That was a pretty quick weekend. My folks flew in Saturday morning and I gave them a quick drive along The Mall and through Capitol Hill on the way home. Evelin had to go to her book club, so my folks and I went to the College Park Aviation Museum, which is small, but neat, and, since my dad loves airplanes so much, it was good to show him a neat museum that's practically in my backyard. The rest of the day was just hanging around, talking about projects that need doing around the house and catching up on things back in Louisiana. Dinner was at Mi Rancho in Silver Spring and the next morning, they were back at DCA around noon.
Even though they said they were game, we ended up skipping Howard Dean's appearance in Northern Virginia. I'm a bit bummed about that -- especially because after talking to them about Dean a bit over the weekend, my dad claims he's interested to learn more (color me skeptical, but he can be a pretty contrarian Republican, so maybe there's hope) -- but an MP3 of the rally has been posted (link through Dean's Blog for America).
After my folks left on Sunday, we headed back to the clinic for Evelin's shot of MTX. She talked to the doctor on Saturday morning before my folks arrived and he was adamant that she come in ASAP for the shot. Evelin'd wanted to wait and let things grow a little more so that we might be able to figure out where the embryo was, but the doctor was concerned -- because we didn't know where it was -- that we stop things now so that no damage occurred, i.e., a tube rupturing. The nurse who administered the shot was a former oncology nurse, so she had lots of extra cautions about the drug that we hadn't gotten before (for example, flush twice because an active form of the drug is excreted through the urine for about 48 hours after getting the shot and it can become airborne from the toilet. She also said that she really liked the color of the methotrexate (MTX), a vivid yellow-green. Apparently two other common anticancer drugs are red and blue and the three together in syringes look really pretty. I guess you have to come up with all sorts of coping mechanisms as a nurse.... Evelin got two shots with long needles (one into each haunch), but only a little yelp.
She dropped me off at the Zoo on her way home, about 30 minutes early for my panda watch shift, so I got to watch an Asian elephant, Toni, swimming around in the pool in the elephant yard for a while. It was a really different vantage point and she moved so differently than an elephant does on dry land. Especially neat was watching her roll onto her side to scratch her back on the wall of the pool. I also kept waiting for her to spray the crowd with water, but she remained well behaved. I guess she hasn't seen the reaction Shamu gets whenever he soaks the crowd.... Nothing to really report about the bears: Mei isn't quite back to her pre-pseudopregnancy self, but she's much more active. She and Tian are scheduled to get reintroduced to each other today, so it could be a fun day to watch on the webcams.
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