I Never Expected Retirement to be so Darn Busy!

There's a lot of activity from yesterday to today. 

My first happy discovery was that back in May of 2012 I had bought a full copy of Sony Vega Movie Studio for about $70, and I had used that a lot to create videos of my Eve Online exploits.  The trouble was that at some point I had a hard drive crash and never recovered my installation of the software.

I happily discovered last night that I could log into Sony, and was able to easily get a second copy and recover my license. 

My sister Julie had produced a very good slide show video last Christmas with a lot of source pictures from when my mother was pregnant with me and of course a lot of growing up with my sisters and all.  When Julie had first thought to produce this, I think she was planning on a video more focused on my mother than of me and my children, and I sort of misunderstood the purpose.  Julie is very devoted to Mom, and it's a good thing too because she takes up some of the slack where I should be taking better care of Mom.

However, it did tug at my heart some as I watched the past 52 years flyby in a bit less than an hour.  What I saw was just an ordinary life, and the fun that was had during the last two generations of our family.  God has made billions of ordinary lives, and so as I watched this, it occured to me that there is no shame in not making some extraodrinary impact on history, such as exploring the South Pole with Earnest Shakelton, or contributions from great scientists like Tesla, Marconi, or Faraday.

What I did do was raise a good family, and not walk away from my basic responsibilities as a father.  To be sure, we have had some rough financial trouble, and there were some rocky years when we lost the house in Massachusetts, and some on Laura's side were pressing for a divorce,  but through it all we did stick together and have been married for over twenty-five years.  Laura and I have raised eight very excellent children, not a single one of them cause for shame.  In this slide show that Julie had produced, were years of smiles and small adventures for our children.  And this should be enough to make anyone proud.

I am motivated to produce my own video that would be similar, but focused slightly differently so that it's more of a legacy message for my children. I plan to take months at this, but it's very encouraging that I have the software to do it again, and I didn't have to outlay any more money for it.

This morning, Laura and I had a visit with Dr. Burgess to get my updated Lupron shot to continue to suppress my testosterone and slow the cancer.  In addition, because the disease is progressing faster than expected, (Apparently the Taxotere chemo series I took earlier this Winter wasn't as effective as had been hoped) Dr. Burgess has started me on Zytiga (Abiraterone acetate) today.  This is supposed to be a very expensive medication, and he had a sample bottle worth about $10,000 in his office.  He provided that to me at no charge, and should last a month.  However the second month supply is likely to be expensive, as we don't know how much will be covered by insurance.

Dr Burgess also had the option to start me on Xtandi, which he feels is very similar, the only difference is that he had no free samples, so we went with Zytigra.

Following this appointment, Kate took Stephen and myself out for a pedicure,  It was actually my suggestion last night.  Stephen was going to fly back to Connecticut this afternoon, and I know how much Kate wanted to "break him in" and get another male to experience culture that many men never bother to indulge.  For me, it's actually becoming more of a true medical neccesity as I can't easily reach my toes to cut my nails on my own.  But for today, it was just a fun thing for the three of us to share.

I had intended to get more work done on my current finances, but after that small bit of activity, I was already quite wiped.
Later this evening, I bought us two rocking chairs  from Gander Mountain and a table for the front patio,  The wifi reaches quite nicely out here so I can post to the blog quite comfortably.  And rather than being entirely reclusive from my nieghborhood I can greet the dog walkers as they use the side walks.  This truly is going to be a great adventure over these remaining months.

oh also I was officially weighed in at Dr. Burgess's office at 250 so the weight continues to drop since Chirstmas, but I'm not totally wasting away yet either.

I hope that my readers can get some sense that life is a gift and that they probably have more things in thier own life to be thankful for, if they would only open thier eyes a bit wider and praise God for his many good gifts.