Month: November 2008

While I was at the ballet gala, Jeremy and the kids went for a bike ride to the town center for some hamburgers.

I wanted to highlight the transformation of Donald’s high school bike. Note the yellow milk crate attached to the back of the bike with flashing lights bungee corded to the outside of the milk crate. He is saving his pennies to buy fenders for his beloved commuting bicycle. Jeremy has actually gone grocery shopping with his crazy bicycle. We are still commuting back and forth to the Metro on our bikes, it’s my one source of exercise, my 10 minute bike ride.

Well… I suppose it was quite an exhillarating night. I know all y’all are east coasties, but I thought I would share some of the going ons over here in Cali-forn-i-a. Most of you are spared from the insanity that are the California Proposistions, but somehow, somewhere, the politicians decided it would be wise to let the public vote directly on laws. Of course, it’s not like californians really understand the impact of the laws that they are vote for/against. What’s 10 billion in bond payments for a high speed rail system?

Anyhow I’ll make two comments here…

1) Sadly, Prop 8 seems to have passed by a 52-47 margin. I don’t know how gay marriage affects any straight person’s lives… So I was surprised that it passed.

2) SF has it’s own propositions too. Here’s a funny one. Complete with arguments/rebuttals. Ha. It was defeated 70-30. 🙂

Last Saturday night, I went to the ballet school gala (I did wear the burgundy dress). I had a nice time – I wanted to showcase Christine’s centerpieces:

As I said before, I had never gone to a gala before. I went mainly because I wanted to support the effort that went into making the centerpieces, but also I wanted to spy on a gala and see what it was all about. I learned that cool lighting can really change a room – that a live auction is pretty fun if you have a couple hundred or maybe a thousand dollars to spend on stuff. (I did win a bud vase at the silent auction, which was much, much less than a thousand dollars. Woo hoo for me!)

We are staying up on election night – all watching the returns (well, all of us except for Edda). Jeremy took the day off and spent the day canvassing and manning phone banks in Northern VA. We just heard that PA is called for Obama, which I’m sure was due to Jeremy’s diligent 4-hour volunteer effort there ;).

Here’s what it looks like at our election tracking headquarters, Vincent is the most manic of us all.

As one of our last big road trips before turkey day (only 3 weeks away!), the four of us ventured to New Jersey to visit my friend Ingrid (who works so hard fundraising to find a cure for Rett Syndrome and runs Girl Power 2 Cure and helps to run RSRT) and to meet her family, in particular, her daughter Sarah who also has Rett Syndrome.

Edda got to go to Sarah’s school and was her “share” at show-and-tell. It was really sweet and touching.

About 5 weeks ago, when I was in the midst of a cloud of grumpiness, I discovered a small lump on the side of my neck. Do you know when you google, “lump on neck”, it pretty much means that you have lymphoma. So my heart sank, not only was I dealing with fundraising, my job, the kids, the house, I was going to have to find out that I had lymphoma and that it was going to be bad.

So I trundled off to my family physician who said that it’s one of three things: 1. a benign growth, 2. a response to an infection or 3. cancer – and he said all three with equal weight in his tone of voice. So he said that we could do three things – wait to see if it got bigger, take a course of antibiotics or see an ear, nose, throat guy. I asked if I could do all three. So the antibiotics did nothing, it took me 5 weeks to schedule the ENT guy, so in essence I was waiting to see if it got bigger and on Halloween, I finally got to see the specialist – who assured me that after feeling lumps on necks for 35 years and my particular lump for a few minutes, this was a lipoma – a benign cluster of fat which has probably been there for a million years. And he said if it was cancer, it would have gotten bigger over the course of the 5 weeks I’ve been poking at it. (It has gotten some intense poking over the course of 5 weeks.)

I’m quite relieved and happy, of course. Sometimes I think life is like dodge ball, you see all those balls coming at you, ready to knock you over, some of them miss you and some of them hit you full force on the noggin (or lymph node).

• We, without consulting each other, casted our votes in Washington State already. Our votes probably don’t mean that much either way since it is a blue state.
• Rena & I are definitely not going to Denver this winter. Our project will restart pretty soon, sometimes in Nov or Dec. Hope the new guy coming in will not screw up things more than what we have had right now. For nuclear energy, the field that we have been working on, I like John better. He is for more of nuclear energy. I am not sure about the other guy on this.
• I just kind of wonder why our government, under the requests of so many governers + legislatures, refuses to loan GM, Ford & Chrysler 10 billions. Those workers, I am sure, are not going to a scenic CA beach for a $440,000.00 spa trip.
• I may have three deer tick bites on my legs. Will check out with doctor to make sure. But, for the time being and taking no chances, I am on anti-biotics medicine.
• I have a lot of skin rash plus those skin tags that I have had for some time. Just don’t know the cause.
• We don’t have the internet at our apartment. So you visit our office everyday, including weekends.
• Last night, we went to One53, the food is okay but the service was quite horrible. Probably this was the last time for us.
• No kids showed up at our apartment for Halloween. It was kind of lost, or relief? Mix feeling!
• Rena & I are planning to have a tour trip overseas soon. Hope Doris (with plural sss) and Donald can come along, but kind of doubt due to their schedules. Not like us, they are quite busy and we are quite free now.
• We are very happy that Mom’s blood pressure has been pretty normal for a while. No need for medicine and that is good.
• Well, this Saturday, Mom decides to go to Princeton University’s meseum this morning, and public Lawrenceville Library for free movie. So, we go!