The Taber Family Blog

Gran Torino

Wow. We saw a really good movie last night. I’ve been wanting to see Gran Torino for quite a while, but it’s been difficult because I know it’s not suitable for kids, which means Denise and I can only watch it when the kids are not with us. Well, last night we were kidless again, so we set aside some time and decided to finally watch it. We both really enjoyed Clint Eastwood’s portrayal of a crusty, racist Korean War veteran living in a working class neighborhood that had long since evolved into a multicultural melting pot. You really want to hate him for his outdated and close-minded ways of looking at other people and life, but by the middle of the movie you begin to root for his eventual transformation.

The movie is quite heavy and has some very course language and violence, but the overall message is what’s important. And that message is that we all have to live together, protect each other, help others even when it feels wrong and just get along. The ending of the movie was quite unexpected for both Denise and I, but it totally made sense and worked perfectly. It had us both in tears. Awesome!

McNear's Beach

This was a really nice weekend overall. It started in a relaxing sort of way with my company picnic on Friday. The picnic was held at McNear’s Beach Park near San Rafael, CA. What a beautiful location for a company picnic. The weather was spectacular and since we were on the beach (on the SF Bay), the panoramic views were amazing. Other than a moderate sun burn on my noggin, the picnic was a great way to start the weekend.

Saturday afternoon, Denise and I became kidless (girls with their dad, and the boys with their mom), so we decided to have a date night out. We enjoyed a great dinner at Los Reyes in VV and then saw the new movie called Funny People.  Needless to say it was pretty darn funny. On Sunday, I decided to finally build the raised garden for Denise I had always been promising. I found a great building plan on the Sunset.com website and we went out and purchased the lumber and other materials. For the rest of the day, I was cutting, drilling, driving screws and applying redwood waterproofing oil. The wooden box for the garden turned out amazingly well and looks fantastic. Now I have to sink it into place in the back yard and get some good soil to fill it up. After that, it’s all Denise’s!

Brief Encounter

And to finish off a great weekend, Denise and I had a wonderful dinner at my sister’s house. Our tradition of watching old time movies led to us enjoying an oldie from 1945 called “Brief Encounter“. The premise centers on a man and a woman who meet at a train station in England, fall in love and have to ultimately decide what to do with their improper relationship. They are both married to other people and have families. Sprinkled throughout the movie were musical moments from Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. One of my favorites! The movie was filmed in England at the tail end of WWII, which meant the film crews had to find locations (like train stations) far enough away from London to avoid by the nightly blackouts because of the threat of bombing attacks by Germany. Interesting stuff.

Wyatt with muzzle flash

I’m lagging on updates these days, but there really isn’t much of a change day to day lately. I’m feeling better all the time, can eat pretty much what I want (gently though) and am back to work 3 days a week now. I still have a bit of the facial rash left and acne seems to crop up from time to time, but I really can’t complain after some of the other things I’ve been through.

Anyway, I forgot to blog about this last weekend, but the kids and I had a great time over at the local shooting range here in Vacaville. The idea came from Wyatt and I thought it would be fun to go shoot at some targets once again too. However this time when we talked about it, the girls became very excited about coming along and doing some shooting too. The reality of shooting a real pistol is quite a bit different than video games and TV, so I thought about it for a bit and decided that after a right gun safety review with all the kids once again, they would be well prepared for some target practice.

Grant with muzzle flash

After the gun safety class put on by yours truly, we headed over to the shooting range and we were almost there, when Elizabeth decided after some deep thought that this wasn’t really something we wanted to do, so she and Denise elected to go shopping instead. Lauren was a rock and said she would stay the course. Once at the shooting range, we rented our ear and eye protection and and were assigned a lane in the range. At this point you can clearly hear the loud explosions coming from deep inside the range and I could see Lauren was starting to get nervous, but still determined to join in.

I always forget how loud guns are when they are fired in close proximity. It never fails to remind me how silly TV and movies are that show people firing guns and not grimacing from the ear pain. Even with ear protection the loud blasts will always get your attention. So we set up our targets and took turns with my little .40 cal Glock pistol. The boys did great and drilled their targets very well.

Lauren is ready!

When it came time for Lauren’s turn, she decided she wasn’t quite ready and urged us to keep going. However after a few turns went by, I assured Lauren that I would be right behind her and wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her. Hearing this, she decided she would try shooting, as long as I was right behind her and even holding/bracing her hands. Easy enough. Lauren stepped up and fired off two rounds right into the target. I was so proud and I could tell she was proud of herself too for overcoming her fears.

I had my follow up appointment with Dr. Woolf today to go over the results of my Pet-CT scans from last Friday. The first thing he said to me when he entered my room was “your images were completely clear.” Man, that is some good news to hear right off the bat. Thrilled is what I’m feeling right now. I knew in my heart that would be the result, but hearing it from him and after having the images reviewed by other experts as well, gives me such a feeling of relief.

He examined me pretty thoroughly, including the camera up my nose and down my throat, poking me and prodding the site of the tumor and feeling my neck all around. He said I still had some swelling in my throat and near the tumor site, but I already knew that based on the effort it takes to swallow. But the swelling will subside as the weeks roll by.

After the appointment, Denise and I had a brief celebration lunch at Favela’s in Fairfield and I had the quesadillas. They were awesome! And for the rest of the day, back to work.

I had my first Pet-CT scan on Friday at Northbay in Fairfield and I’m anxious for the results. The scan took about 2 1/2 hours, but most of that was preparation, including having the radioactive sugar injection and waiting for an hour while it made its way through my body. Sitting in the “quiet” room for an hour, resting comfortably. After the that I was placed on the scanner for about 30 minutes.

Example Pet-CT Scan - NOT MINE

The way this particular scan works is based on the fact that cancer cells feed on sugar (glucose), so when the radioactive sugar is coursing through my body, the Pet-CT scan will expose where high concentrations of sugar are located. There are normal places in your body where sugar concentrates, such as the brain, kidneys and bladder, but in cancer cases, seeing other places “lighting up” is not typically a good sign.

After the scan was complete I asked the technicians if they could tell me what the results were, and although I knew what the answer would be, I still thought I’d ask. Since they’re not my doctor, they can’t discuss the results with me, but I could take a peek at the images on the computer. I took a quick look at several images, including those of my head and I couldn’t see anything lighting up anywhere in the images. I’m very hopeful about what I saw, but the final say will be up to my doctor this week when I meet him on the 17th. Needless to say I was very encouraged that my treatment was successful!

4th of July in Vacaville

I love 3 day weekends! I get caught up on things around the house, things around the yard and on holidays like this one, we get to spend time with friends and watch the local fireworks. Except for the constant wind everyday, this has been a great weekend so far, and today we’re going to have our July “5th” back yard BBQ and hopefully do some swimming too. Not too sure about that because it’s ridiculously windy today and a bit on the chilly side outside (so far today).

Last night we all piled into the suburban and drove over to the Costco parking lot (one of the highest places in town) to watch the fireworks. Well I guess last year hundreds of people left tons of tailgater garbage strewn around the parking lot, that this year they closed it off entirely. So most folks ended up parking on the street or on the hill nearby, like us! We had a pretty good view of the event albeit a bit far away. It was nice.

Earlier today we drove to Walnut Creek and did some shopping and on our way home we stopped at Chevy’s in Pleasant Hill. I know, it’s a chain and often a roll of the dice as to the quality of the food, but we were very pleased with how clean the place was, how nice the staff was and how good the food was too. I had the fajitas that Denise and I shared and I was able to eat them pretty well. I also had my first Margarita of the year. I was worried about the possible sting, but it didn’t sting at all and tasted great. Now if only wine were as nice to my mouth, I’d be a very happy boy.

Well, it’s been a while since I posted and I should write something to keep everyone up to date. Probably the main reason I’ve been late on this blog, is that Internet access in France is spotty, so getting a reliable connect to the tools I use in the U.S. was frustrating at times. We get so used to how nicely the Internet works here in the U.S., but forget to think that from Europe, all access to sites in the U.S. has to route through network connections under the Atlantic Ocean, so there is dreadful lag at times. For instance, I was never able to browse to My Yahoo news portal page from France. The site would never come up at all. And Facebook rarely worked at all. Anyway, back here in the U.S., the Internet works great again and I’m back to normal.

Denise and I had a wonderful time in Brussels and Paris over the past two weeks. The weather stayed nice the entire time, except for the very last day in Paris when it started to sprinkle very lightly. While in Belgium and France, we elected to do most of the touristy type of things, like seeing the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame and the D-Day beaches in Normandy, but we also really loved the change of culture too. The French are in a rush for nothing! Events like eating lunch or dinner could and should take hours in France and Belgium. Nobody is in a hurry. We really enjoyed that. One thing that was particularly interesting is that people eat at specific times, and if you miss the meal, you’ll find all the restaurants closed up tight until dinner time (after 6pm). And we also noticed that nearly everyone we saw didn’t sit down for dinner until after 9pm, and a lot of people would arrive for dinner after 11pm. They eat (and drink and socialize) late into the night. Very cool.

So my challenge was finding things I could eat while in Europe. I have recently begun eating soft things, so I had to make sure wherever we went to eat, they had something on the menu I was familiar with and could eat. This really wasn’t much of a problem, because once I became familiar with a handful of French words, I was typically able to find something to eat, like fried or scrambled eggs, or an omlette. I fell in love with a sandwich called the “Madame”. It’s basically a piece of toast with layers of ham, cheese and topped with a fried egg. Easy to eat, tasted great and almost every place knew how to make them.

I was able to keep my calories up pretty well while we were there, which is good because we did a lot of walking and stair climbing all over Paris.

Some of our highlights were:

1. Walking around in the old town area of Brussels and eating a real Belgian waffle.
2. Enjoying real Belgian beer!
3. Riding the high speed train from Brussels to Paris. Super fast!
4. Seeing the Sienne River for the first time.
5. Attending a full Sunday mass in French at the Notre Dame Cathedral of Paris.
6. Walking up the Eiffel Tower at night.
7. Standing underneath the Arc De Triomphe and walking the Champs-Elysees.
8. Standing next to the Venus De Milo and paintings by DaVinci in the Louvre.
9. Walking and biking through the never ending gardens at the Palace at Versailles.
10. Standing in the surf at Omaha Beach and looking out from Pointe Du Hoc.
11. Reflecting at the American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer near Omaha Beach.
12. Visiting the Bayeux Cathedral and seeing the Bayeux Tapestry.
13. Walking up Montmarte and seeing a panoramic view of all of Paris.

Photos of our trip can be seen here:

Denise on the Grand Place

The Mannekin Pis

The Royal Palace

Parc Du Cinquantenaire

Milk Protest

This morning I’m sitting in our room at the hotel in Brussels, just of the Grand Place and getting ready to start packing to leave and take the high speed train to Paris for the next 6 days. Denise and I have had an amazing time in Belgium so far. The people here are so nice and eager to help and the quality of the food here is simply “off the hook”. We’ve enjoyed the beer, chocolate, waffles and cheese among many other things. I’m not sure I’ve tasted better chocolate anywhere. Fortunately we’ve had good weather the entire time we’ve been here so far, so going outside and walking around this beautiful city has been very enjoyable. Denise and have always loved going into really old churches and there are so many very old churches here. We’ve gone into nearly all the ones we’ve come across and they’ve all been spectacular on a grand scale. The Cathedral of St. Michael is probably the biggest in Brussels, but the Notre Dame du Sablon is also another beautiful church we visited. We also walked up to the Avenue Louise, which is a very fancy shopping district near the Royal Palace with stores such as you might typically see on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

The meetings I attended on Wed-Fri went very well and I was able to network with a great number of other IT-types from the Springer family of companies. And at night we were treated to some great food at a few local restaurants. This city is very friendly to the person who likes to walk around, especially the area near the Grand Place. Everywhere you look, there’s some new amazing thing to see. All the streets are made of cobblestone and musicians are everywhere playing guitars, accordions, saxophones and other instruments. Yesterday we took a taxi to the Parc du Cinquantiare. A simply breathtaking park crowned with a very large Arc de Triomphe of it’s own. There seemed to be a demonstration or protest by dairy farmers about milk prices going on in the park, but it was all very peaceful.

Today we leave Brussels and head for Paris, and we’re both excited about what we’ll see there. We got some great travel advice from one of the other IT attendees about what to look for and to look out for while in Paris too.

Well, I’m sitting here at the kitchen table after getting up at 3:30am to be ready for the drive to the airport. I’m tired, ready and excited. Denise and I spent alot of yesterday packing and making sure we had everything we needed. We purchased some really nice and big suitcases a week or so ago, and they really are huge. Both of us were trying to find extra stuff to put in to keep the essentials from bouncing around. We made sure to pick up some power adapters too, since plugging U.S. devices into European power can be tricky. Fortunately most of our gadgets are capable of handing the 220 volt power in France and Belgium, it’s only important to have the proper adapter.

I checked with the TSA and I’m apparently able to bring my medicine on board the plane as long as I openly show it to the officers. We’ll see how that goes. I just know these long flights will be a challenge for keeping my mouth in good shape. And eating more solid food is going to be a blessing when presented with all the good French and Belgian food.

Denise’s parents are here too to watch the girls while we’re away and for the ride to the airport. Nice! The boys will be visiting the house later this week and spending the next week there, caring for Molly, Padme, the rabbits and the flowers on the piazza. I feel like we’ve thought of everything, but there’s that nagging feeling I haven’t. Oh well. Too late now. Gotta go!

I’m so excited about this trip to Europe next week! I have a business conference to attend in Brussels next week, and then I’ve taken some vacation time to extend our trip into the following week. Denise is coming with me, and boy do we deserve this getaway. We fly into Brussels on Monday night – Tuesday morning and I’m sure Denise will find ways to keep busy while I’m at the conference. We’ll take the high speed Thalys train to Paris the following Saturday and spend the rest of that week sightseeing in Paris and possibly outlying areas. This will be Denise’s first trip out of North America and she’s incredibly excited. Heck, I’m excited for her.

I’ve been gearing up for this trip for a while now, trying to get my mouth in shape not only for solid soft foods, but also for the cuisine we’re sure to enjoy in Belgium and France. I don’t think I’ll be enjoying any adult beverages yet, which is unfortunate, since some say the finest beers come from Belgium.

Overall I’m doing pretty well. I’ve been into the office twice now, and both times I felt pretty good all day long. The walk to and from the train station can be a bit tiring, but with an hour ride either way, I’ve got plenty of time to recharge. My tongue is still hurting with what feels like an open wound on the right side and it’s still affecting my speech a bit. But it hasn’t stopped me from eating. I can feel it’s still swollen from the radiation, along with my esophagus, but things are slowly getting better all the time. I no longer have issues with mucus, which is huge. Fighting the mucusitus daily was a real drag. My weight a few days ago was down just a bit to 188 lbs. Not too bad though. I can’t wait to really start taking in some calories each day, so some daily exercise would be possible without feeling light-headed.

Anyway, good news overall, and I’ll try to update the blog while I’m away. If I can’t, then I’ll post a bunch of stuff and photos when I return.

Au revoir!