Wound Vac

In the seemingly never ending quest to get K's foot wounds to heal, she asked Kaiser about using a Wound Vac on her left foot, and they've set her up with one, about a week ago. It's a gadget that creates a low pressure area over the wound, directs drainage into an external canister, and physically pulls the tissues around the wound closer together, which should help the wound to heal.

LCROSS/NRO Launched!

We launched AV-020, an Atlas V carrying the NASA LCROSS/LRO payloads, this evening! This is an amazing mission, looking for water on the Moon in a smashing way! The LRO vehicle will be at the moon in about 4 days, and LCROSS will meet up with it in 5 days, and then again several months later, as the mission culminates in a very dynamic way. The ULA mission brochure is very informative. Also see more pics at SpaceFlightNow's AV-020 page. The NASA website has some good pics and a launch video on their home page, but you may have to search for them, after a few days go by.

Home again

Sigh. I got home from the graduation trip on Sunday evening, after an "interesting" (as in the curse, "May your life be interesting...") travel day. We had a nice quiet dinner and evening with our neighbors Ken and Freddie. Doesn't it figure, on Monday I was so nauseaus I had to stay home from work, just crashed in bed the whole day. No fever, just felt awful. I felt somewhat better Tuesday, so I'm back into the work routine...

Tyler Graduated!

Back to back graduations! Tyler graduated from Cal Poly on Saturday with an MSEE. We are all so proud of him. There were two ceremonies, one big one for the whole college at the stadium, and a much smaller one just for Electrical Engineering on the lawn by the Engineering West building. Both were delightful. Pictures are here.

D Graduated!

Dorothy graduated from high school on Thursday! Woo hoo! Our Miracle Girl! It was a most beautiful day, just a little breezy, and the ceremony went off really well. We were all just bursting with pride. Sumner's pictures are here... Tom's are here... Brighton's are here...

Generally better

K went in to see the Doc and nurse on Tuesday. It looks from the X-Ray that the infection didn't make it into the bone. These days, I don't trust those conclusions very much, but still it's good news. So, she has both feet on wound watch again, but at least we can hope that the left one is on the mend. She was free of nausea for several weeks, but it appears to be back again, although not quite so intense as it was earlier. We must've had a monster power surge earlier this week. Several circuit breakers tripped, outside and inside the house, but after resetting them, all seems well so far.

Mandy and I continue to get out on weekend and evening walks. Here's a pic of the field across from the light rail station, and an overhead showing where I shot it, just for fun. With the onset of Spring, it sprouted a carpet of lush green weeks. Mandy seems to really appreciate the freedom she gets, when I let her off leash here, although I do worry about coyotes, so I'm always scanning the area. We're still occasionally seeing the young foxes playing around their den in the evenings, as we drive by, on the way back from K's dialysis sessions.