Man, what would I do without google? Today at the gym we were stretching after our workout and we had our arms out in a “T”. What popped into my head was Letterman from The Electric Company, but my brain could only remember, “Stronger than Silent ‘E’! Able to leap Capital ‘T’ in a single bound! It’s a word! It’s a plan! It’s Letterman!” I knew there was something missing and I couldn’t think of what it was, so I looked it up. There was even video on YouTube. (It was “Faster than a rolling ‘O'” that I forgot.)

Now if I could only remember the names of New Edition because sometimes the names torment me like that game where you try to name all 50 states but forget one or two and it drives you nuts. (In case you’re wondering it’s Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky, Mikey, Ralphie, Johnny.)

When I was in high school, satellite cable TV just started and a Bay Area station KTVU was on as filler. It was only on for a little while before the big boys decided to get on cable, but I remember TV Pow! and some of the ads. There’s one that still sticks in my head and I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before. Curse you Denevi Camera! Click on the link and hear the jingle at the end. (Dublin, Berkeley, San Lorenzo, Cupertino, San Jose.)

Oh, God, I can’t make it stop. “Uh, oh, Sergio. Uh, oh, Sergio. Sergio Valente, Sergio Valente.” “Turkeys from Turlock, Turkeys from Turlock! Valchris Turkeys from Turloooock!”

Aaaaigh.

There’s a STUPID, HORRIBLE movie out now called 21. Why do I say STUPID and HORRIBLE? Well, the only obvious Asian in the trailer is a dumb girl and as far as I know about the story, THEY WERE ALL ASIANS. Not whitey. I suppose this is more Stuff White People Like. (That link was sent to me by a Peruvian-American friend.

It was a sleepy Sunday today, but I did have lunch with the family (ma, sis, and brother-in-law). I continued my culinary experimentation, figuring a little grease might make salads a little bit more digestible. So far, so good. Salads with fried jalapeño and fried tortillas seemed to be fine with my innards. Like I heard, it’s probably just because I’m OLD. Maybe it’s creamed cauliflower from here on out.

I finally took my mom out for her birthday dinner to a Thai restaurant. It was pretty good, but we’re lucky that there are even better Thai restaurants within walking distance. The weirdest part was that a woman from my old gym (where I am still a member) came in on a first date with some dude. I got to overhear a lot of background info on the both of them.

For lunch I had a chicken salad and it was great. Unfortunately, my stomach (and the rest of my digestive system) did not agree. Now I’m not really sure, but it seems like whenever I eat any raw vegetables and lettuce my stomach (and the rest of my digestive system) complains quite vehemently. Rice and beans? No problems. Tortas? Fine. Cheeseburgers? Great, if I don’t have any raw onions which I really enjoy. Maybe I have to ease into this salad thing, or maybe I’m just allergic. I’ll just have to live on boiled cabbage or something.

I barely made it through the day. Last night I was wiped out by the workout but when I was ready to hit the hay I remembered that I needed to finish something for my sister.

For her job.

And she was on a Friday deadline.

I guess I could complain more about it and blame it all on her. My sister’s been reminding me about it for a month, but she never did get me the stuff that needed to be processed until Tuesday. She’ll say I had a couple of nights to finish it and yeah, I forgot.

In any case, I had to get up, go to work, and do my job. Today was my big yearly review and they told me I could keep coming for another year. Actually, I was told I did pretty well and it really did motivate me. By the end of the day, though, I was dragging.

Paradoxically, I always perk up a bit when I should be going to bed and now I’m changing themes on my blog and writing about how sleepy I am. The only, “Livin’ it up,” I’m doing is listening to the old Bell & James disco song. I have it on my iTunes. Oh, yeah.

I’m a bad son. It’s my mom’s birthday today and instead of going out to dinner with her, I went to the gym. I thought it was just going to be my mom and my sister, but my brother-in-law showed up as well and I felt really stupid about ditching them. But I’m addicted to the the gym. Everyone there gets along pretty well, so its fun as well. Like one of Dave the Trainer’s clients said, I need a social life. Somehow I think that would involve beer and tacos.

I was right when I predicted a hard workout today, but really there are hard days and there are easy days and they alternate so there wasn’t much prescience on my part. We talked about strategy again but when I got home I had to lay on the floor for a while before I had enough energy to think about dinner. I feel much better now, but I think I probably did as much as I could and “got my money’s worth” today.

Speaking of money’s worth, I should figure out where I am on my gym cost chart but I think I’m too tired to do that right now.

There’s a kid at the gym (and by kid I mean he’s in his late 20’s) who is there as regularly as I am. He’s also very serious about following a healthy diet while I, well, am not. He always orders the healthiest thing on the menu as well. So from now on I’m supposed to follow his eating habits. Which is NOT what I did tonight. I had a salmon caesar salad, but I also had an $8 baked Alaska. Both were great. The worst part is that we all went out after working out and so the trainers know what I ate for dinner and will punish me accordingly. Well, they’ll punish us all accordingly.

Somehow it’s voluntary, so I suppose it’s not really punishment. And while yesterdays workout just seemed kind of awful, most of the workouts are fairly challenging and fun to get through. Afterwards you kind of think, “Woo, we made it! Time for a beer!“

I eat a lot of bad food, and I’ve been trying to be better. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to do the right thing. Yesterday I had two chicken tacos and rice and beans. I’m sure there’s a ton of lard in the beans. Today we went to Rice Box, a Korean/Chinese restaurant because I thought that would be better for me. I had a lot of rice and a little Kung Pao chicken because that was the thing with the most vegetables. Well, I suppose there was kimchee and some sort of non-fermented cabbage as well, but who wants rice and cabbage for lunch? Turns out Kung Pao chicken is on the list of the worst things to eat. I may have to go back to cheeseburgers because they might actually be better for me.

I’m trying to improve my diet mainly because I’m at the gym 4 times a week and I should be doing more than just flopping around the floor and making everyone wait for me to finish. Today the workout of the day was 5 rounds of max pullups and max pushups (max just means you do as many as you can). We did as many pullups as we could and then as many pushups as we could and then rested for 3 minutes while our arms felt so tired that we thought they were going to fall off. Then we did it again. And again. And again. And again. At the very least I wanted my arms to fall off because they were so tired they hurt. Fortunately, my arms recovered quickly and I felt fine by the time we left. I don’t know how it will be tomorrow.

So you see, if I’m going to do a bunch of pullups, I really need to weigh less to make them easier. Sort of like when I was running, I wanted to be faster so my long runs wouldn’t take so long. It’s a goal, but not one I’m getting any closer to. People say it’s good to have goals.

Oh, hey, not only did I finish ordering my contacts and my prescriptions, but I also filled in a bunch of forms for my mom a doctor’s appointment. Unfortunately I’m getting to bed no earlier than I did last night.

Why is it that I can’t seem to remember to do things until after the time I should already be in bed? Yesterday I remembered to FAX some forms to my bank. Today I’m thinking I should really order some new contact lenses. I really should check the online pharmacy for some refills, too.

Well, I went out to dinner with my brother-in-law’s family tonight for a celebration dinner (good medical news) and while that really has nothing to do with my give-upped-ness tonight, I think I’m going to hit the hay rather than do the things on my “list”. I’ll just add to my todo list that I always forget to look at and call it good. Hooray.

I’m having a problem with directions lately. There’s never a clear, concise description of what I need to do. There’s either a form with directions scattered all over the page like stock transaction forms (I’m trying to put money in my Roth IRA) or there’s some email thread I get put on where I have to read all the voluminous back-and-forth before I can figure out what’s really going on. And so very often I’m not getting it right.

I mean, is there some sort of tech writing program that tells you to write instructions like:

1. Do something.
2. Before you do the thing in step 1, do this other thing.
3. On in this special case, remember to do this before you do anything else.
4. These instructions weren’t really for the thing you want to do and now you have to call an 800 number where you’ll have to start punching in a lot of numbers and you’ll have to wait for at least 20 minutes.

So back to the Roth IRA. I used to go down to my bank and they’d have me fill out form after form. Then there was a period of time where I didn’t make much money and I didn’t put any money in the IRA (I know, bad idea). This year I had some money so I went to the bank and waited. And waited. And they told me that now I couldn’t do anything there, I had to call in and do it on the phone. When I called the phone number, I was told I had to do it all online. But instead of just filling out web forms, I had to print them out and fax them in. Is this progress?

My stomach feels better and my back hurts less at night (though still not perfect.)

I just saw the Australian cop movie Noise and I’d recommend it.

I had to edit this post and add an “almost” because my friend Megan (who was diagnosed with breast cancer just before I was diagnosed with CML) reminded me that all of this happened towards the end of the year. Oh, well, we’re close to five years!

So I shouldn’t be so public about my health problems, but it’s too late now. I really don’t want my employer to know anything much about my health, and google will be available for any health insurance company to see my problems, etc. But I have a big mouth and I’ve opened it already.

In any case, I was looking up the side-effects of the two prescription drugs I regularly take and I realized a couple of things. The hay fever medicine lists:

• nausea, diarrhea, upset stomach (no percentage listed)
• menstrual cramps (1.5%)
• drowsiness, tired feeling (no percentage listed)
• headache (10.3%)
• muscle or back pain (2.5%)

However, the frequency of these problems for the general population was fairly low.

My other medication lists:

• fluid retention (usually swelling around the eyes or legs) (59%-81%)
• diarrhea (39%-70%)
• nausea (47%-74%)
• vomiting (21%-58%)
• fatigue (30%-53%)
• muscle cramps (28%-62%)
• muscle or bone pain (30%-49%)
• abdominal pain (30%-40%), and
• rash (36%-53%)

I also see on a bulletin board that weight gain of about 25 pounds is very common as well.

I started thinking about all this because I started having back pain, muscle pain, and stomach problems about the time I started the hay fever medicine, even though the other medication should have been bothering me more. But the other medication with all the side effects is KEEPING ME ALIVE.

I just noticed that it’s been almost five years since I was diagnosed with CML and the prognosis before Gleevec (the wonder drug with some side effects) was 3-5 years. Now, who knows? They don’t see any abnormal chromosomes in my blood tests even with nested PCR (knock on wood.) And like I told a couple of people who emailed me about it in the past five years, keep your spirits up! That’s the advice I got early on, and I’m still kicking!

So I hate to say that I’m dragging my ass around the gym because of the effects of my drug use, I mean, medications, because really I’m a lazy 44YO (almost) geek who usually sits around and only ever exercises his mouse arm. And my diet is doodie, if you consider cheeseburgers to be doodie and not manna from heaven like I do.

For some reason I couldn’t do many pullups today. Not many at all. I’ve been feeling a little off lately, and I blame part of that on my hay fever medicine and hay fever in general. I looked up some of the side-effects of my hay fever medicine and there’s a lot of them. My actual theory is that it just compounds the side-effects of the other medication I take and there’s a huge list on that one. I’m still sneezing a lot at work, so I’m going to keep taking the hay fever medicine. At its worst, my hay fever is a lot more miserable than just sneezing a few times a day.

I finally saw a picture of the alleged key to Eliot Spitzer’s downfall and the first thought I had was wondering how much money I had in my bank account. I figure I haven’t had a girlfriend since 2001 so I’m not cheating on anyone. In reality I’m going to sublimate my urges by eating cheeseburgers. I can get a whole lot of burgers for one high-priced hooker.

Besides, despite the gym’s efforts, cheeseburgers aren’t illegal. They’re not even morally reprehensible.

UPDATE: OK, my left leg just about gave out because of the weird cramp I got. I’m blaming this all on the hay fever medicine and I’m going without it for a while. We’ll see how that goes.