Predictably Irrational

This week I finished reading my fourth book of 2010, Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. It was a pretty interesting book, and a quick read. The author is a professor in behavioral economics (a hybrid of psychology and economics), and the book is a summary of the research he has done over the last number of years, with each chapter more or less based on a paper he has published and the research it was based on. They found some interesting results, and some of it gives insight into how people can make better decisions. Not a 5 star book, but recommended if you are bored and it happens to be lying around.

This past week I returned from Toronto late Monday night, then have been putting in some extra time at work in order to be able to take this afternoon off to head up to Vancouver for some Olympic action. We are going to a medal presentation (officially called a "Victory Ceremony", which I think sounds really lame) tonight, then tomorrow afternoon we are attending the bronze medal game for Men's hockey (where we won't see Canada since they will hopefully playing on Sunday in the gold medal game!), then on Sunday we will see the Men's 50km classic nordic race up in Whistler. It should be a good weekend, I am looking forward to the festivities!

On the weigh-in front, my trip home wasn't as devastating as I thought it would be be, as I clocked three 161.0 weigh-ins in a row (Tuesday - Thursday) before taking a bit of a hit today at 162.4. I probably won't do weigh-ins this weekend again as it counts as vacation, but hopefully I can restrain myself from eating too much Olympic cake!

Finally, Roanne had a meeting with her surgeon on Tuesday, he thought the ultrasound results looked goo and discussed how he would do the operation. When they did Roanne's biopsy they placed a metal marker in the middle of the tumour, the surgeon will use this as a guide to excise a chunk of tissue at a particular radius around this marker. He won't be able to tell if he has gotten all of the tumour since it appears identical to the flesh around it, but what he removes will then sent to a pathologist to identify where the cancer cells are within the sample. We hope it has "positive margins", meaning that the cancerous cells of the tumour are completely surrounded by normal flesh, but they are not ("negative margins") then he will have to operate again and go in and remove more tissue. The surgery will be scheduled for 3 weeks after Roanne's last chemo treatment (which occurs on March 8), then she will likely need about 4 weeks of recovery before starting her 6 weeks of radiation therapy. So, we are looking at a best case of being totally done with treatments in mid June. It is a pretty long road, but Roanne has an amazing attitude and I am really proud of how well she is handling everything. We have already started planning a trip to Europe in July to celebrate the conclusion of her treatment and ride some of the cols in the tour!