• plan for about 120-150 words per minute when you think about length.
• writing for something that'll be read on the page is different than writing for something that'll be spoken.  It helps to try your handiwork out loud to see how it rolls off the tongue or if it's easy enough to follow when spoken.
• If you have a lot of anecdotes to include, you can't spend too much time setting up or elaborating.  I think you need to efficiently set the point/idea up and deliver the story.  I had tons of stuff I wanted to share but couldn't b/c I was on top of 1500 words (the 10 minute mark) before I knew it.
• it's good writing advice in any context, but think a lot about your audience.  I was writing to like, 95% 1st-generation Chinese (though mostly college-educated) so I had to axe a lot of the more flowery prose in favor of to-the-point and easier-to-follow.
• Tone-wise, try to stay conscious of whether you're shooting for more nostalgic or cathartic.  Both will be in there in one form or another but wherever you're going with your eulogy, you're taking an audience with you so it helps to have a defined overall direction.

6.  When I'm emotionally-stressed, I have a trigger-happy anger/lash-out reflex and I would guess most other folks do too.  It's helpful to de-stress when you can and consciously try to be extra patient and calm and even-keeled when you know this stuff is going on.

7.  Invite a friend or two of your own.  It was oddly comforting to have Hoon & Mimi in attendance because even though they live in MD now, it felt like part of my extended Seattle life/family/existence was there supporting me.

1. Vastly better ability to focus and maintain current trains of thought.  It also seems easier to think clearly in general.  I could work on the same thing without distraction for upwards of 40 minutes+, an approximate 10-fold improvement over my doped-free self.  Also, I'm able to do things without getting sidetracked or forgetting mid-stream what I meant to do, both of which were regular occurances for me.
2. Sort of a corollary to 1, but I'm able to ignore distractions much more effectively.  E-mail, web surfing, side coversations, IM all seemed less enticing draws while I was working on stuff.
3. Higher energy level.  I went through a 6-hour interview loop yesterday followed by 3 or 4 hours of finishing my programming assignment.  I really didn't feel tired at all through the whole thing until about 30 minutes before I finally went to bed.

Con's

1. A mild headache that isn't enough to take medicine for, but enough to be annoying.  I had it nearly all day and night.
2. Sleeplessness.  I went to bed at 1 and woke up at 5:30 and didn't really sleep fitfully in-between.  I did chuckle hearing Karen talking in her sleep, in a very sarcastic and caustic tone...hahaha...it's weird, it was like she was condescending to someone she was dreaming about...maybe the dream-version of me?
3. I found myself many times yesterday talking loudly and excitedly.  I had to consciously curtail my chatter...
4. Most alarmingly, a skyrocketed BP increase, post-Adderall in the neighborhood of ~137/97.

I'm not sure what % of the perceived pro's and con's are just placebo effect.  For right now, it's not a slam-dunk for me one way or the other, i.e. it's an easy call to keep taking it or not take it anymore. 

I took 2 yesterday and it was too much.  As such, I'm refraining today and I'll have another one tommorrow AM, as per my doctor's actual instructions (1 week take 1, next week take 2, week after that try 3, all the while monitoring BP and stopping if it gets too high)

I'll play the guinea pig just a while longer...=)

• Groovin' with Mozart
• Gobbling grapes
• Cranking up the fart-stink
• Getting my stretch-on in Yoga class

• Holding daddy upright and manual intervention for daddy's pee-pee guidance system.
• Enema assistance . It' sounds worse than it is in reality; not that much different than say, squeezing frosting into a butt-shaped cake...
• Diaper-change.  TBH, this is almost a vacation compared to you two.  At least here, grampa won't get up and run away before the new diaper or kick his feet into the diaper-payload.

Love, Daddy.

In some other Md-related current events, I went over to All Around Tech today to check up on the progress of my dad's home theater system.  Mike from All Around was super-nice and, with great enthusiasm, showed me around his shop as well as my dad's system (this is just the cabinet without the speakers or TV):

Images like these make me wonder why there isn't some sort of male-targetted marketing equivalent of those ubiquitous diamond engagement ring commercials  (with this type of hardware)  Something where it's Christmas, and the wife covers the husband's eyes and steers him into a room with something like this to surprise him.  The lighting softens, the children jump up and down in ecstatic joy, Christmas-y music plays.  Chokes me up just thinking about it...

Speaking of technology,

Uncle Chien bought this for my dad from Resonant Light (if you click on the link, check out the price)  You're supposed to put your feet on the two paddles on the right which are connected to wires that then connect into the console unit.  I'm not completely clear on the science; the general idea is that they zap electricity into one's body to kill cancer cells.  There are also handles you can grip instead of putting your feet onto these paddles or you can just detach the wires and connect them directly into the bolts on your neck.  Seriously, I'm no theologian, but I'm more or less positive there's an extra-hot space in Hell reserved for people who take advantage of the emotionally vulnerable state of the sick and their loved ones with mean gimmicks...

After dinner last night, we decided to go check out the Linens N' Things closing sale.  I was looking through the mostly-empty prints section when a really unpleasant odor wafted up to my nose.  I looked over to see Elliott waddling by.  Maybe just a fart...until he walked by again and there it was again.  OK, maybe more than a fart.  Linens N' Things is maybe 2 miles away from my house, so K just left the diaper bag at home, figuring she wouldn't need it for such a quick little outing.  At this point, there was no use crying over spilled poo nuggets, the damage was already done.  While we were already there, we figured we might as well just spend a few extra minutes walking through the store to check out more of the sale.

Just moments later, from the general vicinity of Colby, came a Pbbbrrrt! noise.  Then another one.  Then, sitting in the shopping cart, Colby's eyes narrowed into an intense focus and the color drained from his face.  Grunting and panting, Colby eventually topped Elliott by not merely soiling his diaper, but also leaking runny poo through his diaper and onto his pants. 

Now unlike most of his stuff, Colby's carseat isn't a hand-me-down from Elliott.  We bought him a brand-spankin' new Britax Boulevard, which is like the BMW of carseats.  Or the Toyota Sienna if you're Young.  The point, of course, being that I wasn't going to willy-nilly let Colby just get his carseat dirty.

We had no diaper bag, no change of clothes and we were surrounded by tons of ever-so-useful stores like Barnes & Noble, Cucina! Cucina!, Trader Joes and Petco.  So it was time to put on my McGyver hat.  I thought for a bit and went back into the Linens N' Things and asked the checkout girl to cut the corners off of a plastic bag.  She was happy to help and I took my makeshift baby-slipcover outside and pulled Colby's legs through the newly-cut leg holes and tied the bag snug around his back, like how a Hooters girl ties her t-shirt.  We put both boys into the car and drove home with all the windows down the whole way.

Colby, oblivious and happy. 

A rear-view of the bag and my knot.  I wasn't ever in Boy Scouts.  But I did spend the night at a Holiday Inn... 

A side shot of Colby.

This picture is actually from another night, but Elliott had a funny expression on his face and he loves those new pajamas, so I put it up too.

grandson?!

Gramma looked back at the rock in her hand, and then trained her steely momma-bear gaze onto the snake...

...and now there's a quarter-cup of garter snake-puree mashed underneath a rock in my backyard...

Here are some pix I've taken and one or two that were already on my mom's laptop:

Like nearly-narcoleptic aunt-Lora, Elliott used to spontaneously fall asleep in random places like restaurants. Here, around Thxgiving 2006, he fell asleep during dinner as he often did in those days.  K & I improvised pillows out of our jackets, scarves, dinner napkins and other items we've had to scrounge up on the fly.

Around the same time as the previous photo, Elliott and I are playing a hybrid version of Hide and Seek/Peek-a-boo.  We took turns ducking under our respective sides of the laptop screen and popping up and "surprising" one another.  Don't think he realized that when he ducked, I could still see the top of his dog hat...

From my mom's retirement party, taken 1/26/2006 about a year before she passed away.  My mom actually really enjoyed working before she retired, because the work wasn't stressful and she had some good friends at the office.  OTOH, I remember her telling me that retirement was like an awesome pot of gold at the end of the working rainbow.  Lest there is any confusion, my mom is the one in the middle, with the black outfit on. =) 

My dad and I, a couple weeks ago, at Bugaboo Creek steakhouse.  He looks a little better than this right now; at the time this was taken he was having some pretty bad aches in his jaw.  Those aches have since been largely relieved by the magic of antibiotics...

This is Mr Sun, whom I shared some stories about in an earlier blog entry.

Mrs Pei, my dad's cook/housekeeper.  She's about 4'11", so roughly 2" taller than Karen. :)  She's a chubby, chipper, cheerful woman and she is to chinese cooking what LeBron James is to dunking basketballs.  Pictures don't do her handicraft justice, but here's one I took:

Left to right, beef brisket & potatoes, soup, a chinese cold-cuts like appetizer, stir-fried cauliflower with dried shrimp, a spicy whole fish dish, a tofu & pork mix-it-up-with-your-rice-awesomeness thing.

A picture of me with my birthday mug (ty K!) sent from K.

And Lucy, my sister's dog.  In the last few weeks, I've taken her for walks, bought her dog treats and brushed her coat out several times.  You know those stories where mother gorillas nurse stuffed animals or raise kittens or whatever when their gorilla baby is taken away or missing?  Brushing Lucy this morning, it occurred to me I might be projecting my inner mother-gorilla onto Lucy while my kids aren't around...