i do not talk very hugely much when i am happy, i think. at least not online. but i am happy, it isn't that i've fallen off the planet or anything. fyi.

i am having a very pleasing and very full life at the moment. it was wiscon over memorial day weekend, this week i am doing an upgrade at work (which is part of the full part but not so much of the pleasing part), and then on thursday i go up north for a few days for my grandmother's memorial service (she died in december and has been cremated and in my parents' living room ever since), where it will be nice to see family and not so nice to have it be at a funeral, and i am dating someone and it is going well. then there's the usual summer whirl of conventions, and i seem to be going to someone else's family reunion in july. i am a little terrified of that; dozens of people i don't know, and what if i say something that i think is funny and they all back away from me slowly? eep. but we'll see.

it's spring here. spring spring spring. 50 degrees out when i went out for dinner.

this is not the weather that makes me so very glad that i live in this state (you have to wait for october for that), but it is, as we say here, not bad.

my fine fine parents lent me a set of dog steps that i have now put in the nursery aka computer room aka guest room (i have a small house and believe in multitasking), so now pirate can get up on the guest bed which is right next to my computer desk. now, she comes and licks my hands while i am typing. at the moment i have most of the spare desk space taken up with the laptop that i am trying to install fedora on (currently i am cursing video drivers as well as wireless drivers; 800x600 less than ten feet away from my hub is less fun than it sounds...) otherwise she gingerly hops up on the slippery desk and walks over and hops down into my lap. this would work better if there was room for a dog on my lap while i was typing. due to the construction of the betsy and the desk setup, there is not much dog room there. ah, well. she is still a fine pirate dog.

here in fair minnesota, it's the middle of winter. we've been having a completely ridiculous warm spell-- i mean, nice, but ridiculous-- but that doesn't make it not winter. there's still ice on all the roads and snow on even the lawns that get sun.

this means most people are a little flat, myself included.

i did throw a party this last weekend; it was a bunch of fun. i still crash relatively early, but it's better than it was before the new knee. and some friends decided they were going to host a pi day party. i am all excited about that. and i think i may have more cider leftover than i can drink between now and then, so if i still have some, i will likely bring it over there. mwhahaha.

Medical News: Body Weight Makes No Difference in Ovarian Cancer Survival - in Hematology/Oncology, Other Cancers from MedPage Today

i am so angry about this that i almost can't talk about it.

Medical News: Body Weight Makes No Difference in Ovarian Cancer Survival - in Hematology/Oncology, Other Cancers from MedPage Today

All patients received chemotherapy administered according to their actual body weight. Often, chemotherapy is administered based on ideal weight, which may lead to insufficient doses for obese patients, according to the researchers.

in plain english, when they gave the patients doses of medicine calculated as to what they actually *did* weigh, rather than what the medical profession thought they *ought* to weigh, fat women with ovarian cancer live just as long as skinny women with ovarian cancer.

chemotherapy is nearly always systemically administered rather than directly administered to the tumor. this means you take pills or they inject the medicine into you.

that means that in order to be effective, you have to adjust the size of the dose to reflect the size of the system aka patient.

that means that when they weigh you when you go in to see your oncologist? they may or may not be using that information for anything useful, like, making sure your treatment is effective.

goddamnit.

a good review of the day the earth stood still at gendergoggles. i liked the movie and i liked the review, and the review points out that the movie does, in fact, pass the bechdel test. i was pretty sure it did, but it's good to have my thoughts confirmed.