Infusion of blogging (continued)

We're back at the University of California, Davis, Cancer Center. The machine whirs and clicks and pumps the drugs into the wife as she naps. We've settled into a two-week cycle -- a deep trough of tiredness followed by a slow but steady climb back to a feeling of general well-being -- and then back here.

This is the start of the third of eight cycles. There will be one more of this particular cocktail of drugs, and then four cycles of a different cocktail.

Getting laid off from work at the same time the wife started her battle with cancer has been useful, but it has put a real dent in my transit riding. This week I rode the bus to play Go with the Sacramento-Davis Go Club at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-Op on Monday evening and then got a ride home with the kid, who recently started work as a supermarket courtesy clerk.

The recreational reading that I used to do while riding to and from work has been the biggest personal loss. It's not that I don't have the time, but I feel I need to be doing something demonstrably more useful. So I've been teaching myself the Ruby programming language and the Ruby on Rails Web building framework. I've finished one book and I'm working my way through the second. Soon I'll start rebuilding one of my Web sites to get some practical experience. And then I can add another line to the résumé.