Life With Frenchie

Do you believe in signs? I certainly do. And I have appeared to have received 2 in the past two days.

Right now, we’re falling victim to this crappy economy (we’re not in a recession…yeah, right! *eyes severely rolling*) and are having to tighten our budget. I’ve been forbidden from eating out (ouch! that hurts!). We cancelled our Las Vegas trip (waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! It was going to be my first time!). We’re missing my nephew’s high school graduation (that sucks!). And the worst blow is that I had to cancel my participation in the AVON Breast Cancer Walk. I decided to walk in the AVON walk this year because the local 3-Day starts on Halloween. I didn’t want to give up Halloween with my family, so I chose to join some friends and go to New York for the AVON walk. Well, with the state of things, it’s just an extra expense I can’t afford. But, even so, the decision didn’t sit well with me.

Anyways, back to the signs….

The first one was not so clear - EP & I were watching Part 6 of 7 of the John Adams series on HBO last night and at the end, it showed a preview to Part 7. In the preview, they showed his daughter being diagnosed with Breast Cancer. It was one of those moments where you kind of go “Hm. Weird.” It made me think about what it must have been like to have received that news during that era. Not that it’s any better to find out today, but things were not understood so well back then and just it was different somehow. But, like I said, not a very clear sign.

The second one pretty much screamed at me - I just received an e-mail from our office manager that a former partner in our firm has been diagnosed with Breast Cancer. She left the firm in the last year to pursue another career but she is still very much a part of our family. She also had a 2nd child recently. I am still pretty much in shock over it, but I am also just guilt-ridden that I’m backing out of the walk this year. But, I think I am very close to deciding to walk the 3-Day here again this year. I will just come home that Friday night to spend Halloween with MM (just what I need - walking around trick-or-treating after walking 20 miles!!!). I am going to talk with EP about it more and then see how I can come up with the registration fee, but I just can’t ignore the signs.

I will be honest and admit that, before this morning, I had never heard of Randy Pausch. I still don’t know much about him. I have learned that he is a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. On September 18, 2007, Pausch delivered his ‘last lecture’. In his lecture, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”, Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own goals. Not only is the lecture now available online for millions to view, but there is also an ABC special with Diane Sawyer that will air this Wednesday, April 9, at 10 PM (Eastern) and the book was released today. I have not yet had a chance to view his lecture (stoopid work firewall!) but I am going to go ahead and post it for everyone else to enjoy.

One of my Girl Scouts made this video for a school project. Enjoy!