blivet 2.0

Audrey thinks Santa looks like Richard Attenborough and I am inclined to agree. I mean, that is his own beard and everything…

[this post refers to the previous entry]

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Without a doubt, the best Santa I have seen. And a happy little boy!

via wood s lot, comes this from American Samizdat:

From Gallup: “Only about a third of Americans believe that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is a scientific theory that has been well supported by the evidence, while just as many say that it is just one of many theories and has not been supported by the evidence. The rest say they don’t know enough to say. Forty-five percent of Americans also believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago. A third of Americans are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.”

If you are inspired to change these sad statistics, here’s a tool box for you: Talk Origins, Skeptics Annotated Bible, Raving Atheist, Religious News Blog, American Samizdat, Internet Infidels, God is for Suckers, James Randi Educational Foundation, Free Inquiry, Freedom From Religion Foundation, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. This atheist hopes to see you down here in the foxholes soon, tovarish.

We are back in Nevada. The public library was closed, so I could not post from Texas.

My ‘good news‘ turned out to be very good. There is no sign of bone marrow disease. Now I am sure they will want to do some other kind of awkward and/or painful proceedure to find out where all these red blood cells are coming from.

My personal theory is that the sleep disorders caused an increase in the amount of heme available as a reaction to low blood O₂.

Just a thought. (various grammar/syntax edits)

… and across the Great Divide, to Grandmother’s house we go. Tomorrow morning anyway.

We are going to visit my Mother in Fort Worth (Benbrook), Texas for Thanksgiving. She has not had the opportunity to adore Ian for some time and is overdue. Plus, there is the whole lobectomy post-op thing to check up on.

I should be able to get to the Public Library to update you all on news from the leech.

Back on Saturday for sure…

I hope so, anyway. ‘Cause around every silver lining, there’s a dark cloud…

There was a message from the Hematologist on the machine when I got home today. It seems I “have no bone marrow disease.”

Now, I am not sure if that means no leukemia, essential thrombocythemia and/or myeloproliferative disorder, or if it just means no leukemia.

You can be sure I will be calling them tomorrow.

[update 2/22/2005:] Not what I hoped.

Things have been slightly quieter than usual around here. Yesterday afternoon (Friday) I had a bone marrow biopsy taken as they are trying to determine why I have an elevated red blood cell count. The two leading candidates are essential thrombocythemia and myeloproliferative disorder.

One thing I learned is that Demerol makes me sick as a dog.

So, we await the findings from the biopsy. Needless to say, I am less than thrilled about this…

Update: For those who have asked, one of the diagnostic signs of Essential Thrombocythemia is platelet values > 600 x 10 ^9/L (there are other criteria), and my platelet values have been running about 675 x 10 ^9/L for the past year and a half.

I appreciate the comments and emails. Thanks.

I had wondered for several months what had happened to Wade who did a weblog called Whimmydiddle. I was pleasantly surprised today (via a comment of his at dangerousmeta!) to find out that Whimmydiddle is back and powered by WordPress.

Ian and I drove around the southern part of the Desert National Wildlife Range on Sunday. We drove up the slightly maintained Mormon Well road into the Yucca (Joshua Tree) Forest until the road got so cross-cut with fresh gullies I didn’t want to slosh Ian around in his booster seat any more.

The area on the north side of the Las Vegas Range and Fossil Ridge is really pretty this time of year. Ian picked up a lot of rocks and said, “what’s that?” followed by, “let’s go!” a lot. Then we would run over to whatever it was he saw. Usually another interesting rock.

Now that Audrey is back from Death Valley, I think we need to take a side trip to Fossil Ridge proper next Sunday. That should be interesting…

Twenty years ago today I moved to Las Vegas, Nevada from Winslow, Arizona. I was going to be here for a maximum of two or three years. At most. I couldn’t imagine visiting Las Vegas, much less being a resident. In many ways I still can’t.

I continue to propagate my ‘I’ll only be here for a couple of years’ meme, except now I make it plural and add ‘more’ to the end.

I mean that. Just a couple of years… Really.

p.s. I deliberately used ‘meme’ just to annoy someone in particular. You know who you are. :^)