Author: Doris

We trimmed Edda’s bangs this weekend. It seems like we do this every 3 weeks – just because we always only take about half an inch off each time, just enough to clear her eyes… Jeremy is much more patient than I am, so he got to control the scissors. I got to hold Edda’s arms down so they weren’t flailing around and getting into bits of hair.

Vince trying to do some hairstyling. Edda has the longest hair in the house and so she’s the best candidate for braiding and pony-tails.

Edda tips by giving a Hi-five!

This morning at 5:30AM, I sent Mom driving off to her office alone. That hasn’t happened for a long while. As a matter of fact, she hasn’t driven the car for at least 6 months. I was really concerned her driving alone on this winding mountainous road about 7 miles from the gate to the plant itself. She just called me at her office and that was good.

We will not see each other often for at least 2 weeks and that is not usual too. We use to share one bedroom apartment & adjacent office cubicles, working on the same subject, checking each other work and calculations, driving one car and stick together 24/7/365 all the time.

Mom just can’t stop of being a Mom. Our refrigerator is completely full with all her cooking. I guess she is afraid that I will be starving for the next 2 weeks.

Well, I am going to bed again preparing for the first night-shift for at least 35 years.

A friend of mine has season tickets to the Capitals and when her date bailed on her at the last minute, I got to pinch hit (I know, I’m getting all my sports metaphors wrong) and go to the opening game on Saturday night. I do not follow professional sports, generally I find it all a little odd that people spend so much time and energy following wildly well-paid people throw a ball (puck) around. But I’m also a good sport and my friend is insanely excited about hockey and the Caps are coming off an amazing season last year, so I went out and spent $5 on a red T-shirt from Target and booked it to the Verizon center with 18,000 other fans.

The final score was Caps 6 – Maple Leafs 4. I stood up and cheered enthusiastically for each goal and high-fived people I did not know all around me (which was incredibly painful) and it was a lot of fun. I ate the $9 pizza slice, got the Mike Green bobblehead, I learned about many things including all the cheers (C-A-P-S, Caps!, Caps!, Caps!), the horn guy, and that if the Caps score more than 5 goals in a game, one wins 10 free buffalo wings. Oh yeah, I learned a little bit about hockey too.

Metro got me there and back and was filled with people with the red jerseys.

Tonight, it is the Moon Festival. It is a popular harvest festival celebrated by Chinese people, Japanese people (Tsukimi festival in Japanese), Koreans (Chuseok festival in Korean), and Vietnamese people (even though they celebrate it differently), dating back over 3,000 years to moon worship in China’s Shang Dynasty.Of course, there are moon cakes to celebrate. I have never developed liking of these cakes. Besides, I don’t know what’s in it. They stuff a lot of different ingredients that no one can really tell. But, a lot of people love them. Some of these cakes carry an astronomical price tags on it – one bite worth a thousand, therefore, can’t afford [or, not worth :)] a bite.Translations from Chinese are:1) Tonight, you can enjoy reviewing the moon for more than 12 hrs in the whole country (i.e, China)2) Moon Festival in Chinese3) Moon Cakes in Chinese

Well, I will work on 12 hr night shift from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM plus turnover with Rena, starting next Monday (10/5) for 2 weeks. Rena will work from 6:00 AM to 6:00PM plus turnover with me. Really funny, it looks like a family outing affair. And exciting? – maybe 🙂

The federal fiscal year is over. I made it through my two years of being a probationary employee – now I’m a full-fledged federal employee. I passed my certification exam last month and I applied to work from home.

I have mixed feelings about working from home, I love my co-workers, I love going out to lunch with my coworkers, I love going to the on-site gym. I love that I can go up and down the halls and ask “Hey, do you think when they use the word “bonded” that it just means covalent bonds or do you think it includes Van der Waals forces and hydrogen bonding too?” However, I’ve been eating up sick time and vacation time like crazy from doctor appointments/school appointments and various things, I will be happy to be able to just shift my hours a little bit to actually use vacation time for vacation and to see the kiddos a bit more… Also, I think it will help relax the household a little more, I’ll be able to do some more errands during the week, like going to Costo.

For date night, we met at the CVS downtown. The little photo kiosk there is awesome… All set up to print passport photos. We should have done Jeremy’s there as well. 29 cents.

Date night continued in the streets of downtown Bethesda. Bethesda is a little bit fancier than our a little-further-out ‘burb, so the quality of the bicycles parked near the Bethesda Metro stop shot up a price point or two. Jeremy got to ogle them and tell me how totally cool they are…

Batavus bike: price $1028 – has a cool built in lock for the back wheel.

Breezer bike: $1160, cool little headlight setup. Doesn’t it look like is owned by someone who is homeless? What’s with the two duffel bags? This bike also looks to be locked by a very thin cable lock, it would take a thief two seconds to steal this bike. Sigh, maybe nothing gets stolen in Bethesda..

Jeremy took Edda today to Target to get some passport photos. After 1 hour, a handful of goldfish crackers, 3 attempts with a Polaroid camera, they left empty handed. The criteria for a passing photo – looking up, no smile, no teeth showing, mouth closed. We tried 60 times at home tonight, I don’t know if we are going to be successful anytime soon.

After we got home from the camping, we dried off, threw some laundry into the washer and turned around and headed out again. This time to the MD/VA/DC Rett Syndrome family picnic. Great turnout this year – and what do you know? It was not raining! A big plus! Whenever I get together with other families who have a daughter with Rett, I feel like we are all somehow connected by a spider web – a strong, light and invisible line – something that transmits a little vibration to each other where ever we go. OK, that was a little wacky. But you know what I mean.