I Have Not Written For A Very Long Time

Sorry.  Life is….unexpectedly interesting these days in both positive and negative ways.

Positive: since I was awesome at school last semester, I got a scholarship and had my seminar paper accepted to a conference.  In a week and a half I leave for a week’s vacation in Barcelona.  Grad school socializing has kicked up a notch and I have my pick from loads of things that can distract from my work.

Negative: The week’s vacation in Barcelona is to visit Alex’s grandfather, who is dying of cancer and only has a few months left to live.  Also, and this is the larger negative of the two, my mother-in-law was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.  We didn’t originally think it would be very bad – only Stage 2 which, of course, still sucks, but not in comparison with Stage 4.  Her last mammogram was in August and she was clear.  Now she has 2 tumors in her breast, a tumor in her liver, a tumor in her stomach, and some nastiness in her lymph nodes under her arm.  It’s bad, y’all.  In less than 6 months she went from cancer free to metastasized.   We’ll know more this week about treatment options and prognosis, but this thing isn’t curable, only (hopefully) manageable.  At this point it’s a matter of figuring out if we’ve got closer to 2-5 years with her or closer to 2-5 months.
  

So. That’s why I haven’t been around here much lately.  The combination of school, social life, and various family cancers is kicking my ass.  I will be back periodically, but for now I’ll probably only update every so often.  I wanted to let y’all know I haven’t forgotten that I have a blog.  Just…well, right now other things have to be more important.