Dad's Surgery

In this first video you see them enter through the hole on his side. The metal clamps you see I believe are propping back his right lung and open his heart. The tube is part of the heart lung machine he was on. The white thing is his mitral valve. You can see how it does not close. When he pulls back the valve, you can see the cords that are supposed to pull the valve shut.
This second video is of his heart after "work". You can see the gortex ring they sewed in place to help hold the valve's shape and the white stiches from shortening the cords, so they actually pull his valve shut. In this video they fill his heart with "fluid" to check its seal and drain it again.

Important stuff

Pumpkins!

Yay! Pumpkin carving time. I hadn't realized how many pumpkins I had bought over the last couple of weeks (six) until I started to find places for them. Luckily, three of them are really small and fit in my centerpiece. Of course, you can never have too many pumpkins when it comes to carving them, especially when you discover the greatness of power tools. Thank you for the dremel Lesa!!

p.s. If you try to use a dremel yourself, do so in an easily cleanable spot (pumpkin dust is a bit sticky).

Toxic Waters

Below is a link to a NPR piece about the health of our water ways and the New York Times page dedicated to the series.
It makes you really want to switch to solar energy

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113927993

http://projects.nytimes.com/toxic-waters

Isle of Haut

Earlier this fall Phill and I went to the Isle of Haut for a party at one of his Advisor's summer house. Upon the drive down there it occurred to me why I haven't seen this advisor yet... he is really far away!

After a two hour drive to Stonington we caught the mail boat/ferry to the island . I didn't take any good pictures of the ferry but it consist of a boat with a lot of deck space on which several lawn chairs were placed (this is still acceptable by coast guard standards apparently).

After riding the ferry to the island we had the choice of catching a 15 minute ride to the house or hiking about two hours through the woods (Isle of Haut is actually part of the Acadia National park system so the trail system- although very wet- is very well maintained). The car below wasn't what we would've been able to ride in , but we did notice that all the cars on the island were older, and without license plates.

Being that it was one of the first days we had seen the sun this year, Phill and I chose to hike through the middle of the island. The hike was quite pleasant and it was very surprising to see the amount of fresh water on an oceanic island. There was even a stream that was about the size of Bear Creek! (You can tell Phill was the one with the camera this trip)

Here is a panorama of one of the bogs we passed while on the island.
And me resting on the beach (note the nice pinkish color I have obtained by this point (who knew, I could burn after two hours of sun exposure in August).

We didn't take any pictures of the house once we got there (we have to work on taking storylines of photos), but there was plenty of good beer (somebody brought some kegs they brewed), food and cute kids (see below) playing on the beach.

Parent's Visit!

Mom and Dad came up for a week to see the fall colors of Maine and Phill and me. Too bad the weather was not the best, next time I'll try talking them into coming during the bug season so it will be a bit drier and camping or kayaking don't seem just a little crazy (aside from the bugs). Despite the weather we got around to all the Maine tourist attractions and mom got to try out her new camera and investigate all the shops.


Mom and Dad along the coast in Acadia National Park



Dad raising the Sails of the Olad in Camden


atop of Little Chick Hill

Summer... Is that you?!?

Today was the first day it reached 80 in Portland (2 hours south), hopefully it will get that warm up here soon! When I learned that this was an unusually cold year for Maine it made me feel a little better, but then I started to wonder if there is a policy to tell the new Mainiacs that is colder than usual.