Countdown to Hermination - 6 days

I head to Seattle in a few days - yay! - and I think my brother, Kevin, is driving me up there.  I'll be up there for three nights - and unfortunately, the American Cancer Society was not able to secure a hotel room for me, so I will have to pay out of pocket.  Good thing that I received donations from a couple of friends, the Chaplain's Office, and the local Cancer Center (about $1350), and a gas card from the American Cancer Society.  I think that I've spent about $550 so far for four trips and used all the money from the gas card.  It would have been twice as much if I paid for the hotel room myself - the going rate at the hotel I was able to stay in was over $150/night and I received four nights from the American Cancer Society.   I wanted to thank everyone who gave me donations - it's been very very helpful! It means that my own money could be used for every day things and even day trips to the coast, like we did on Sunday.

In other news, I did finish my mosaic and I finished repainting my bedroom in the colors that I prefer since I'm single now!  I liked the seascape I created - I will try to post pictures when I get a chance.  The blue sky was in a color called "Still Moment" (appropriate, since I'm trying to learn how to meditate) and my blue sea is in a color called "Healthy Waters" (also appropriate for obvious reasons).  When I looked for something to paint the sand at the store, after trying out various ones, I picked a color that I thought was more tan (so I guess it wasn't really "sand" but more tannish hills in my seascape; when I think about my image, it comes closest to a place in Spain called La Herradura that Eddie and I visited five years ago).  But when I brought it home and used it, it was more yellow.  So, I ended up mixing the yellow with a "coffee bean" acrylic paint to make a tan and then added water to make a "wash" and then used that to paint my hills a tan color.  When experimenting with paint strokes, I ended up with some splotchy clumps that I needed to fix. I ended up making them into clumps of grass.

All in all, I'm happy with it! I used a paint called "Fresh Aire" that has "No VOCs in the paint, no VOCs in the colorant and no chemical odor".  However, after painting with it for several hours on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, and sleeping in my room, I ended up feeling really fatigued for a couple of days and yesterday, I was headachey.  Part of my fatigue was staying up too late.  But I think part of it was the effects of the paint fumes.  So, today, a student (who just finished remodeling his house) let me borrow his respirator mask.  I think it worked great!  I don't feel nearly as yucky after finishing my room today.

So, six more days until I get my t-cells back.  I am very curious to see what happens!

Bedroom

A few weeks ago, my dad and my brother painted my bedroom. A few days later, I decided to sponge over some of it with what ended up being sorta gold. I only did the sponging on two of the walls. You can see the two different walls in this picture. I think it turned out well! What do you think?



Hope you all have a great week!

A New Style of Scarf

The secretary of my department, Loretta, forwarded this picture to me early last week:



The caption was: "Try the latest scarf fashion and you will be the center of attention!"

Isn't it great? I wish I could find out more about this - if anyone knows, please let me know!

I had a good week-end. I wasn't as productive as I would've wished, but I felt pretty tired all day yesterday, so I guess I did what I needed to do, which was rest.

Yesterday evening, though, I did go to my department's fundraiser called "Empty Bowls".
The fundraiser is put on by the Nutritional Anthropology class, taught by my colleague, Melissa Cheyney. The students are responsible for a service-learning project, which includes this event. Empty Bowls raises money for food insecurity programs - this year, it was World of Good (out of Junction City, OR) that raises funds for impoverished people in Ethiopia, and also the OSU Emergency Food Pantry. They served homemade soup, had several varieties of bread and desserts. They had a Silent Auction and I'm proud to say that I engaged in a bit of a bidding war in order to obtain the gift certificate for 12 entries for a personal chef! Regular readers of my blog know that I do not like to cook, so I really really appreciate home-cooked foods. I outbid others for the gift certificate - it was $75. That comes out to a little more than $6/entree and if I remember correctly, each entree may serve 2 people. So, I think I got a deal out of it! Scott attended with me.

Played cards with my card-playing buddies last night afterwards.

Friday night, I went to dinner with Allison, another of my colleagues on campus.

Today, my dad and brother painted my bedroom. Scott helped me pick out the paint color a few weeks ago - I decided to go with a Rose Wine. I was going for a maroon-kind-of-color, but it ends up having a bit of pinkish hue to it. I really like it. I may do some sponging over two of the walls, for variety and to lighten it up some, but generally, I think the room feels warmer. Anyway, I'm happy. I didn't realize how dingy white the walls were until we started cleaning and painting in there. Yikes!

Well, now I better get to grading some papers. Sigh!