Author: Doris

Yesterday was my mom’s birthday. We went to Bob’s Noodle 66 (best Chinese food in the DC area) to celebrate!

Edda fell asleep during dinner. She usually loves eating chinese food, but not last night.

Sorry folks, on the relative silence. I’m overwhelmed at work. I have been warning Jeremy for a year now, that there would come a time when I would encounter a really difficult period and now I’m in the midst of it. The past 2 nights, I’ve gotten home well after dinner and just in time to put the kids to bed. I’m estimating about 2-3 months of this hectic work schedule. Can I tell you? By tomorrow I will have worked on 24 patents (7 first actions, 8 amendments, 5 restrictions, 2 attorney interviews, 1 advisory action). Of course, this had to happen over Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations.

A few updates:

Jeremy’s having a ball at work. Here’s a NYTimes editorial about stuff he’s working on. His colleagues are trying to work on the bailout of the automakers. What else? I dunno, but he’s really excited and has a lot to do, but thankfully he doesn’t have so much to do that he can’t be home by 6:15 to meet the kids.

Edda:

We had her IEP meeting, which was both fine and emotional. More on this later.

Vince:

He has a project due tomorrow. He had to make a building. This is how it was last night:

Tonight he put a solar panel on the roof.

Jeremy and I spent the evening at our city council meeting. Jeremy has taken a few moments in the past few months applying and interviewing for a position on the local transportation commission. Tonight he was sworn in to a two year term.

Waiting for his big moment:

Here’s his unanimous 5 votes in favor of his appointment (Jeremy’s sitting in the first row behind everyone, the lady with the red shirt is the mayor)!

Now we are just counting down to the US VP nomination in 8 years!

Jeremy hasn’t shaved all weekend – during story time right before bed, Vince spent a lot of time fondling Jeremy’s cheek, driving him INSANE! Edda chose the story, John Muir and the Squirrel. It was a little long, Edda got pretty tired of it by the end, hopefully tomorrow she will pick something else.

We had Vince’s parent teacher conference today. He’s doing well in the 4 areas – reading, writing, math, social studies (where’s science?). Hold on, I have to find the report card and see if they are teaching our children science in school anymore. Oh yes, it’s 5 areas, it includes science. Whew.

He’s struggling a little with writing – the goal is that by the end of 1st grade, the kids should be able to write an 8 sentence story. Can you believe it? I don’t know how they are going to squeeze 8 sentences out of him.

Are my blog posts even 8 sentences long? I think not (OK. this one might be a little longer, but my grammar is not very good.)

Jeremy spent the day at IKEA trying to buy a kitchen. We are trying to convert our basement into an apartment to rent out. After getting a bunch of quotes from various contractors for sums of money which would take us 5 years of rent to recoup, we figured we would try and do a lot of it ourselves (famous last words, I’m sure).

Jeremy is designer extraordinaire, he has spent many hours drawing, measuring, redrawing, looking at IKEA catalogs, looking at higher end catalogs and then returning to the IKEA catalog. His actual hands-on experience is a little bit lacking. (Jeremy’s a theorist.)

My background in building stems from watching my parents put in basements in our various childhood homes. I also spent a summer working for Habitat for Humanity in Austin where I apprenticed for a plumber who helped me learn all about indoor plumbing (PVC pipes and vents and soldering and sewer lines and city inspections and gas lines). I would like the kitchen to look nice, but I’m not going to spend any a lot of extra time thinking about colors and/or design. (I’m decidedly not a theorist.)

So armed with nothing more than youtube videos, my dad’s expertise and suggestings and a jigsaw, hopefully, the kitchen will be put in sometime soon. We had an original deadline of Dec 31, 2008. Well I’m pretty sure we are not going to make this deadline as the trip to IKEA revealed that they did not have what we needed in stock, so we are waiting another 2-3 weeks until they have it delivered.