More Fun In The Unknown Household

We had a speaker (excellent one, at that)today at the Unknown University. Just as I got out, my cell rang - the Unknown Daughter on the phone tearfully says "Mom got into an accident and she's in the hospital". No other information.

So, I rush home (I live about 2 miles from the university) and try to get some info. UW was heading to the neighboring state (about 2 hours away) for a "retreat" at our old church (actually, a sleepover with a bunch of her old girlfriends). Less than a mile from our house, she stops, since the car in front of her was turning. She promptly gets rear-ended by some moron in a Ford Explorer (she was driving our Camry, so it's likely totalled).

She was able to get out of the car, but just in case (she got whipped around pretty hard), she went to the Emergency Room on a board, and called our house (we had arranged a babysitter so someone could watch the Unknown Baby Boy until I got home from the speaker).

She managed to call us from the ER (at this point it's 4 p.m.

Six hours later, after x-rays and an MRI,she gets checked out. No major problems, but she'll be sore tomorrow once the muscles start spasming (been there, done that, bought the shirt).

However, the MRI showed a possible bulging disk in her neck, but it could it's not clear whether it's from the accident, or just "Chronic". So (since I'm seeing a back specialist in a could of weeks), maybe they're running a "have one back checkup at the regular price, get the second for $99 (after all, it works for suits, so why not?).

Granted, it's a friday night, there are whackos out there, and it's a college town (and it's a friday night).

But. Six. Hours.

Damn.

Time to start looking for another car.

I'm Still Here

As several readers have noted, I haven't been posting much lately. Mostly, I've been working - trying to get ahead in my classes, working on research, and in general keeping a low profile. So, here's a brief update on things.

As usual, I've been juggling a couple of projects. One is (finally) just about done - it's been going on for a couple of years now, but the end is in sight. With luck (and, more important, some discipline), it should be done in the next couple of weeks. And then it'll get sent out to the Journal of Banking and Finance (not a top-tier journal, but pretty good). Then I work on another piece that will get sent to Financial Management (about at the same level).

Meanwhile, I'm also working on an accounting piece that will be sent to the Journal of Accounting, Auditing, and Finance. SO, with a bit of luck, I should shortly have three pieces under review at pretty decent journals.

Meanwhile, in the last two weeks, I've received three papers to review, so it;s time to start working on those. It's odd - nothing for a year, and then three in a week. Ah well.

While this is going on, I've been teaching (of course). Last semester, I had three "preps" (a "prep is a unique class you must prepare for - so three preps means three separate classes), of which one was a new one. This semester, I have only two preps, and neither one is a new one. So, I've actually been getting things done.

Finally, things have been good in the Unknown Household. Unknown Baby Boy is crawling, and starting to make words - so far, he does "Da Da" and a pretty good imitation of an explosion (what can I say - he's a Boy Child). The Unknown Daughter continues to impress everyone with her writing skills (she recently described her mom and friends as "overly garrulous"), and has been reading up a storm.

Enough for now - my data awaits.

Great Video of The Unknown Baby Boy (And Some FMA Stuff)

I'm grateful that the Unknown Baby Boy has a good disposition. He laughs easily and often, and is generally a happy kid most of the time.

Here's a short clip (luckily, he gets his looks from his mother). The quality is pretty poor because I took it with my cell phone, but it give you an idea. The other kid you hear is the Unknown Daughter. Enjoy.



On a work related note, looks like one paper's already been submitted to FMA (it helps having good coauthors who do most of the work). I'm still working on the second one, and hope to be done by early evening.

Of course, that means I'll probably still be in my office at 11 pm like I was last night - Groan!

Updated 8:00 p.m.: The second paper is done and submitted. Of course, at the very end, Acrobat refused to print it (there was something wrong with the version of Acrobat on my system). Luckily a colleague of mine also didn't have a life and was working late also, and it worked on his computer.

Murphy never rests. Never.

But luckily, neithr does my colleague.

Now it's time to feed the little bugger. and tomorrow night I go on a well-deserved date with the Unknown Wife.

Since coauthors on both papers are out of pocket for a while (one just had classes start up and the other is at -I kid you not- Disney), I guess then I'll just have to work on another project that needs a revision (I'm also "data monkey" on that one).

Out With The Old Year, and In WIth The New

Well, it's the last finally the day of the year. So, here's wishing you all a safe, happy, and prosperous New Year.

It's been a pretty eventful one in the Unknown Household - we had one son pass away from cancer, and had another one join the family. So, I can pretty much guarantee that 2010 will be less eventful for us than 2009 (at least I hope so).

We finished out the old year yesterday by taking the Unknown Daughter up to Boston to see the Science Museum's Harry Potter Exhibit. Total Cost:

• Three Tickets - $93
• Parking - $9
• Various Junk from the Museum Store - $35
• Overcooked and dried food from the Museum Food Court - $20
• Hearing the Unknown Daughter say (wide-eyed) "This is Fantastic" - Priceless
  

Luckily, our two nieces were home from college., They drove down the night before to baby-sit Wonder Boy for the day, so we got to go without munchkin in tow. But Boston traffic still sucked - it took us 45 minuted to go about 3 miles on Rte 93 (and this was not even rush hour traffic). Ah well, that's the price of being in a city.

Remember - there will be a lot of alcohol-impaired folks out there tonight, so be safe, and see you next year. Being old fogeys with a couple of young kids, we'll be home, warm, and in bed by 10 or so.

Yeah, we're boring. But I'm O.K. with that - I'm in touch with my inner old fogey.

Happy Thanksgiving

This is a bit belated - I started it, and then didn't finish before all family got here for the festivities. But better late than never, eh?

Here's hoping you all had a Happy Thanksgiving. It's a good exercise to occasionally thing about the things we're thankful for, so here's a few of the things I'm particularly thankful for:

• My Family - I somehow managed to marry well above my station (the Unknown Wife is far better a person than I deserve, with the exception of her poor taste in spouses), I have a nine year-old daughter who still thinks her dad is pretty cool (I figure I still have another year on that score), and a very good-natured 8 month old baby boy (yeah, I'm too old for this stuff, but it's still pretty cool).
• My Job - I love being a professor (well, at least most of the time). I spend my workday with smart people, I get to learn interesting things about topics of my choice (they call it research), and teaching is pretty fun. And they pay me well and give me lots of time off.
• Where I live - I live in a beautiful area, in a nice neighborhood, in a relatively new house less than two miles from my office, and both my and the Unknown Wife's family are within two hours' drive (in fact, they were here for Thanksgiving Dinner), and we visited my mom last weekend.
• My health - while I have a few things that'll eventually need fixing, I'm basically healthy. And I live in a time where replacement parts are getting better, more available, and cheaper all the time.
• My church - As evangelical born-again Christians, having a good church to attend is very important to us. We are fortunate enough to have a great one - a good preacher, good worship (our worship band kicks some serious hiney), and people who get involved in each others' lives in good ways.
• My country - the USA has problems (after all, it's populated and run by people, and people are inherently messed up). But over all, I think it's the most amazing place in the world. We're an incredibly wealthy country, with more freedom (still) than any place else, and there's always opportunity for those willing to take advantage of it.
  
• The times we live in - The advances in almost any field over my lifetime astound me. We can now cure things that would have been a death sentence thirty years ago: to give you just a few examples, the Unknown Son wouldn't have lasted a year back in 1980 (instead, we got an additional five years), AIDS has become a manageable disease, and they can do heart surgery on babies in the mother's womb. As far as technology, I'm old enough to recall the original Star Trek in the 70s. Now we all have our own "communicators" (cell phones), I don't know anyone (including my students) without a microwave and color TV, and I'm posting a message that will be read by people all over the world on a machine that's many thousands of times more powerful than the computer that was used in the original space program.
  

As regular readers know, it's been a Hell of a year (and I do mean "Hell"), what with the Unknown Son losing his battle with cancer in June. But even with that, there are things to be thankful about. When he was diagnosed, it looked like he wouldn't last a year, as the cancer was both aggressive and resistant to treatment. But we had another five years with him, and got to see him grow into an amazing ten-year old boy. And we got to see his excitement at his new baby brother (and to see him relate to him for two months). In fact, here's a picture (it's the desktop background on my computer):




One of my favorite blogs (the Aleph Blog) is run by David Merkel, a CFA charter holder, portfolio manager and fellow Christian with eight kids. He just put up his own Thanksgiving post, and in it he mentions Job - the one book of the Bible that there never seem sot be a good time to read: when you're happy, it can bring you down, and when you're down, it can be even worse.

For those of you who aren't "people of the Book", it's about a wealthy, happy, and religious man who God allows Satan to test by taking everything from him - his wealth, his family, and even his health.

At the end, Job decides two things - that God is beyond his understanding, and that he'll still praise him regardless of his circumstances. So at the end of the day, being thankful is a choice. I've noticed that there are people who are generally happy and thankful, and those who aren't. More often than not, when I ask the happy ones why, the only common answer is that they simply choose to be happy.

In any event, it's time for a late breakfast, and then off to work.

Happy 4th of July

We're just got back from a trip to Wal-Mart (what could be more American) to buy some clothes for the Unknown Daughter (she's grown enough that her old bathing suit no longer fits). The Unknown Wife and Unknown Daughter tried on clothes, while I wheeled the Unknown Baby Boy around the store until he went to sleep. Not surprisingly, the large-screen flat-panel TVs did the trick (based on initial indications, he's definitely a boy-child to the core).

Now we're getting ready to grill some critters, followed by fireworks. In the meanwhile, here are some links. They're from a previous year's post, but they.re worth repeating (after all at Financial Rounds, we're all about the efficiency thing):

The Declaration of Independence most people have never read it through. So take a few minutes and do so before going about your day.

Our Sacred Honor - a piece that recounts what happened to the signers of the Declaration

The Pledge of Allegiance - 'nuff said.

The Star Spangled Banner - the words to our national anthem and a video of Whitney Houston singing it.

Now go grill some meat, light some fireworks, and have a happy 4th of July.

What's going on in the Unknown Family

Here's a short update on goings-on in the Unknown Household:

• The Unknown Daughter is now done with school for the summer. I get a feeling that she'll be doing a lot of social activities this summer - since Friday (the last day of school), she's already had one sleepover (at a cousin's house), and has her second one (at our house) this Wednesday. In addition, she's just finished Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard book. She gets a real kick out of describing the plot to others - it's an unusual tale where the humans are largely the evil characters, and the supernatural ones (ghosts, vampires, werewolves, etc) are the good guys. Next on the agenda is Madeiline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (she just finished the 6th Harry Potter book, and is looking for some variety before tackling the 7th). All in all, not bad for someone who just finished 2nd grade.
• The Unknown Baby is now starting to make sounds - a LOT of sounds. So, he's become the star of any family gathering (he was anyway, but now that he's "talking" and laughing, we pretty much get a complete pass on having to take care of him at any event with others around --our rule is that to hold him, you have to do the associated diaper change). More importantly, he's now sleeping more that 6 hours at a pop at night. So, we give him his last feeding between 11 and 12, and don't hear from him until about 6.
  
• We've been doing a lot of social things - my sister and law and brother run a golf tournament to raise funds for cancer research (they lost their son to Neuroblastoma a couple of years ago). While we missed the tournament this year, we did make it up for the kid's mini-golf event this past weekend. In addition, the Unknown Wife is hosting her women's bible study group this morning, so the house will shortly be filled with about ten women. Finally, we'll be traveling to West Virginia shortly for a family reunion over the 4th of July weekend.

I continue to work on various research projects. I am finishing up one paper, and thought I only had a bit more to do. Then I decided to update our sample to include the most recent year of data. Unfortunately, as I worked through the program I'd written, I realized that I would also have to update two other datasets that the paper uses. One week, many lines of SAS code, and much profanity later, I'm almost done with the "simple" job that I thought would take only a day or two. So hang on, my coauthors - I'm almost done. Once this part is done, I move on to another piece, which is also in the final stages - once I finish my small part on this paper, we can put all the work we've already done since the initial version together and do the rewrite. My guess is that it'll be at the submittable stage before long. And then, once a third coauthor sends me the data set I need, I can do a bit of analysis on a third paper, which is also nearing completion.

As for the 500 pound gorilla in the room - we're coping fairly well with the whole grieving process. Of course, it's different for the Unknown Wife and I (hey - the process is different for any two people). For me, it's toughest at night (in the time just before sleep)- for the majority of the day, I don't think about it much, except for the odd moments when I see/hear something that reminds me of the little guy. For her, it occurs more frequently, mostly because she's at home most of the day, where she sees more reminders. We each have different "therapies" - for me, I think about Jonathan on bike rides (almost 17 miles yesterday), and for the Unknown wife, it involves talking about him with friends and family.

But, the sharpest part of the grief has largely passed. For now, it only hits us on occasion, and even then not to badly. It's a lot easier knowing that (1), this is not the end of Jonathan's life (but only the end of this part of his life), and (2), he's not only pain-free, but extremely happy now.

But the human psyche has an amazing capacity for dealing with pain and grief - we're an amazing species that way.

As I said, the Unknown Wife is hosting her ladies group shortly -- As I write, three women have already arrived. So, before I succumb to Estrogen overdose (and start watching the Lifetime channel), I'd better bolt.

Tough Times Ahead

This tough to write. The recent post on the Unknown Son's treatment was somewhat encouraging. In the blink of an eye, this one turns our lives around 180 degrees.

This morning, Unknown Son tried to go for a walk around the hospital unit (the walking helps expand the lungs, and would speed his recovery). We noticed after a few steps that his left leg was dragging. We put him back in bed, and he was unable to squeeze my hand with his left hand. A quick CT scan followed, and revealed that the cancer had spread to his brain – in three separate spots. We hadn't known this previously since all our scans had been focused on his chest region. One was pretty large, and since it was on the right side, it was the likely cause of the problems with his left leg, arm, and hand.

This changes everything – he now likely has a matter of days rather than weeks. We gave him some radiation to see if we could slow the swelling, but at best that only buys a bit of time. So, we took him home tonight in an ambulance so that he can be in familiar settings and be as comfortable and safe as possible in the short time he has left with us.

In the meanwhile, The Unknown Wife's mother and father and one of her sisters are here. Her other sister and her family (and my mother, brothers and sister) are coming down tomorrow to lend support and see the boy.

Please keep us in your prayers as we ease his transition. For him, this is not the beginning of the end of his life – only the end of the beginning. But even though we know that he's going to a place with no more pain or limitations, and only joy, it’s going to be a rough week or so for us – likely the toughest we’ll ever have to go through.

So keep us in your prayers.

Memorial Day

It's Memorial Day - time to remember and honor all those who fought to preserve our way of life.

As I've done in previous years, here's a link to Ronald Reagan's classic "The Boys of Pointe du Hoc" speech, given in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of D-Day (compliments of American Rhetoric).

After that, go see this PowerPoint file sent to me by Bob Jensen. If you don't have Powerpoint click here to view it without music. If you do have it, download the file here (both stored on DocStoc).

Now it's off the the movies, followed by charring some animal flesh on the grille.

Interesting Times In The Unknown Household

For a number of reasons, I haven't been blogging much:

• First off, I'm still in post-semester recovery mode. This happens every Spring - after the semester is over, I need a week or two to decompress, clean out the detritus of the year from my office, and kick back a bit before refocusing on my summer research goals. This time around, between the timing of exams and faculty meetings, it was worse than usual.
  
• Second, we've catching up on some "family time". We offloaded the Unknown Baby Boy (UBB) to the Unknown Sister-in-Law and took the kids to Six Flags in Lake George for a couple of days. Unknown Son is currently into a minor Looney Tunes obsession, and they have an entire section of the park with an LT theme. Without UBB, we got to focus on the older two kids, and we even got a couple of good nights' sleep.
  
• We're also cleaning up the Unknown House. Because of all the craziness we've had this spring, we're doing Spring Cleaning this time around in June.
• Meanwhile, we've been arranging some pretty cool stuff for the kids. There's an organization called Famous Fone Friends that works with sick children. They've arranged to set up a meeting between Unknown Son and the author of one of his favorite book series (he lives about 80 minutes from us, and agreed to meet Unknown Son for lunch at a nearby restaurant for lunch). In addition, U.S. will be getting a phone call from Sam on iCarly. The organization also sent Unknown Daughter an actual script from the Hannah Montana show (her favorite), so she's also pretty excited.
  

On an unrelated note, we just got some potentially disturbing news regarding the Unknown Son. A recent CT scan showed a couple of irregularities in his lungs. We'll be doing a biopsy next week so we'll be keeping our fingers crossed.

Next week continues the crazy pace. We travel to my sister's house for Memorial Day, have a meeting with the Stem Cell Transplant unit at Children's Hospital of Boston on Tuesday (if the irregularity mentioned above turns out to be nothing, this will be the next step in his treatment), and have a biopsy to check out the irregularity in U.S.'s scan scheduled on Wednesday. So, regular blogging might resume by the end of next week.

That is, if my head doesn't explode before then...

Stick A Fork In Me!

The semester is now officially over at Unknown University. I gave my last final Tuesday afternoon (the last slot in finals week). Unfortunately, grades had to be turned in by 4 today (only 48 hours later).

I finished the almost all the grading last night at 3 a.m. (except for the final assigning of grades). So, it looked like the coast was clear.

Unfortunately, nothing is ever easy in the Unknown Household.

This morning, Unknown Elder Son was looking and feeling washed out. So, after a quick trip to the local hospital to have his blood counts taken, it turns out he needed a blood transfusion (not an uncommon thing - anemia is a common side effect of chemo).

Unknown Wife took him in for the transfusion, and I got to attend the faculty meeting with the Unknown Baby in tow (he slept through the entire morning, which is probably the best course of action when on a faculty retreat). After lunch, I left to feed him and drop him off at a neighbor's house for the afternoon, so I could finish the grading.

Now it's off to Six Flags for the weekend. Since the Unknown Sister-In-Law is taking care of the little one for the weekend, it'll be almost like we're a family of four again.

Happy Mother's Day

We're off to a neighboring state to visit my mother for Mother's day. It'll be the first time my side of the family gets to see the Unknown Baby Boy in person.

As for the rest of my life, I have a final exam to write for Tuesday, followed by an executive education class on Wednesday, a Faculty retreat on Thursday, and a trip to Six Flags in Lake George over the weekend (Unknown Older Son is a big Loony Tunes fan, and we wanted to go there before his stem cell transplant in early June).

So, blogging will continue to be light for the next week or so.

Now go tell your Mother (or the mother of your children) how much you appreciate her.

A Good Conference, Followed By More Crazy

I thought I'd put a few impressions of the EFA conference from this past week. While pretty short, it was a very good time: catching up with old friends, making some new ones, getting a lot of work done, and SLEEEEEP!

Because of all the other stuff going on in the Unknown Household, I was only able to get away for a day, so I took an early Friday flight to Baltimore, followed by the train to Washington. I arrived at the conference hotel just before lunch. Between 11:00 Friday and 1:30 Saturday (when I took the hotel shuttle to the airport for my return flight) I

• Had two papers presented (both were presented by coauthors), and received good comments on both. In both cases, the papers were well received by the discussant and the audience.
  
• Met with coauthors on three papers (the two mentioned above and a third one that's also coming along nicely). On two of the papers, we just talked briefly to discuss what needs to be done next to get them out the door. On the third paper, my coauthor and I spent about a hour applying various methods of statistical torture to the data, yielding some pretty nice confessions (oops! - that would be "results").
• Arranged to present a paper at my undergraduate Alma mater in the fall. I know a good number of the faculty, none of which were there back in the dark ages when I was an undergrad. We've been talking about my coming to present some of my work for some time, and it looks like it'll finally happen
• Talked with another potential coauthor about combining some of my data with his methodology.
• Most importantly, I went to bed by 9:30 and (since there was no-one clamoring for a 3 a.m. feeding) slept almost 9 1/2 hours without interruption. Woo Hoo!
  

Just to show that nothing ever changes for long, when I got back, I called the Unknown Wife, and she said it was all right to go to a book store and veg a bit (it's one of my favorite ways to decompress).

Of course, this was followed by a second phone call an hour later telling me that Unknown Son was getting nosebleeds. We called the on-call oncologist and was informed that he was likely low on platelets (they are the clotting factor in the blood, and often get depressed following chemotherapy). So, it was a quick drive home, followed by a trip to the ER, followed by an overnight stay at the hospital so he could get a platelet transfusion (since it was the weekend, we couldn't do it on an outpatient basis.).

He was discharged the next morning, and all's been quiet since.

For now.

We Are In Final Approach

Once again, it's that happy time - the end of the semester at Unknown University.

I teach my last classes tomorrow - in one, I hand back some assignments and talk about the final (that means today is all about the grading, and in the other (the student managed fund), I hand out stock assignments for which they must come up with final analyses.

As always, the last week was crazy - the student-managed fund class makes a presentation to the Alumni at the end of every semester, and it's always a mad rush to get it done. They did it this Saturday. As usual (with one or two "foot in mouth" moments) they did a job that far exceeded expectations.

So, all I have left is a bunch of grading (for tomorrow's class) and a couple of exams to write. Then it's back to research (lots of projects to rein in) until Unknown Son starts the next round of treatment.

As my end-of semester treat, I get to fly to Washington for a couple of days for the Eastern Finance Association meeting - catching up with old friends, seeing a few presentations, and (best of all) getting a good night's sleep (Unknown Baby Boy is cute, but it'll be a while before he sleeps through the night). So, I'll take the opportunity to sleep 8 hours without interruption. Woo Hoo!

Marital Insurance

I'm a flaming extrovert: I strike up conversations with people waiting in line, with the guy (or gal) in the seat across the aisle on planes or trains, and in general with almost anyone I spend some time with.

The good thing about this is that I find out a lot about people, and much of it is pretty interesting. Last night, I was on the train, and I started talking with the guy across the aisle. He was a fellow extrovert (and, it turns out a law professor at Harvard), so we had plenty to talk about. Thanks to him, I picked a great idea for all you married guys.

This guy (Dave) got married on May29th almost 24 years ago. Since then, he's sent his wife three dozen roses on the 29th of each and every month since then. I asked if he ever forgot, and he responded "no - they do it automatically and just put it on my credit card. Every month they put together a mix of different colors (red, pink, white, etc...)".

Of course, she doesn't know about the auto-delivery part of the process.

This may be one of the best things you can do for the long-term health of your marriage-- make your wife feel special and appreciated every month. And as an aside, they last a couple of weeks, so if you're covered if you screw up for almost half the month - it's pretty hard not to get the benefit of the doubt when there are flowers you recently bought her all over the house.

Think of it as another monthly bill - in your budget it should go under "insurance'.

A Quick Update

I just realized that I've gone 11 days without posting - the longest stretch since I started the blog. First off, Unknown Baby and the rest of the Unknown Household are doing fine.

Not surprisingly, having Unknown Baby around has been time consuming. We've done this twice before, but I was much younger then (Unknown Daughter is now eight years old, and I was 40 when he arrived). The sleep deprivation isn't nearly as bad as it was for Unknown Son (who might be upgraded on the blog to Unknown Elder Boy) and Unknown Daughter. I'm a night owl, so I've been taking the 10 p.m. and 1 p.m. feeding. This way, the Unknown wife can get some sleep (as they say down South, "If Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy"). Unfortunately, I seldom sleep past 7 or so, so I end up about an hour short of sleep every night. Not great, but livable.

I've discovered that third kids are much easier than first one, because you're not nearly as stressed out about breaking them. Here's one example: The other day, Unknown Baby managed to mess himself while I was changing him (he seems to do that often - usually with what looks like a smile - Stewie Griffin watch out). Unknown Wife wondered whether or not we should give him a bath, since he had a doctor's appointment in about an hour. I just picked him up, took him to the sink, and hosed him off with the attachment. We didn't have his little baby towel, so a dish towel worked just fine. Unknown Wife was a bit surprised at my solution, but Unknown Mother In Law and Unknown Father In Law (they're visiting for the week) just laughed. Hey - it's a guy thing.

In any event, I'm still trying to get my research out. The only difference is that a lot of the SAS programming now takes place in hours between 10 and 1 while I wait for the little guy to wake up for his feeding. Surprisingly, I get a lot done.

Ah well - enough for now. Back to SAS coding.

Expansionary Policies

Yesterday, the Unknown Family was set to go to a nearby city for an overnight trip to check out a couple of hospitals (part of the Unknown Son's treatment plan). We were getting ready to leave in the morning, and then the fun started.

Unknown Wife's experienced some leaking. We were somewhat concerned, but not much, because the the new baby wasn't due for another three weeks. We called her OB/GYN, and he told us not to bother about coming to his office - just go straight to the hospital. So, it was off to the neighbor's with the Unknown Son, off to school with the Unknown Daughter, and off to the hospital with us.

Halfway there, her water broke. We arrived at the hospital, got checked in, and then proceeded to wait. It took quite a while, because, while her water had broken, the baby was in no hurry to move to his new digs. To make a long story short, 16 hours later (at 12:20 A.M this morning), a new member of the Unknown Family made his appearance. After settling them in, I drove home to catch a few hours of sleep (I got stopped for speeding along the way, but got off with a warning when I showed the officer pictures of the new guy).

I took the Unknown Son and Daughter (along with the Unknown Mother-In-Law, who's visiting for a few days to help out) in to the hospital to see the new little guy - both he and Mom are doing fine.

Now for the dilemma - if I refer to the older brother as the Unknown Son, what do I call the new guy? any suggestions are welcome.

By the way, he weighed 6 lbs 14 ounces, and was 19 1/2 inches long.

Stylin at the Cancer Clinic

Unfortunately, one of the side effects of the Unknown Son's Chemotherapy is that his hair has fallen completely out. Everyone says it increases our resemblance. But, as he often reminds me, "Daddy, at least MINE will grow back".

So, I looked around on the web, and found this company JKaye Designs (actually, a one-lady shop) that makes colorful surgeons caps. Yesterday, he showed up at the clinic wearing a cap in this pattern:


I wore one with multiple Snoopy characters on it, but unfortunately it's out of stock, so I don;t have a picture. And the Unknown Daughter has this one on order:



Unfortunately, we can't convince the Unknown Wife to wear one.

In any event, if you know anyone undergoing chemo who wants to dress up their noggin, give JKaye Designs some business. A small one fits a kid pretty well.

Chemo Weeks Bring Teh Crazy

It's a chemo week for the Unknown Son, so things are a bit on the crazy side. While I don't usually get into the details too often, I thought it might be instructive to walk you through a typical chemo week.

U.S. gets the chemo every day for five days (the clinic where he goes is only open on weekdays), so we make the 45 minute drive every day. We leave the house at 7:30, armed with a backpack full of whatever his latest video obsession is - for the moment, it's classic Pink Panther (the cartoons, not the movies).

• Monday's are the long days - he first has to get his fluids up to snuff, so they take about 2 hours to put in lots and lots of saline. Then they start the chemo (two separate drugs, proceeded and followed by various other meds to protect him from side effects) usually around noon or so. I get the morning shift, and the Unknown Wife relieves me around noon (after her Ladies Bible Study) and takes the afternoon slot, which allows me to go into my office for a few hours to prep for the weeks' classes. When all's said and done, Unknown Wife gets home around 4 or so.
  
• The rest of the week, we're out of the house by 7:30 and home by 2 - they don't need to pump as many fluids in as on Mondays, so the chemo starts (and ends) much sooner.
• Tuesdays and Thursdays I teach until about 2 and then rush home to meet the Unknown Daughter at the Bus Stop (Unknown Wife gets chemo duty),
• Wednesdays and Fridays, I get chemo duty. If all works well, I get to go in the office for a couple of hours afterwards.

Unknown Son typically handles the first day (or two) of chemo fairly well, with only a bit of nausea, By the end of the week, however, he pretty much is sick until about 6 every night (and sometimes into the evening, and we're pretty tired out.

Somehow in the midst of this, we manage to get everything else done (with the help of the Unknown Wife's friends, who bring us a LOT of meals). We also typically have a family member (usually the Unknown Mother in Law) stay over for a couple of days to help out and lend moral support.

Luckily for Unknown Son and I, the clinic has all the essentials: a DVD player and Game Cube for him, and Broadband for me (hence, this post). So, he gets to watch hours of Pink Panther DVDs and I can catch up on my emails, blogging, and work -- between working on two existing projects (one of which I'm just about done with and ready to hand off to my coauthor for his part) and prepping for the new cases I've added to my Corporate Finance class, it never ends.

But at least it keeps me off the streets begging for data.

Happy New Year

I get to close out 2008 on hospital room duty with my son. He's doing well - had his breathing tube out yesterday, is eating regular food, and slowly recuperating. He should be moved out of the ICU tomorrow and into a regular room. With some luck, he might be home by Monday the 5th.

The Unknown Wife and Daughter are going to a neighbor's house for a little New Year's cheer (the non-alcoholic kind, since Unknown Wife is expecting), and then home by about 10.

Here's hoping 2009 finds you healthy, prosperous, and happy.