Beach Day

 We got to the beach nice and early.  There was just a few families on the whole beach.

 After a few hours, the beach got more crowded, and the kids got sleepy after we ate lunch.

 I really do derive a special glee from taking pictures of my kids when they've fallen asleep.

Sam made some friends, too.

The minute I was getting ready to call the kids in from the water to go home, thunder rumbled across the beach and the guards closed it.  So we got stuck in a little traffic leaving, but it was a great day.

Happy Birthday Max!

I don't have the full archive of pictures, but I have a few that I've been scanning.  Look!

You were born the month before your Mom graduated from college.  We lingered in Provo for a few more months, then moved to Maryland.  Here we are posing on the steps with your Uncle John and Jen, with baby Alice, right before we left Utah.

We returned to Utah for a reunion in the summer of 1996.  This picture has the distinction particularly of showing *EVERY*one of us closing our eyes at the exact same time.  Except you, I think, you must be telling us to look at the camera.

 Christmas, later that year (1996).  I remember those matching pajamas!  I think Roxie Jane *might* have still been wearing one of the girl's just a few years ago.

Finally, here you are on your first day of first grade, September 1999.  The time has flown by.

We love you Max!  Happy birthday.

Malaria Day Three; Ibuprofen is Magic

The best news this morning; my blood test was negative for Malaria critters!  I still have to stay until I take my last dose of choloroquine tomorrow, but after that, I can go home!

Well last night was interesting.  The first thing that I want to point out is how *uncomfortable* it is when you have a fever.  No wonder sick babies cry so much!

After I checked in yesterday, I got my first dose of chloroquine, but I also got some ibuprofen.  An hour later, I felt pretty normal.  But over the course of the evening, my fever came back.  This morning, it was all the way up to 101.2, I felt like hammered dirt.

600 milligrams of motrin later, my fever is down and I'm feeling human again.

A super violent thunderstorm blew over last night, and a fire alarm went off. The storm was pretty, but the alarm was obnoxious.  Walking around an enormous empty building while a disembodied voice warns you to evacuate...I felt like I was in a Science Fiction movie.

A side effect of the Chloroquine is increased bruising.  So far it is the only side effect I've experienced. This is from this morning's blood draw for the Malaria smear.  I've never seen my skin that particular shade of blue before.


Can't wait to go home tomorrow!

Record-setting Anniversary

It was a bright sunny day for a wedding.

Too sunny, actually.

It broke records all over Maryland, though you can't tell from the DC weather station.

Jennilyn was a trooper trying to keep the newlyweds looking comfortable for their photos.

Malaria Watch Day Two; No Longer Watching.

I woke up this morning feeling fine.  I had a low-grade fever at 5:30am, but went on to work.

I got a call at 10:15 from a 301 Area code, and had a feeling it was bad news.

"Your blood smear this morning was positive, how fast can you get back to the NIH?"

*sigh*

So here I sit, dosed with my first round of Chloroquine (the side effects look pretty awful, but at least they'll be temporary).

I'm not supposed to check out until 48 hours from now at the earliest, after I have my last dose of the medication.

But I also can't leave until I have two successive negative blood smears for malaria.

First of all, let me assure you this does not mean the vaccine has failed.  I was in a group that took a lower dose of the vaccine, the researchers thought it would probably not prove effective.  So *shrug* I'm a datapoint in *that* part of the study.

Anyone feeling the need to line up and say, "I told you so!" be my guest.  I don't mind.  I knew this was a risk, and I knew this was a good thing, I'm not sorry.

I miss being home, though.  It's so much easier to weather a fever on your own couch.

Can't tell if my growing discomfort is psychosomatic, the onset of the malaria (so far, it's all fever symptoms, achy joints, dry eyes), or the onset of the cure (there are a lot of little malaria bad-guys that are going to die in my blood stream in the next 24 hours, it's going to be uncomfortable while my liver and kidneys flush them out).

If I feel up to it later, I'll write a little about my room.  My roommate. 

Think I'm just going to curl up and take a nap now.

Malaria-watch, Day One

I checked into the NIH last night, and was positive I had the Malaria.

My neck ached, I had a low fever (99.2), my blood pressure (140/95) and heart-rate (100) were elevated.

A few hours later, I was febrile (temp of 100.3); seriously, that's the word the Doctor used to distinguish between the low fever and once I was over 100. So they ordered a blood smear test and gave me some tylenol.  I was certain I would wake up and be confined to the room.

But I woke up this morning and I felt fine! 

I suspect I am walking embodiment of the Hawthorne Effect; I am hyper-aware of every possible malaria symptom now, so every physical manifestation of anything feels like it might be Malaria.  When I clear my throat, if I feel sleepy, if my neck is stiff.

I couldn't find a funny cartoon about observer effects, so here's one about Pavlov instead...

Redwoods!

While in the hills South of San Francisco, the Ritchies took us to a great Redwood Forest Park.

 Sometimes lightning will strike a tree and set the innermost part of it on fire.  Since outside layers are what is really living, the tree continues to stand for years. Which makes for a dramatic place to take a picture!

The grandeur of something this big, this sturdy, was overwhelming.

On the way back to their place for dinner, we saw the tiniest fawn I had ever seen in the wild nursing from its Mom.

Nature is fun!

Never Stop Learning!

In April, I posted about a site where you could self-teach yourself.  But I wished at the time that I could have something like that for learning a foreign language.

And here I have found a website for Learning a language!  A work friend recommended it.

Now I have something *else* to do in my spare time.

Eso si que es!

Surviving Mosquitoes and Posing for Lunch.

I survived the Mosquito Challenge!  Each volunteer was prescribed a tube of Hydrocortisone cream, and I had so many bites (20-25) they gave me an anti-histamine, too.

Two or three hours later, you couldn't even see where I had been bit!   I should have photoed the challenge site when the welts were big and ugly.

Here are some pictures of Suzanna at the cool place the Ritchies found for Emma and Dean's Wedding Brunch.  Suzanna drove almost four hours that day, in record-setting heat, in a stick shift car with no air conditioning.  She's a good sport.

Malaria Update!

Tomorrow morning, at about 5:30am EST, I will be infected with Malaria.  It's part of the Vaccine Trial I volunteered for.  You can read more about the study here.

Friends have expressed concern.  Family have evinced a growing leeriness about my presence.

First of all, it is nearly impossible for me to infect anyone else.  Go read the wiki article about Malaria, it's not "contagious" like a virus. I would have to be bitten by a mosquito of a particular breed, "the definitive hosts for malaria parasites are female mosquitoes of the Anopheles genus."   It's not a mosquito that breeds in Maryland.  So you can't get Malaria from me, and unless you show up with a jar full of non-native mosquitoes, I won't be a vector for your infection either.

I've also been asked about recurrence; Malaria never goes away, right?
 
Not the kind I will be exposed to; I am being bitten by mosquitoes that have the most serious type of malaria, P. falciparum.  That's serious and all, but it means I will not be at risk to suffer a recurrence; if I get it, they treat me, and it's done.  Check it out;

Recurrent malaria

Malaria recurs after treatment for three reasons:
Recrudescence occurs when parasites are not cleared by treatment (See the post-infection process below)
Reinfection indicates complete clearance with new infection established from a separate infective mosquito bite.
Relapse is specific to P. vivax and P. ovale and involves re-emergence of blood-stage parasites from latent parasites (hypnozoites) in the liver.

I'll get bit today.  Malaria has an incubation of 7 to 21 days.  Starting Tuesday July 17th, and for the following two weeks, I will be sleeping in the hospital.  I can leave during the day, but if I start to exhibit any malaria symptoms, they'll keep me.  They'll test me daily for Malaria, and once I test positive, they will treat me for it until I test negative twice in a row.

So I won't experience Recrudescence.  I can't have a relapse.

It's a *little* worrisome, but seriously, life is a serious of calculated risks anyway.  If this works, I did a little tiny bit to make the world tremendously safer.  If it doesn't, *shrug* I'll be feverish for a few days and get paid very well for it.

And hey, free orange juice.

Like Tree Rings. Only with Hydrocarbons...

I don't know how much longer we'll be keeping this.  Poor van, it's seen some rough use.

We've owned it since before Roxie Jane was born.  She's never known a day that the Big Mormon Wagon (license plate) wasn't in our stable of vehicles.

It blew a radiator line just as we were approaching the crest of Parley's Canyon East of Salt Lake, and then coasted the 7 or 8 miles down into the city.

Caught on fire on the way home from North Carolina (where we got the Spencer Yacht logo on the right window), which fire was extinguished by two good-hearted strangers (with extinguishers!)

We've put almost 150,000 miles on it.  Now the brakes are failing.  But I wanted to have a record of all the things it said for us.

We were members of Port Discovery for a year.  Were members several times of the Baltimore Aquarium. 

We are proud of our kids scholastic achievements, proud to be BYU alumni, proud to be from Harford County and to be seen in Aberdeen.

We've camped in it, driven loads of youth dozens (hundreds?) of times to the temple, to the church, to parks, the bay, the river.

We were glad to have its use, even though we've used it up.

Landbeck Women

 My brother-in-law Erik throws a huge cookout every June, his annual Summer kick-off tiki party.  We gather at his house the day after to eat leftovers and celebrate Father's Day.

Here we have three generations of women who married John S. Landbeck.

 This is kind of a funny picture of Grandma Billie, but if you look close over Jenni's shoulder, you can see David Babcock.

It amuses me to catch my kids doing similar things.  Roxie Jane and Emma both sit at the table with their left foot on their chair, their left arm around their left knee.  Seeing Emma and Suzanna relaxing by interlocking their fingers behind their head was just a cute moment.

Banana Slug!

I snapped this the morning of the California reception to show Suzanna.  It was on the stairs going up to Emma's new in-laws' house.

Of course, I can't entitle this blog without hearing the "RingRingRingRingRingRingRing" of a previous meme...