Weekend vacation

This past work week was fairly uneventful.  I've been having radiation every day on my leg, pelvis, and chest which takes about an hour every morning.  It is fairly boring since I have to lay there and be very still, but it gets broken up by each transition between the different areas and music the radiation therapists have going.  There are some new suspicious spots on my right lung under my main chest mass that my radiation oncologist is worried about, so I'm going to have a ten day spread of whole lung radiation too starting sometime this week.  

No side effects to speak of so far.  I've been working regular hours and making progress in lab.  My boss has a fresh hypothesis about how some of the processes that I'm looking at are regulated which means I have to read up on a bunch of papers and test out a few things this week.  It seems like he might be onto something so it has peaked my interest.  I've been able to catch up on most of my loose ends so it is nice to have something new to work on.  

It was also very nice to get away to Nashville for the weekend.  Anna and I took off Friday afternoon once I got done with radiation, and after several hours of driving (extended substantially by road construction) made it to our destination.  My back was acting up a bit by the time we got there, so I was very happy to take up a ride offer by a bicycle/cart delivery guy.  He pedaled us to our restaurant which turned out to be a longer journey than expected.  Good food, beer, and the pain meds kicking back in powered me through the rest of the night as we walked up and down Broadway hearing various bands play some good covers.  The rest of the weekend was fairly pain free except for the usual occasion stiffness, which was great.

We continued enjoying excellent food and drink the rest of the weekend at various coffee shops, candy stores, a brewery, BBQ, and Thai restaurants.  Anna and I went to the Grand Ol Opry Saturday night, and it was interesting.  The average age of both the artists and audience was 60, but there were a few new singers to help the spread.  Some of the old guys were pretty good too.  Hearing "Rawhide" sung by who we can only guess was the original band was pretty fun.  We're happy we went, but figure it'll be a long time before we'd want to head back.  Probably once we'd get closer to that average age I mentioned before.

Now we are heading back for another week of regular life.  A substantial amount of Nashville brewed beer in the trunk will help ease the transition.