More Surgery. Yay! #cancerisabitch

I guess the title says it all, so...goodnight, everybody!

(Pauses, notices no one leaving)

I guess not. Oh, well. So after the six weeks of radiation and chemo pills ended, and I had to wait 6 to 8 weeks for the radiation effects to fade before having another MRI, and in between I screwed up the next round of chemo pills because I was supposed to take a dose a day for five days in a row but instead skipped a few days before taking a second dose, I finally got the followup MRI last week and visited my neurosurgeon today.

The MRI showed that there's a tumor that's started to grow in the same area where they removed it the last time. It isn't very large but it's large enough that it can be removed. The doctor said that the aggressive approach is to remove it now. Otherwise we can wait and monitor it with more scans while continuing with chemo. I'm going with the aggressive approach.

But part of me wonders, if it's going to keep growing back, possibly quickly, what would be the point of having surgery multiple times in a fairly short period of time?

So I'll be scheduled for surgery on or about the 30th. That would mean I can't attend the huge Temple-Notre Dame game on the 31st. And that last sentence, referring to a huge football game involving an unbeaten, nationally ranked Temple team, is about as surreal as my life right now.

The Linc: Dawkins, Turbines

I've been slipping a bit lately on here, so in honor of the start of the Eagles' season, here's another post I'm moving here from the photo blog. In November 2012 I was at a Temple football game at Lincoln Financial Field (hey, Temple finally beat Penn State and they're 2-0 this year!), when I took these pictures. In 2012 the Eagles retired the number of Brian Dawkins...

...and, because I noticed them, I took a pic of the wind turbines atop the Linc...

The Eagles are big on generating their own energy and being environmentally friendly, and since the turbines went up, they've also added a lot of solar panels, many of them in the parking lots (serving as cover for cars as well as pulling in the sunlight).

2011 Daily News Sexy Singles: Shrinking

I'm still in a bit of a catchup mode after my California trip, which is why I'm writing about this subject just minutes before the Phillies take the field for their first playoff game.

I got home late on September 20th, so I had my subcription to the Daily News on hold until the 21st. When I got the paper on the 21st, I found that they were in the second day of their annual Sexy Singles event. I've written about it the last two years here: about how so many of their selections either work for local media outlets or the number of models/actors/athletes on the list, not to mention its inclusion (or lack thereof) of the LGBT community.

With the Daily News under new ownership and trying desperately to stay alive, you'd think that Sexy Singles would be a major deal, as it has been in the past. But it's been downsized. This year the feature ran for only two days, and with just 20 Sexy Singles. However, the more things change, the more they stay the same: by my count, 15 of the 20 fall into one or more of these categories: model, fitness instructor, was/is employed by local media outlets, or performer of some kind (including a ballet dancer, the current Miss Pennsylvania and "Top Chef" Jennifer Carroll).

The NFL is again represented, but not by an Eagle.

From Protest To Party

Last night the Temple University Student Government and their Queer Student Union put on a production of "The Laramie Project" on campus. In case you aren't aware, it tells the story of the reactions of people in Laramie, Wyoming to the 1998 torture and murder of Matthew Shepard, the gay University of Wyoming student.

This did not please the Westboro Baptist Church, the extremist anti-gay organization led by Fred Phelps that holds protests at funerals of fallen soldiers and many other events, waving signs such as "God hates fags" and "Thank God for 9/11." The cult (let's face it, that's what they are) announced that they would hold a protest at Temple because of the production of "The Laramie Project" as well as a separate production of "Rent." A counter-protest was organized in response.

My friend Kurt (with whom I share a birthday, albeit 20 years apart) was in the cast of "The Laramie Project" so I went to see him in the first of two shows, at 4 pm, as did his friend Stacy from Virginia, and we then joined the counter-protest. The amount of people -- mostly students, but not entirely, and not all from Temple -- was impressive. The turnout was reported at over 1,100 at the locations where the two plays were being held, according to the report in the Temple News. (Neither the Inquirer nor the Daily News saw fit to cover this story, unfortunately.)

Hello? Temple/Daily News Q still needs the A

You may have noticed there's a little box on my site from Feedjit.com. That widget keeps track of where hits to my tiny little slice of the Internet are coming from, and how. In reviewing the live feed it provides, I notice I'm getting a number of hits on this recent post, from people Googling for the same information I asked for when I wrote it. It refers to the Daily News headline on Friday accompanying a photo of Temple's move-in day, a headline that was so bad they felt the need to apologize for it the next day (and again on Monday). Obviously I'm not the only one who missed the paper on Friday, so I'm asking again. If anyone knows or can find out what the photo depicted and what the headline said, please let me know.

I know you Temple people are all excited about tomorrow's football game (at least I hope you are), but that's no excuse. If it was that bad I would imagine there'd have been some talk about it around campus. Please help me and some anonymous Googlers sleep tonight. Thank you.

Need info from Temple people/Daily News readers

One bad thing about being out of town is that I miss reading my newspaper. Sure, I can read it online, but it's more time-consuming if I want to read everything I normally read. And not every single part of the paper may go up on the website.

So I really, really, really am curious as to what this item in today's Philadelphia Daily News is referring to...

OUR APOLOGIES

A headline above a photo on Page 4 of yesterday's Daily News regarding move-in day at Temple University was totally inappropriate. The Daily News apologizes to the student, her family, the university and our readers.

Seriously, someone who saw the paper yesterday or someone from Temple (because I imagine there was some uproar from the campus and/or from alumni) needs to enlighten me. What was in the photo and what did the headline say?