Year: 2014

Boys had a sleepover Friday night which segued into an 8 am soccer game.  Go Strikers!  (They lost.)

Donald flew to Portland this weekend to hang out with mom and to get a cup of coffee.

I went running on the C&O and it was beautiful.

Vince made me a BLT for lunch!

Jeremy is in a cookie bake-off at his work this week.  He wants to WIN.

Both the kids had the day off on Friday and it was Edda’s regularly scheduled OT appointment with Deb.  Deb hasn’t seen Vince in years!  Deb has been Edda’s therapist since she was three years old.

In first or second grade, Vince was having a lot of trouble with his handwriting.  Deb took him on for a few months to teach him how to hold a pencil and write the letters correctly.  It was not an easy thing for Vince.

Date night = IKEA.  Jeremy is trying to convince me that this desk is going to totally change the workflow in the house.  A modern organizational miracle.

We misestimated that a queen sized bed would fit into the minivan.  Had to tie it to the roof.

*******

Would it be remiss of me to not talk about Ebola?  This has been a crazy week to be a bedside nurse (in training) in a hospital.  I’m not immune to having my blood pressure and heart rate rise when I watch 15 minutes of CNN.  Yes, I have friends who work in ERs, I have friends who are nurses at NIH, and I have friends who have kids that needed to be in the ER this week surrounded by feverish people.  Yes, I have put on PPE equipment to protect me from C-diff and MRSA beacuse every third patient have these hospital aquired infections.  Yes, I’ve seen Contagion.  Please just go out and get your flu shot, OK?  They are at every Safeway, CVS and Walgreens.  There are flu clinics at school and work sites. Don’t follow the red herring.

Jeremy took the day off work to chaperone Edda’s field trip to Mt. Vernon.  We talked about Washington crossing the Delaware at dinner tonight.  Vince’s pal, Owen, was at dinner and he’s a bit of a history buff and we wondered if we’d still be an English colony if Washington was unsuccessful in his Christmas Day attack.  Jeremy thought we’d still being an English colony today.  Owen said it would have only taken another year to get independence.

Edda boarded a fancy coach bus which did have a wheelchair lift.

Jeremy was bemused with the conversation on the bus which alternated between kiddie jokes and racy jokes.  Edda’s pals were impressed that Edda had her own phone.  Most kids here have to wait until middle school to get their own smartphones, but not Edda.

I hate to even mention how busy we are because all the things we are busy with are our own fault and because we are excited to be doing the things we are doing.  We are busy!  Jeremy got up at 5 am to start work before he left for the trip and then promptly started work again when he got home at 3ish and he’s still at it now.  He’s set up a permanent workstation in the dining room with multiple screens.  It’s close to the coffee.

Foggy nights and warm beds.

Vince is back from the 2-night camp out.  He has new freckles and a new facial hair.

He came back filthy.  You can see the dirt on his legs.

No shoes.  But he has socks at least!

1) There are more pigs in China than in the next 43 pork producing nations combined.

2) An investigation by the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services found more than one million counterfeit Chinese parts in the Department of Defense supply chain.

For the first one, no wonder the largest pork producing company in USA, Smithfield Foods, is looking to China for growth.  Evidently, there are a lot of pigs being consumed there every day.
For the Chinese parts, we are not only using their counterfeit parts unintentionally but also using their genuine parts intentionally.  For example, Pentagon waives sanction rules on Chinese magnets on our Radar System, landing gear and other hardware for F-35 fighter. Or otherwise, the colossal program can not be kept on track. 

Btw, these days, we use Russian rockets to put up our satellites too.  With all these NATO sanctions, I just wonder why Russian still let us using theirs – not in our military purposes though. 

In short, we all become desk persons.  This, I believe, is the direct results of our brilliant MBAs from our elite colleges – outsourcing (remember this fancy term?).  They and US Companies make millions overnight without doing much but, as consequence, leave all American folk in the dust. 

Our President is still in his campaign’s mood – running around the world, saying a lot, but not much can be delivered.

Not like President Nixon said “Speak softly, but also carry a big stick”