Last Friday, my dad performed the last surgery of a career that has spanned over thirty years. By my conservative guess, based on a minimum of two scheduled surgeries per week plus countless emergency room calls, his total career count would have to be somewhere in the vicinity of 5000 operations. For the obvious reason that I have no place in an operating room, I never saw his work first hand, but I have looked over his shoulder at the never-ending x-rays of anonymous reconstructed knees, hips and hands. To me, they were bones and screws, plates and stitches. To him, they were his craft, his passion, his profound responsibility.
Got this idea from drama_kween – here's a quote from each of 15 different movies that I like. I've picked some fairly obscure ones (movies and quotes); good luck with your guesses. When you're out of guesses, you can follow the links to the movies on IMDB.
Thursday morning we discovered serious water damage in our living room ceiling, directly below the upstairs bathroom. Annika called the insurance company and they had their emergency response crew out to assess the damage around 5 on the same day. They did an exploratory look around the damage area and brought in some serious dehumidifiers to dry out the wet portions of the house. The response crew then told us to get a plumber in, and the plumbing crew gave us the lowdown: All of the old, cast-iron plumbing between the fixtures in our upstairs bathroom out to the road has to go. The source of the leak was the soil stack itself, which has a half-inch hole rusted through it.
I sent out mail to a bunch of folks today to let them know that our home phone is offline for the time being. If I forgot to mail you, well, our home phone is offline for the time being.
Well, that was a bad call. SunRocket basically imploded this week, and I'm unlikely to see a prorated return on my flat $200 for a year of service. So now I'm on the fence; I'd sure hate to come crawling back to Vonage in time to watch them implode the same way.
Elena passed away at 12:55 this morning. She was surrounded by her family and close friends. She stayed with us long enough to see her sister Maria who had, at Elena's encouragement, followed through with plans to make a two-week trip to Africa. Maria arrived back at Logan Airport at 10:30 in the evening and set foot in the house at 12:30 a.m.
After giving the whole thing some serious consideration, I am ending my career with Brix Networks. I have had a tremendous seven years there, and will miss working along side some of the smartest engineers I could ever hope to meet; chief among them, my long-time friend and mentor Mr. Bennett. I have accepted the position of Director of Technology at Mark Altman & Associates, a small and successful publishing agency that is looking to add technical leadership as part of their plan for business growth. Many thanks to K. for bringing this opportunity to my attention. Most importantly, thanks to my wife for supporting me in this decision—even as we prepare to bring kid #2 (!) into the world. Obvious symbolisms aside, this is a great opportunity for me and I look forward to the new challenge.
Elena is out of surgery now. The surgeon said that the procedure went very smoothly, and that the tumor was very easy to identify and remove. She'll spend 24 hours in ICU, and another day or two in the hospital; after that, it's her call as to when she leaves. I saw her briefly in ICU and she looked pretty good for someone whod just had her brain operated on. Thanks to everyone for the kind words of support!
I have been lax in spreading this news, probably because the fac't hasnt sunken in for me yet. But to tarry further would be a great disservice to this insanely complex phenomenon that, if all goes well, will be our second child.