What fun!

Saturday night I was fortunate enough to celebrate with friends and relatives down at my parents house in Virginia. Many people pitched in to make it a fantastic night. What were we celebrating? Two things: 1. My recovery from cancer, and 2. My 40th birthday (gasp). It was GREAT fun and I was so incredibly excited to see and visit with everyone that came.

Everyone that came holds a special place in my heart and I can't begin to describe how loved and cared for I felt. For me it was a rich time of fun, laughter and fellowship. I hope that everyone had as much fun as I did.

There were some friends that weren't able to make it - but I'm sure that we'll have the opportunity to golf later this year (hint) or go fishing on the Susquehanna (hint) to "catch up".

My sister emailed many of you asking for songs that reminded them of me. She then created cds from those songs and had them ready for everyone to take home. The music wasn't as bad as it could have been, but couldn't anyone include my favorite song to play on guitar "Louie, Louie"? I also had to spend a great deal of time explaining a fraternity favorite "One of these days" by Pink Floyd - let's just say it's not . The cd set "Double Live Brad" is sweet and I'll cherish it!

long time no see...

April 22??? That's my last post? Sheesh.

Well.......

Radiation was finished at the end of April. The doctors and nurses at Fox Chase Cancer Center are awesome, but I won't miss them. I finished my treatment on April 28. It was only two weeks, but it was grueling.

It has been good to have a normal schedule again. Work really picked up so I was pretty much hanging on trying to keep up. Also, it was good to be hungry again. Also, started going to the kids sporting events again. Sam is doing well with baseball. He got the game ball twice. He's hit several homers and does pretty well in the field. He's enthusiastic and can't get enough of playing catch (me either). Joe is playing soccer, I use that term very loosely. I think the only reason it is called soccer is because occaisionally there is a soccer ball that is part of the action. Joe actually tallied three goals last week, which were his first of his fledgling career.

A few highlights from the past 6 weeks:

We took the kids to 6Flags Great Adventure on Memorial Day. In reverse order:

Several hours at the water park - good stuff and always interesting to hang out in the bathing suit with 20,000 strangers. The water park is really nice. And despite the masses of humanity (gasp) it was a barrel of fun. As a side note, I would prefer to go to places and events without all the "people". http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=misanthrope

Amusement park for a few hours - it's fun watching the kids on the rides. They're still too small to ride the big coasters, but it's fun nevertheless. I spent about 15 minutes staring at the Kingda Ka, basically about 30 seconds of heart attack action. I'd put the fear factor at about the level of an IRS audit, handling a poisonous snake or a chance encounter with an unmedicated Mike Tyson (all put together). Unfortunately, the line was too long for me to ride it, otherwise I was on it... so on it. One of these days, if I'm allowed, I'll conquer the ride.

And the highlight of the day was the Wild Animal Safari Park. Basically you drive through the a zoo with very few cages and watch all the NJ dirtbags feeding the animals through their car windows. Do I really care about feeding a camel a slice of bread? No, I just hate explaining it to the kids. Nevertheless, it's a pretty cool park and you just don't get to be so close to animals in a typical zoo setting. The absolute highlight: We watched an unfortunate duck fly directly into a lion cage!!! Yes, it's the kind of carnage that I live for. The duck was immediately subdued by mother lion. Two cubs then spent much of their time playing tug of war with the dazed, but very alive mallard duck. good times! Needless to say, the boys were stoked.

Last weekend I spent some time with some Young Life buddies out on the Northern Neck of Virginia (tappahannock river/Chesepeake Bay). It was beautiful and we had a rich time of fun, fellowship and silliness.

That's all for now! Peace.