LIVING WITH MCL

Well, here it is the last day in Rome, and Edie is sick. So she is lying in bed resting, while I decided to come down to the lobby, and play on the internet. I guess it's a good thing she waited till the last day to get sick. It would have been a real bummer if she had gotten sick earlier. It must have been all the walking we did in Rome, Florence and around Tuscany. But all the walking is done now, since we're staying at the Rome Airport Hilton, and it is only a short walk to the terminal. Once out of Rome, things calmed down considerably. We even found a wine festival, in the city of Panzano in Chianti, which was having a tasting of all the various wineries in the area. There were about 20. And as you might expect, some of the wines were very good and some not so good. It was still fun and a good way to taste a lot of wines without driving too much. We only stayed in Tuscany 4 days (originally scheduled for 7) and then headed south towards Rome, and visited Montalcino,...

Now that we are away from Rome, things are slightly better, but even Florence has too many tourists (and Americans), but if you stay away from the major toursit attractions, The Ponte Vecchio, Uffizzi Gallery, and the Galerie d'Academia it really is a pleasant city. Our hotel is just on the outskirts of Florence, not far from Ponte Vecchio, the most famous bridge in Florence. Not sure why it is so famous, since it is simply lined with jewelry shops. You don't even realize you're walking over a bridge, until you get to the very middle, and there is gap left open for viewing. While there are some historical sites, and some beautiful architecture, basically Florence is just one great big factory outlet mall. But the food is better in Florence than in Rome, and if you stay away from those majror attractions, it's not nearly as crowded, and Florence is a relatively nice city. Tomorrow we're off to the farm house in Tuscany where we're staying. We are really lookin...

Rome sucks! From having to deal with an ATM card that won't work, unbelievably enourmous crowds, a traffic system that constantly seems like it is on the verge of gridlock, to a body clock that essentially ends my day at 6 PM, and has me wide awake at 2 AM this vacation has not gotten off to a good start. I can only hope things will get better once we get to Florence (we leave today), and then on to the farm house in Tuscany. Beyond that, I will say the people are friendly, mostly speak English (they have to in order to deal with the inordinate number of Americans here), and the first pizza I had, although thinner than what I remember, and the application of toppings different, tasted identical to what I remember pizza tasting like when I was growing up in Pittsburgh. So things aren't that bad. Stay tuned for more updates. Maybe?? :)

It's a concept that comes up everyday in life. When I go ride my bike, it's not the number of miles I put in that is important, but it's the quality of the training session, how much effort I put into those miles, that counts. On the golf course it's even easier. It's not how far you hit the ball, but how far you hit the ball in the fairway. And it shouldn't be any different in every other aspect of our lives! Or should it? I've often wondered what I would do, or how I would feel, when (if) I get to a point in life, where I can't ride my bike, play a round of golf, enjoy eating and drinking wine as much as I do, and am relegated to sitting around the house watching reruns of I Love Lucy. I've often told my wife (who is a nurse), when I get to that point, just shoot me up with morphine or heroine, and let me go happy and peacefully! I'm not so sure she would do that, but that is what I think I would want. Of course it's easy for me to s...

I'm not even that much of a rock star aficionado, but back in August I did predict the ultimate winner . And that in spite of the fact that there was considerably better talent on that show then is indicative of the final outcome. Too bad I didn't place a wager in Vegas on it! :(

113 out of about 450 graduates attended my 40th high school reunion. I was not one of them. I went to San Francisco instead . I was going to go to the reunion, and even had airline reservations to Pittsburgh, and hotel accomodations all lined up, but my wife was not very enthusiastic about going, and it was a long flight, which I didn't want to do either, in light of the fact we were going to Italy two weeks after that, so we opted for San Francisco instead . Now I had a great time in San Francisco , and don't regret going, but after reviewing some of the happenings, at and before the reunion, (my class has a website), and hearing from some of the people who did go, I felt as though I missed something. I hadn't been back to Pittsburgh since my father died in '87, and I would have liked to see how things have changed since then. It would also have been great to see so many of the people I grew up with, when life was a lot less complicated, to reminisce about the goo...

I read a lot of blogs. I read political blogs, both conservative and liberal, healthcare and health insurance blogs, and I read other patient blogs just to name a few. I used to read a lot more blogs than I do now, having come to the realization there is more to life than reading blogs. They can pretty much consume your entire life if you let them, especially if you're also writing your own blog or two. Today I was reading a fellow blogger's site who has chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), and I realized that he relates all his postings to his CLL. One such article was Opportunity Cost, Opportunity Lost , which I thought was particularly good, and which I pointed out on this blog a week or two ago. He also did another post about the three day rule , where if you buy something, under certain circumstances, you can return it in 3 days, and related it to his CLL. I want to know how he does that? How do you focus on something seemingly unrelated, and relate it back to your...

And none too soon. I think it was a good thing we only went for the weekend. San Francisco is just a great city. The shopping, the food, the wine, just the ambiance is something you can't help but enjoy and over indulge in. Saturday our flight got in to Oakland about 11 AM. By the time we collected our luggage, got the bus to the Bart station, and checked into the Argent hotel, it was about 1 PM. We took our luggage up to the room, and not wanting to waste any time, immediately headed down to the Ferry Building to check out the farmers market, and have some lunch. After about an hour or so at the Ferry Building, it was time to head for a wine bar to unwind. Our first choice, London, was closed, so we then headed up to Enoteca , a Cal-Italian wine bar close to our hotel, where we met two other friends and their son, who arrived a little later. After having a few too many wines there, we still had time to kill before our dinner reservation at Foreign Cinema , so we decided to ...

It may have been fate, that we decided to go to San Francisco, instead of Pittsburgh for my 40th high school reunion, since Pittsburgh is getting the remnants of hurrican Ernesto, and the weather is less than ideal. Today in Pittsburgh there is still the prediction of light rain with temperatures lower then they will be in San Francisco this weekend. We would not have been prepared for that. Of course things haven't started off too great for this trip either. Yesterday when I tried to check in online, I realized I had booked two seats in my name. Fortunately I discovered this yesterday, and not this AM, which made it significantly easier to get rectified over the phone. My hats off to JetBlue for making the correction so easily. Then I finally gave Sylvia information concerning finances, which I have arranged with my cousin (her neice), in NY, to take care of should anything happen to us. As you might expect, that didn't go over too well with her, and we almost thought ...