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John's Back, and Dr.
Luisa's Post Op
J: Last week I
figuratively worked my butt off in California until Sunday morning,
when I returned happily home.
While in CA I managed to get away from the hotel and work to see a few
friends Friday night at Eric and Beth Zuckerman's Badgers night, an
informal game gathering. We playtested a new Kory Heath party game,
then played a couple games of Zendo, and finished up with a Milton Bradley Buffy the Vampire Slayer board
game by Bill Sabram. Buffy was supposed to last less than an hour, but
ended up going a whole season I think - three hours or so. The game is
a lot more gripping than I thought it would be, but suffers from what
Mike Sugarbaker calls "lack of gravity," i.e. no mechanism that
definitely drives the game to a close. Still, we had a lot of fun. Eric
won as the evil vampire master. I didn't get back to the hotel until
after four in the morning, and had to work the next day, but I handled
it.
G: I had some extra work
while John was gone, plus several social events, so I kept busy.
Thursday I went to the Looneys' as usual. I played King Me, Dibs, and
the aforementioned party game of Kory's (hilarity ensued).
Friday I went over to
Mi Ae's place after picking up Kory. Luisa and her mother Gabriella met
us there. Mi Ae had picked up some champagne, since Luisa had defended
her doctorate that day and is pretty much now Dr. Luisa Fernandez
Robles-diaz-de-leon, save having to make some minor corrections. After
celebrating and chatting for a while, I drove everyone downtown to a
lecture, at the National Museum of American History, in a weekend long
series called "Inventing Ourselves." Kory discussed artificial
intelligence with Mi Ae a few months back and she found out about this
lecture soon afterward and ordered up a bunch of free tickets. We met a
friend of Luisa's there named Todd. She said he was her geeky hunky
friend. He was big, muscular, and handsome, but really into computers
and such.
The lecture turned out to be more or less about robotics, called “Flesh
v. Machines,” by Rodney Brooks, director of the Computer Science and
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, discussing his current
research on what it is that separates living from non-living
matter. We all agreed that the lecture was very interesting and
geared for the layman. So Kory didn't learn anything new. There was a
shorter second part by a German woman whose name I don't recall, who
discussed robotics and A.I. in relation to God. From there we went to
Dupont Circle
and decided to try a Malaysian place called Penang for dinner. It was
good, but in the end I would have liked Sala
Thai better.
On Saturday I drove Kory up to Baltimore to attend a show at Motionfest, Izolda and Jacob met
us there.
Rich had been attending the conference and was already there. It was a
great show, although with unentertaining chatter (for non-conference
attendees) from the MC in between every other act. Afterward, we went
(sans Rich, he had more conferencing to do) to Fells Point to look for
food. Izolda was hoping to find a Middle Eastern Restaurant she knew
of, and Kory and I were fondly remembering an Ethiopian pizza place we
ate at once a few years back but had no idea where it was. As we walked
up a street, we stumbled on the place - Izolda's and ours were one and
the same. How disappointing that it was just closing! They suggested we
try the place across the street called Brick Oven Pizza.The food was pretty
good, but after reading their web page I wish I'd gotten a cheeseless
pizza instead of the veggie wrap, which was a bit overly olived and raw
onioned for me.
On Sunday Kory and I went to the Vegetable Garden for dinner,
unsuccessful in getting anyone else to join us. From there we went to
the airport to
pick up John, and for once I was quite early instead of a bit late.
J: On Monday, happily
home again, I decided to move our heavy shiitake
mushroom logs to a shadier spot beside the shed. Halfway through this
task I pulled something in my back, but I finished the job. Now I'm
popping ibuprofen and groaning a lot. I have to remember to pick things
up correctly in the future, and to readjust when I find myself in an
incorrect lifting position. Every year or so I do this. No fun.
Today Gina and I
visited Luisa at her house, where she is recuperating
from yesterday's surgery wherein doctors removed large lumps from her
ovaries. Everything went splendidly - the surgeons managed to complete
the task with minimal incisions, and they biopsied the tumors and
pronounced them benign! We're all relieved and happy with the outcome,
and Luisa has a steady flow of visitors and callers. She was unable to
eat today (she explained that she didn't have enough saliva to chew),
so I went to the store to buy her some baby food -- those little jars
of pureed plums, bananas, apricots, and other fruits you can find in
the store. I used to have a hankering for baby food; sometimes I'd buy
a jar and have it open before I left the store. I figured a jar of baby
food would be an easy meal for Luisa to eat, no chewing necessary. At
the store I discovered that nowadays it comes in miniature
tupperware-style containers! Luisa ate a couple with gusto, and this
seemed to bring back her appetite. Later she ate a bowl of her mother's
soup and some corn chips. Doctor says she should be up and walking
around in five days, and ready for normal exercise in a couple weeks!
We're so happy she's gotten past that ordeal.
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