Precocious but extremely cute

I heard this story on Weekend Edition today. Scott Simon inteviewed 7-year-old Ethan Bortnick about his life as a child piano prodigy and his desire to be a zoo keeper. I'm sure I laughed out loud at least a few times. It is worth a listen.

The voice I don't want to hear at 3am in the middle of a snowstorm

is that of one of the nurse midwives, telling me that there is to be a stat c-section in the next few minutes.

To paint the picture for you ... It has been snowing for the last 10 hours, adding to snow and ice already on the road. My car decided that it didn't want to start again the previous morning and was boarding at the mechanic. Miguel's car is so special that no one makes chains to fit the tires. So, that means one car between us with no traction device and I need to get to the hospital now. Add to this when we get out to the car, I come to find out that Miguel doesn't even have a window scraper. Luckily my woolen mittens do a fine job of getting rid of the ice and snow; we make it down the hill without difficulty; the baby comes out beautifully and doesn't need any intervention; we make it back home without slip-sliding away. Thank goodness the baby was okay since the helicopter couldn't fly in this weather if the baby were to need to go to Seattle and the ALS (advanced life support) ambulance was out tending to someone else.

In love

I have to admit that Miguel has to share my heart with NPR. We have talked about writing a love letter to Scott Simon. I do not know a better voice than his to wake up to on Saturday mornings. I must admit that I haven't always like NPR. My dad drove me to school for a few years in high school since I had an "early bird" class, and we always listened to Morning Edition. I guess I wasn't cultered enough at that time in order to appreciate it. In my senior year of college, the Bellingham signal was poor at the Pink House and I didn't want to listen to the jazz on KPLU. (I guess I'm still not cultured enough to appreciate jazz.) KWMU in St Louis was the first station of which I became a member. I listened to NPR all of the time when I wasn't studying medicine - while cooking, eating, playing with the cat, etc. To partially make up for not having Thistle and Shamrock in St Louis, this station introduced me to the program To The Best of Our Knowledge which is this wonderful show dedicated to theme per hour. Here is the description from the website.

"TTBOOK began as an audio magazine of ideas - two hours of smart, entertaining radio for people with curious minds. It's sort of journalistic (because some of us are, or used to be, journalists), but it's never about the President's speech to the U.N., weapons inspections in Iraq, or yesterday's stock market disaster. It's the kind of show that would spend an hour on the future of capitalism, or on the roots of Islamic fundamentalism. It might also spend an hour on hair. Or salt. Or pirates, road trips, psychic phenomena, house cleaning, animal intelligence, high energy physics, or how to say you're sorry. (You'll find all those shows in our archives.) It's the kind of show where someone might mention Charlotte Bronte or Anthony Trollope in one segment, U2 or They Might Be Giants in another."

My favorite NPR station has to be KOPB in Portland. If I though I listened to radio a lot in St Louis, I listened even more in Portland. I got to listen to Thistle and Shamrock again, but alas, no TTBOOK.

Now that I'm in Port Angeles, I restrospecively appreciate KOPB even more. We have access to the "classical music" station affiliated with WSU and while it has some of the good care NPR stations, we have to resort to listening to our favorite programs online.

I can't imagine not having NPR around and getting news solely from the local newspaper. My dad finds it somewhat appalling that the radio is my only source of news. He thinks it is biased as a result. Sure, NPR is a little liberal leaning but my biased view is that it is fairly unbiased.

Snow and the kindness of strangers

Here are a few images of the views upon waking this morning.

And thanks to the person who towed Miguel out of the ditch around midnight. He was in Seattle to celebrate his brother's birthday by watching a WSU men's basketball game. It started to snow in the early evening and so there was quite a bit of snow on the road in places. He went off the road at one point. The guy following him saw him spin-out trying to get out of the ditch and was able to pull him out with the truck he was driving.

Just a coincidence?

What is it about taking your car to the mechanic or children to the doctor that makes them not act up or appear sick, respectively?

My car has been fickle the last few weeks, not always wanting to start very easily or not at all in 1 instance. I had it towed recently which resulted in a tune up and an oil change but not a fix of the problem. It started for them without difficulty. I just took the car in to a different mechanic in town this morning. It also started great and didn't have a jerky idle like it did yesterday. Just threaten the car with a trip to the mechanic and it behaves.

Likewise with kids. I have no idea the frequency of parents bringing kids to the clinic and them looking completely well. The parents say something to the effect of, "I swear she was on her death bed not 5 minutes ago." Threaten them with a trip to the doctor and the illness magically leaves, at least for a few minutes.

Any other examples of this?