Month: June 2007

As a kid, my parents took me to the National Zoo almost every weekend. Today we spent one of our first weekends back in Maryland doing the exact same thing.

Edda and I playing in the new kiddy area (we are standing in the middle of a big foam pizza)

Vince, just finished with his blue ice cream.

The treasure of the Chesapeake – the blue crab. I remember going down to the bay with my mother and buying 2 bushels of these guys straight from the fisherman. At home, the table would be covered with a thick layer of newspapers, everyone would get a nutcracker and a mallet and we would have the most glorious messy dinners ever. We’d hand the orange roe over to Mom who would gobble it down..

Washington D.C.
A severe thunderstorm watch
Nice weekend ahead

Off to Beantown tonight. Going to go to YAM (Yet Another Wedding). My friend Ken. I guess it’s time to be a tour guide for all those Stanford folks. Of course, it looks like we’ll crash MIT’s commencement on Friday. Whatever. Chuck Vest is the keynote. How boring is that?

International Rett Syndrome Foundation is formed from the merger of IRSA and RSRF. This is cool news – the Rett Syndrome community has been split for about 10 years now. I’m glad that the two organizations are coming together as one.

We are starting some simple home repairs. Yikes!

We’ve been busy at Johns Hopkins participating in a study for the Pathogenesis of Rett Syndrome. Edda and I stayed at the hospital for 3 days – NIH is funding this study and everything (except the parking) was paid for – including travel. The following tests were done:

1. Neurological exam
2. Neuropsychological exam
3. Gait study
4. Occupational and physical therapy consult
5. MRI
6. EEG
7. EKG
8. Swallow study
9. pH probe study
10. Dexa-scan (bone density)

Whew. We are beat.

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

Well this weekend, we all went rafting on the Merced River. Another one of those follow Yi-Ling adventures. I had a great time as usual. We managed to go down some Class IV rapids, watched some dudes pan for gold in the river. I even managed to body surf some of the easier rapids. Our guide, Pam was super cool, and she loved us cause half of the people were Dragonboaters and could actually row.

Saturday, we drove up to Yosemite and did a super short hike up to Inspiration Point – the look out for one of my favorite Ansel Adam’s photographs, Clearing Winter Storm. The length was actually nice, but I think we’re getting old and slowing down… Sigh.

One of the best things about living in DC is being close to family. Tonight we had dinner with the DC Martins.

The young cousins put on a play.

Backstage prep:

The suspense:

The action:

And the appreciative audience:

I spent the morning emptying closets and rearranging furniture because even though my parent’s house is empty of people, it is overflowing with a lifetime of possessions and our own possessions (about 5 tons worth) are about to be delivered on Monday morning.

Jeremy had the pleasure of looking at all my science fair projects which are on display in the basement – my favorite being the fire fighting robot.

This cold is still lingering and we are still not 100% better yet.

We went to Lake Needwood and had a snack and walked around a bit. I remember going fishing there with Mom and Dad many years ago.

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

Sadly, my Guitar Hero save data got corrupted yesterday. I was saddened by this, since I was pretty much 80% of the way thru the expert mode. I guess it’s just an excuse really to go back an redo all the songs better than before.

I managed to clean up medium difficulty in under a day without missing a 5 star, earning a cool $32,000. 😛

1. The World Book (circa 1984). “Researchers are seeking ways to improve computer memories and auxiliary storage equipment. The expect to produce an efficient magnetic bubble unit, which is faster and cheaper than mechanical tape or disk units. A magnetic bubble unit is a semiconductorlike chip that stores data in tiny, cylindrical shaped area called bubbles. Up to a million bits of information can be sotred in one bubble unit the size of a matchbook.”

2. IBM selectric typewriter. I loved the self-correcting ribbon.

3. Shrine to the IBM PC. Still on display in the family room next to the TV.

4. After many a dial-up service and surreptitious hanging onto errant neighborhood wireless connections, today (finally!) marks the inaugural day that my parents’ house has high speed internet. We may still have 2 rotary phones in use in the house, but hey, we are cruisin’