{"id":385,"date":"2022-09-21T19:12:08","date_gmt":"2022-09-21T19:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/7stones.com\/?p=385"},"modified":"2022-09-23T00:50:42","modified_gmt":"2022-09-23T00:50:42","slug":"je-men-fiche-01","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/7stones.com\/?p=385","title":{"rendered":"Je m\u2019en fiche 01"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>2022.07.13<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, our 2022 EU trip is now over, and I\u2019ll get to that shortly.  A version was written, but far too much of it was me being a drama queen about my cancer. Perhaps I\u2019m entitled. Perhaps I can\u2019t help it, because I am a drama queen. I\u2019m hardwired that way. When others point it out, presumably thinking that in so doing I might be cured, my attitude &#8211; after long years so afflicted, and knowing that the condition is not susceptible to amelioration &#8211; is to reply, \u201csir or madame, you are correct\u201d. And I usually add a photo of some starlet from the 1930s posing dramatically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, anyway, having read aloud to Francesca much of what I\u2019d already written, I realized it was really awful. Angst much?  I have a July, 2022, visit to MGH upcoming, and we\u2019ll see if the angst is warranted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"244\" height=\"300\" src=\"http:\/\/7stones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/img_1594-244x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-384\" srcset=\"http:\/\/7stones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/img_1594-244x300.jpg 244w, http:\/\/7stones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/img_1594.jpg 731w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 244px) 100vw, 244px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, that visit to MGH, the giving of blood, the meeting with my oncologist, was now two days ago. I will summarize, so that we can get to our travels without (much) further drama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">1. My PSA was still undetectable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">2. All other numbers good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">3. Three months ago, oncologist said my numbers are \u201cupper echelon\u201d (which sounds great, but imparts very little useful information). I explained that starting about a week or even two prior to coming into MGH I get quite tense, wondering when the other shoe will drop. That is, my good numbers may (inevitably?) change \u2026 Doom doom doom. The good doctor (and he is quite stellar) finally got it, the disparity between his view and mine. He said there is no shoe. My condition, presently stable, could stay that way for years. [What!? What what what!?] I was stunned. I decided to run a test to experimentally determine if his words had weight. \u201cHow about if we plan to go back to EU in May, 2023?\u201d I asked. Go for it, he responded. He did add some cautionary words, like buying travel insurance, but it seemed he did so because not to do so would be professionally irresponsible. And can I continue to surf, I pressed? In reply he chuckled, which I assumed was a good sign. He has no other patients who surf, and my continuing participation in this strenuous pastime, at my age, is a source of amused bemusement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">4. Bottom line: that tension I feel prior to Boston visits? Unnecessary for foreseeable future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s now two days later, and I\u2019m still dizzy with deep wells of holy shitness. He used the word \u201cyears\u201d at least twice. At the end he shook my hand warmly, almost congratulatory. I was too stunned to even bring out the drama queen. Two years prior the words I remember receiving were \u201cStage 4\u201d and \u201cincurable\u201d. It\u2019s still all that, but \u2026 And now we rewind the clock and tell the story of our trip, in as humorous a manner as possible. The majority of this was written before I lost my shoe at MGH.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Early 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yesterday I bought business class tickets for Francesca and myself on AirFrance from Boston to Paris &#8211; mid May to mid June, five weeks total across the pond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[Note added 2022.08.08: I had been periodically getting emails from AirFrance suggesting that an AirFrance credit card might suit me. I\u2019d had a BA card for years, and it helped pad my BA miles. But last year BA had shown themselves to be &#8211; how do I politely say this &#8211; well, a large spanner in my works. Ok, so now I have potentially years to live, and I\u2019m deeply in love with AirFrance, so I got the card. It\u2019s sleek, sexy, and tactilely pleasing.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Planning<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I had thought we might do something different in 2022. Maybe, after a few days in Paris, we could train to Vienna. But I had misgivings. Like Paris, Vienna in the 1920s was a hotbed of creative activity. I read a book about it. I was not thrilled, as I had been about the ferment in Paris at that time. The names Wittgenstein and Popper popped up frequently, as well as the Vienna Circle. The focus of those people, and that group, was to develop a philosophy of how to do science, and while some of the members of this onanistic cabal brushed shoulders with the likes of Einstein, they never seemed to have actually contributed to the advancement of science. Their whole <em>raison d\u2019\u00eatre<\/em> brings to mind an idealistic teenage acquaintance of mine, back in the 1960s, whose goal was to precisely define \u201clove\u201d in 25 words. That goal, like that of the Vienna Circle, was, well, goofy in the extreme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Part of the reason was that Vienna was then, and is now, stuffier than Paris. I googled the words \u201cVienna\u201d, and \u201cstuffy\u201d. I was greeted with assurances that, no, Vienna isn\u2019t stuffy. We have nightlife now, of a sort. Come visit. This wording was defensive, and I remained far from convinced. I looked at images that google had accumulated, 95% of which were of grand, formal, Teutonic buildings, most of which had out front an equestrian statue of some really stuffy emperor or lesser noble with a mustache the size of sheep dog. I found the lot of them more than a little offputting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ok, rather than blather on this subject any further, we decided that seeing scenery we had not previously seen is insufficient reason to cross the EU to a place even whose cafe culture is stuffier than Paris. New plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>2022.01.26 Update<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Omicron spike diminishing, along with people\u2019s patience with continued restrictions. As a consequence, several European countries have got rid of the testing requirement for entry, if you are vaccinated, which we are, up the wazoo. This trend is likely to accelerate on the assumption we have passed the omicron peak, and no new variant appears to wipe out our entire species. This is a win in either case in my curmudgeonly mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First 19 days of our 35 day trip are booked: Paris; Chamonix; Santa Margherita. \u201cBut haven\u2019t you been to those places already?\u201d, you ask. \u201cDon\u2019t you want to see something new?\u201d Well, maybe, but to what end? Different scenery? We\u2019ve seen scenery. Other scenery is in all probability more of the same, less than the same, or very uncomfortable to get to. I\u2019m 73, fighting cancer (a phrase I always hated, but now understand completely), and I like cafes, mountains, the Mediterranean, and a couple other things. So just back off. Your input is neither wanted nor required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Meanwhile, the Dolomite option had been hovering in the background as a 4th stop, and we had both been considering it. However, I initiated the thought quite a while ago, and Francesca, presumably because she wanted to please her husband, also occasionally expressed approval for the Dolomite option, and I began to think it was her idea. But she has an autoimmune condition, which means she needs to avoid gluten, and the milk of black and white cows, and various other comestibles. The brown cows of Italy and France are not a problem; their milk does not have the mutation that makes black and white cow milk hazardous. And at this point you may be thinking we don\u2019t know what we\u2019re talking about, and you\u2019d be half right. I don\u2019t. But Francesca has a Harvard PhD, and the title of her thesis contained the phrase \u201cmetabolic mechanisms\u201d. Moreover, since realizing her life depended on a deep knowledge of her condition, she\u2019s read dozens of relevant technical papers and books. She has a focus that is extraterrestrial in its intensity. (I am making assumptions about extraterrestrial mental prowess that is possibly unwarranted, but, come on, we all know they\u2019re wicked smaht.) Trust me, at least for those with autoimmune diseases affecting the thyroid: brown cows good; black and white cows bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that\u2019s why when I suggested driving through the Dolomites to western Austria, thence to Switzerland, she finally realized my heart wasn\u2019t in it, and she told me she never again needs to go to any germanic country. She can\u2019t eat their bread, drink their beer, or eat their cheese. I felt relief at this. Even their cultures &#8211; germanic and nordic &#8211; are uninteresting to me, and to us. And the dolomites used to be part of Austria, so food-wise it\u2019s all oom pah pah, schnitzel, and ugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We discovered that last year, in Aosta. Alpine Italy is faux Italy. Half of Francesca\u2019s genes come from southern Italy. We\u2019re now thinking of heading in the direction of Nice after Santa Margherita. If it can be done in a manner that will not exhaust me, then I\u2019m all for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>2022.02.10 Update<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ok, trip is crystallizing. After Santa Margherita, 5 nights in Nice; drive to Avignon and maybe 4 nights there; TGV to Paris, and 7 nights there; before getting to the CDG Sheraton the day before flight home. I\u2019m unsure if Avignon is worth 3 full days. Must discuss with Francesca. Our 2nd place in Paris looks very promising (the benefit of having relationships with people there from previous trips). I just wonder if we want more nights there. I like Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[Note added 2022.09.21.  Just a quick word about Avignon, our visit there being detailed in a future section.  In the film <em>Breathless<\/em> (a French friend of ours told us), Jean Paul Belmondo &#8211; the antihero &#8211; tells an annoying tourist, \u201cIf you want Macdonald\u2019s, go to Avignon; for fish and chips, Marseille.\u201d  I am watching the film in snippets, and have not yet encountered that scene, so I cannot attest to its veracity, but I rather wish I had encountered it before booking Avignon.  Alas.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Negative covid test still required by France just prior to entry, regardless vaccination status, but USA omicron numbers dropping rapidly, and France\u2019s attitude may change by May. (It did.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Oh, and getting from Paris to Chamonix will now (theoretically) occur like this: TGV to Annecy; pick up car; drive to Chamonix, waking up each day viewing Mont Blanc. Yay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, there are to be two TGV trips, but I cannot purchase tickets until March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And why do I even mention early plans, many tentative? Because it\u2019ll be so much fun watching it all fall apart later. Or not. This is, after all, 2022, not 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Planning under a cloud<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">TGV tix &#8211; Paris-Annecy, and Avignon-Paris &#8211; purchased. Everything almost done. WCGW?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, I mentioned above how our travels coincided frequently with disasters or near disasters, and each of these was unique, like The Equalizer\u2019s weapons in the big Home Depot like store. Sigh. We\u2019re running out of types of trip disruptors. But one thing we haven\u2019t had, and never expected to have, was World War III. Well, anyway, war in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A thing I once found alarming was the Millennial and Zoomer habit of blaming on Boomers the world\u2019s decline into post-apocalyptic yuckiness. And, yes, to be sure, Boomers had their hands on the tiller during this recent, noticeable period of global disintegration, but let\u2019s look less shallowly at this fact before we go dooming a whole generation to hell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During the 1960s a great many Boomers were hippies, in favor of peace and love and LSD. And they were vehemently against an older generation that seemed hellbent on sending them to their deaths in Southeast Asia for absolutely no good reason, other than it enriched the Military-Industrial Complex. Are these the Boomers at whom the Millennials and Zoomers are so ready to point the gnarly finger of blame. Well, no, not really.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">See, most Boomers were not Flower Children. Most were on a spectrum from conventional and straight-laced, all the way up to psychopaths. And in every generation, without exception, it is mostly citizens on the psychopath end of the psychological spectrum who seek and achieve power and influence. So, you Zoomers may think you\u2019re immune to this societal disease, and that voices of reason will gain power when your turn comes, but those voices of reason cannot compete with the psychopaths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And this is especially true in nations eschewing democracy in favor of more oppressive forms of government. I mean, yes, Putin is a Boomer, but do you think he was ever a Flower Child? He\u2019s more like some guy whose happiest moments were in high school (or, in this case, USSR KGB), and he\u2019s holding on to those times, carousing with his buds, invading and bombing a neighboring country, because, shit, they did have a crazy good time in high school. Remember how Czechoslovakia and Hungary rolled over so easily? Good times; good times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, yeah, I would prefer that this trip not be disrupted by WWIII.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2022.07.13 So, our 2022 EU trip is now over, and I\u2019ll get to that shortly. A version was written, but far too much of it was me being a drama queen about my cancer. Perhaps I\u2019m entitled. Perhaps I can\u2019t help it, because I am a drama queen. I\u2019m hardwired that way. When others point &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/7stones.com\/?p=385\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Je m\u2019en fiche 01&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/7stones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/7stones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/7stones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/7stones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/7stones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/7stones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":389,"href":"http:\/\/7stones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions\/389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/7stones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/7stones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/7stones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}