Yup, Barb and I are still basking in our new suburban Chicago home. No moving vans are lining up to whisk us off to the nation’s capital. The President seems to have rescinded my invitation to be his science advisor, and Ivanka has lost interest in using Barb to decorate the White House. I’ve wracked my brain for what went wrong, and have unearthed a few reasons why our adventure down the rabbit hole into Wonderland D. C. seems to have short-circuited. In part it was our fault, in part the failure can be blamed on the Trumps and their cronies, and part…well that’s just the way things go sometimes.

Ten Reasons We Aren’t Working the White House

1. The freakily warm Chicago weather has Secretary of State Tillerson worried that I may be channeling global warming via my hidden super powers. The former head of Exxon-Mobil has no interest in a climate changer as science advisor.
2. Barb bought a pair of shoes at Nordstrom’s last week. We all know how Trump feels about THAT. But Ivanka’s interest may explain why my credit card company flagged the purchase with a potential fraud warning.
3. Following Melissa McCarthy’s Saturday Night Live performance, all new hires from Illinois are subject to “double secret extreme vetting” to guarantee we don’t do cross-gender impersonations. It is rumored I failed that investigation.
4. Barb’s “some of the decorating can wait until next year” philosophy was considered too slow for an administration that might not make it past cherry blossom season.
5. Our lack of foreign language skills was a real drawback. Trump wants all new employees to be able to say “Get out of my country” in at least three languages.
6. We get vaccinated–a lot.
7. Our niece works for Marco Rubio. New Trump regulations exclude staffers with any relation to Lyin’ Ted or Little Marco.
8. We texted POTUS asking for contracts guaranteeing us more than 24 days on the job. He tweeted back “Only Kellyanne Conway gets that kind of guarantee.”
9. Our two china policy (Wedgewood and Rosenthal) was in conflict with this week’s foreign policy (but maybe not next week’s.)
10. We filled out the wrong application. The New York Times published the right one a few days ago.

So Barb and I will just have to bide our time until Chris Kennedy calls us to Springfield in 2018. It might not be D.C., but our bags are packed!

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When at last I am given my dues,

And injustice deliciously squared.

Be prepared!

The Lion King-1994

Show me a trivia contest. Tell me about a tricky word puzzle.  Offer me a mental challenge. You will have my mostly undivided attention and a  ball point pen will magically appear at my fingertips–pencils are for losers. Every vacation is preceded by a trip to Barnes and Noble to pick up the latest edition of Games Magazine, a publication my dad introduced me to 40 years ago and which still features the best variety of brain teasers on paper. The drive to tennis on Sunday mornings always includes listening to Will Shortz and the weekly puzzle on NPR. Every shot I miss can be blamed on my mind being lost in the maze of challenges like  “Take six different letters. Repeat them in the same order. Then repeat them again — making 18 letters altogether. Finally add “tebasket” at the end. If you have the right letters and you space them appropriately, you’ll complete a sensible sentence. What is it?” Got that?

But my current addiction is “3 for Free,” the challenge Lin Brehmer and Mary Dixon feature every morning at 6:40 on WXRT. They play clips from three songs or movies, you tweet in the titles, and first one in with the right response gets a “shout out” on the radio. No cash, no tickets, no swag, just a shout out.  But the competition is fierce with the names of repeat winners etched in my frontal cortex.

In the interest of universal access, I present some tips for being a champion and having your name spread over the airwaves by Mr. Brehmer, your best friend in the whole world. Be prepared to shine.

1.  Get a twitter account. Not something everyone in the ‘XRT demographic (old rockers who saw the Beatles live in 1966) necessarily have.
2. Get a radio. Forget online streaming for this one. Because of the buffering delay your answer will be too late to win (of course most of this demographic has never heard of online streaming.)
3. Listen to the dynamic duo at 6:30. They most likely will give a hint to the subject of that day’s clips.
4. Find a website that lists movies/songs that feature the topic in #3. Memorize the list.
5. Pre-enter @93xrt and some likely answeres into a tweet. Nothing wrong with getting a head start, and you can always delete.
6. Twiddle your thumbs during the song playing from 6:37 to 6:40.
7. 6:40. OK, here come the clips. Listen and fill in your answers. Avoid brain freeze, that panicky moment when you could even forget your wife’s name. A delay of a millisecond is deadly.
8. Proof read, especially if  Autocorrect is on. “The Devil Wears Pravda” is not, and never will be, a Meryl Streep movie title.
9. Send your tweet and pray.
10. Swear loudly as Lin announces that Joel Reese has won again.

Yes, just as in life, no matter how you prepare, you will probably lose more than you win. But all that planning keeps your brain sharp, and in our demographic, don’t we need that?

For more ways to keep your brain sharp, don’t forget to subscribe. See details below.

 

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I never chose my mentors, they just “were”. And then they are gone. I lost two of the men who helped shape my life within days of each other in 1993. My first real boss, Dr. Earl Suckow, passed away while undergoing aggressive therapy for recently diagnosed lung cancer. He was a smoker, a brawler, and let you know in no uncertain terms when you had crossed him. But in my first professional gig he took me under his wing, making sure I had the capability and the confidence to make my own diagnostic decisions. He encouraged me to go to night school for an MBA, emphasizing that in the years to come mastering the business of medicine would be as valuable to me as mastering the art of pathology. He was a family man, treasuring his annual trip to a Wisconsin resort with wife Char, his five daughters, and all the grandkids. Barb and I still look forward to the annual holiday cards picturing the whole Suckow clan.

My dad, Harold Raff, whom I have written about before and who I resemble in so many ways, died two weeks after Earl. His long, painful fight against prostate cancer  informs my decisions each day as I look at dozens and dozens of cores of prostate tissue under my microscope. I can only hope that I have been nearly the role model to my kids that my dad was to me.

Dr. Richard Dufour entered my life two years after those two men left it. In 1995, after doing some school related community service, I was asked by members of the Adlai Stevenson High School Board of Education to run for election to join them. It was as a Board member that I met Rick, superintendent and undisputed master of the school, the district, and possibly the universe. Under Rick’s guidance Stevenson had entered the realm of high performing high schools, battling it out for suburban supremacy along with perpetual powerhouse New Trier. Rick was tough, decisive, but with the capacity to listen. Our annual retreats were filled white white boards and wild thinking.

I know Rick had fun teasing me as the perpetual “junior member” of a Board mostly composed of old veterans, but he was always kind as he explained why my questions were way off base, my suggestions a bit bizarre. And we shared a love of music, Rick being one of the few people who could hold his own against me in a round of “Name that Tune.”

Rick was not “my” superintendent. He belonged to the old-timers who had chosen him. Most of my tenure as President of the Board was spent with his successor, Dr. Tim Kanold at the helm. By that time, Rick was making his mark on the national scene as a leading proponent of Professional Learning Communities. I had the pleasure of writing a review of one of his earliest books, Professional Learning Communities at Work. I submitted that review to a medical journal, fully believing that Rick’s ideas were so universal they could be applied in any setting. Apparently the editors of the American Journal of Clinical Pathology agreed and published the review a few months later.

It was in September of 2014 that I received a call from Rick, telling me he had just been diagnosed with lung cancer, and asking for some information and guidance. I cannot describe the  shock and sadness I felt as I spoke with him. Though not an expert in the field, I knew the statistics and the overwhelming odds he faced. But Rick was never a quitter, and along with wife Becky, he would not quit in his last battle. Barb and I followed his progress via the wonderful blog he wrote, always uplifting, never pitying. The last time I saw him, in the summer of 2015, he made it clear that he, and not the cancer, was running his life.

Yesterday, Becky wrote the blog post that we knew would be coming. It was brief, but loving as always, as she told us all that Rick had passed away.

For the third time cancer has taken my mentor. Perhaps I am too old to find another, but perhaps there will be someone for me right around the corner.

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It’s been awhile since you’ve heard from me. It isn’t a case of writer’s block or the nefarious (among bloggers) “fear to publish” syndrome. It certainly isn’t about a lack of things to write about. It’s more a case of trying to pack 30 lbs of stuff to do into a 20 lb bag of time. There just hasn’t been enough of me to go around.

Early January was filled with a monsoon of sub-contractors working on the new home, or “the big” as our granddaughter likes to call it. Once we gave builders Ham and Jeff an absolute deadline, we found the house filled with wall-to-wall workers. Painters, tilers, electrician, cleaners, the butcher, the baker and our favorite cabinet maker all stepped on each others toes in an effort to get us a certificate of occupancy. In the meantime, I collected contractor’s waivers and negotiated with the title company, part of our slightly unconventional way of financing the project.

And then there was the process of packing up our furnished apartment. What we thought would be a 2 hour job turned into a two day one. We stacked the living room with boxes, making it a challenge to get to the front door. Max and Phoebe certainly seemed befuddled.

Moving day was smooth but not perfect, challenging but not chaotic. The move in crew wasn’t quite as sharp as the move out crew had been, and we detected a few broken pieces, although some damage remained hidden within the layers of cardboard, bubble wrap and packaging paper. Nothing too major, but disappointing none the less.

During the next week of frenetic unpacking we were assaulted by the odor of freshly stained wood floors and a gas-like (but according to North Shore Gas not actual natural gas) miasma–the result of all those last minute paints and stains. Tradesmen continued their round the clock assault, working on AV, alarms and back-up power systems. We escaped for a wonderful relaxing week with friends at our Cabo San Lucas timeshare, though even that was interrupted by a text from the lab–“Two inspectors just turned up at the door for a surprise lab inspection.” That was one day of the vacation spent mostly on the phone, though my work associates tell me they could hear the gentle poolside breeze in the background. At least they couldn’t see the gentle poolside Margarita in my hand!

Returning home I was faced with learning a new computer system at the lab while clearing up the paper work from the inspection, and more unpacking in “the big.” There were plenty of house tours to family and friends, with more than a few celebratory bottles of wine uncorked. When we realized one of our old TV sets was too small for the allotted wall space off we went to BestBuy for a new smart TV. We discovered the smartest party in the TV equation are the sellers of TV brackets, which are more expensive than the UltraHigh Def 10G Supersonic Sets that hang on them.

Yesterday was a major milestone. Handymen hung our artwork and unfurled area rugs on the now thoroughly cured wood floors. The cardboard cartons were all sent for recycling and the properly stickered garbage bags hauled away so I can once again park in the garage. Now in every room in the house we have something familiar. There is something old, something new. But as we were going to bed Barb said to me “I feel like an imposter in this house.” So it is still with a little trepidation and a little uncertainty that we walk past the newly painted walls and the glistening chandeliers, negotiate the kitchen island-continent, and struggle with finding the new light switches. It is our home, but just doesn’t quite feel like it yet. But I know deep down and without hesitation, the best is yet to come!

++++

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You could have held a contractors convention at the construction site last week. Painters in one bedroom, trim carpenters in the next. The plumbers who were scrunching under bathroom fixtures making final hook-ups were following hot on the heels of the tilers, who were busy grouting and sealing the stone floors. Electricians were scaling ladders hanging the chandeliers, while cabinet artistes were on their knees installing the latest batch of knobs and handles.

Since final inspection has been scheduled for Wednesday, and move-in date is less than a week after that, the pressure is multiplying. Every absent sub-contractor has us texting, calling, or grilling the GC.  Yet I am convinced that with a Three Musketeers ethos of “all for one and one for all” we will defy conventional wisdom and be sleeping in our new home in less than ten days. So imagine my disappointment when a recent double paged, picture-packed article in the bastion of design, the Wall Street Journal, informed me that as far as kitchens go, we blew it.

Let me describe our new kitchen. Rows and rows of meticulously hand crafted cabinets covered by highly polished counter tops. Accessory garages you can park a medium sized Kia in. A double sink, personally chosen by me, big enough to contain an entire dinner party for six–not just the dishes, the guests too. Dueling built-in ovens and a microwave that disappears into the cabinetry with the touch of a button. A light fixture that is close to Barb’s heart, and the pièce de résistance, an island roughly the size of Madagascar. We thought we had designed the most glorious galley that could be imagined.

So what was in the WSJ article that smashed our dreams? It seems that these days, those chichi New York homes now feature HIS AND HERS kitchens. That’s right, once is never enough!

Now his and hers walk-in closets I understand. I can even grasp the concept of separate (but equal) bathroom facilities. But kitchens?

Once or twice a year I make my damn good heart healthy turkey chili. And in any given winter I am prone to pull  the crock pot out of the recesses of the pantry to slow cook a tasty, but not too peppery, beef goulash. But other than those occasional incidents, and sometimes spreading chopped vegies over a Home Run Inn frozen pizza before popping it in to a preheated 450º oven, I don’t really do all that much cooking.

Yes, I do much of the clean-up. But I was more than content to share the counters and cabinets, the continental island and the oceanic sink, with Barb. But now I know the truth. Because of our solo kitchen we can never be a truly hip, up-to-date, 21st century couple. So do you think I can convince Barb to that we need to do this one more time, and this time maybe we will get it right?

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With my acceptance of the Scientist in Chief position in the incoming administration, Barb and I  faced the possibility of a long-distance relationship for the first time in our 38+ years of marriage. Facing the unfaceable, we decided we had to find a way to put Barb to work in the nation’s capital too. And in doing so, we hoped to make a life long dream come true!

All of you are familiar with the incredible job Barb has done as the supreme visionist and manager for our almost complete new suburban home. But you may not know that for Barb, this has only been practice. Her desire for years has been to take on the White House. It is old, it is big, it is important, and it needs a makeover. What better project to refresh the batteries — and get us both to Washington at the same time! So we pulled in  favors with a congressional aide here, a senatorial counsel there, a tweet or two to Mr. Trump himself. Our diligence paid off as we managed to arrange a very special job interview for Barb.

Last week, in a secret meeting in our friend’s apartment in Trump Tower downtown, Barb met with our First Lady to Be, the glamorous Ivanka Trump. I am pleased to say the meeting went swimmingly. The two ladies immediately bonded in a discussion of fabrics and window coverings. Ivanka’s face gleamed as they shared their admiration of marble. When Barb mentioned that our architect Jefferson had once worked on Hugh Hefner’s Chicago Playboy Mansion, Ivanka let it slip that President Trump had expressed  a desire for a hidden Man Cave below the Oval Office, and maybe they could borrow some of the Playboy plans?

The designing ladies sealed their admiration for each other with their mutual distaste of green, the newly declared Color of the Year. “Greeen may be OK as an accent color here and there, but if you paint a room in it, it makes my skin look pallid,” Trump was heard to say. “I know we can do lots of things with different shades of white, the Color of the Year in 2016. And what year has ever been better than 2016?”

So while it is not yet official, I think we (or Vladimir Putin) can confidently leak  that Barb will be accompanying me to Washington as Ivanka’s White House Decorator and personal confidante. Look out Washington, the Raffs are on the loose. It’s going to be a fun four years!

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You may recall that I put my hat in the ring for several cabinet posts in the new administration. Much to my disappointment, President Elect Trump chose differently-qualified candidates for those positions. I was giving up on my dream of moving to DC and cashing a government paycheck when my phone vibrated, signaling a Twitter Tweet. Thumbing to the new message, I was shocked to read “Raff-give me a call. It will be HUGE. @therealdonaldtrump”. Could my wishes be coming true?

I dialed 1-800-TRMPREZ and arrangements were quickly made. A day later I was on a first class flight to NYC for a meeting with The Donald at Trump Tower. (I would have preferred Mar-a-Lago, but it was totally booked for the First Annual Angry White Woman Beauty and Talent Pageant.)

I entered Trump’s suite and he wasted no time in getting started, “Raff, I’m looking for a science advisor and I saw your blog. You write all that stuff about global warming and evolution, right?”

“Um, no Mr. Future POTUS. The blog that you are thinking about is called Violent Metaphors and it is written by Jennifer Raff. I once checked with her and she isn’t even a relative. And she writes AGAINST all phony science. I suspect she hates you”

“Lester, Jennifer, sounds the same, what’s the difference, no wonder I mixed it up. Or maybe you are a transgender. Anyway, you do blogs too, and you are some sort of doctor or another. I saw your picture with a microscope. I want to give you the enormous new position of Scientist in Chief.”

“I am honored, Incoming Leader of the Free World, but I thought you wanted to cut down on government and drain the swamp. And I don’t support any of your positions.”

“That’s the point, Chester. I want to appoint an advisor that the liberal pussies at the New York Times will like. Keep em confused. Then they won’t notice all the big oil, big business, screw the environment policies that Rex and Scott and I have up our sleeves.”

“Mr. Next Commander-in-Chief, I think they are pretty smart there at the Times. They may have you figured out.”

“Is that why they said Lying-Emailing-Deplorable Hillary had a 90% chance of beating me in the election, which by the way I won by 20 million votes?”

“Yeah, Upcoming Chief Executive, I guess they sort of blew that one, didn’t they. So my job would be to talk good science while you cripple future generations? And I will get paid to do this?”

“It’s even better than that. I’m giving all my advisors a 1% share in Trump Enterprises. By the time we’ve had our eight or ten or twelve years in office you’ll have enough cash to keep your children’s children’s children in air conditioned bomb shelters no matter how hot it gets out there.”

I leave for DC next week. Can you blame me?

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The gracefully curved stairway is familiar. I know it is the one we took Michael’s prom pictures on, the one we  thought Laury might one day descend on her wedding day. I recognize the foyer light fixture whose bottom curl you can just see at the top center of the photo. I described it many, many years ago in a holiday newsletter. I think “Early Long Grove Bordello Style” was the phrase I used back then. And that glass paneled door in the lower right of the picture leading to the basement–I recall the mess I made scraping the plastic coating off of its window panes.

There is nothing unusual about seeing a brightly wrapped present in someones hands on the staircase. But  up until this year the wrapping paper would have been Hannukah blue and white. The wreath on the wall is a first. And most significantly of all, no Santa has ever walked down those steps before.

I have been OK with our decision to move. After all, I instigated it! But the new reality this picture demonstrates really brings it home to me.

I suppose the most important thing is that the house is still filled with smiling, joyful, people enjoying the holiday season. We are happy that a young family, with sons who love the nieghborhood, live in the home (and we thank the new owners for permission to use the picture.) But like the seven pound chocolate bar that mysteriously appeared in the lab yesterday, it is bittersweet.

As for new house construction, we ARE in the homestretch. For a variety of reasons, Barb and I have selected a move-in date of of January 17th (three weeks and counting down), and are holding Ham and Jeff’s feet to the fire to get us there. Despite their screams of agony over their burning toes, they promise it will happen, even if it means giving a subcontractor or two the flaming boot.

The work progresses daily–and nightly, thanks to our all hours tile guy. But much like creating government legislation, we don’t always want to see how the sausage is being made. We have a mailbox, we have top loading washers and dryers, we just don’t have all our lights and cabinets. And still no front walk or front porch flooring–the new subcontractors need to start bringing the bluestone.

With all that in mind, I fearlessly predict that next winter there will be two celebrations–Yuletide in our former home, and the Festival of Lights in our lovely new one.

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I go to the front door of the lab to let the Fedex guy in with our 3:30 delivery. He appreciates a moment of warmth and I can use the stretch. My back has stiffened while I have been looking at a continuous stream of prostate biopsies for the past few hours. It has been a steady flow of glass slides, each with their linear array of pink and purple stained tissue. Benign, benign, cancer, benign. With each 10x field I look at, I make another decision. I trust that via my training and experience I have a mental “memory picture” of every pattern that prostate cancer might take and will recognize it when I see it. But as the afternoon ticks by, it gets harder and harder to decide. Is it  benign or malignant? In fact, it gets more difficult to make any decision at all. I tell myself I should order some deeper sections, or special stains, or just look at this case first thing tomorrow morning. All  logical steps, but what I am really thinking is that I just can’t make one more decision today.

I hear it from Barb, too. We have been working on our house for more than a year and a half now. The series of decisions has cascaded: Should we move, should we build, where should we build, who should build. And then there was the layout phase. Bedroom here, mud room there. Most of those decisions we made together. But once the details of design began, from muntins on the windows, to knobs on the cabinets, it has been almost all Barb. She has found some great help along the way, but the yea or nay comes down to her. All those decisions can just wear her down.

A little research shows that we are suffering from a condition known as “decision fatigue”, a real condition that even has a biological cause. My afternoon inability to pull the trigger on a cancer case fits the classic description–as the day progresses, decisions become harder and harder.  Barb’s housing issue is more of a chronic variety that we can shorthand as CDF or Barb Syndrome.

Decision Fatigue has been reported at least since Ancient Rome and the Empire, overcome by Julius Caesar when he decided to cross the Rubicon River– a decision he probably made in the morning. You can temporarily fight DF with a calorie jolt, particularly with a hit of glucose. No word on the benefits of caffeine. A good night’s sleep is what it takes to restore our ability to make sound decisions.

So my desire to hold of on some cases until the morning is a smart one, even if it slows down the turn-around time on my cases. Bedding down today will help me separate the benign from the malignant tomorrow. My patients will benefit from any slight delay. Waiting till morning will even lead to a better job of proofreading this blog.

As for Barb and her more chronic variety of Decision Fatigue, a solid night of sleep will help her out too–but only when she finally gets that night of sleep in our perfectly designed and decorated new home!

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Dear President Trump:

It is very cold in Chicago. I hear the weather is better in Washington DC. I also have some friends and relatives there, so I am investigating making a move. I don’t want to relocate without a decent paying job, so can you give me a Cabinet post? I don’t care which one; that is up to you. But just to help, here are my qualifications for some of the positions:

1. Secretary of State: I can name about 50 countries and can even find most of them on a map. I am not so good on capital cities, but I am a fast learner. I also think it would be cool to get one or two million frequent flyer miles so the airline will give me that nifty black card that George Clooney has.
2. Secretary of Treasury: As a kid i collected pennies. Now I collect larger bills, and also know how to spend them. Spending lots of money is another way to get miles on those nifty black cards.
3. Secretary of Defense: I got bullied once and the next day I brought some friends to rearrange the bully’s attitude. That’s the best defense, have some friends do your dirty work.
4. Attorney General: My son and lots of other people I know are lawyers. I have also been to traffic court. I won. ‘Nuff said.
5. Secretary of Interior: Only about 83 Americans knows what this person does and I am not one of them. But I will still take the job.
6. Secretary of Agriculture: I have never seen a working farm but I am tolerant of gluten, lactose, GMOs, ADM and Monsanto. Think of the kick-ass Franken-Crops we can create!
7. Secretary of Labor: I was in a union in my first job at the Jewel Food Store on Morse Avenue across from the deli. The store manager hated unions just like your administration will. I learned young.
8. Secretary of Health and Human Services: Did I tell you I was a doctor? Not a brain surgeon like Ben Carson, just a neighborhood pathologist. But we aren’t prima donnas and will work cheap.
9. Secretary of Education: I went to school for twenty years. And oh yeah, I was a School Board President. Forget it, I am overqualified for this position in your Cabinet.
10. UN Ambassador: I visited the UN when I was a kid and the tour guide was very nice to me. I want to return the favor.

If you think I would be better at one of the other Cabinet positions, that would be fine with me. Just get me to Washington in time for one of the Inaugural Balls. I promised Barb I would buy her a new dress.

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