Gordon B. Hinckley

President Gordon Bitner Hinckley, the President and Prophet, Seer, and Revelator of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints passed away tonight (1/27/08) around 7pm MST in his Salt Lake City apartment surrounded by family. He died of causes incident to age at the age of 97. He was a very active and dedicated servant of the Lord right until the end. Though short in stature, he was a giant among men and even among other Church leaders. He will go down in history as one of the greatest of the modern day prophets. His amazing temple building program (http://tinyurl.com/of8ve) and the Proclamation on the Family (http://tinyurl.com/3dxjsk) are just two of the many accomplishments for which he will be remembered and revered. He has more than earned the long awaited reunion with his beloved Marjorie which he is now enjoying.

Members of the Orange California Stake were grateful to have heard him speak one last time after last October General Conference during a satellite broadcast for our Stake Conference two weeks ago on January 13th. Here are the somewhat cryptic notes I took during his talk:

Need for love, caring, trust in marriage; abuse & dictatorship is sinful; repent and live gospel with greater devotion; expect and withstand adversity. Four steps for strengthening marriages and families:
1- Mutual respect; cherish differences; overlook weaknesses; focus on virtues; live worth of being respected
2- Give a soft answer; employ soft communication; still small voice of peace and love; be slow to anger
3- Financial honesty; limited extravagance; allow mutual freedom for limited, minor expenditures but discuss and agree upon major purchases
4- Family Prayer

Spotlight Award Master Class

As mentioned in a previous blog posting (http://camswebpage.blogspot.com/2007/12/lotsa-news.html),
Zachary qualified for the semi-final round of the Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Awards. We received a letter stating that Zach was the only remaining competitor from Orange County. Last weekend he attended a master class where the musical theatre candidates from among the 15 semi-finalists in the non-classical voice competition received group and personal coaching from a professional. Here is a group picture taken at that event. The reason there are not 15 High School students in the photo is that apparently the competitors in other voice categories like Gospel or Jazz attended a different class. The semi-final competition is this weekend.

Zach: BYU Music Dance Theatre Department audition

Zach flew to SLC today for his audition tomorrow at Brigham Young University to seek acceptance into BYU's Music Dance Theatre Department

http://cfac.byu.edu/index.php?id=174

If he is accepted, he later plans to audition for acceptance into the elite BYU Young Ambassadors performing group.

http://pam.byu.edu/similarpage.asp?title=Young%20Ambassadors

Zach is schedule to fly back this evening. Hopefully his flight will arrive before the approaching storm.

Scientific breakthrough: turning lead into gold!

Well....almost. Time Magazine's top scientific discovery of 2007 is reportedly the biological equivalent of turning lead into gold. This amazing gene manipulation process converts normal skin cells into differentiateable (transformable into all other kinds of cells) stem cells without the need to harvest human embryos and aborted fetuses. I wonder why we haven't heard more about this stem cell breakthrough on the news?! Could it be possible that some parts of society actually want a convenient excuse to continue supporting non-medically necessary abortions?

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/top10/article/0,30583,1686204_1686252_1690920,00.html
http://www.wired.com/medtech/stemcells/news/2007/11/skin_cell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_pluripotent_stem_cell

carpe diem...sieze the day

BSA Wood Badge beading ceremony

At a Court of Honor on this very rainy evening, I received my Boy Scout Adult Leader Training Wood Badge beads, which completes a goal I set for myself back in the Autumn of 2006. Our Scoutmaster for Wood Badge WE4-39-2-06, Mark Guttenplan, conducted my beading ceremony. Rick Christensen, President Graham, and fellow Fox Patrol member David Price were pressed into service to assist.

The following webpages give a little insight into the process:
http://camswebpage.blogspot.com/2007/11/2007-scouting-for-food.html
http://www.woodbadge.org

sometimes kids (& grandkids) do the nicest things

http://claytonandkatiemay.blogspot.com/2008/01/happy-birthday-grandma.html
http://kthodges.blogspot.com/2008/01/my-mother.html

Mormon Helping Hands

Besides driving hundreds of thousands of people from their residences and destroying hundreds of homes, the severe November wildfires in Southern California left many steep hillsides devoid of the vegetation that helps hold the soil in place during rain storms. There is great concern about severe soil erosion and mudslides this winter in the areas affected by the fires. See the following article. (http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1955426.php)

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints frequently pitch in and help out when their neighbors need help, especially when a disaster strikes. Several local stakes (groups of congregations) of the Church having been helping with clean up and damage control efforts in the interim months. The volunteers wear yellow t-shirts with the caption "Mormon Helping Hands".

Our stake has had several such service projects scheduled, but today's was the first not cancelled due to poor weather or other issues. This morning about 40 members of our stake worked in the Modjeska and Williams Canyons areas (http://tinyurl.com/2qq2rw) filling sand bags, hauling straw bales, and placing them along drainage areas to control the runoff and steer it away from homes. The work was hard and we're going to be stiff and sore, but it felt good to help out the folks whose home are threatened. Here are a few of the photos I took. Click on the photos to see enlarged versions.

Kaylee's birthday party

Some photos of Kaylee's party.
(click to enlarge)

Chutes and Ladders

My LEAST favorite board game is Chutes and Ladders. (http://www.boardgames.com/chutandlad.html) It is a child's game whose play and outcome is totally determined by the roll of the dice, with no skill or strategy whatsoever. Just when you think you are making progress towards the finish line, you land on a "chute" and slide back down several rows and spend the next few turns trying to get back to where you were.

Sometimes my to-do list is like that. Just when I begin to make some progress, something important that I have already completed breaks or requires attention again, causing me to have to reinsert unscheduled and previously completed tasks at the top of my to-do list. Very frustrating.

It was very windy last night. Our roof was rattling. I saw a distant power transformer blowup and light up the night sky. There have been sporadic wind related power outages.
http://www.ocregister.com/news/power-winds-road-1961163-santa-canyon
The power flickered off and on at our house long enough to reboot our home computer while I was working on it. Ever since that happened, our DSL Internet connection has not worked. I spent several hours troubleshooting it, but finally gave up and went to bed and woke up tired. Sometimes the twists and turns of life remind me of playing Chutes and Ladders. It's my least favorite game.

Kaylee has reached the BIG five dot oh

Our granddaughter Kaylee Faith Hodges turned five years old today. Some of her family members accompanied her to dinner tonight at El Torito (http://eltorito.com), where she enjoyed her favorite food...the complimentary chips and salsa. Grandma baked her a chocolate cake from scratch with pink frosting. Tomorrow night Kaylee has invited friends and family to join her at Hullaballos for a big birthday party. (http://hullabaloosclubhouse.com)

My first real attempt at trying to get back to "normal"

After being out of town on business for a few days, I took a day of vacation on Thursday. Jayson and I went jogging in the morning. Except for a few minutes on a stair stepper machine a few days earlier, this was my first real attempt at exercise since my surgery 6 weeks ago. We slowly jogged about 3 miles in 30 minutes. Except for tight leg muscles, which I assumed was due to the cool temperatures, I felt perfectly fine during and after the run...that is, until the next day, when I was quite surprised at how sore and stiff my leg muscles were. I haven't been back on the bike, yet, in part due to some repairs which I have yet to accomplish. I can see that its going to be important to resume activities gradually. No church basketball just yet.

Our ward participated in a stake temple day on Thursday. Since there was an overabundance of unreserved capacity in various service opportunities, I tried to make the most of the situation by attending 3 endowment sessions, two initiatory "sessions", and one sealing "session" during the afternoon and evening. I was grateful to have had the strength to enjoy the rare opportunity of spending most of the day in the House of the Lord.

Am I the only one who thinks this is wrong?

We buy extra long butane lighters for use on our barbecue and our kitchen gas range whose auto-lighter no longer works. When it was time to replace our old lighter that was running out of fuel, Kim bought what was available and on sale, probably at Big Lots.

When I saw the new lighter, I was shocked that any company would produce such a product. The butane lighter was in the likeness of the old claymation cartoon character "Gumby" (http://www.gumby.com). I thought to myself, "Why would anyone want to be liable for making a potentially dangerous product like a butane lighter in the shape of a children's toy?" The advertising on the display box states that the lighter is "child resistant". The spring on the trigger lever is quite strong, but a determined child using both hands could probably activate it. The butane lighter is manufactured in China (isn't EVERYTHING?...don't get me started on THAT topic!) by Gibson Enterprises (http://www.gibsonent.com) for Prema Toy Company.

As a sidelight, even though Prema Toys doesn't have a website of their own, their claim to fame over the years has been suing a 12 year old boy nicknamed "Pokey" for trademark infringement because his father gave him a gift of a pokey.org website registered in the child's name. For those of you too young to remember, Pokey was the name of the horse who was Gumby's sidekick.
(http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1998/04/11846)

My 1st attempt at posting a video

I finally bit the bullet and bought an analog video capture board so that I can transfer home movies onto DVDs. Here is my first attempt at capturing 8mm videos and uploading them to my blog. This was taken while the family was picking up Jayson from the airport. The last second of the uploaded video is cut off for some reason. What I was jokingly trying to say to Katie was, "What if we point cameras at each other? Will they break?"

To chemo or not to chemo- that is the question.

Following the surgery to remove the tumor, my cancer was reclassified as Stage IIA (T3N0MX) due to 35 of 35 removed colon related lymph nodes testing negative for carcinoma and no evidence of metastasis to other organs. (Yea!)

The chances of a stage II colon cancer survivor remaining cancer free for 5 years without chemotherapy is in the 75-85% range, depending on the source of the information. In talking to an oncologist when I was in the hospital, and in doing my own research on the Internet, it appears that the benefits, if any, of post-surgical chemotherapy might increase those chances by 3-5%. Some studies say that there is no statistically significant increased prognosis for Stage II people who opt for chemo, so it is not recommended for patients who are not at a high risk of recurrence. Other studies seem to suggest that there might be a benefit for some patients, so it should remain an option. I'm still undecided, but am leaning away from chemo at the moment. Here are some websites that discuss the issue of adjuvant chemotherapy for stage 2 colon cancer.

http://www.guideline.gov/summary/summary.aspx?ss=15&doc_id=5298&nbr=3621#s23
http://tinyurl.com/32nz69
http://www.oncolink.upenn.edu/types/article.cfm?c=5&s=11&ss=81&id=7336
http://jco.ascopubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/22/16/3408

If you try and access the following two Medscape & eMediciene articles directly, you will probably encounter a screen prompting you to complete a free registration to access the information.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/487981
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/508765_print

You should be able to access the articles by doing a Google search using the following search terms and then clicking on the resulting link.
medscape colon cancer chemo 487981
medscape colon cancer chemo 508765

Could chemo make things worse?
http://ezinearticles.com/?Stage-Two-Colorectal-Cancer-Turned-Terminal-After-Chemotherapy&id=556021

Here's an interesting chemo calculator. The answers to the questions are: none, T3, low, 50-59. http://mayoclinic.com/calcs/colon/index-ccacalc.cfm

Today I learned that 80% of colon cancer cases occur with people without a family history of the disease. Quoting an article, "A recognised hereditary link for colon cancer exists between 1st degree natural family members of people who have colon cancer. If there's a family history of colon cancer, the chance of getting it is 3 times greater than the risk for the population as a whole. Do not be complacent however. Just 20% of colorectal cancer occurs amongst persons who have family history of this disease. The majority of colon cancers, four out of five in fact, affect those without familial association to the disease."