Yesterday I got an email from my sister, saying that my mom had gone to the hospital with chest and back pains, and was getting checked out. A couple of hours later, another message arrived, saying that she had a torn aorta and was going in for emergency surgery. As was the case with my Dad a few weeks ago, they said that it was a good thing that she had come in right away, since the mortality rate for a ruptured aorta quickly approaches 100%.

As of this morning she’s apparently stable, and should be conscious as of later today; meanwhile, I’m waiting at the airport at Barcelona for the first of three flights which will get me to Ohio in 18 hours’ time. For all the clichés about it being a small world, it still seems inconveniently large when it really counts.

I bought some glowstick necklaces for Sofia today, and decided to show her what happens when you take a long-exposure photo while dancing around with them (she did the dancing, while I did the photo).

Signs of spring in and around Barcelona… nearly 20C and sunny at Sofia’s school when I went to pick her up this afternoon.

I took Sofia to the zoo today; the primate habitat is the one area that always catches my attention, but not necessarily in a good way. The look in these eyes is disturbing close to how I imagine I would look if I were forced to live in a display case.

I’ve always taken a strange pleasure in working on days surrounding holidays, when the traffic is great and the office is quiet. Particularly on days when Sofia has the day off from school, I can get in early for a change and get caught up on work, maybe catching a nice hallway sunrise while I’m at it.

One of the downsides of having a blog, as well as a domain that’s been around for 16 years, is that the spam volume is unbelievable. The email spam would be unmanageable without the excellent gmail filters (I average over 450 spam messages each day), but the blog comment spam is also pretty daunting. Most of them are simply annoying, but lately I’ve been getting some that are at least mildly entertaining. Today’s winner was: “If my prolebm [sic] was a Death Star, this article is a photon torpedo.”

For future reference, see below.

Amy cut her finger pretty badly a couple of days ago while cleaning a very sharp kitchen knife. After noticing some numbness in the finger, she decided to have it looked at in the local ER.
Sofia decided that this would be a good time to catch up on current events.