Vacation Begins!

I'm writing this at 9 AM on Saturday, June 21--though it won't be posted until Monday, when I'll be in Boston (Somerville, actually), visiting Nate and Meghan. Nate doesn't know it yet (as I'm writing), but I'm planning to leave Madison very early tomorrow morning, arriving at his house in time for his birthday party tomorrow afternoon. As I explained in last Monday's post, in my mind this is almost as much a celebration of my 27 years as a cancer survivor as of Nate's thirtieth birthday.

Speaking of cancer survivors: here's a photo of some of the members of TEAMSurvivor Madison and the TSM dragon boat, which has been moved to Rutabaga's back lot--but has not yet been in the water. The man in the picture holding the dragon head is the boat's builder, Jim Caldwell, who donated hundreds and hundreds of hours to the project, beginning in March. You can get an idea of how big the boat is when you realize that you can't even see all of it in the picture.

So vacation has begun! In about a half hour, I will disconnect from my chemo pump, and with luck, I won't have any more chemo until after Labor Day. And tomorrow will be the first of six trips, big and little, I have planned for the next two months: two to the east coast, two to Chicago, one to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and one to the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota. That one ends with a day at the Dragon Boat Festival in Superior, Wisconsin.

Sounds like a lot of fun. Now, if the tumors will just behave.....