A “quick and dirty” flyer I created for RBHS homecoming.
I went to my first homecoming in 31 years last night – sort of. My daughter, Ashley, is in ASB at Rancho Bernardo High School. About two weeks ago she and her friend, Lizzie were brainstorming a tailgate party for the upcoming homecoming game. When asked about a live band, Lizzie suggested – The Rubber Band.
RBHS Homecoming Tailgate Set One
We played for about an hour over two sets. We even got the principal of RBHS to join us for a cover of “I Wanna Be Sedated”, by the Ramones.
May is bookended on one side by Mother’s Day and on the other by my wife, Jodie’s, birthday. Throw in Memorial Day, busy kiddos, and a new job and I was surprised to get this comic done. Well, almost done – I’m posting it now ’cause I didn’t have time to color it when I gave it to her on Sunday!
The New Job
I guess it’s probably time to make an official announcement. Before I started working as an “Artist in Residence” at Rancho Bernardo High School (RBHS) I had applied for a Programmer Analyst position with Poway Unified School District – and was subsequently turned down. Well, about two months into assisting in art class I got a call from the district office to see if I was still interested in the programming position.
Honestly, I had to think about it. The art position I held was part-time, without benefits, and had very little chance of being renewed for the next school year. Compared to a full-time position with benefits at a much higher pay the decision should have been easy, but it wasn’t. The problem? I really liked teaching art and working with the kids. It was very fulfilling.
I ended up taking the programming position, but made it clear that long-term I’d want to be back in the classroom. My new supervisor seemed to be on board. She’s the executive director for Poway’s CTAAE Department, a mouthful of an acronym that translates to : “Career Technical Adult Alternative Education”. If you live in Poway and Rancho Bernardo and get the “Adult School” booklet in the mail, that’s one of the things my department does. My department is also in charge of CTE, or “Career Technical Education”, which spearheads a lot of the “alternate” classes that I used to like so much when I was in high school so long ago. My daughter, Ashley, for example, took a Computer Graphics course last semester at RBHS which was sponsored by CTE, and loved it!
It’s only been a few weeks, but I feel like I made a good decision. I like the work, the people are great, and for the first time in a long while I feel like I can make a difference. And who knows? Someday I might get to teach one of those CTE classes myself!
On a more personal note, I’ve yet to have the any of the anxiety attacks that used to plague me while working as an Application Development Manager at my last job. I’m beginning to realize just how unhealthy that place, and my manager, really were.
“I almost walked up to the office to call you guys the first night, but my friends convinced me not too.”, Kaylee told Jodie and I, not long after returning from 6th Grade Camp.
It was probably a good thing she didn’t because, although Jodie and I had fully intended to leave our phones turned on as we slept, we had forgotten to. Awesome parenting, right?
“So…?”, I prompted her.
“The food was bad and I didn’t sleep at all the first night!”, she told me.
“Would you do it again?”, I asked her.
“No!”, she said, firmly.
“Really?”, I asked again.
“No!”, she demanded.
“Why?”, I asked.
“The food was horrible!”, she repeated, adding, “And the beds had graffiti all over them, and….”
“….it wasn’t that bad, then!”, I interrupted.
“… and everyone kept farting! My friends and I all used the bathroom at the same time…”, Kaylee continued.
“…so no one knew who was farting?”, Jodie interrupted, laughing.
“YES!”, Kaylee confirmed.
Although I missed my little girl, I am proud of her. My own experience with 6th Grade Camp some 36 years ago – ironically, at the same campground and ( likely ) bunk houses – was disastrous.
Due to nerves, bad food choices, or both, I didn’t shit for the entire week. Showering was also traumatic. I spent the first two days with unrinsed shampoo in my hair before I gave up on bathing altogether. I was all-too-happy to return home, or at least I would have been if my mom didn’t immediately whisk me off to an event at the Portuguese Hall upon picking me up – unshowered, filthy, and still very constipated, in dress slacks and a tie.
So, no Kaylee. I’m not sure I’d do it again, either…
One day in the near future when COVID is a distant memory my family and I will all look back and laugh about that one time while we were all working/schooling from home and our device’s batteries all died simultaneously.
My cousin, Angela, badly hurt her rear and I thought she could use some cheering up so I plagiarized one of her students’ favorite books. My apologies to the REAL author of “I Broke My Butt”, Dawn McMillan as I’m probably breaking some copyright and artistic integrity laws. The original can be found here on Amazon. For more on my rendition go here.
“Dad! Can we do an Easter Egg Hunt on Minecraft?”, my oldest daughter, Ashley, asked me.
In years past we would go to the Westwood Club, our community center, for an annual Easter Egg Hunt with our friends and neighbors. However this year, due to social distancing restrictions enacted to slow the Coronavirus, the community center would be closed and the Easter Egg Hunt, cancelled.
“That is a great – wait, no, fantastic idea!”, I told her excitedly, “Let’s do it!”
So, during the week leading up to Easter Sunday we created a Minecraft World, populated it with a bunch of colorful “eggs” ( we substituted in-game colored wool blocks ), and scheduled a Zoom teleconference so that the participants could talk.
We kept the rule simple.
Each participant would be provided a “basket” ( an in-game chest ) that would reside in the starting area.
Each basket would contain tools ( a pickaxe and shears ) which would allow the participant to “mine” the eggs.
A hunt would last 15 minutes.
During the hunt each participant would have to find and mine as many eggs as they could and return them to their basket before time ran out. Only eggs inside the basket at the end of the hunt would be tallied.
And most importantly, the participant with the most eggs wins.
For each hunt we also hid a special “golden egg” ( an in-game gold block ) which would be worth ten regular eggs.
To get by Minecraft’s 8-player limit we would hold two hunts. The first would be for the older kids who would re-hide the eggs for the second hunt, which would be for the younger kids.
The hunt had it’s hiccups, but everyone seemed to have a good time. Hopefully next year we’ll be able to once again meet up with our friends and neighbors at the community center for a real, in-person Easter Egg Hunt, but desperate times call for desperate measures and this measure, in my humble opinion, wasn’t so much desperate as it was fun.
Take care. Stay healthy. Live life. And stay safe everyone.
COVID has dramatically changed everyday life in a very short amount of time. LEGO competitions over Zoom with my daughters’ friends was one way to buck the lockdown and establish some normalcy. It’s fun, too!
My girls and their friends are all big fans of Lego Masters, a new television show where teams compete with one another to create incredible builds based upon a theme.
Leveraging the coronoavirus restrictions as a unique opportunity, five families participated in Episode 1 of the “Rancho Bernardo Lego Masters : Coronavirus Lockdown Edition”. Each family used Zoom running on a mobile device or laptop to teleconference so that they could participate.
The winner of this weeks challenge, “Build the World’s Coolest Treehouse” was the Jock Family. Alexander and Kaliope won the exclusive “Rancho Bernardo Cup” with their amazing build. They will hold onto the cup until next Saturday for Episode 2.
Rules
Each family will represent a Team. A Team will be made up of one or more kids.
Each Team will need access to a device capable of running Zoom.
Each family will have two Votes. A family can only Vote for themselves once.
A Host (me) will host the Zoom meeting and be responsible for interviewing ( and muting ) the Teams throughout the challenge.
How it works
A Theme will be chosen from a hat by the Host and presented to all of the Teams.
Each Team will take5 minutesto create a Plan. A Plan is a one page paper describing about how the Team will build a Lego representing the Theme. The Plan can ( and should ) contain pictures. No building should take place during this time.
Each Team will take 1 hour to Build their Lego.
Each Team will take turns Showcasing their Build. While doing so they must describe how their Build fits the Theme.
Each family will submit two Votes for the best Build and discretely tell the Host.
The Host will tally the votes and award the winning Team the “Golden Cup”. The Golden Cup will be re-awarded with each competition.
One thing I have learned after getting diagnosed with cancer is to request copies of all your scans. The scans will come in handy if you ever need a second opinion from a different hospital. Just be vary careful about securing them. For more go here.
“Jodie, what the heck does this mean?”, I grumbled.
Jodie peered over my shoulder at the report for the CT scan that was performed on me two weeks prior. The report indicated, as my surgeon Dr. Kane had told us during my last appointment, that my prostate and compromised lymph node were now normal-sized. However, a little further down it read this :
Significant stool burden throughout the entire colon, indicating severe constipation.
SMALL & LARGE BOWEL: Significant stool burden throughout the colon.
“I think it means you were full of food.”, she replied.
“Well, YES. I mean, they had me fast for four hours ahead of time, so I crammed as much food in as I could.”
Jodie shrugged.
“And I am NOT constipated!”, I said with, in retrospect, a little too much bravado. I fired a quick email off to Dr. Stewart pleading my case and forgot all about it.
Fast forward a week.
Jodie and I were, once again, waiting in an exam room at UCSD’s Koman Outpatient Facility. We didn’t have to wait long before Dr. Stewart burst through the door.
“Oh my God, are you okay ?!?”
“Huh? What? Yeah, I’m fine, wh…”, I stuttered.
“I read your CT scan report and it sounds like you were very full and constipa ( smirking ) ….”
Dr. Stewart couldn’t keep it together and started laughing. In a prior post I wrote about doctors having to walk a fine line when using humor with their patients. Dr. Stewart nailed it this time. Jodie and I started laughing with him.
“Radiologists often point out things like this. I’ve looked at your scans and everything looks normal to me.”, he reassured me.
“Can you at least see what I ate in the scans?”, I asked, half jokingly.
Chuckling, Dr. Stewart brought up my scans on his computer and, although I thought they were as indecipherable as a rorschach test, he did his best to show me my full stomach and colon.
“So, how are you doing?”, he asked.
“Well, I’ve been on Lupron and Zytiga for over three months now.”, I told him, “The hot flashes are getting better, but I feel like I have had a lot less energy.”
“That’s because when you first started therapy it was a new challenge, but now that you’re in the thick of it, the honeymoon period is ov…..”, Dr. Stewart started.
“I’d hardly call it a honeymoon!”, I interrupted, smiling.
“Good point.”, Dr. Stewart chuckled, “Anything else?”
“Well, I got the paperwork for my radical prostatectomy next month, and I am a little relieved that I do not have to do an enema.”, I replied. In my opinion, food goes in the mouth and comes out the bottom, the reverse is never a good thing.
“Let’s talk about your surgery”, Dr. Stewart said.
He then told me that I would remain on Lupron during surgery, but I would take a two week break from Zytiga. When I asked him why, he told me that there’s not a lot of precedent for men being on Zytiga while having a radical prostatectomy. I would, however, remain on Prednisone the entire time. A week after surgery, the same day that I was to get my catheter removed, I would get my second shot of Lupron. I briefly envisioned how that day would go, and quickly changed channels. One step at a time, right?
“After surgery should my PSA be zero?”, I asked. PSA measures prostate inflammation. No prostate, no PSA.
“Yes.”, said Dr. Stewart.
“And if it’s not?”
Dr. Stewart started talking about radiation and I stopped him.
“For now, let’s just assume that the surgery is going to work and everything is going to be okay. I really don’t want to talk about radiation when I won’t really know if the surgery worked until I’m off of hormone therapy.”, I interrupted.
Hormone therapy starves prostate cancer cells. It’s why my PSA has dropped from 103 to 1.14 while I have been on it. As I am to remain on hormone therapy for up to two years, worrying about any residual cancer after surgery seemed premature.
Next, we discussed my genetic screening results.
Since being treated by Dr. Stewart I have had two genetic screening tests performed, the first by Tempus and the second by Invitae . These tests scan for BRCA1, BRCA2, and HOXB13 mutations in your DNA. While having these mutations greatly increase your chance of getting Breast, Ovarian, or Prostate Cancer, the mutations, being as common as they are, have been targeted by pharmaceutical companies in the development of newer, very effective medications, such as Lynparza.
Given my family history of cancer, Dr. Stewart thought that I might have had one of these mutations, but the results from both companies came back negative.
“Is that good or bad?”, I asked him.
“It’s neither good nor bad. It is what it is.”, Dr. Stewart replied.
I was almost disappointed. Having a known mutation would have likely made me an easier target for therapies. But then Jodie snapped me out of it.
“It’s good! It means that our daughters aren’t carriers, either.”, she said.
Thanks, honey. Very good point.
“Any other questions?”, Dr. Stewart asked.
I shook my head no which, in reality, was far from the truth. I had lots of questions, but realizing that not all of them had answers and that our appointment was winding down, I relented.
As it turns out I won’t see Dr. Stewart again for over two-and-a-half months. He explained that, after surgery, my cancer treatments will quickly become a routine of hormone therapy, bloodwork, and PSA tests for the next year or so. I understood, but I will miss our monthly pow-wows nonetheless. Dr. Stewart is a fantastic doctor. As he left the room I held up my arms in a mock embrace and smiled. He smiled back and closed the door behind him.
My mom told me that her original tuition was $400 per semester at a private university ( University of San Diego ) in the late 60’s. Today that number is just shy of $30,000. Life just got a little too real…
drawnandcoded.com 