The End!

We're ending the year on the best of all notes --

Ack had his last chemo treatment on Friday, 12/30. Today he spent a restful day and feels pretty good.  (I did pick-up curling and threw some nice stones.) Tonight, we're doing our classic stay-at-home New Year's Eve--Casablanca and a puzzle--though with less champagne than usual.

A happy end to 2011.

Thumbs up from Ack and Dr. Julie Chang

Ack's nurse Nadeige (? can't quite remember her unusual French name) awarded him sparkling grape juice at the end of the yucky hard-not-to-puke treatment.

The celebration continued at home. A "That was easy" talking button gift from Meg and delicious Gail Ambroius chocolates from Margaret.

LOTR Christmas!

We took our family's crazy Lord-of-the-Rings-Christmas-tradition a bit farther this year.  On Christmas morning, after singing "Happy Birthday" to baby Jesus in the creche, opening gifts, playing with new gizmos, and calling distant family, we turned to a gingerbread project: creating buildings or scenes from LOTR.  Two days before we'd gathered ingredients for frosting and decorations. The night before we'd each designed the size and shape of the gingerbread for our construction and baked it. Then on Christmas our construction began.  Stressful!  Exciting!  Disappointing!  Lengthy!  Cooperative!  Glorious! All this and more but primarily it was fun, fun, fun. 

Anne's Bag End of the Shire. All agreed it was the prettiest.

Erin's Rohan with horses galore

Alana's Battle of Helm's Deep with orcs attacking. Notice the horses coming down the ramp on the right.

Ack's tower and castle Minas Morgul, a fortress of Mordor. Yes, it's leaning a little but hey, there have been horrific battles there.

Al's Gondor

Al's meticulously aligned construction pieces

Just like in LOTR, it all ended with a terrible struggle for the one ring!

Christmas tree - from backyard to living room

We wanted to take down a increasingly large pine tree in the back yard to make way for a larger garden. We (Ack and Tom Achtor) cut it down and now the top of the tree is our Christmas tree. The lights are on, but we are waiting to add other decorations when Erin, Alana and Al come visit. Merry Christmas! Here are three pictures of the current project.

17 Minutes of the Lunar Eclipse

6:50 am

So glad our house faces west! We could stay inside to watch and not have to brave the 9 degree temperature outside.

6:52 am

6:55 am

6:59 am

7:04 am

7:07 am

San Fran

The ceiling painted in Native design at Mission Delores, a church built before the Declaration of Independence was signed.

I didn't take many photos, only the one above. I was having too good a time.  I love that city!

Photo by Lin Chambers of Ack and Margaret at her AGU poster presentation. They gave a paper together too.

Photo by Margaret of me at Mel's Diner, a great breakfast spot.

Photo by a busboy at Sam's, a dockside restaurant in Tiburon that had delicious crabcakes and smooth mimosas. We were lucky enough to have sunny, 60s, no fog days. Old friend Dave Meyer treated us to exploring some of the Marin Headlands. Great to see him again after 25 years.

Erin's Here!

It's a week now that Erin's been home visiting.  Al joined us on Thursday. They'll stay 'til Sunday.

Erin, Margaret and Anne had dinner at Sardine on Tuesday. Meg came by later. Ack should have been curling but instead was home sick. He felt better by the Big Day.

Erin (see above the A) at the 219th daily noon Solidarity Sing-Along in the Capitol on Wednesday.

We saw the glorious new Muppet movie on Wed night with Ellen, Carrie and their Thanksgiving guests. Go see it!

Al and his folks were with us for Thanksgiving. Here's the puzzle a bunch of us (mostly Al) did  that day.

Chemo #5

Ack's items to get through the day: iPad, meds (in a favorite chocolatier's bag, to make them sweeter), some hard candies to counter bad tasting meds, and a book from E&A about champagne (which he has lost his taste for!)

The day is not fun but he's getting through it.  This is the start of the second half of treatments so we're closer to the end than the beginning of the cycles now, which is great.

Today we're in Bay 13, next to a window with the closest view of the construction we've had so far.  None of the other bays in this corridor are occupied, which is a first.  Usually it's a full house. 

For He's a Jolly Good Fellow

This afternoon, Ack was inducted as a Fellow in the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.  Seated at our table to make the event even more wonderful were Mary and Joe Pryor, Orange and Dean Schroeder, Margaret Mooney, Ellen Pryor, Carrie Kruse and Ginny Kruse.  Long series of talks but interesting. Ack talked about how to take a complex entity, make it simple and then deal with the problems caused from that simplification. Judy Faulker, CEO of Epic Systems, gave three rules, one of which was: what you put up with is what you stand for. Jeremey Suri, a historian, stressed that clusters of creative people is what incubates profound change. Maury Laws, the composer of the music in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer cartoon (yes, that one we see every year on TV), traced how music really is involved in all parts of life.  7 Fellows total, all with interesting ideas. 

A November Friday with Mimi

 My mother is game for any adventure. 

On this sunny but cool day, Mimi and Anne putt-putted the pontoon over to Governor Nelson State Park for Donny Anderson to take and store it for the winter season.  This was after a few other steps first: shuttling a car over to the park (Poppy did that with me), clearing out the boat and drying the  hidden water in every compartment, finding that the battery was dead, and then recharging the battery.  The short ride on the lake was beautiful.

Then later in the afternoon, we went to the 60th annual lutefisk dinner at Lakeview Lutheran Church, down the road from our house.  Even though she wasn't hungry, and despite the fact that neither of us planned to eat the fish (the white stuff on the platter in the photo), we had a great time.  I ate the meatballs, mashed potatoes, rutabaga, cole slaw, lefse, cranberries and pie.  Mimi had a few tastes of the meatballs, taters and pie.  What's as delightful as any of the foods are the enthusiastic stories people tell about lutefisk: how they grew to like it, advice (to me) on how to eat it, their favorite way to prepare it, their favorite places to go for it, the church lutefisk suppers they've gone to this season already and will go to next. 

Through it all, Ack did great work at work and Daddy kept guard at the dining room table or napped in the guest room. 

Visiting Erin

Anne's annual American Folklore Society conference was in beautiful Bloomington, Indiana this year. I went down on Tuesday; Ack followed on Thursday; we both stayed with Erin and we all missed Alana.  While I was giving or hearing papers, Ack and Erin cleared out the yard of lots of overgrown brush.

Day in Dane: A Community Photo Album

Help me choose!

Dane County is going to put together a poster using images taken by county residents on four days throughout their 175th anniversary year. "The purpose is to produce photos that show what makes Dane County a special place to live and work." If you want to see other photos sent in so far from the other three days, go here: www.flickr.com/photos/danecounty175.

The last day for shooting was noon Friday to noon Saturday last week.  Here are four of the images I took that day.  Which should I send in? (Each photographer is allowed only one.)  

Knowledgeable Photoshop advice for enhancing the sky in the first and third images is welcome!

Another wig...

... and this one from Eileen can double as a beard when my hair grows back!

Chemo #3 day 2

Feeling just fine today! Even worked out. Though I did come  home at 2:30 to relax and nap on the boat with Anne.  Tomorrow is a full day of work. Meanwhile, two new submissions - one by Anne and the other by Alana. Both of them used Tom's tool at: http://profhorn.meteor.wisc.edu/wxwise/ackb/

Mr. Steve by Alana

Curly Grey Hair Guy by Anne

Chemo #3 - Day 1 (and wigs)

Well, today was Chemo #3.  Our stay at the hospital was a bit shorter today - we were only at the hospital from 8 am to 2:30 pm. Blood tests were done fast and while the nurses didn't do the 'rapid delivery' of the "R" helpful poison, they were able to increase the rate. So, that was nice. My reaction so far has been good, but unfortunately as I type this nausea sets in - and it is not because of my writing!

The weather was in the 80s, so when we got home we jumped on the boat and hung out on the lake.

While waiting at the hospital, Anne made some refrigerator magnets from the art supplies they leave in the waiting room. This reminded me of the great wig contest.  Here are my favorites so far (no particular order): They are by Mike (Simpson look), Erin (Bieber look) and Shaima (feather head man).

Give me a wig contest!

OK, I'm doing a contest.  Color in a wig for me. Two options. One is to save the image below, bring it into your favorite drawing program and add a wig. then email it to me.

The second option is to go to this web site, draw in the wig and do a save screen and send me that image.  Not sure what the prizes will be, but they should be good!

Birds!

We saw all kinds of amazing birds yesterday - from endangered American whooping cranes to an African grey crowned crane to Dr. Evermore's musical bird band.

Fun day - Orange Party, Crabby Ack

Rose and Louise coming out of the 'gerbil treadmill' 

Ack, Anne, Rose and Louise went the Madison Children's Museum to celebrate Orange's 60th Birthday party. It was a great party and we got to explore the museum along with everyone else. Though, I did get crabby at the end, when I got tired and needed to leave. Sorry to those I may have offended.


Prior to the party we spent the day driving through Devil's Lake to get to the Crane Foundation, Ski-hi apple orchard (though they were out of caramel apples), Dr. Evermore's park and capped the day with a great homemade dinner.

Chemo #2 day 1

We finished the puzzle Bob, Kristy and Trina gave us, the missing piece is an Ackerman tradition

Well chemo #2, the day after - is going well. I feel a little nausea but other than that I'm fine. One short nap today when I got home. I am thinking of shaving my head completely.


I meet yet another colleague who new someone who had lymphoma and was cured. It was his mother and she was cured over 10 years ago. So that is about 8 people who I have meet who know a survivor. Of course I started thinking that is 100% cure rate so far, but the doctor said 81%. So, I need to find two unsuccessful cases, so that I'm not one of them! That is an abuse of statistics of course. It reminded me of when Anne and I were looking to Madison. We meet many people who loved Madison, so we went on a search to find someone who did not like Madison. Never succeeded at that either. So, now I'm planning on 100% cured!