5/9/10

Hello all and happy mother's day out there to all the moms, grandmas, great-grandmas, great-great grandmas, aunts, sisters, and wives. But really I should say happy mother's day to the earth. The earth, which has provided a great diversity of life where even flowers have a mother's touch. Her genetic imprint and her nurturing protection.

Congrats to Tracy, a new mom to Elliot Funk. Watch out for Unky Nick. Aunt Sally is gearing up to be the super fun aunt. Maybe Auntie Rebecca will have something to say about that. Also don't forget about wild aunt Sadie. Should be exciting to see how it all unfolds.

Another congratulations are in order to Andy Funk. Your genes have been passed on just as those of the flowers do. Which is why we'll be saying happy father's day to you in about a month.

Now, that I've said my well-wishing, I can give some news updates. The biology and flower references mentioned previously are side-effects of teaching 6th grade science. Other side-effects include headache, nausea, stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhea. But those can be controlled with medicine fortunately. Work is good, keeping me busy.

This past week I've also settled into bachelor life, now that Sally has been in Denver and leaves from there to fly to Paris this evening. I am quite excited for her. As for my bachelor life, I was taken in by the Moch family last night for dinner, thank you very much. Spent a little time with LD, JH and Oscar. Mostly trying to get Pirate and myself exercise during the week. Cleaning a little less, hoarding a little more. Watching and playing a little basketball. Should be outside right now actually. It is just past noon here and an absolutely gorgeous spring Seattle day.

Well then, until next time, this is Dominikolaus signing off.

Nous allons à Paris

Hi friends and fam,

Some of you have already heard Nick and my summer plans so this post will bore you. But now that things are looking a little more certain, we thought we would make it official by posting on the blog...we're headed to Paris!

I am being temporarily transferred for work and will probably leave around May 9th. Nick will finish out the school year at Mercer and then he'll come out and meet me for July and maybe part of August as well.

There's no official "end date" but we will probably both be back home in August or September.

Needless to say, we're very excited and we can't wait to do some traveling while we're over there. And we welcome visitors so set your fare alerts!

Au revoire!

P.S. - I am starting a Paris only blog so that I can add girlie stuff like pictures of poodles and flower markets without boring the Beyond Stanus followers. If you want to follow, the address is sallyinparis.onsugar.com.

Splendidness

Sup,

It has been a while and we hope that you all are feeling splendid. As for us, things are going well. My work at Mercer Middle School here in Seattle has been keeping me quite busy. 6th graders as you can imagine, are well, sheesh. But, by golly, they sure can be fun.

You know what else is fun? A little raarr from Sam Jackson.



Yeah Sammy, RIP.

We all loved you, Samuel, but we have to get back to the fun. And speaking of fun, I get to start some more chemo on Friday! Jealous much. Okay so that kind of sucks but at least it is for a good reason, which is to not have any cancer cells grow back. Whaddya gonna do?

How about cheer up with this...




Aww, shameless.

But in all seriousness, the stars are aligning for what may be the best summer ever. I can't say much because our tickets are not punched yet, but there may be a fun little voyage.



Oh really? Yes really.

Voyages are great, just like when we made one to this little lunch spot out side of Black River, Jamaica.



And not much, beats riding on the back of 50cc through the streets of the DR.




How about a Lake Travis, Texas at sunrise?



Of course, the Orygun Coast is not just known for its salty dogs and bloody marys.




Splendid indeed. Hope you all have a wonderful evening, morning, day and so on.

What's in the sack?

March Madness

G'Day Mateys,

Long time no blog and lots of happy haps to tell y'all about. So far we've had a pleasant early spring that has included a bit of travel and a few house guests, plus some good news on the cancer front.

First, my last visit with my oncologist revealed that my CEA (tumor marker) numbers have been holding steady at normal levels for the last several months indicating that I am cancer free as well as can be determined. Therefore the plan is to undergo a few rounds of maintenance chemo in an attempt to obliterate microscopic cancer cells if they are in there. Research indicates that this type of plan following surgery has fairly high remission rates, so yay.

In more interesting news Sally and I recently hosted about 25 of our close family and friends in town for the Mercer Island Rotary Club 5K, 10K and half-marathon benefiting colon cancer awareness. Over the long weekend we had a big ol' spaghetti feed, a night of fine dining and group karaoke, the run and a pizza party. Here are some pics of the run for you all to enjoy. Thanks to all who came out and made it a blast.



Our half-marathon runners. Sads and Sal pulled Ty along, who decided to run it just the night before without having done a single training run. Yowsers.

Team members including TorKat, who both finished 3rd overall in the men's and women's 10k respectively.

Apparently, the marked course was still confusing for these two directionally challenged run/walkers.
D-swizzle showing the hops and the steeze.
J-Lau and Sammy, we see you too.
The Keyes with our youngest team member, Penelope Clover.


Hope that you all enjoyed those fine photos. The next few are from Sal's and my trip to Denver for the Funk baby shower. Another grand time mingling with the laid back country folk, where the gorgeous old west comes to life in blaze of sepia toned glory that is Denver. It was super fun to hang with Dave, Rebecca, Jonas, Eric, Sadie, Jevan, Casey, the Funks and our other Denver pals.

My special lady friend.

If more baby showers turned into parties with Sads and Sal rocking the shades, then count me in.
What what.


Rebecca, Dave, Eric y Jonas.

Tracy looking great at 8 months with Elliot (not pictured?), Rebecca and Sadie.


Well that is all for now. Stay tuned for exciting future updates, including new plants in the yard and more with Pirate, Benny and Goose. Later Skaters.

NYC Pictures

Hi friends,

I just got back from a work trip to NYC. Managed to have a little fun while we were there! Here are some pictures...

Here's a view from my hotel room (you could see the Empire State Building and the Hudson River but I wasn't a good enough photographer to get it all). We stayed at The Standard, btw, and I would highly recommend it...

Drew and Cece XOXO...

Momofuku ramen...oh yum...(and sat next to Tom Douglas randomly!)...

Work friends, Grace, Karina and Garland at The Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village...

Grace and me with the host of the Comedy Cellar show that night...

Grace H.O.V.A.! Jay Z, Madison Square Garden!

Jay Z on stage...

The boys.

Sup,

As you might imagine when battling cancer, one tends to go through a range of thoughts and emotions. I am no different in this as I've spent my time recovering from surgery contemplating new thoughts on life and feeling a bit more emotional than usual. While I know that I am on a journey that will inevitably provide many twists and turns, I have just recently decided to amp up my tough-as-nails, bad ass, tough guy, fire-eating, "crappin bigger than Billy Crystal" Jack Palance persona. And the first thing is to post this picture of my homies, Benny and Pirate.



Yeah, yeah. In yo face. What? I didn't think so sucka!