I guess I'm blogging more this week because everybody is worried about me overdoing it at the show. :)
Also, a note on the title for my non-native English speaking friends now that I realized a bunch of you are reading this, and you may have no idea what it means. It's a bad pun. "Crabby" means grumpy and ill-tempered in English. Also, "cancer" is an astrological sign, and the symbol is the crab. Ta-da.
The day did not start out well. I ativan'd myself to sleep last night (which I am working on again tonight) because of the steroids. But I set an alarm for 7:30 so I could meet T for breakfast at 8. I woke up and realized the room was pretty bright and looked at my phone - 8:40.
So apparently the alarm went off and I didn't hear it. Bob turned it off and didn't wake me because "one day earlier this week the alarm went off and you didn't get up". Ummmm. Let's just say every marriage has it's ups and downs and leave it there.
So I call T in a panic - she texted me but didn't call because she assumed I wasn't feeling well. I still feel terrible.
So I ended up throwing yogurt and pudding in my bag for breakfast and grabbing a cab down to Moscone for my morning booth duty. Booth duty involves standing behind a desk and handing out t-shirts that are sitting on shelves all around you at knee and floor level to people who stand in line. It's not hard, but it is a lot of bending over.
So I discovered that zofran (the anti-nausea med) works great for me, unless I lean over and try to pick through piles of shirts at floor level trying to find the right size. I can tie my shoes. I can pick up a single thing off the floor. But this activity was a no go.
I'd bend over, and unless I found the right size first, I'd start feeling like throwing up, and by the time I talked myself down from that, I could no longer remember the size the person had asked for. NOT FUN. And I looked like a giant bald moron. M came back and rescued me, and then I felt terrible because the shirts had been organized well and I basically left them in messy piles for other people to pick up. That's actually the first time I've felt completely incompetent and like I'm a drag on the team. I will not be doing t-shirts again tomorrow. (I was fine doing t-shirts pre-chemo on Monday. No problem. 6 hours of it.)
I did sit down at a table near the booth and it turned out to be a good thing. I'm actually kind of famous in my world, and didn't realize how much that had seeped out from the Java community into the larger OTN community. For two hours I had people who recognized me either by face from a presentation I did on Friday at HQ, or by name on my badge because they'd seen me on the message boards I've taken over, and they sat down to chat and talk about what we're doing. So, I'll take more of that tomorrow.
M and I were off duty at 11:30 and needed to go back up to JavaOne to pick up Bob's suitcase from the booth (it was used to transport our last bag of stuff to give away this morning), and we weren't on duty there at all. But we ended up staying for another two hours basically because I kept getting flagged down by people who wanted to talk to me personally. Got in another few intros for M and T out of that at least. M and I finally got out for lunch, where tragically they delivered my (totally delicious) sandwich late and therefore felt compelled to comp apple cobbler for dessert.
M went home, and I came back to my room. No napping on decadron, but I did get into bed with my laptop and did some mellow stuff with my feet up. I even laid down and closed my eyes for a bit. Felt good to be de-stressed enough to just be here and not do anything for several hours.
Leasha called and I got to ask her a bunch of questions about how we should configure the house while I'm post-op and we think we've got it figured out. Turns out doing the guest bed in my office will be great for me during chemo, but pointless for surgical recovery. I basically will not have use of my abs AND my arms for several weeks, which will make getting out of bed impossible, and I'll probably need one of those extra tall toilet seats too. So we're going to move our dining room table down to the living room (there's room against one wall for it. We'll continue to build the guest room so people who have offered to come for a few days to care for me will have a comfortable place to stay, and we'll get a hospital bed in the dining room. I'll still be central to the house, close to the kitchen and accessible bathroom, Bob will have privacy upstairs, and guests/caretakers will be close by but not right on top of me all the time. We think it will work well. And I've had so many people who are local volunteer to help too that I think we'll be in pretty good shape. There will be a few weeks where I just need somebody around to make sure I eat and take my meds, but otherwise they could be working from my house, and enough of my friends are techie that this is totally possible.
Anyway, back to life here at the con. It ends tomorrow. The big concert (Maroon Five and Black Keys) was tonight. Bob and I had no interest, so we just headed down to the mission and got burritos with our friends Ben and Anna who are here from London, and then sat in a quiet bar and chatted until around 9:30. Nice low key evening. Bob's back out with the boys. I'm here goofing around and trying to start packing up this total wreck of a hotel room. It's been so bad between us being colossal slobs, the giant boxes of swag that I'm giving away, the other giant boxes of swag that John was having us save for him to ship back to Greenville, that we just didn't want to bother. They couldn't do anything but make the beds, and we don't even bother with that at home anyway. Plus, I'm pretty sure one of my bottles of Ativan went missing the first day. I forgot to lock the bag of drugs in the safe. Whooops. Didn't make that mistake again.
I may have make-up breakfast with T in the morning if she's up for it and then she's flying back to Chicago. I've got booth duty from 10-noon with M at Moscone but no t-shirts (and it will be dead dead dead because it's the last day), and then I invited a bunch of my friends to join me for lunch tomorrow. I haven't seen them enough because I have been being good, and also because of the food thing - everybody eats dinner at the buffet events, and I can't, so I go eat by myself. Seriously cuts down on the hanging out time, even when I had the energy to be out of the room.
I'm not sure who's still in town, but it should be somewhere between 5 and 20 of us and I am very much looking forward to it. I will confess to crying when I sent the email out. This is hard. Big changes. Letting go. It's more than the cancer. It's the fallout from my promotion - I had to stop traveling with these people because of it, and now only see them once a year. That plus the great unknowns of this year make it hard.
That's it for me tomorrow. Packing up, checking out and having dinner with John (and maybe one other friend) before we drop them off at SFO on our way home. We should be back in our own bed by 11 tomorrow night. Looking forward to it.
I'm glad I came for the week. I am sad it's over. While I did push to the limit, I didn't walk past that limit at any point and I'm pretty proud of myself.
Also, a note on the title for my non-native English speaking friends now that I realized a bunch of you are reading this, and you may have no idea what it means. It's a bad pun. "Crabby" means grumpy and ill-tempered in English. Also, "cancer" is an astrological sign, and the symbol is the crab. Ta-da.
The day did not start out well. I ativan'd myself to sleep last night (which I am working on again tonight) because of the steroids. But I set an alarm for 7:30 so I could meet T for breakfast at 8. I woke up and realized the room was pretty bright and looked at my phone - 8:40.
So apparently the alarm went off and I didn't hear it. Bob turned it off and didn't wake me because "one day earlier this week the alarm went off and you didn't get up". Ummmm. Let's just say every marriage has it's ups and downs and leave it there.
So I call T in a panic - she texted me but didn't call because she assumed I wasn't feeling well. I still feel terrible.
So I ended up throwing yogurt and pudding in my bag for breakfast and grabbing a cab down to Moscone for my morning booth duty. Booth duty involves standing behind a desk and handing out t-shirts that are sitting on shelves all around you at knee and floor level to people who stand in line. It's not hard, but it is a lot of bending over.
So I discovered that zofran (the anti-nausea med) works great for me, unless I lean over and try to pick through piles of shirts at floor level trying to find the right size. I can tie my shoes. I can pick up a single thing off the floor. But this activity was a no go.
I'd bend over, and unless I found the right size first, I'd start feeling like throwing up, and by the time I talked myself down from that, I could no longer remember the size the person had asked for. NOT FUN. And I looked like a giant bald moron. M came back and rescued me, and then I felt terrible because the shirts had been organized well and I basically left them in messy piles for other people to pick up. That's actually the first time I've felt completely incompetent and like I'm a drag on the team. I will not be doing t-shirts again tomorrow. (I was fine doing t-shirts pre-chemo on Monday. No problem. 6 hours of it.)
I did sit down at a table near the booth and it turned out to be a good thing. I'm actually kind of famous in my world, and didn't realize how much that had seeped out from the Java community into the larger OTN community. For two hours I had people who recognized me either by face from a presentation I did on Friday at HQ, or by name on my badge because they'd seen me on the message boards I've taken over, and they sat down to chat and talk about what we're doing. So, I'll take more of that tomorrow.
M and I were off duty at 11:30 and needed to go back up to JavaOne to pick up Bob's suitcase from the booth (it was used to transport our last bag of stuff to give away this morning), and we weren't on duty there at all. But we ended up staying for another two hours basically because I kept getting flagged down by people who wanted to talk to me personally. Got in another few intros for M and T out of that at least. M and I finally got out for lunch, where tragically they delivered my (totally delicious) sandwich late and therefore felt compelled to comp apple cobbler for dessert.
M went home, and I came back to my room. No napping on decadron, but I did get into bed with my laptop and did some mellow stuff with my feet up. I even laid down and closed my eyes for a bit. Felt good to be de-stressed enough to just be here and not do anything for several hours.
Leasha called and I got to ask her a bunch of questions about how we should configure the house while I'm post-op and we think we've got it figured out. Turns out doing the guest bed in my office will be great for me during chemo, but pointless for surgical recovery. I basically will not have use of my abs AND my arms for several weeks, which will make getting out of bed impossible, and I'll probably need one of those extra tall toilet seats too. So we're going to move our dining room table down to the living room (there's room against one wall for it. We'll continue to build the guest room so people who have offered to come for a few days to care for me will have a comfortable place to stay, and we'll get a hospital bed in the dining room. I'll still be central to the house, close to the kitchen and accessible bathroom, Bob will have privacy upstairs, and guests/caretakers will be close by but not right on top of me all the time. We think it will work well. And I've had so many people who are local volunteer to help too that I think we'll be in pretty good shape. There will be a few weeks where I just need somebody around to make sure I eat and take my meds, but otherwise they could be working from my house, and enough of my friends are techie that this is totally possible.
Anyway, back to life here at the con. It ends tomorrow. The big concert (Maroon Five and Black Keys) was tonight. Bob and I had no interest, so we just headed down to the mission and got burritos with our friends Ben and Anna who are here from London, and then sat in a quiet bar and chatted until around 9:30. Nice low key evening. Bob's back out with the boys. I'm here goofing around and trying to start packing up this total wreck of a hotel room. It's been so bad between us being colossal slobs, the giant boxes of swag that I'm giving away, the other giant boxes of swag that John was having us save for him to ship back to Greenville, that we just didn't want to bother. They couldn't do anything but make the beds, and we don't even bother with that at home anyway. Plus, I'm pretty sure one of my bottles of Ativan went missing the first day. I forgot to lock the bag of drugs in the safe. Whooops. Didn't make that mistake again.
I may have make-up breakfast with T in the morning if she's up for it and then she's flying back to Chicago. I've got booth duty from 10-noon with M at Moscone but no t-shirts (and it will be dead dead dead because it's the last day), and then I invited a bunch of my friends to join me for lunch tomorrow. I haven't seen them enough because I have been being good, and also because of the food thing - everybody eats dinner at the buffet events, and I can't, so I go eat by myself. Seriously cuts down on the hanging out time, even when I had the energy to be out of the room.
I'm not sure who's still in town, but it should be somewhere between 5 and 20 of us and I am very much looking forward to it. I will confess to crying when I sent the email out. This is hard. Big changes. Letting go. It's more than the cancer. It's the fallout from my promotion - I had to stop traveling with these people because of it, and now only see them once a year. That plus the great unknowns of this year make it hard.
That's it for me tomorrow. Packing up, checking out and having dinner with John (and maybe one other friend) before we drop them off at SFO on our way home. We should be back in our own bed by 11 tomorrow night. Looking forward to it.
I'm glad I came for the week. I am sad it's over. While I did push to the limit, I didn't walk past that limit at any point and I'm pretty proud of myself.
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