Year: 2008

Jeremy’s dad now is able to check email on his PDA. I am so behind the times.

Edda’s totally miffed, why do they make the buttons so small on those things?

While we were in upstate NY, Edda regularly got up at 4:30 am – we took her on the early morning bagel run. The morning light was wonderful, but for the life of me, I couldn’t convince her to stop mouthing for the photo.

Edda is hanging out at home with us this week. It was going to be a fantabulous week, no school, just summer and hanging out with the 3 adults – no Vincent to take over the TV or leave his Legos scattered all over the living room creating a painful obstacle course.

But on the drive down from upstate NY, Edda spiked a fever and spent last night shivering between doses of Motrin and Tylenol. But right before we realized that Edda was getting sick, we were getting off the freeway to find a McDonalds, and we ended up in Easton, PA, home of Crayola and they just happened to have Dora visiting!

Here’s my book reviews:

Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande

In medicine, mistakes costs lives. Gawande gives a stark examination on how doctors and the health care system can better serve their patients. He brings to bear a vast arsenal of resources: history, statistics, publications, technology, his own experience as a surgeon, and his own time in the field examining the processes, systems, and techniques of doctors and clinics around the world. All the while, he never loses sight of the fact that medicine has a very human element – every single mistake has a human cost. So it’s ironic, when Gawande realizes that solution lies not in new technology or research, but in reducing the human frailty of health care workers. Simply that health care can do better, thru diligence, understanding their patients better, creating performance metrics, improving those metrics, and examining what the very best in the field are doing differently. Not to say his answers are easy or clear cut, but they are well within our capability. If nothing else, health care professionals could just wash their hands more. 🙂

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max

Tucker Max is indeed an asshole. He makes no qualms about it. He revels in it. He shares it with you in this book, and you find yourself inexplicably laughing out loud ever 3-4 paragraphs. Unlike The Game, don’t expect some soul searching metamorphosis in the end. Tucker only shows you his drunk, raving side. But it’s the other side, the side of him that he hints at throughout the book, the side that has him “matured” at 31 vs 24, that you end up being most curious about. Sadly, There’s no incentive for Tucker to reveal his alter ego, so take the book for what it really is – your drunk, sex crazed friend, telling you some shit-ass f’in’ hilarious stories.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

A wonderful tale of vivid detail and incredulity. It’s like eating a steak in The Matrix. You know it’s probably all fake, but the richness of texture, the nuance of flavor, makes you wish it was oh so real.

Vince’s last day of camp was on Friday, we actually picked him up early to head up north to Jeremy’s parents’ house where he’s going to spend a week in “the country” with Kiki and Kappa. It isn’t really the country, as it’s still just 15 minutes from the Target, but there are farms and goats and chickens within a 5 mile radius of the house, all of which are illegal in any neighborhood at home with an attentive home owner’s association.

We all headed back down south of the Mason-Dixon line today after a too-short visit. Edda is now sick with the family bug – the last one in the long line… First, Vincent, then Jeremy and I, then Yvonne and now Edda.

Jeremy and I are now a little bit sick. Ugh. Time to go to bed.

Vince and Jeremy have been spending a lot of the time in the basement packing up.

They found Edda’s favorite toy, Peter. She loved this toy, she used to cling to it and chew it and hold it in her teeth when she crawled around on the floor. My mom patched it up 17 million times until Edda couldn’t pick up Peter anymore.

Well, I am a new owner of an iPhone 3G. Fun. 🙂 I thought it was about time that I just up and went to the store to stand in line and get on of the darn things. I had been wasting my regular hours anyways, looking at availiblity chart, perusing apple forums, driving my apple stores to look see as to the length of the line.

Fine. Done. Erg.

I got up this morning at 6am, and took the 7:14 express train down to PA, and promptly got in line at 7:50 – ten minutes before open. I was about 15-20 deep into the line, and the apple employee handed me a card with my phone choice on it, mentioning that this part of the line would be 1.5 hours into the store. Fun.

I did a prequalify, but I had a business marker on my AT&T account, and had to call AT&T to remove that.

I walked into the store at around 9:40. The employee, wanted to chat, but I barely had time, since I had to go to a meeting at 10am. I think he wanted me to oogle the phone a bit more when he opened it, but whatever. I had no time. Just ripped the plastic coating right off. Didn’t really glance at it at all…

Am I stupid? yes. Did I need it? Probably not. But it’s fast…

Doris, did you still want my old iPhone?

I can not believe this happened today, but I met with Congressman Van Hollen today and asked for his support on the Rett Syndrome earmark.

His legislative aide, Ray Thorn, carved out about 20 minutes of his day to talk about the IRSF earmark and about the way earmarks get approved. I was impressed that Ray had spent some time researching the earmark and when it will be voted on and then the Congressman came in for a minute and said hello and shook my hand, which is when I delivered my “ask” and he said that he would support it! I wasn’t expecting such a definitive statement right then and there, but there you go.

I’m flabbergasted that I got any time with these people – that Chris Van Hollen (the Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – the 5th highest ranking position among House Democrats, the money man) basically made a detour in his extremely busy day to see me. I am amazed. It never occurred to me that a little guy like me could send some emails and end up meeting with the Congressman.

So there it is. Call your Congressman and make an appointment to talk about stuff that is important to you.

I did not get a chance to take a photo with the Congressman (I was too chicken to ask, but I’m sure he would have done it), but I have a fascinating photo of the cafeteria of the Longworth House Office building where I ate a cheeseburger before my meeting.

Vince has been busy this summer, he’s now attending a science camp run by the county at a nearby elementary school. I’m not sure how much science they are learning, but at least he is getting a deep dark tan by going to the pool twice a week.

Yesterday, his camp had a field trip to the local bowling alley (what science was that about? I guess it must be physics) and Vince whined and whined that he did not want to go bowling. He hates doing things in which there is a distinct possibility and an quantifiable way that he is going to lose and he, like the rest of the human race, hates to lose.

Grumbling the whole way (I’m sure), he was pleased to discover that the bowling alley basically converts to a disco-night-club-type thing and no bowling was required. This is how he explained it, “They turned off the real lights and then turned on the funny lights, then everyone screamed like crazy, then the music played and we all danced around.” It all sounds very scientific to me.

Anyways, after all this crazy screaming dancing bowling trip, he came home and promptly got a fever of 40C. (Somehow after our trip to Singapore, I’ve converted over to Celsius body temperature. 36 – good. 37 – a little high but nothing to worry about. 38 – for sure a fever. 39 – for sure a high fever. 40 – for sure into a cool bath, cold compresses, call the doctor if it doesn’t go down with Motrin fever – I can’t believe I just referred to our 2 years in Singapore as a trip, sheez).

Anyways he stayed home from camp today and will again tomorrow, Jeremy stayed home today and I’ll be home half day tomorrow. Hopefully he’ll perk up before one of us goes down, because there is nothing worse than taking care of a sick kid than perhaps taking care of 2 sick kids while you are sick yourself!