Still scratchy but no longer a bass

My throat is still a little scratchy, but my voice has moved up the register from bass/baritone to at least tenor now. That appears to be a sign of general improvement.

I felt well enough yesterday to go out with a friend and do some more errands for the bathroom remodel. Demo is supposed to start next Monday! I've bought a toilet and have ordered a sink from a local potter.


He will decorate it in exactly the royal blue, sea green and reddish brown of the tiles from Jerusalem Pottery in Israel.

Risky Business

I've been engaging in risky behavior lately.

Don't get too excited.

For the last 20 weeks, I've been leaving my comfort zone and taking improv classes at Bobby Oliver's Standup Academy. How much riskier does it get?

How about getting up on a stage and performing at The Ice House in front of family, friends and strangers?

I'm glad I took the risk.

But I'm even gladder it's over.

I'll miss spending Saturday afternoons with this zany group.

Hypoxic responses in glioma stem cells

Hypoxia-inducible factors regulate tumorigenic capacity of glioma stem cells by Zhizhong Li and 11 co-authors, including Jeremy N Rich, Cancer Cell 2009(Jun 2); 15(6): 501-13 [FriendFeed entry] PubMed Abstract:

Glioblastomas are lethal cancers characterized by florid angiogenesis promoted in part by glioma stem cells (GSCs). Because hypoxia regulates angiogenesis, we examined hypoxic responses in GSCs. We now demonstrate that hypoxia-inducible factor HIF2alpha and multiple HIF-regulated genes are preferentially expressed in GSCs in comparison to non-stem tumor cells and normal neural progenitors. In tumor specimens, HIF2alpha colocalizes with cancer stem cell markers. Targeting HIFs in GSCs inhibits self-renewal, proliferation, and survival in vitro, and attenuates tumor initiation potential of GSCs in vivo. Analysis of a molecular database reveals that HIF2A expression correlates with poor glioma patient survival. Our results demonstrate that GSCs differentially respond to hypoxia with distinct HIF induction patterns, and HIF2alpha might represent a promising target for antiglioblastoma therapies.

Make Me Over

If there's one thing I haven't been able to complain about during the past four months, it's been boredom in my life. Actually, there are a lot of things I can complain about, yet at this moment I find myself slightly smiling. A grin, perhaps.

I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop, even though I've had about 50 pairs dropped on my head already. And I tell myself to NEVER say that it can't get any worse, because frankly, it can.

Now that I'm all out of cryptic aphorisms, I will report some exciting yet extremely odd news. I was nonchalantly chilling with my buddy Chris, waiting for our buddy Judy to show up to go out to lunch, waiting, waiting, waiting...Now, Judy isn't the type of person you would call "flaky," but she was being kinda flaky today--which I found to be odd behavior. Actually, she and Chris were both acting goofy, but I blamed Chris's jetlag for his goofiness.

Anyway, after waiting for Judy for almost 90 minutes, the doorbell rang. And who is standing on the other side of the door but a cameradude, a producer, and Cheryl Hickey, of Entertainment Tonight Canada! Freakin' WEIRD. Like, not something you expect to happen to you on a random Tuesday afternoon, while waiting for your friend to come to your house so you can go get lunch at a Korean restaurant (which was a total set-up, obviously, and so after Cheryl and the gang departed, Chris and I went for schwarma on Main). So yeah, Cheryl is there at MY house--which, by the way, is totally chaotic from remnants of my craft-fest on Saturday night--telling me that I'm going to have a "celebrity makeover" tomorrow--complete with clothes, hair, make-up and photoshoot! What?! Yes!

Um, okay.

So there you go.

It's the middle of June, the middle of 2009, and it's time for a whole new me (with some of the good-ol'-me thrown in for good measure).

Wax on, wax off

When I took WCK to her four-year checkup at the pediatrician's office last month, she completely failed the hearing test in her left ear. They had her wear a pair of headphones, and a voice told her to point to different pictures on a big piece of cardboard. She just sat there doing nothing and looking a little confused. The doctor looked in her ears and said there was a lot of wax in there, so that was probably the problem. I'd never noticed that WCK had any signs of hearing loss. She talks nonstop and has a pretty big vocabulary. Still, we were pretty freaked out, because Jay has a hearing loss, and we have no idea if it is hereditary.

So, the doctor sent me home with some drops to put in WCK's ears, and we had her re-checked yesterday. The drops apparently did not work at all, so they had to squirt water into her ears with a giant syringe. She was extremely brave during this procedure, and, my goodness (and please stop reading the rest of this sentence if you are easily grossed out), the entire supply closet from Madame Tussauds fell out of her ears.

She then passed her hearing test with flying colors, and the doctor gave her a popsicle. All the way home, she kept asking me, "Mommy, why is everything so loud?" If that's not bad enough, this morning I explained to her yet again that the doctor took the wax out of her ears to help her hear better.

"I want to go back to the doctor and have her put the wax back in, so everything's not so loud!" she cried.

Oh, dear. I guess she was much happier in her muffled little world.

Under the weather

I think I am coming down with a summer cold. You know that itchy, ashy-tasting feeling you get in the back of the throat that signals something is wrong? Well, it showed up last night and 1000 mg of vitamin C before bedtime didn't help. I slept poorly -- couldn't quite cough, clearing the throat (ahem ahem) didn't help, and yet that scratchy feeling kept waking me up. (Not to mention night sweats from the Megace. That is a side effect that wakes me EVERY night.)

We've had a cold start to summer, 60-some degrees after a month of a very warm late spring with lots of sun and no rain. Maybe that's the culprit. At any rate, I think I will settle in with some tea with honey and lemon, more vitamin C, and hope for a quick conclusion to this thing.

LHOTP update

Today I spent a harrowing 44 minutes and 30 seconds absolutely certain that Half-Pint was going to die of Mountain Fever. In the final 30 seconds of the episode, Doc Baker revealed that it wasn't Mountain Fever after all! It was merely poison ivy!

The logical part of my brain knows that a) this has got to be the worst TV-show ending ever and b) it's also a total ripoff of the "Jan's not allergic to Tiger; she's only allergic to Tiger's flea powder!" episode of The Brady Bunch. The Little House on the Prairie part of my brain, however, was so shaky with relief that I could have kissed Doc Baker.

I think I'm trapped in an abusive relationship with Little House on the Prairie.