More Santa Fe Enjoyment (Saturday/Sunday, August 10/11, 2012)

The travails of Thursday were a distant memory as Con and I awoke for a Saturday morning walk. The sun was barely over the horizon but it already was a “sunglasses type of sun”. Santa Fe has hundreds of open space acreage right near our house and they recently marked them with walking paths and trail markers to help guide us over the southwestern desert like terrain. We are about 10 minutes outside of Santa Fe proper and the quiet is all pervasive while the views of the Sandias, the Jemez and Sangre de Christos mountain ranges in different directions offer spectacular views everywhere you look. This was a wonderful way to greet the day. On our return, we watched some Olympics until the girls woke up and then headed into one of those traditional eating places mentioned in yesterday’s blog, The Shed, for lunch. The Keerans always frequent this locale for lunch and we stuck to tradition, ordering a variety of dishes, including Beef Enchilada and taco plate with red chile sauce and Carne adovada, both dishes with the traditional posole. Then we waked the Plaza with Connie’s sisters, Peggy and Kathy and followed it up with a stroll down the famous artist street, Canyon Road.

We then headed out to store and home to get ready for a larger dinner crowd tonight as Con’s brother Bob and wife Cindy, with two of their children, Drew and Jennifer came from Albuquerque. Sally and Ed, along with Con’s mom, Jeannette came over from their house with Peggy and Kathy. It was a scene of frenzy on a Thanksgiving like dinner evening as everyone was making respective dishes in the kitchen (see picture). Sally and Ed made a roast chicken dish using a technique I have never seen. The opened beer cans, drank a few sips and then stuck the whole chicken on the beer can, put them on a roasting pan and put on the barbeque. Con made a corn salad; Kathy made a green salad, Peggy made a skillet based home fry potatoes with zucchini dish as well as tomato bruscheta; I made a lobster guacamole and Bob and Cindy brought the peach pie with ice cream. It was a feast and we ostensibly celebrated Jeannette’s 86^th birthday two days late and my 57^th birthday five days early. The evening was only marred by a quick driving rain storm with high winds that kept us inside but made the locals happy given the paucity of precipitation. We memorialized the evening with a group picture, capping off a great Santa Fe day.

On Sunday morning, Con and I took another pleasant walk early before she went to the cathedral with her mom. When the girls woke up, we watched the thrilling US-Spain basketball game and then joined Con in downtown for another Keeran tradition-breakfast at Tia Sophia’s. Con and I each had Huevo Ranchos with green chiles while the girls had breakfast burritos. Con’s other brother, who lives in the cabana that is part of our house, along with wife Nancy had arrived back from Denver late in the prior evening. He joined us at breakfast with Jeannette to make a six some. After breakfast, Con, Kate, Nell and I walked around for another hour or so before we headed home to catch some of the PGA golf prior to my flying home. I’ll end the day’s blog here but confidently predict that my flight to Denver and then on directly to Manchester will go off without a hitch. If not, you’ll hear about it later.

Why Did I Book This Trip?…Cause Santa Fe Soothes All Pain (Thursday/Friday, August 9/10, 2012)

Following through on a trip booked long in advance, I started the trek out to Santa Fe for a long weekend on Thursday afternoon. This followed a morning where I was at Nypro. One of the more touching things happened while I was there. We have quarterly profit sharing meetings where all our employees attend meetings throughout the world to hear how we did in the prior quarter and see how each of their operations did. For the operations that did well, everyone receives a profit sharing check. Since I hadn’t walked around the Clinton operations in some time, I decided to stop into their meeting for a few minutes. I was overwhelmed as everyone burst into spontaneous applause and people were genuinely happy to see me. It made my day before the travel later tried to ruin my day… and potentially the next day. Though I am a frequent flyer, this was the first flight I had taken in over four months, since my medical problems started in April. I now remember how bad travel can be on its bad days.

I had the same flight itinerary as Connie and Kate had three days prior, a 5:30 PM flight from Manchester to Chicago Midway, followed by a 30 minute wait and an ongoing flight to Albuquerque, getting in at 9:30PM. Everything went smoothly for them and after an hour ride, they were comfortably in our Santa Fe house by 10:30PM. Well the storms bracketing the East Coast and regions out towards Chicago meant my trip wasn’t going to go so smooth. They kept pushing back the flight from Manchester but finally I got out 3 hours late and when arriving in Chicago, learned that the Albuquerque flight was also 3 hours delayed, not leaving till 12:50AM (Central time). Ugh!  And I wasn’t even sure the flight would go out, leaving me few options as all the morning flights were booked. Ultimately the flight did get out finally landing in Albuquerque at 2:35AM. Connie was nice enough to drive down and pick me up even if she was 20 minutes late and had a virtually empty tank of gas so we spent a few minutes searching out the one gas station open at 3AM. Ultimately we got in at 4:10AM and I got 3 hours sleep before awaking for a conference call.

But the splendor of Santa Fe and its Southwest surroundings can quickly bring you back to good spirits. The weather was beautiful; temperature hot but bearable with the low humidity and the calm and quiet of our setting was soothing. When I completed the call, Kate, Con and I headed into town for lunch at one of the many excellent restaurants there. We often kid Connie that she and her family always go to the same 3 standard places whenever they return, trying to relive their youth. But she has gotten more adventuresome in the past couple years, opening her horizons. We had a lovely lunch at one such place, the outdoor patio of Guadalupe Café, almost in the shadow of the State capitol building. I had to have some NM fare (chicken burrito with green chiles and posole) while Kate and Con shared a huge SW salad and a sandwich. Afterwards we visited Con’s mom Jeannette at her house; sister Kathy was in from Oakland and Peggy in from Denver while Sally has retired there and lives in the same house with her husband, Ed. We watched some of the Olympics while visiting, then headed out for dinner shopping. On our return, we had an equal split of dinner responsibilities. Con made a delicious watermelon cucumber gazpacho (with chiles, tomatoes and basil syrup); Kate made a watercress and arugula salad with grilled prosciutto, provolone cheese and grapefruit (yum, yum) and I made a yellow snapper Veracruz (pictures all below). We hosted Connie’s mom and Kathy and Peggy for a delightful dinner. Afterwards Kate and I watched some Olympics while Con drove back to the Albuquerque to pick up Nell coming in on the same Chicago flight. She, like Con and Kate, arrived on time. Alas it was only Thursday that one should not have been flying.

Abandoned (Monday-Wednesday, August 6-8, 2012)

Well after 100 days of having her by my side virtually full time, it finally happened. Con packed her bags, walked out of the house and left me Monday. And she took Kate along with her to boot. Both boarded a plane for New Mexico and a week of R&R in the Santa Fe sun without the hassle of dealing with the curmudgeonly old cancer patient. So it was a quiet house I came home to on Monday when I got back from a partial day at Nypro. Duncan was still around and I picked him up at the train station but he informed me he was going out with some Groton friends for dinner. So you’ll see no fancy pictures today as I heated up leftovers watching the Olympics. I am feeling more of the effects from the dose dense treatment this go round so I barely made it to 9 before calling it a night.

Tuesday led to a further abandonment. Coincidentally, this was the first day Duncan was working at home for his Deloitte assignment. But I wasn’t around as I had various Nypro meetings to attend, including a trip to Boston. And then when I got home, Dunc informed me that he was called to Hartford for a high priority project and had to be there by the end of the night. So we grabbed a quick but enjoyable dinner at Gibbett Hill Grill before he headed out. And then I had the house totally to myself- completely abandoned. Wednesday didn’t bring much change to this routine as I put some time in Nypro, came to an empty house, ate some leftovers, watched some Olympics and called it a night. The life of an abandoned man. I may have to put out a call to some of those bulldog sisters of mine and get them up here for some company.

PS. The way the mechanics of the blog postings work is I write it, send it to Connie, she makes any edits and posts on the blog with pictures. So if my partner wants to add anything about her days visiting the Opera, taking hikes etc etc, I will defer to her to write it. 

(I’ll just add a photo of the stage set at the Santa Fe Opera for “Tosca” (note the open air setting!), and Kate and her Granma at Sena Plaza for drinks on Granma’s 86th birthday).

A Pleasant Sunday…And Dinner with the McDonalds (Sunday, August 6, 2012)

If you remember most of my June blog entries, Con and I got into a fairly predictable routine with a morning walk on one of many conservation properties in Groton and environs. Somehow we got away from this routine in the past few weeks with all of our travel, increased Nypro activity on my part and other conflicts. So we enjoyed getting up today, eschewing the more rigorous bike ride and taking a pleasant hike on the Baddacock conservation land and trails across from the Wharton Plantation. The oppressive heat from the day before had temporarily been washed away with evening thunder showers and a peaceful Sunday calm made for an enjoyable outing. We have Kate and Duncan home at this point so on our return, all the healthy Lapres members taunted dad and went out for runs while I read my Sunday paper on the front porch. We followed this with a family breakfast and followed the Olympic tennis as Andy Murray finally solved Federer and brought the gold home for the Brits. The four of us then turned our attention to golf and headed over to the International for some golf. The heat had picked back up by early afternoon so we felt the effects. But we were able to move along at a good clip and get 11 holes in before a powerful thunder shower swept through the region, dropping torrential rain and high winds for 30 minutes. Fortunately we got minutes ahead of the bad part.

Then it was on to another dinner outing as a former Nypro HR person and friend, Karen McDonald (along with her husband Joe) had us over to their Acton house. Now Karen is a faithful reader of the blog but she refused to be intimidated by past food entries and vowed to keep it simple. And she (with Joe) kept to the pledge. We entered a house with no electricity and candles lit everywhere, a victim of the storm. So it was a nice intimate setting. Joe was off to their daughters house (a mile away and with power) to put the chicken dish in the oven since they couldn’t cook at their own house. When Joe returned, we caught up over the next 45 minutes in our intimate candle lit setting. Having had their granddaughter, Amelia, battle leukemia at an early age made both of them intimate in some of my challenges. Fortunately she is doing well, having battled against the odds so I am happy to use her as one of my inspirations. It was also clear that these two retired folks weren’t going to let the little things getting them frazzled. Joe headed back out and picked up the main course and with power flickering on and off, they figured out how to get some asparagus cooked, along with the rice to accompany the chicken. We then sat for a wonderful meal (see picture below) and discussion, topped off by the amazing cupcakes that Karen made (see picture). Now I know she went to Ildlewylde Farms earlier in the day. And I know they make big cupcakes there suspiciously like those in the picture. But I’m saying Karen made these- that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. All in all, our get together capped off a pleasant Sunday. 

 

Dose Dense-Round 2 Completed…And a Dose Dense of Dr. Bill (Friday/Saturday, August 3/4, 2012)

After the wonderful stay with the Slineys, Con and I were up early to get into St. E’s for the second part of the Dose Dense- round 2. The Friday session is much shorter than Thursday as they break up the Cisplatin dose half and half between the two days due to its toxicity; meanwhile all the Gemzar is administered on Thursday. They give you two full bags of saline solution each day when you are getting Cisplatin so similar to two weeks ago, my body literally inflates with so much fluid in me and my weight shoots up by about 10 pounds. Con and I left the hospital around 2 and made it home by 4 since we stopped at Lahey to drop an updated package of all my new information to the surgeon we are considering there. Similar to two weeks ago, I feel the effects of this heavier regiment on Friday afternoon/Saturday. So I took it easy both days, particularly given the heat wave pushing into the high 90s. Although I confess that I was up so early on Saturday that I went into Nypro for a couple hours early in the morning. However, the balance of the day and night was spent sitting on a recliner and watching the Olympics.

Obviously the chemo was no treat but we did get a special treat as my old college friend (that I mentioned in last Sunday’s blog), Bill Holmes came down for dinner Friday night and stayed the night. It was great catching up with him in more depth than our prior weekend with our conversations covering his work overseas, next projects, his counsel on our surgery options and much more. As I mentioned in last week’s blog, Bill has had a remarkable last 25 +years with stints in Cambodia, Sudan, Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia, Indonesia (after the tsunami) and much much more. He has captured many poignant observations from his work in a book titled “Voices from the Peace Zone”by William Holmes that is only available on Kindle for $4.99. If you want an interesting and moving read, I’d recommend it. And a small contribution from every purchase goes to the 3^rd Monday Foundation. It was a real treat getting a dose dense of Bill for the 24 hours even as I worked through the aftereffects of Dose Dense- round 2. Fortunately my appetite didn’t totally abandon me and we gave Bill a treat of fresh grilled bluefish and grilled sardines, with our local tomatoes on Friday night.

Dose Dense-Part 2… and a Visit to the Slineys (Thursday, August 2, 2012)

Wednesday was a relatively uneventful day as we were up early (5AM) to make the drive back to Boston; I had to make some meetings at Nypro and Connie was heading up to Plum Island for her afternoon and evening women’s book club (“White Tiger” which the women gave a thumbs up to). I also had an evening Groton Conservation Trust meeting. This was my 13^th and final day of the post 1^st round of dose dense. So I have felt strong the last couple days. Our only tragedy is we had bought a famous Margate hoagie from “Dino’s” to eat when we got back to Groton but alas, we left it in Dana’s downstairs refrigerator.  If you knew how good these were, you would realize my disappointment.

 

I have to admit Thursday morning bought a minor sense of dread, gearing up for round 2 of dose dense treatment. Thursday is the long day with both the Gemzar and ½ of the Cisplatin, along with saline IVs, some anti-nausea IV and a steroid IV. Our trusty lead nurse, Lee wasn’t in today and we felt the effects. Two weeks ago, with Lee there, we were in by 8 and out by 4:15. Yesterday, we ended up being the last ones leaving the ward, not getting out until 6:30. Around mid afternoon, Con reverted to that “b…ch” mode, last demonstrated in mid May and let her feelings known. That helped pick up the pace. All in all, I felt slightly better than I felt two weeks ago after the end of the Thursday “dose dense” long day but it is a long day.

 Then it was on to the Slineys in Medfield and an overnight stay, making our Friday ride back in to St. E’s easier. As you can gather from the blog, this cancer journey has enabled us to get quality time with good friends from throughout our life. Bob and Molly fit squarely in that group. Bob and I overlapped briefly at Coopers & Lybrand but our real friendship blossomed when each of us moved within blocks of each other in West Roxbury back in 1986. We each proceeded to have three kids (2 girls and a boy) in roughly the same time frame. And a strong friendship blossomed. Bob is a financial person that has spent his last decade plus at EMC while Molly is active everywhere, both town volunteer work and a successful Silpada sales person. They also have three great kids in Robert, Caroline and Molly, the latter two joining us for dinner last night, along with our Kate. We have always enjoyed our dinners, outings and get togethers. Our meals are always thoughtful, funny and enjoyable often tackling the thorny issues of the world. Bob is a prolific reader, as is Molly and they are devout Catholics so we always have great discussions. We were also grateful that Bob’s brother, Tom, who has always enjoyed spending time with Connie and me drove down from Hartford to join us. Now I have to confess total surprise but Bob expressed consternation at “keeping up with the Jones” seen in the blog on the food front. But he had nothing to be concerned about. Bob started with a tomato, brie cheese and shallot tart for appetizers and a main course of fabulous grilled sea bass with grilled peaches, a tasty wild herbed rice dish and salad. It was excellent. And Kate, along with making her mojitos (giving lessons to Caroline and Maggie), made a wonderful blackberry key lime pie (having just picked a bunch of fresh blackberries at the Groton School. As is always the case, we had a wonderful time with a great family before calling it a night and getting ready for my short dose dense day on Friday to complete round 2.

Back to My Roots Sunday-Tuesday, July 29-31, 2012

As most of you know, I grew up in Margate, two miles outside of Atlantic City on Absecon Island. We had a big old house a block and half from the beach that we lived in year round. We had many fond memories growing up, as well as those occasions when we came back with friends or family over the years. Unfortunately we don’t have the house any longer so it has been several years since I have been down and consequently, I had a desire to “revisit my roots” and also catch up with family members in the Philly area. So following the 3M event, Con, Kate and I drove down to Moorestown, NJ Sunday afternoon and stayed with my brother Geoff and his wife Donna for the night, along with Brian one of their sons and Donna’s sister Liz and husband, Greg, both in from Phoenix. If you read the Lake George entries, you may remember that Donna has Italian roots and is an amazing cook. She, with Geoff’s help put together another tremendous meal, including an appetizer of stuffed zucchini flower blossoms (picture before cooking below), a fresh Jersey creamed corn dish, Jersey tomatoes with mozzarella and basil and luscious plump crab cakes. And the “piece de resistance’ was an amazing desert- chocolate tortini (beaten egg whites, whipped heavy cream, almonds and melted chocolate). Donna didn’t want a picture taken of herself but we did get pictures of the food. The meal was wonderful and the conversation enjoyable. Liz and Greg are both medical folks so we tried to solve the US health care problems but didn’t make much of a dent.

Moorestown is an old and well to do suburb of Philly in Jersey and Con and I enjoyed a walk around the town early on Monday. (Note for Brian Fidler- we enjoyed our walk through the Moorestown Friends school). After our walk, Con and Kate took a run in the area and then we drove down to Margate and its abutting town, Longport, arriving late morning. Trish’s good friend Susie (Campbell) Waddell has what they call “a little shack” on the beach block in Longport at the end of the island, sitting around a series of larger houses built after people did tear downs. We found the house, built in 1901 and never renovated since, as a classic old time beach house, hidden around the Mcmansions in the neighborhood. We loved the ambience. Susie graciously offered the house to us and we stayed there Monday night. Much of the next 24 hours was spent catching up. We had lunch with my good friend Carl Tobiasen’s mom, Rosemary, as well as a friend of my mom’s and distant cousin (from the Fralinger Saltwater side of family) – Stella Breitinger. They both looked great in their 80s and then another old friend of my moms, Mary Capaldi, a sprite 98 year old came into the restaurant with her son. So it was old home week.

Con, Kate and I walked off our lunch with a 4 mile walk down the beach, seeing many of the old sights of Longport and Margate. Unfortunately I blew it and didn’t take a picture of me in front of Lucy the Elephant (the two story elephant built for the Philly World Fair in the late 1800s and now a landmark in Margate). Then we were on to visit some old friends, Bill and Petie Subin for dinner. Bill is a lawyer in town and I got to know during my rowing days in high school. And Petie is his dynamo wife, with an irrepressible personality who worked tirelessly over many years to have me kick my shyness. Now she does various social work, including consulting at Gilda’s Place. Our friends from our Boston dinner group, Mike and Kathy Cunningham (and their three boys) also were at the dinner as they were in town. Mike and I went to high school together- Mike was our coxswain (and later was Princeton’s cox, as well as the national team cox for a couple years) on the high school boat I rowed in. Petie has read the blog so she had lots of foods prepared for us, pasta, meatballs, ratatouille, turkey and much more. It was excellent (picture of our group shown below). Mike and I continued our rowing memory tour the next morning as we met our high school rowing coach, Stan Bergman for breakfast. Stan had a tremendous influence on both of us as he built a national powerhouse at Holy Spirit. Though our senior boat was not one of them, he led Holy Spirit to four Henley championships before heading to Penn to coach there for 15 years. It was so enjoyable spending time with Stan and saying thanks 38 years on for all he did for us in our formative years.

After some beach time with the Cunninghams, along with Susie and a couple of her daughters (picture below), Con, Kate and I headed up to Bryn Mawr (outside of Philly) to spend the night at my sister, Dana’s house. Trish, another sister was there and finally ready to go home to Las Vegas, after spending the last five weeks gallivanting around the East Coast,was there. Mom was also over for dinner (from her house 300 yards away) when we arrived, and we had my nieces Kara and Danielle (sister Michelle’s daughters) with their children, Savion (Kara’s son), Logan and Isabella (Danielle’s son and daughter). Kara’s husband, Pravin was also there so we had a pleasant family get together. Mom’s sister Aunt Sue, and mom’s neighbor was also there for cocktails (see picture below of the sisters with me) And surprise, surprise- we ate a bit. Pravin brought some huge stone crabs for an appetizer, Mom made her tasty shrimp dip and Dana made a decorative heirloom tomato and crab salad to go with roasted asparagus and marinated grilled chicken. We had a wonderful dinner and setting sitting by the pool on a beautiful night. All in all, it was a great three days, getting back to my roots.

3M Weekend (Friday-Sunday, July 27-29, 2012

This was the weekend of a mini- reunion get together of my Dartmouth fraternity brothers held in the Boston area. Before elaborating on that, however, a few recaps prior to our initial Friday evening get together. Con and I continued our taxi service for Duncan in the morning. Until September 1 when he gets his apartment in Boston, he needs to take the train into his job, which started 2 weeks ago, at Deloitte Consulting. So we dropped him off at the Ayer train station and then we took a short walk through Devens following which I headed into Nypro. I had a couple of morning meetings and conference calls. Before I headed out for the day, I had the pleasure of stopping down in our NP division (along with Gordon) to say good bye to a retiring 36 year employee of Nypro, Nesty Ribot (picture attached). We have a fascinating cross section of people who work in our Clinton facility, spanning many nationalities and backgrounds. Most are intensely loyal and committed long term employees. Nesty was one of them, moving up from Puerto Rico in 1976 to Clinton and coming to work for us. Gordon and I enjoyed sitting and talking with her for 20 minutes on her final day, hearing her reminisces on Nypro and her plans for the future. And I knew as she left that I had one more person clogging the prayer line to the man upstairs on my behalf.

After resting when I got home, we headed into Boston for our first event of the weekend; we reserved a room at Jillian’s, a bar, restaurant and game complex right next to Fenway Park. Fortunately we could access it easily as the Sox were in the Bronx playing the Yanks. We had our own room which enabled us to catch up in a quiet setting while also following the Opening Games ceremony and the Sox game. But let me elaborate a bit on the title in the heading. In my senior year, a number of us from our Alpha Delta fraternity (I have to sheepishly admit this was the fraternity that Animal House was based on, but based on the exploits of the members a decade earlier in the mid 60s) went out for a dinner on the third Monday in November. We were all dressed up and convinced ourselves after a few drinks that if we put our minds to it, we could make a million dollars coming up with some new products or business model ideas. We didn’t make much progress that night but agreed to meet the Third Monday of each remaining month before graduation to further discussions. We unofficially started the Third Monday Corporation, or 3M for short. Once we graduated, we turned to an Annual meeting/dinner get together in a different city. We also expanded our ranks to members from the classes 1977-1980. Our events were often a bit raucous where new product ideas were introduced, a new president elected and a trophy was awarded annually to the person who had accomplished the least in the past year. But at its heart, it was essentially a group of people with special friendships that we wanted to maintain and expand over the years. While we weren’t successful in meeting every year, we have kept this going faithfully for 35+ years and our bonds are as strong as ever.

Our 3M concept took a more serious turn 10 years ago thanks to the inspirational efforts of one of our members, Bill Holmes. Bill is a doctor and for the better part of his last 25 years has devoted his efforts in a number of international locations. His first was the Cambodia refugee camps on the Thai border in the mid 80s (where I had the good fortune to visit with him). But other stints have included the former Yugoslavia during the conflct there, the Sudan, Libya, Cambodia (after the Pol Pot regime), Indonesia after the tsunami, Afghanistan and much more. Bill felt we should channel our unique bond of friendship into a cause and we formed the 3M Foundation in 2002. We have attempted on a very small scale to fund worthy projects overseas that Bill identifies from his travels and work. He sees so much waste in the large NGOs where money gets squandered before it reaches the actual recipients so he identifies small but meaningful projects where a few thousand dollars truly makes a difference. So in addition, to having fun this weekend, we did spend time on a board meeting for the Foundation.

 

Our Saturday activities included golf for 12 of us, some sightseeing for others and just general catching up for the balance. Normally we hold our big Saturday night dinner at some restaurant but opted for the wonderful Wayland home setting of Chris Riley/Marylynn Gentry. Rain did put a wrench in the works as we elected not to have a tent so the dinner was held in the elegant Gentry/Riley garage. We did, however, have to position the dinner tables along-side the ping pong table, in place for those frustrated jocks that needed to relive their college beer pong excellence. But the setting only proved once again that it’s the friendship that is so special about the get together, not the food or the background. Our president, Frank Ittner couldn’t make it but he came in with inspirational opening remarks via Skype and snuck a roast of me in the mix. I was the recipient of last year’s award previously mentioned so I arbitrarily and capriciously selected this year’s winner. And Bill Holmes, came up with the new product idea, buffalo ice cream, Lactose free and cost effective to crack the Asian market in a big way. Besides being an incredible doctor, Bill is one of the funniest people around and his presentation kept us in stitches. A few pictures from the weekend are enclosed. We followed up with a breakfast on Sunday morning and Bill discussed some ideas that he would love to explore with us as part of the 3M Foundation. While a bit tiring keeping up with the 3M gang, it provided so much pleasure for me catching up with the old friends and continuing our special 3M bond.