Race Registration and a Loss

Today (11/11/11) from 11AM to 11PM PST, you can save $20 on registration for almost any of the Rock 'n' Roll series races!  Thinking I'm going to take the plunge and sign up for the Seattle Half Marathon one, which is only $45 with the discount.  They don't have the course up yet, but it sounds like it starts right in Seattle by the convention center, so I wouldn't have to worry about getting on a bus for a race that wasn't really in the city.

My excitement for this is tempered by some bad news that I received last night about a good friend of mine.  He was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the end of August and passed away on Wednesday night.  I last saw him on Friday, July 29th.  We wandered around SFMOMA and went to lunch at 54 Mint.  The next week he got really sick and a CAT scan revealed a mass in his abdomen.  The next week he was admitted on a Friday, but they were unable to operate once they opened him up because the "mass" was cancer that spread.  They biopsied it and a couple of weeks later they told him they couldn't operate because there was so much cancer that they couldn't tell where it started.  Long story short, that was the beginning of a slow decline.  He's been in and out of the hospital for the last couple of months because the cancer caused an intestinal blockage.  This week he had a lot of pain and nausea and was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday, where he died peacefully late in the evening.

I knew that he was not going to live long, but I still wasn't prepared for it to happen this soon since I was planning to see him on Saturday.  The last time I spoke with him was on Halloween (his birthday) and he invited me to a family get-together.  I was going to bring him some tea as a gift (since he was unable to ingest anything other than clear liquids because of the blockage).  His wife is still having the get-together, so I guess now I'll be bringing flowers or a plant. 

Sorry, I didn't mean for this post to be such a downer!  I'll let you know once I've pulled the trigger on the Seattle Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon registration! 

XOXO