wondered whatever became of me, i’m livin on the air in cincinnati, cincinnati, wkrp.

i was thinking earlier this week about pivotal points in life. like you’re faced with a decision and you make a choice and you wonder what would have happened had you gone the other way.. i remember one choice like that.. if you’re not a geek or gamer, very little of this will make sense to you. in college & for a few years after i was a big gamer. my main obsession was magic, the gathering. a bit of background: mtg is owned by wizards of the coast, the people who now own d&d and just about every game under the sun. they have a yearly professional tour circuit, which is invitation only. in order to win an invitation to a pro-tour, you compete in qualifier tournaments. a friend of mine, steve spisak was going to ann arbour, michigan for one of these qualifier tournaments, and although i had never played in one before, i thought, what the heck, i got nothing better to do. so we picked up a couple others, eric tam and paul mccabe, and made the drive down to michigan (from hamilton, ontario). eric berates the chaff deck i’ve made and builds me one he got from somewhere, and i manage to fight my way through 8 rounds into the top-8 (as does steve, and our host, fish ). my first round i play someone who i played in the swiss rounds and i know his deck, and know how to beat it, which i do handily in the first game. the second game we get into a battle for one of his cards, and although i can win the battle, i choose to let it go and save some of my firepower for later, which proves to be a mistake, since he uses the card in a way that i didn’t expect, and kills me. same thing third game, although i didn’t have the power to stop him then. i’ve looked back at that often and wondered what would have happened, had i chose to win that battle. would i have won the tournament and started making the rounds on the tour? world travel? fame & fortune (well, you know.. geek fame…). i don’t know, but it’s one of those moments that i think about.

at the time it didn’t seem like one of those pivotal moments, but since then i’ve come to think of it as such. i look at people that i used to hang out with at the time. some of the most noted are gary wise (still a pro-tour competitor) and jeff donais, who went on to work for wizards. they’re doing well for themselves, but i can easily see how my life could have paralleled theirs instead of diverging to where it is now.. married, working a 9-5, 1.5 kids & the house in suburbia. that’s not to say that i’m unhappy with my life, quite the opposite. i just wonder.. what if.

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my dad had throat cancer and had his voice box removed in the summer of 2000. he had radiation therapy and managed an almost complete recovery. that was 3 years ago.
now he’s been diagnosed again, and i wonder what kind of struggle he will have to go through to fight it again. he’s almost 70, but one of the most solid people i’ve ever met. i realize he probably has a tough battle to go through, possibly including surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, which i wouldn’t wish on anyone, and in the long run, some people might think is it worth it?
is it worth the pain and suffering and operations and drugs just to get one or two more years? well, in the last three years, there have been so many things happen, just in our own family, such as

watching two children get married

the birth of his first grandchild

seeing three children graduate university

and if he were to live 3 or 5 more years, how much more could he see? just looking at that list, i think that any one of them would be worth fighting for.
then that brought me to another thought. i am a father, and a husband. when i made the decision to get married, and further, when my wife and i made the decision to have children, my life suddenly was no longer my own. not that i am unable to make decisions concerning my life, but now i must consider their impact on my family.
so that brings me to my question. does my dad have an obligation to my mom, my sisters and brothers, and to me, and my wife and daughter to try to spend as many more years, months, or even days with us as he can? is it ethical for him to decide not to undergo surgery or chemo or any therapy that might prolong his life?
please understand that i’m not making any judgements or engaging any moral imperatives here, i’m just raising the question. never having been in a similar situation, i can’t possibly imagine the mindset, or the different flood of thoughts, feelings, and emotions that must go into such a decision.
the other thing that i know must be thought about, with regards to the ‘is it worth it’ argument, is will it have any effect? it’s possible to have all the operations and therapy in the world and it have little or no effect. the other side of the coin, of course, are the survivors. the people who beat it once, twice, or many times.
when i was about 12 or 13, a friend of my mom’s was found to have cancer, all through her. her doctor performed a double masectomy, removed her uterus and she was told that with aggressive chemo and radiation, she could live another 4 to six months. she went through hell for 4 months, the most debilitating therapy that anyone could go through. that was 16 years ago, and she is fully healthy today, no recurrences, and is as strong a sign that this can be overcome as you could want. i know that things don’t always turn out that way, but for now, that’s a hope that i can cling to.

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i’m really getting into riding the train, but not just for the obvious reasons. i’ve actually been thinking that maybe it would be interesting if i did a blog every day as i ride the train, about the people that i see, and my rambling musings about the places i pass, and stations etc. i like the naming of the stations along the light rail, some of them inspire interesting thoughts, and make me wonder where they came from.. of course, most of them are named after whatever place or street the station happens to be near (capitol, curtner, great america) but there are quite a few that are interesting. the one that i find possibly most intriguing is called ‘old ironsides’ and the name brings to my mind the vision of turn of the century trains, old steam engines, and railroads running all the way across the country.

today’s selection of people on the train is limited, there are only 4 other people in the car with me (i’m on a late train today – my hockey went late last night.) there is a sweet hispanic couple, in their mid-late thirties, and they’ve been on since downtown. they are cuddling and talking to each other, and look totally in love. they were holding hands on the platform as we changed at baypointe.

there’s an older man with a sheaf of papers wearing a jacket with some kind of regal-looking crest on the breast pocket. it makes me wonder if he’s part of a club, or group, or evil illuminati that is plotting to take over the world. j he looks tired and a little harried, so i would be more inclined to think that he’s on his way to a meeting, or possibly a job interview. there’s also a woman who got on a few stops ago and almost looks homeless, although of course i have no way to know. she’s wearing a battered purple baseball cap and carrying 3 big bags filled with varying things, clothes, a towel. she stares straight ahead, not looking around at all, talking under her breath to herself. it gives me a moment to pause and think about the sadness, and heartbreak that might have led someone to such a situation.. as i write this i’m struck by my thought patterns. i fly from one tangent to the next, taking little time for deep inspection of a single thought, instead, zooming recklessly from one to the next. i’m amazed at the number of muses that i can find to inspire me on a single train ride, but i know that i’m really avoiding what i am trying to do. since last week i’ve been mulling over in my head two different things that i want to write. i don’t know if i will actually blog one or both, or any, or if i will do it privately, but it’s something that i absolutely want to do. i want to write about my dad. i want to write something about him. about his life, who he was, what he did. i won’t be able to talk about why he did things, or from his point of view, although i’ve tried to get him to tell me several times over the last 4 or 5 years. the second thing that i want to write is a letter to my dad, telling him what he means to me, and how many things he still has to look forward to. i know that cancer is a big thing to have to fight, but he’s beaten it once, so who can tell what the future holds. i’ll try to post this when i get to work, and also to work on some other entries, i know i’ve been slacking since… oh, since i started my blog.. but that’s life.

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and with it comes tiredness, worry, fretting and even sadness. this past week has been long and tiring. there is a quote in hamlet that sometimes i think about:

“when sorrows come, they come not in single spies, but in battalions.”

how true this is.. it seems like when one thing happens, then a lot happen. on the positive side, we finally got a/c installed in our house, just in time for the swelter of this weekend (95+) in september. i thought it was supposed to be fall already.. frigid mornings, cool enough to need a sweater. well, soon enough i suppose. until i gain the strength to write more.. continue on with your lives, gentle readers, and think of me!

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it’s wednesday and i’m mired in another week of crap. this coff-ay is climing out of the cup and trying to attack my trackball *thwap* *thwap* “back in the mug you damned caffeine!” some times i try to explain that the coffee filter doesn’t have to be filled all the way to the top, it’s ok to leave some room in there, but the other engineers here don’t always get that. i’ve been kinda in the dumps for a couple weeks, thus the lack of any posting.. i’m also trying to finish some templates for mt, and write my transfer script so that i can move over to it. and lastly, i found out last night that my dad has lung cancer. *sigh*. if you’re religious, pray for us. otherwise, cross your fingers and hope that he comes through ok, and my family doesn’t crack :) thanks y’all.

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