Things have been rather hectic here at VatulBlog HQ lately. So busy that I have neither the time nor the inclination to blog. I’ve seen more of the insides of airports and geophysical data than any human should and the best part is that it isn’t over. More travel and data schlepping ahead.
This past weekend, I flew up to Ohio to spend some time with my parents and grandmother, the latter of whom I haven’t seen since my wedding around sixteen months ago. This is Patti’s (Tamil for grandmother) second battle with that awful beast known as cancer and she has just come out of another demeaning round of chemotherapy and radiation. Yet, she got out of bed and walked into the living room to spend time with one of her favorite grandchildren and, through coughs and sniffles, lovingly related to me all the things I used to do as a precocious young kid visiting my grandfather and her in India. I want to take this opportunity to say the following to my grandmother: Should this fate befall me, Goddess help me be half as strong as you are and look half as beautiful as you do after swallowing harsh, cancer-killing chemicals and being zapped by gamma rays, neutrons and protons that make you sicker than your illness provides. You, my dear lady, kick ass. I love you. (I also admire the hell out of you for tuning out the inevitable, heated discussion on American politics that went on among your children and grandchildren.)
Should this fate befall me. Let’s see – paternal great-grandmother and maternal aunt dead of breast cancer, paternal uncle dead of lung cancer, grandmother fighting non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and I live on Cancer Alley. Nice. When I mentioned this to him, Herr Doktor Brother assured me that nanotechnology will cure all within the span of a decade and that I’ve got to have faith in the coming and unstoppable advancements in medical science. I’m similarly optimistic about the oil industry and alternative sources of energy, but, like any passive consumer of products I don’t know much about, I’ll believe the cure for cancer when I see it.
Speaking of frustrating illnesses, Dangerblond‘s blog is on the fritz. More specifically, we are battling File ‘./blog/wp_comments.MYD’ not found (Errcode: 13), which probably means a corrupt Comments file/table which in turn means a WordPress upgrade. I may not be able to fix cancer, but I will make her blog cry Uncle, by gum. Tonight, I go in with a Ka-Bar between my teeth. Wish me luck.
“I’ll believe the cure for cancer when I see it.”
Ditto on that one. ‘Til then, keep that family history in mind and get yourself checked out regularly puhleeze. kthanx.