Great Thanks...

I had the honor of attending a football game on Friday with my family that raised thousands of dollars for cancer research. Our family friend Karen and her son John was nice enough to include my sister and I :) My Mom couldn't do it due to just having surgery on her foot. So, we were able to join around 100 or so other survivors and were brought onto the field before the game and cheered on by the crowd! It was a pretty surreal experience (for more ways than one which I'll explain later). Anyway, all of the players and coaches wore jerseys with each survivors name on the back and Nicole and I were represented by the coaches. After the game, the players and coaches gave their jerseys to us and The Lymphoma and Leukemia Society donated light the night balloons that were released into the air... It was really cool watching the balloons fly off with the big orange moon in the background. All in all, a really nice event. To anyone who's reading this that donated, it's much appreciated :) I also wanted to thank my Mom for getting the word out for the donations.


From left, my Mom, Karen (both have sunglasses) and Rich


Nicole and I before we walked out to the field


Nicole and I waving to the crowd as we walked out onto the field with the other survivors/caregivers.


After we got our Jerseys joined with John (who is a coach), his buddy with the beard (can't remember his name, doh! nice guy...) my Godmother Aunt Shell next to me) and my cousin Susanna in front.


The balloons...

So, as I mentioned earlier, the night was very surreal. Surreal in the fact that here we are out there being honored and applauded for "surviving" cancer... I've written before about the disconnected feeling you sometimes have with the rest of the world and it really hit me as the crowd stood there and cheered for us. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I didn't appreciate it, it just feels weird, hard to explain...

This brings me to the other surreal experience... Earlier, before the game, I pulled in to the parking lot to wait for my Mom so she could give me my t-shirt. I had the dogs with me so I wanted to take them out in the field for a quick walk before we went inside. Right as I got back to my car, my Mom called and told me where they were. Meanwhile Gomez, who was on a leash, somehow managed to pull out from his collar and proceeded to race off through the parking lot and around the corner, ugh. He's been escaping lately and once he's gone, it's hard to get him back because he doesn't come when you call him and he's fast as hell. So, with Chili still in her leash in my hand, we take off running after G. He's nowhere to be found and just outside the parking lot is a busy road, yikes. I had two things that suddenly struck me, first, he's going to get hit by a car, or, because his tags are on his collar which was now laying in my car, someone is going to find him and keep him because there's no contact information on him. Either way, I thought he was gone for sure. I then looked across the street and there was a young girl who was trying to get my attention. So I could hear her better, I stopped traffic and ran across the road. As I got closer to her, I noticed that she was pointing back across the road and as soon as I turned around to look, there was G making a mad dash toward me. I looked to his right and there was a woman driving a mini van (oblivious to him) and speeding forward right toward him. I screamed out NOOOOO and from what I could see, she hit Gomez as she was trying to slow down with the right corner of her bumper. I thought he was toast. Sure enough, he bounced up and started running the other way, unbelievable... I then stopped traffic again, with Chili still with me and ran across the street after the G man. By now of course, he was really freaked out and wouldn't let me get close to him. At that point, I decided to unleash Chili and she went right after him. It was almost like she was able to calm him down as he just stayed there and let me come and grab him. He was covered in burrs from getting down into the riverbed next to the road and shaking like crazy. I put him back in the car after making sure he was ok (he ate a bite of pizza and drank some water). It was then that I discovered that while all this was happening, I dropped my keys somewhere, what else could go wrong! Luckily my Aunt Shell, Sister and Susanna showed up and said prayers to St. Anthony and within minutes, I found the keys!

I haven't experienced that level of anxiety for at least a couple of months, haha. I mean, I of course really like the little guy but was more freaked out because he's not even my dog!

So, I had to break the news to Jackie and couldn't sleep for the rest of the night thinking he might have a head injury, bruised lung, something... I called the emergency hot line when I got home and they said as long as his gums are pink and he's not having trouble balancing and walking, his head should be ok. To be safe, I took him to the vet the next morning and after $175 later, was proclaimed to be ok except for excessive gas in his intestines! Thank God...

So, Saturday was pretty much shot because of the no sleep the night before but had a chance today to catch the last home game at Comerica Park and the Tigers which they won and was a lot of fun.

Of course, the Lions lost, surprise!

The adventure continues...

The Moth

Just got back from a really cool event that took place at the historical Gem Theater in Downtown Detroit. The theater is something else as it's the largest structure ever to be moved in one piece (well, I've been told that but not exactly sure how accurate the information is ;). Back when they were building the new baseball stadium, Comerica Park, there were a couple of buildings that were within the site limits that if nothing was done would have to be razed. While there were buildings that didn't make it, there was a strong push to preserve two of Detroits historical landmarks, The Elwood Grill and The Gem Theater. They literally hoisted the entire theater up onto rollers and rolled it down the street! It's actually now in a better location closer to the theater district in the city.



Anyway, back to The Moth. I just pulled this from the website and couldn't explain it any better:

What is The Moth?

The Moth, a not-for-profit storytelling organization, was founded in New York in 1997 by poet and novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer evenings on his native St. Simon's Island, Georgia, where he and a small circle of friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales on his friend Wanda's porch. After moving to New York, George missed the sense of connection he had felt sharing stories with his friends back home, and he decided to invite a few friends over to his New York apartment to tell and hear stories. Thus the first "Moth" evening took place in his living room. Word of these captivating story nights quickly spread, and The Moth moved to bigger venues in New York. Today, The Moth conducts eight ongoing programs and has brought more than 3,000 live stories to over 100,000 audience members.

Why "The Moth"?

The screen around Wanda's porch had a hole where moths would flutter in and get trapped in the light. Similarly, George and his friends found that the characters in their best stories would often find themselves drawn to some bright light—of adventure, ambition, knowledge—but then find themselves burned or trapped, leaving them with some essential conflict to face before the story could reach its conclusion. So George and his original group of storytellers called themselves "The Moths". George took the name with him to New York, where he hoped that New Yorkers, too, would find themselves drawn to storytelling as moths to a flame. They did. With no advertising, through sheer word of mouth, every show to date has sold out in 48 hours or less.

So, that's the history of the event and the cool thing is, so far, it's only in 4 cities; Chicago, New York, L.A. and The D! The stories were great (all 11 of them) and the gal that won is now off to New York to compete in the championship (or Moth Ball as the event is called ;)

It was also pretty neat being downtown tonight as they're shooting the new Transformers movie just a couple blocks away from where I was. They had this huge space ship looking thing laying in the middle of the street with all these burnt out cars (and probably incorporated one of the burned out buildings as well, haha).

I don't remember a buzz like this in Detroit since I've lived here. It's really cool watching things slowly turn around here and I couldn't be happier for my home town.

So, on a slight downer note, today was a pretty big day for me in that I found out that my private health insurance is going to expire Oct 31st. Yes, the very thing I was paying my hard earned money every month is going to expire because I can't work. Kinda ironic that it's called insurance isn't it? How is it that insurance is allowed to "expire"? It flat out doesn't make any sense and seems a lot like fraud to me. I mean it seems logical if you always stayed current on your payments when you were healthy it should be there for you when you get sick and hopefully be there if you're still sick and can't work right? I upheld my end of the bargain, how is it that the insurance company can just back out after two years? If someone can give me an honest logical explanation, please enlighten me...

Thank God I have the option of going on Medicare. What would I do if Medicare didn't exist? To those that are affiliated with the Tea Party or the Right Wing of the Republican Party, what would you do if you were in my spot? It just pisses me off that people can loosely throw around how entitlements need to be eliminated but the truth is, without them, people like me (and my sister) would be up shit's creek without a paddle. Same thing with Social Security (which I count on every month). If George Bush and the then Republican Congress had their way, they would have written laws that would have encouraged people to invest their Social Security money into the stock market. The same institution, Wall Street which was systematically stripped of all it's regulations/laws led by the former Republican Texas Senator Phil Gramm. So, essentially, mass amounts of money (probably some of mine as I was pretty naive about that stuff back then) would have gone into these crazy unregulated financial scams called derivatives and subsequently lost forever when the mortgage/lending crisis (again caused by deregulation) hit thus sending the economy into the Great Recession.

Again, with the likelihood that these same people are going to be controlling Congress again, I brace myself and shutter to think how much more damage will be done...

I guess you could say that I'm a little disenchanted right now with government being run by big business. The unfortunate thing is we can't vote big business out of office... I'm not advocating socialism or anything like that but I just think there has to be rules to protect the vulnerable from the powerful.

I guess you could say that suddenly I feel kinda vulnerable and I have enough of that in my life already, ugh...

Anyway, I'm not going to apologize for my rant this time, it's just how I see it.

I've got to make the phone calls tomorrow and find out how things are going to change and I'm hoping the financial impact isn't going to be too harsh. No matter what, I will find a way to continue to enjoy my relatively good health right now and of course always stay prepared for things to go the other way...

Now that I've got that off my chest, it's time to wrestle with the dogs for a bit as Chili and I have had a visitor for the last couple of weeks, Gomez or G for short.


How could you turn down a face like that? The people that were watching him previous to me decided that they weren't going to give him back to his rightful owner so I agreed to watch him to prevent this from happening.


He is a handful though after pooping, peeing in my house and today running away three times. Hard to get mad at the little dude though...

Tomorrow should be fun as I'm going to a football game slash cancer fundraiser. My Mom (who's also a cancer survivor) and her very good friend Karen made my sister and I part of the contribution drive and were able to raise a good amount of money for the Cancer Foundation (I think). It's pretty cool to know there are so many people out there donating their time and effort to raise money and awareness for cancer.

And, finally, to those out there that I know are praying for me, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it and whatever you're doing, keep doing it!!

Long Day...

I started this when I returned from New York, was too tired to finish it, finally have some time so here it is...

Sitting here catching up with Entourage after returning from New York. I had to squeeze the trip into one day after a mix up with my lodging. What a long weird day...

Got up at 4:30 to catch my 7:00 flight and as I went through the security line, someone stole my wallet! Because I was half asleep, I neglected to take my ipod out of my pocket thus setting the alarm 2-3 times in a row. I first thought it was my wallet and I placed it by itself in one of those bins. By the time I discovered it was the ipod, a few people had gone in front of me with their bags. As I went to collect my stuff, my wallet was missing, noooooo! I turned to the security guy and told him what happened and he said he knew he saw it and proceeded to look through all the stacked bins. Once we discovered it wasn't in there, a police officer was called and we went over to the monitors. They backed it up to where they saw me place my wallet down and tracked it through the machine. We followed it through where first a man picked it up, opened it and put it back down. Right after that, his wife picked it up put it into her purse and walked away. We had people in hidden places working the monitors for us and froze the image of the woman. The officer then told me to follow him as the hidden security working the cameras throughout the airport directed us to where the culprits were. Even though I was so tired, my blood was boiling at this point. I had 15 minutes to catch my plain and we were walking the complete opposite way down the new terminal. The pressure was on because if I didn't make this flight, there was no way I was going to get to New York and be able to stay on schedule with my trial. Not to mention, my original trip had to be changed as my lodging got all screwed up and had to pay an extra 400+ dollars to re-book. I guess I could've probably got on the flight there but how was I going to get back home with no ID?

Anyway, the officer got a call and we had a direct location of the klepto lady. We walked up to them and the officer confronted her making her reach into her purse. Sure enough, there was my wallet which she handed to the officer. He then gave it to me and I wanted so much to stick around and get her explanation or excuse but I had to bust it back across the terminal to catch my flight. Thank God I made it...

So, after the flight and bus ride to NYU, all I needed to do was get my blood drawn, see Dr. O'Connor and get my pills. Not so fast...

Sean, the trial coordinator came out the door into the lobby and pulled me aside. He told me that my platelets were below the threshold of 50,000 (they were at 45,000). As you can imagine, I was a little stressed... Sean thankfully had a plan however. He's had patients have low platelets before and for some reason, if you do some physical activity, it causes them to go up. So, time to do some stair climbing! He asked me if I could do a couple of flights and I of course said no problem. I had a lot of nervous energy and instead of doing two flights, I decided to go all the way down to the first floor and did 7 flights! I was totally out of breath when I got up and they immediately took my blood again. Success!! My platelets went up to 52,000 and I was able to get my pills and start cycle 8, whew...

From there, I walked to Grand Central Station, hopped on the bus and rode back to LaGuardia where of course my flight was delayed for 2 hours because of storms but eventually made it back home totally shot. Now you can understand why I couldn't finish my entry that night!

So, yesterday I went down to the junkyard to pick up some more parts for my car, ran some other errands and went to a concert last night :) A friend of mine had tickets for the Deftones and Alice in Chains. They both totally rocked and at the end, Jerry Cantrell from AIC whipped out a signed drum skin out to the audience like a frisbee. I watched it as it flew majestically over the crowd thinking there's gonna be some lucky s.o.b. that's going to catch it. As it carried over the crowd, it tilted and started coming our way. I felt like I was at the park playing disc as I now was tracking it coming over to our section! I then reached up as it was flying over my head and snatched it out of the air! I had to fight a couple of guys off that were behind me as I dropped it at first but with quick hands, reached down, whipped it behind my back and that bad boy was mine, hells yeah! What a great way to end the night :) I was pretty much a celebrity from there on out as everyone who walked by me and saw it in my hands was giving me high fives and whatnot. Good times!




So, to celebrate my Frisbee catch last night, I went and played some disc golf today (not with the drum skin, haha). Gonna go to my little downtown tonight to check out the DIY festival in Ferndale so I'm definitely keeping busy.

Tomorrow may be the day to rest, ahhh...... :) Go Lions!!

The Outside World...

Ever since my encouraging PET/CT scan I've had a little extra pep in my step and have really been enjoying this spell of feeling relatively well. In doing so, I really haven't had a chance to keep up with what's going on in the world and as I sit here and watch the news, a couple of things really struck me.

There seems to be another wave of paranoia blowing around, (kinda like it was just after 9/11) with regard to Islam, Muslims and Mosques.

Quietly, the War in Iraq is "officially ended" whatever that means. The price tag to remove an old delusional dictator who was absolutely no threat to America: 1 trillion dollars, 4500 American troops dead, 35,000 American troops wounded, 10's of thousands of troops with brain trauma and thousands of others who will suffer the effects of post traumatic stress disorder. Can't forget the mass amount of innocent Iraqis that were killed and who will be killed once we leave. Not to mention how the war became a recruiting tool for Islamic extremists and Jihadists, damaged America's reputation around the world, the list could go on... By far, the worst foreign policy blunder our country has ever made.

With all that said, because of the ineptness of the Democrats that are now in power (in many facets), it seems as if our country is poised to elect the party back into power that pushed for this war and created all of the problems that have led to this f'd up economy. I just don't get it... Why are we stuck with only two parties to choose from?! (and no, the backward thinking Tea Party is not the right answer)

Pretty crazy that you don't hear anything about the oil spill anymore... All that oil that was spilled into the water and the damage that was done and it's almost like it never happened...

Locally, it looks like this guy Rick Snyder is going to be our next governor (according to the polls). He seems like a good fit for Michigan with his business background as our state continues to reinvent it's economy. You can kinda feel things are on the verge of turnaround with new industries starting to emerge. The growing movie industry has really created a buzz around here... I was eating at a local restaurant the other day and the the guy from Detroit 1-8-7 came in (Michael Imperioli who was also in the Sopranos). People are talking about plans for huge urban farms once the 100's of abandoned homes in Detroit are razed. The mayor wants to shrink the city (basically relocate people who live on these deserted blocks to viable neighborhoods) to save the city money on public services. The resulting large plots of land would then be turned into farms that would ideally link up with local grocers and restaurants. It's happening on a small scale now and hopefully will continue. Most interesting however is how fast the Medical Marijuana industry is growing (no pun intended) here. You can't drive down a freeway without seeing a billboard advertising growing supplies etc... You open up a Detroit Weekly or Metro Times and the last 10-12 pages are all ads devoted to the now legal practice of growing and cultivating Marijuana for medicinal purposes, crazy...

Things are definitely changing around here and after such a long period of being stuck in a rut, it seems as if Michigan may be on the verge of a comeback. I'm cautiously optimistic...

That's pretty much my take away on the major things going on right now. One thing I forgot though is the tragedy going on in Pakistan. I guess 3.5 million Pakistanis have been displaced from their homes because of the floods. In total, 14 million people apparently have been affected. Doesn't it seem like there have been a lot of disasters lately or is it just me...

Anyway, that's my take on some current events for what it's worth.

It seems as if fall is on it's way...

Where'd the summer go?!

The New and Improved "Big House"!

Been a while since I've been to the Big House and when my Buddy Mike called letting me know he had an extra ticket, I was all over it!

Turns out today's game was the official "Re-dedication Game" as they've just spent 200 million dollars renovating the stadium. I'm also proud to say I was part of the largest crowd ever to watch a college football game, over 113,000 people showed up! The best part is we won in convincing fashion over a top 25 team, Go Blue!

Hoping Meechigan football is back!! So far, so good...







So far, it's been a fun weekend. Yesterday had a chance to check out a giant festival right in neighboring Royal Oak called Arts Beats and Eats. They have several different stages set up with all types of genres of music playing, great food from local restaurants and of course arts and crafts from Michigan's finest. It's a great way to wind down the summer and hope to get back and check it out tomorrow.

Hoping to continue to ride this wave of good health and more uplifted spirits!

Hope everyone is having a nice weekend :)