A Truly Courageous Individul

I mourn the passing of Geraldine Ferraro, 1935 - 2011, and pay tribute to her as a truly courageous individual. Ms. Ferraro battled multiple myeloma (cancer in the bone marrow) for more than 12 years.

She also participated in a clinical trial for a new drug called Revlimid. Typically, people in clinical trials don't know if they are part of the group being given some new drug that may fight the cancer or may give them some horrible side effects, or if they are a part of the "control group," being given a blank pill with no medical properties whatsoever. These are truly courageous individuals on the front edge of fighting cancer.

Spring Pics

On a couple of recent Saturday mornings, we got to have our local granddaughters over to the house for a while. They enjoyed the sheer delights of chasing bubbles, running around and around a tree, and playing in spring flowers. We enjoyed the sheer delights of grandchildren.

(Oh, and by the way, the last of the winter leaves in the front yard got raked up right after the girls left).

Bowie

On March 1 and 2, I had to perform some 24-hour composite sampling and monitoring of the effluent from a client's plant near Bowie, Texas. Since all of my technicians were busy with other assignments, I took the job myself. Here's me on the west Texas prairie, near the end of the 24-hour shift (altogether, more like 36 hours because I had to get there, get set up, then rush the samples to a lab on the northeast side of Dallas). And here is the receiving creek downstream of my client's plant. The plant discharge proved to be clean, and the ducks (in flight) sure don't seem to mind it.