Some News

Wow - looking back at the blog I see that the last post was from May 2011 - over three years ago!

Quite a bit has happened since then...

Some trips...

Europe 2012 - Tubingen, Germany

Trier, Germany

Burg Eltz, Germany

Vimy Ridge Memorial

Moreuil Wood Memorial, France

You-know-what in Paris

Anniversary drink in Montreal, September 2012

Is that a person riding a tiny unicycle in the background?!?

  

Montreal, 2012

Elkhorn Resort with Curt and Sarah, Feb 2014

At the Elkhorn with pals

Sold our house on Chestnut Street...

Bought a house on Churchill Drive...

Anyway, I wanted to post a little bit of an update on what's going on, since there have been some developments.

Some of you probably know that Pam has frequent blood tests to make sure that her treatments are doing what they should. The so-called "tumor markers" - CA 15-3 and CEA - are important indicators of this.

For the last few months the markers have been on the rise. This usually means that cancer is active somewhere, even if symptoms aren't evident. Pam's doctor has tried various things to see if they would help. Medicine was stopped, medicine was changed, but this didn't seem to stop the markers going up.

So the next step is chemotherapy. Fortunately, this chemo is done with pills at home. Pam has been taking a drug called Xeloda, three pills twice a day, two weeks on then one week off. There are some side effects but they seem pretty manageable for the most part. Again, there hasn't been any indication of active disease except the tumor markers going up, and Pam has been feeling pretty good lately, if a bit tired. She's through the first course and on her "week off". So we are hopeful that the Xeloda will do its job.

There are eight refills so that means the full course is 24 weeks - 16 weeks taking pills with eight "weeks off" interspersed.

We'll update as we get more news. Hope you all are having a great summer!

Grey Fella and Bathroom Crazies

The glass shelves are now installed in the shower niche and look great.  Rudolf (contractor guy) installed these as well as the slide-in cabinet unit when I was in Toronto last week.  There is a story...

When we were having the original work done on the bathroom, we put the cats on the third floor so they wouldn't get underfoot or escape. When Rudolf came to finish up last week, we didn't bother because, you know, what was going to happen?
As it turns out... Lulu was hiding in a hole underneath the floor while Rudolf installed the cabinet. Only later did Pam discover that she was trapped in the wall :-O

Result: Pam had to cut a hole in the baseboard to allow Lulu to escape.  How we love cats... which brings us to our news of today...



This is our new cat, known for now as Grey Fella.  We adopted him from Quagga Stray Cat Rescue, a no-kill cat shelter here in Winnipeg.  The intention is that he will be a friend for Lulu and a moderating influence on Leonard (known by my friend Mike A. as "b!tch be crazy").  He's about a year old.

His name at Quagga was "Diesel" but it remains to be seen what his new name will be.  We need to get an idea of his personality first.  Personally I am partial to "Mycroft" but we'll see if it fits.

Introductions in the household are ongoing... wish us luck! 

Done! (well almost)

I wanted to post some pictures of the bathroom now that it's nearly done!  (The only thing left to do is to install a cabinet into the space behind the tub wall opposite the chair - and that is happening on Monday).

Pam made the Roman blinds herself.  I think they look great!

 

 

Tempered-glass shelves yet to be installed in the "niche".

 

Chair is from IKEA!

 

Heated towel bar is nice in the morning.

 

Had to make some space for our old buddy the Pink Panther!

Almost there!

 

Excellent progress being made on the bathroom!  Here are some work-in-progress pictures from the last week or so...


 Blue drywall is up and mudding started...

Tub installed with protective plastic still on...



 Marble tiles installed around the tub...

 Wainscoting installed and painted, and first coat of paint on the walls...

Faucets and hardware installed and the tub is ready to go!  We had our first showers in the new bathroom last night and it was awesome... no pics of that though ;-)

Renovation Progress

Well, we lost about a week on the renovation due to the inspection.  It turned up some joists that had been "notched" (probably about 50 years ago) to accomodate plumbing.  So we had to get a report from a structural engineer to tell us to screw a couple of 2x6's to either side of the joists.  Really.

So once this vital job was accomplished (haven't received the bill for it yet), the real work could progress.  The boys have been doing some good work.  Tub is installed and drywall is up.  Taping and mud this week.

I like this picture of Pam and Lulu relaxing on the couch!

Renovations...

So back in December we finally decided to pull the trigger on the long-planned bathroom renovation.  As you may know we live in a very old house (100 years old this year) and in old houses, bathrooms are often not so nice.  Ours was no exception... ugly flooring, worn out vanity, ancient tub surround, etc...

...plus the toilet was actually in a different room from the tub and sink!!

So we decided to completely gut the two rooms, knocking out the wall in between and renewing everything from the wall studs outwards.

Here are some pictures of the destruction... the whole process is expected to take until the end of March or so.  Until then, while we have a powder room downstairs, we won't have a tub or shower.  Yikes!!

I'll post pictures as we make progress.  The guys have been working for six days now, and the wall is knocked through, new walls framed in, and plumbing and electrical work is well underway.  Exciting!!

A Weekend Away

 Hey everyone, time for the quarterly update I guess ;-)

Here we are in Gimli.  We had such a great time here last year that we decided to come up again for the "sweet deal" which includes breakfasts and dinners in the hotel restaurant. 

We were basically pretty sloth-like, except for Pam going to work out on the elliptical trainer in the hotel gym.  Good for you, Pam!  I just stayed in the room and read a book. 

We had a couple of nice meals in the restaurant and sat in the hot tub, too.  The weather was super-nice so we went for some walks by the frozen lake, which was very pleasant.  On Saturday night we saw something very unusual, a ring around the Moon.  Never seen one of those before so it was pretty cool!

We took a few photos on Sunday before we came back to the city so I thought I would post them here.  Oh, and a health update - the last few scans have come back very good and Pam is feeling pretty well.  Some very minor blood clot issues continue but it is not bothersome for Pam except for having to take daily injections, that sucks.  But it is bearable.  We are just looking forward to the summer!