Good morning all:

“Somebody ought to call Steve Jobs, who doesn’t need to be bribed to do innovation, and ask him if he’d like to do national service and run a car company for a year.” — Tom Friedman

Reversing my opening from last week, our house has been empty this week. This makes this early morning window of quiet opportunity a bit extra boring. That makes this first morning mug of continuously uninterrupted coffee just a bit duller—but still tasty. I do miss the hustle and bustle of the little guys and their constant search for attention.

All of Thanksgiving week Derek and Kellen kept asking about snow and would we be getting any. Being from Florida this is a really big deal to them. It’s the kind of stuff stories are made of. All week it was sunny and the temperature hovered in the low fifties; that is except for one rainy day. This morning the streets are white, the deck is white, rooftops are white, the grass is white, and it is still coming down. Sorry guys.

Searching for nipples.
Since inception I have made it a point that this post would not fall into a cheap, attention getting, tabloidesque style rut by tossing about attention grabbing words. Yesterday though, I was driving across town on a search for nipples.

Marcia had been looking by herself – unsuccessfully. And to make matters worse, time was running out. Finally she decided that maybe taking me along would prove to be beneficial. Just as leadership became crucial in The Hunt for Red October we found our prey in short order—Evenflow number 2 nipples. You see, Vai is coming home this weekend. Mom Adrianne was running out of time and these were desperately needed.

Yes, Vaioleti is scheduled to come home tomorrow!

Actually, I am on pins and needles waiting for Adrianne to call. Last night she spent the night at the hospital alone with Vai who is now totally removed from all monitors and tubes. The final test for Vai (who celebrated her due date yesterday) is to spend a night with the parents in a small suite removed from the NICU. Earlier in the day she had passed another test by successfully spending an hour in her new car seat. A hearing test given a few days ago proved to be fine. Also, she had her fourth eye exam and Adrianne was told everything there too is excellent and no further eye checks are required for a full year.

Yesterday Marcia and I visited with Vai. We both observed that she is getting cuter by the hour. What a difference, starting life 95 days ago as a 1-pound 14-ounce micro preemie, and now looking at her as a 6-pound 10-ounces bouncing baby.

You might have noted that I have not mentioned daddy Tevita. Well, there is a reason. Last week he was exposed to Marin and his new crop of Chicken Pox. It seems that Chicken Pox is not very common in Tonga, in fact the Tongan language doesn’t have a term for the disease. Unsure whether he has the antibodies for the disease he had himself tested. But the virus needs to grow in a Petrie dish and this takes time. Soooooo, currently he is not very welcome at the hospital.

Meanwhile, I keep getting myself into more and more little “difficulties”. Last week it was hitting my Citroen Deux Chevaux with the ATV. This week I made efforts to store the one remaining piece of patio furniture from the deck. Carefully I removed the tempered glass top from our 6-person table. I fitted the plastic bag over it and carried it downstairs to the drive. Here I set it upright and slid the shipping box it came in over the whole thing. I then carried it through the garage and into the basement, setting it against the wall. Now realize that I am a packing nut, a true fiend when it comes to compact packing. I looked and felt that sliding the box forward an extra foot would be better, and proceeded to move it up. As soon as I did I felt the back end slip off the 2X4 I had it on and heard it ‘ping’ as the back corner (poking through a tear in the box) hit the concrete floor.

Tempered glass is strange stuff. A child could jump on it without a problem. However, a slight ‘ping’ sets off a whole chain reaction. Starting at the back of the box I felt the glass table-top disappear from my grip as it disintegrated into millions of teeny-tiny little bits of glass into the bottom of the box.

There is a slight silver lining. The 30 pounds of glass was already pre-bagged for the garbage pickup.

Make it a great week. Watching snippets of the Big-3 CEOs, the head of the UAW, and my ‘favorite’ congressman, Barney Franks, on television brings to mind an old Mark Twain line – “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Cheers,

Dirk