May Day Sit-In

I see it’s been a few weeks since my last entry. I’ve had a couple of rounds of treatment since then which went just fine. In the interim, I went to Florida briefly to get my Dad’s car and drive it back. Since I don’t generally have a lot of energy, I split the trip into segments of no more than 4 hours of driving and so, it took about 5 days total to get back to NJ. Along the way, I stumbled across a truckstop with the best fried chicken I’ve ever had – just north of St. George, SC. It called itself a café but, in my book, when you’re attached to a gas station/convenience store, you’re a truck stop. Nonetheless, the fried chicken, mac and cheese and collard green lunch was superb! Good thing the hotel was right next door so I could sleep it off! I also stopped in Richmond for a terrific dinner with my old friends from Genworth - and that was a treat to get caught up with everyone. And, one final stop off in DC for lunch with another former colleague made for an enjoyable trip.

This week’s treatment coincided with the Occupy Wall Street May Day protests in the city. I met Vicki for some lunch before my appointment and decided to walk to treatment which took me, as usual, through Bryant Park, one of OWS’ rally points. They had a pretty good drum circle going, surrounded by protesters who, I suppose, played in their high school marching bands, so it almost had the atmosphere of a college football game tailgate party. Except that the big dancing mascot was the Statue of Liberty. There was also a group dressed in uniforms designed to look like the old Brooklyn Dodgers except the team name was the “Tax Dodgers” and every player wore the same number – “1%”! I thought that was pretty creative. One curiosity, though, was that a large group of protesters apparently had come down Fifth Avenue and turned onto 42nd Street across from the NYC Public Library where it appeared they were being held up by the police – there were a LOT of police, at least 20 or 30 of which were on motorcycles to form a wall keeping the protestors on the sidewalk. In any event, they were sort of corralled right at a Qdoba, which made it appear that they were protesting the fast food chain! I was expecting some pithy chant – maybe “Hey Hey Ho Ho, we don’t need your Burritos!” But I think they were really just being held until the cops could stop traffic enough for the group to cross into the park.

So, that was all the excitement before I held my personal sit-in in the Big Chemo Chair on 53rd Street! Hope you are all well, BB