Trip Recap

So I tried micro-posting on my trip back from DC and it worked reasonably well. What I've been doing is using my Cell Phone to email the posts to my blog. There is a bit of a challenge that you get 160 characters for both the subject and the body. So it does encourage a certain brevity. The only problem I have is that at the bottom of every post is a little tag from AT&T. Which annoys me because then I need to go back and edit them out.

As you can tell I made it home fine, albeit late.

It was really good to get to see everyone. I'm also glad that my dad is doing good. On Monday we drove to Bethesda Naval Hospital (technically the National Naval Medical Center) around 5am (so we were up around 4am). I dropped him off in the Ambulatory Procedure Unit. There were five little bays in the room where he got changed into that fun little hospital gown and pajama bottoms. They took various pre-surgery vital stats and then and somewhere around 7:30ish they asked us all to follow them (all five patients and 3-4 family members). We all walked down the hall, stopped at another bay and picked up another 5 patients and 3-4 family members. It was quite a motley crew shambling down the hall. When we got to a fork, they asked the patients to hand over any glasses or contacts and then said something like "Family members, you can go left here, then right, then down the hall to the waiting room. Patients, if you will follow me...".

Honestly the thought that popped into my head was that god... even the operations are by the regiment in the military...

I went to get Breakfast in the cafeteria, then took a nap in the waiting room. Around 9am there was a tap on my shoulder and a middle aged (mid to late forties?) doctor who said that my Dad was out of surgery, that everything went well and that his kidney stone "popped right out" whatever that means...

We got back to my Dad's place around 1ish... Sat around and chatted, he napped for a while when I was checking train and bus schedules. Around 5pm Beth showed up and we headed off to the metro. Then what followed was high-lighted in my micro-posts. I got to Union Station, waited about 20-30 minutes to find out the train I wanted to take was dead on the tracks. So I hopped back on the Metro Rail, and did the B30 express bus again. BWI itself was uneventful other than getting in a bit late to Albany and not getting any sleep on the plane. Driving home I went a lot slower than I planned since I was so tired and got home around 1am.

I did get a great picture of my nephew Alexander. This ensemble consists of wrap around sunglasses, a bright orange t-shirt, my sisters hoodie, his "laptop" and bright blue boots with bright green lizards on them. Perfect isn't it?