Climbing the Inner Everest

Met a fascinating man today ... Alan Hobson is an adventurer and a cancer survivor.

Alan summitted Mount Everest, then learned that he had acute leukemia. Given no realistic odds of survival, he did survive. He did it by facing his cancer in much the same way he faced the mountain. He's now an inspirational speaker and was the keynote speaker at AGH's Visions for Total Health conference, which is how I met him.

"Everest is 97 percent preparation and three percent execution," he says, and then applies that to "real life" for the rest of us. If we want to achieve our goals, we must prepare for them.

From a professional perspective, Alan was a great guy to work with. (It doesn't hurt that he complimented my promotional work. We put together a billboard on US Highway 50 that he drove past on his way into town. "I was sort of dozing in the back of the car," he told me the next day, "and I saw this billboard. I said to myself, hey, that looks like someone in the Khumbu Icefall. Then I realized it was me in the Khumbu Icefall.")

From a personal experience, meeting him after the conference was an inspiring, fantastic experience. I don't think I've ever been in the presence of someone who just radiates positive energy like Alan does.

A Clean Bill of Health, Mostly

Home from the hospital with a mostly clean bill of health. Apparently there was a small polyp that Dr. Canakis removed. They'll biopsy it and let me know, but his experience tells him that it was no big deal.

And, if you read that Demerol link yesterday, drugs.com notes that "Demerol may be habit forming." Yeah, I can see how that could happen...

Yum! [A serious post, actually.]

Yum, yum! What do Fleet's Phosphosoda and Jell-O have in common? Together, they are the sum-total of everything I've eaten today.

And that can mean only one thing: Colonoscopy.

I come from the royal family of colo-rectal cancer so, even though I'm more than a decade younger than most colonoscopy patients, I'll be seeing Atlantic General Hospital from a patient's point-of-view tomorrow morning.

It's not my first go-round with a colonoscopy, so I already know the preparation is the worst part of the exam. When the exam itself is underway, I'll be under the relaxing effects of Demerol.

The thing with colo-rectal cancer is that it's so deadly, but could be so easily prevented in most cases. Dad died at 57 of cancer that started in his colon after not having it checked for a number of years. Most people start screening at 50. According to this Web site -- I think it's Katie Couric's, for what that's worth -- 13,000 cases are diagnosed each year in people under 50. With numbers like that, I'm destined for a lifetime of colonoscopies.

But, with each one, I'll be a step closer to living long enough to have the next one!

Big Snake

It's Monday night, take-the-trash-to-the-curb night, one week from the night I encountered a four foot black snake slithering into our garage.

I had just gone out to load the trash into the big garbage can when I saw what looked like a big, black snake.

"That piece of rubber looks a lot like a big, black snake," I said, probably aloud.

Then it moved, moving, unfortunately, into the garage. It looked like a big, black snake because, well, it was a big, black snake. I tried to turn the light on, but the power is connected to a switch in the house, which happened to be turned off. I ran in, turned on the light and called my neighbor Vivian.

"You know those big, black snakes that you hate so much?" I asked. "Well, if one of them bites me, what will it do to me?"

Armed with little more than Vivian's reassurance that a bite from this particular snake wouldn't kill me -- though it might hurt, she conceded -- I headed back to the garage, put on a pair of work gloves, picked up the garden rake and started hunting. If there had been a pair of safety goggles handy, I probably would have put those on, too.

Digging in the wood pile -- if you can call it that when you're using a rake to rearrange firewood -- yielded nothing. Pulling the old freezer away from the wall resulted in the same thing. That was probably okay, though. What was I going to do? Somehow convince it to wrap itself around the tines of the rake long enough for me to toss it back into the yard?

As I pondered my next move, the snake slid nonchalantly out the other side of the door, having made nearly a complete circuit through the garage. More importantly for both of us, it spared me from my first attempt at snake wrangling.

Iron Corporation incurred net short-term capital gains of $40,000 in 2003...

Spent today cooped up in an H&R Block office in Glen Burnie, studying for the IRS Enrolled Agent exam. I took the exam last September and passed three of the four sections -- the parts on stuff I had actually seen and used before, like individual returns, sole proprietorships and ethics. The part I failed covers corporations, gift taxes, estates and fiducaries. This summer, then, I'm waist-deep in corporate tax law and fun things like that.

So, I found myself on the road at 7:30 on a Saturday morning for a 2+ hour drive to Glen Burnie, a suburb of Baltimore, for what was expected to be a four- to five-hour class, but ended up taking closer to eight. It was worth it, though. I know exactly what I need to study and what I need to just review.

Just for fun, here are a few questions I spent yesterday studying. All are questions I missed on last year's test but now understand. We'll start with an easy one:

True or False. A corporation that has individuals as shareholders and has less than 75 shareholders qualifies for S corporation status even if it has more than one class of stock.

--

Iron Corporation incurred net short-term capital gains of $40,000 and net long-term capitol losses of $90,000 during 2003. Taxable income from other sources was $500,000. How are the capital gains and losses treated on the 2003 tax return, Form 1120?

a. $3,000 of the excess net long term capital losses are deducted currently and the $47,000 remainder is carried forward indefinitely.
b. None of the excess net long term capital losses are currently deductible, but may be carried back to the three preceding years and then forward five years as short term capital losses.
c. Excess net long term capital losses are fully deductible in 2003.
d. Excess net long term capital losses of $50,000 are carried back two years and then carried forward 20 years as short term capital losses.

---

Carol Corporation and Brown Corporation are domestic corporations. The Carol Corporation owns 25% of the Brown Corporation. Carol Corporation's income from business for tax year 2003 is $500,000 and business expenses are $750,000. In addition to income received from business, Carol Corporation also received dividends from Brown Corporation in the amount of $100,000. Carol Corporation's dividend received deduction is:

a. $70,000
b. $80,000
c. $100,000
d. $20,000

---

The Bob Trust is a simple trust. Per the information below, how much taxable income in passed through to the beneficiaries?

- Taxable Interest: $1,000
- Tax-exempt Interest: $1,000
- Fiduciary Fee: $400

a. $1,600
b. $600
c. $800
d. $1,800


Answers: false, b, b, c. As you can see, it will be a fun six weeks for me...


By the way, I *was* on You Bet Your Garden this weekend. At least I didn't sound like an idiot.

Congratulations!

Congratulations, Tracy and Charles!

(They know why.)

Ouch!

Got my polio booster jab, along with a four-dose series of typhoid immunization, at the travel clinic today, which means I'm one step closer to leaving.

The CDC actually recommends a bunch of immunizations before moving to the Philippines, but I've managed to have many of them already -- Hep A before I moved to Micronesia, Hep B because I work in a hospital. Plus, my tetanus booster is already current, so it really wasn't too painful.

You Bet Your Garden

Today, I made my National Public Radio debut, as a caller to the WHYY-produced and nationally aired You Bet Your Garden show.

Shelly and I are trying to figure out what to do with our vegetable garden when we're gone. I really don't want to have to dig up a bunch of sod again, so I don't want to plant grass. I know that if we do nothing, the garden will be full of weeds when we return. Should we cover it with a tarp? Heck if I know. That's why I made the call.

The show airs over the weekend -- twice, in fact, at least on our local public radio station -- but they tape the calls on Tuesday. The producer told me I'd be on the air on one of the next three weekends. If you want to listen but your local NPR station doesn't carry You Bet Your Garden, send me an e-mail or leave me a comment and I'll e-mail you an MP3. Providing, of course, I don't sound like a moron.

Thanks, Brad, for the HTML help. It worked!

Luddites

Shelly and I are quite possibly the only household in the country which is technologically advanced enough to have a blog while still using an old, decidedly unadvanced VHS player.

And after a trip to the video store last night, I think it's about time to upgrade.

In the six months which have passed since we last rented a video, the store has almost completely stopped renting new releases in VHS format.

This should not be a big surprise, I know. In fact, it's probably not the video store's fault that many of the movies I wanted to see are only available on DVD. Studios just aren't releasing some movies on VHS any longer.

You know, even though I saw this one coming, I hate it when technology passes me by.

Tanaka's Got a Brand New Bag

We spent Sunday (July 31) celebrating Mister Tanaka's second birthday with a major purchase, at least as far as a feline is concerned.

Now the proud owner of his very own Sherpa travel bag, Tanaka is once again, I think, starting to suspect that something is up. Shelly's running around like mad scraping and painting, Greg's throwing out bags of old stuff and boxes are mysteriously starting to appear in places they weren't before.

The last time this happened, Tanaka joined in, digging out his many toys (a grand name, I suppose, for bits of plastic and ribbons) and, I kid you not, bringing them all to his old hard-side travel case.

I don't think he's actually been in his new bag, yet, but somehow a favorite ribbon is already there.

The ultra-cool new travel bag will allow Mister T to snooze his way across the Pacific in the luxury of the passenger cabin, rather than stowed as luggage. Truth be told, he'll probably be more comfortable than I will.