Embarassed walrus

From my window

I can see the 9/11 light beams from my window

Chaitanya's nursery 'hood

I'm in NYC with Chaitanya and Bobby. We are running around Chelsea near the office and Chaitanya realizes we're a few blocks from his childhood home. We've just passed his old nursery.

Here's a pic of him in front of the old apartment.

NOLA

Honey the pit bull

Here's the dog i'm watching. She's a cutie!

Plastic surgery video blog

My friend Dave had plastic surgery recently and he's video blogging about the experience and his recovery.  





You can visit his profile page to following along during his recovery process, if you're interested.

wienermobile

Oh I wish I were an oscar mayer wiener...

New blog

John and I started a new blog to keep notes about wine, beer, and food. We've been taking a bunch of wine and cheese classes together (and he took beer classes on his own). I realized that a problem I have with learning about wine is that I never remember what I tasted and whether or not I liked it. By maintaining this blog, I'm hoping that over time, I'll be able to see a difference in the way I talk about wines (and food) as evidence of my developing palate and increased knowledge. We'll see.

Please check out our blog: Artichokes to Zinfandels

Cutie under my desk

Condi Rice just walked by

Just another day at the goog

Oh Google

Someone showing off their ride for Bike to Work Day

Surgery pictures

I finally scanned pictures from my surgery. I understand that not everyone enjoys looking at such things, so if you're interested check them out here

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Now playing: Maroon 5 - If I Never See Your Face Again
via FoxyTunes

Biggest strawberry...ever.

This strawberry is the size of a medium plum. Next to it is what I would normally describe as a 'big' strawberry. I even put a quarter in the pic so you can see the relative sizes.

Edit: I'm kinda disappointed that I ate the humongous strawberry because this picture really doesn't do it justice.

Vacation time!

I'm going to leave for my vacation at some point today. John and I are going to drive from here to Coeur D'Alene, ID stopping in Napa, Portland, Seattle, and Spokane. Here's the plan in case you're interested:

Sunday
Wine and cheese class at Artesa Winery and lots of other fun wine tastings throughout Napa. We're hoping to hit ZD Wines, Ceja Vineyards, and Sterling Vineyards. Or we might head up to Sierra Nevada Brewery if we can get to the Sundial Bridge before sundown.

Monday
As we make our way up to Portland, we're going to visit the Tillamook Cheese Factory and possibly some sanddunes for sandboarding (not me, I'm injured). In Portland, we have several breweries we hope to visit plus Voodoo Donuts, Powell's Bookstore, and more.

Tuesday and Wednesday
By this time, we'll be in Seattle. I love Seattle so we'll be busy visiting lots of stuff. I've never been to the Space Needle but we're also going to visit my old favorites like the Seattle Public Library, Pike Place Market, and Bleu Bistro. I don't think I can handle the underground tour again, but maybe I'll make John do it on his own. If we venture outside of Seattle we're going to try to make the Boeing Factory Tour.

Thursday
We're going to leave Seattle and head east toward Spokane. Ideally, we'll be there in time to have lunch with my Grandpa. Then, off to Coeur D'Alene Resort for dinner with my Grandma and her side of the family.

Friday
Fun resort activities and/or driving up to Bonners Ferry, ID where my Grandma lives.

Saturday and beyond
John and I don't really have a plan for getting home. We figure we'll take the most direct route and play it by ear.


View Larger Map

I wish I could've gone to Carnival, but I can't fly (hence the roadtrip). I'll try to do lots of mobile blogging to keep you updated.

Politics and donating

Until recently, I never truly got why people would donate money to a particular candidate. What does my money matter? I could never donate enough to really make a difference. Don't they have enough? Etc, etc. (Yet I don't feel that way about voting.) I just donated to the Barack Obama campaign fund. Honestly, I'm concerned about the country but I feel there's little I can do. The whole system seems to have screwed itself into the mess we're in. I hope my money helps.

Surgery pics

Here are some pics from surgery...

This is me before surgery a week ago:


This is my knee today. You can see the 2 smaller incisions where they had the arthroscopic camera and tools in me. The larger incision is where they had to open me up to repair the cartilage because the arthroscopic approach wasn't going to work. Also, if you look carefully you can see the "yes" they wrote on my leg to tell my surgeon to work on this leg and not the other one.

Surgery

So I got surgery on Thursday. I still have to scan the photos and upload them but hopefully they'll be here soon.

The background:
I've had bad knees my entire life. My kneecaps are very loose and slide out of place. Occasionally, they completely dislocate and cause me to fall for (seemingly) no reason. The question I most often get are "do you have to pop them back in?" and the answer to that is no, they go back in by themselves. The whole thing is very painful though. Over the years, my knees have gotten worse and worse. The frequent dislocations have caused the cartilage on my kneecaps to wear away and become arthritic (pics to come!). It prevents me from running, playing sports, and even little things like hiking on uneven surfaces. My knees just feel so unstable that I get very nervous doing anything besides walking.

I have been seeing an orthopedic surgeon since the beginning of the year to try to resolve this problem. We decided that the best course of action was for me to get surgery on both knees. It turns out I have two problems: 1) my kneecaps are too high and 2) the ligaments that are supposed to hold my kneecaps in place are off balance; that is, the inner ligament is too loose and the outer ligament is too tight, thus the sliding kneecaps. The surgery we were planning was fairly straightforward (from my perspective). My doctor was simply going to loosen up the tight ligament and tighten up the loose one. (At one point, the use of cadaver ligaments was even thrown into the mix - how exciting! But then my doc thinks we can just use my existing ones). That was scheduled for April - as soon as I got back from the CHI conference in Florence.

What happened:
I was in NYC on business the week of February 11th and I had another episode. I was walking through the lobby of my horrible hotel, the Paramount Hotel, and I my kneecap popped. Unfortunately, this one was not like all of the others I've had. I tried to get up and walk it off like I usually do, but I was unable to put any weight on it. I went to the hospital the next day and had to get crutches.

Fast forward four weeks and I'm in surgery at Stanford Hospital to remove a piece of cartilage that got knocked off when my knee dislocated. It was floating around in my knee causing problems since that day in NYC. I imagine things were a little more complicated than my doctor expected since I was in surgery for longer than scheduled. Since the cartilage was in there floating around for so long, it swelled a bit and had to be shaved down before it could be screwed back into place with bio-dissolvable screws. I was put under through general anesthesia - something I am not excited about experiencing again as my body did not take it well this time. My doctor was unable to perform the other surgery (tightening and loosening the ligaments) at the same time due to the nature of recovery. I have a special machine (a continuous passive motion machine) that moves my leg between extended and flexed very slowly. This is necessary for recovery so I'm able to bend it once it's healed. I have to be in the machine for 6-8 hours a day. I'm also attached to a special cooler for 5 days. It's really like a fancy ice pack that has ice water running through it for constant cooling.

The State of California now officially recognizes me as handicapped (woo good parking). I cannot drive for at least 4 weeks. I can't put weight on my leg for 8 weeks, which means I'm using crutches that entire time. I cannot fly due to increased risk of blot clots so I had to cancel business-paid trips to Switzerland and Italy.

More interesting Peru news

There was an article on BBC News's website about Peru being chastised for allowing people to use coca leaves. Here's a snippet

The International Narcotics Control Board released an annual report on Wednesday that reminded the two governments that use and possession of coca leaves, the main ingredient in cocaine, were limited to medical and scientific purposes.

The two countries should "abolish or prohibit activities... such as coca leaf chewing and the manufacture of coca tea", the report said.

People in the Andes use coca leaves to alleviate hunger and tiredness, for medicinal purposes and in religious rituals.

I understand both sides, but having gone to Peru and having drank coca tea to alleviate elevation sickness, I think the Peruvians do have a legitimate cultural reason for their position. Caryl even bought coca tea to take home (remember? At that crazy grocery store where the women were serving samples of vodka and tang? I was so excited about the tang! It was incredible to find new flavors!)

Fwd: knees

My knee is huge!

snow

If you look carefully behind where it says 'cold' and 'snow' you can see the reflection of my brand new crutches. Stupid new york.

Theresa Sobczak

Cold in NYC

My hotel in NYC shows me the weather by the elevator. Cold and cloudy is an understatement

Theresa Sobczak

Kimchi

If you care to know more about kimchi, here's an article that was in the SF Chronicle

Finally, a purpose for science

This article talks about a scientist who wanted to test the idea of "double dipping" - that is, whether or not a significant number of germs are transferred when people dip, eat and dip again. It turns out fewer germs are transferred than expected - and thicker dips are better than runny ones because more of the dip sticks to the chip and doesn't run your germs back into the bowl :)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/dining/30curious.html?ex=1359435600&en=4685daa806b50ab5&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! This is my first post of 2008 and I'm happy to report that my resolution of exercising more is going fairly well. Actually, prior to 2008 I never exercised. I learned to use the gym/machines at work and I'm keeping track of my weight.

Other exciting 2008 news: I'm probably going to get knee surgery this year. The doctors tell me that my kneecaps are naturally too high on my legs plus I have very loose ligaments on one side which is what causes my knees to pop out. In order to solve this problem, they're going to cut into me and loosen up one side of my knee and tighten the other to balance out the forces on my kneecap. I have xrays and MRIs I can share soon.

In April, assuming my knee surgery doesn't prevent me, I'm going to be in Florence, Italy for CHI, a conference for human-computer interaction. I'm supposed to do research all over the world this year, but if my knee surgery conflicts I may have to postpone it so I can do the necessary traveling.

The week of February 11, I'll be in NYC.

Carnival is in April, Liz is getting married in September, and hopefully I'll get to go visit Caryl soon.

Overall, it's going to be a busy year!