A work in progress...

• 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...