Huffman Coding

In the spring of 2007 after a laparoscopic cholecystectomy didn’t alleviate the gastric pain that she was having, my wife was referred to to a specialist and had a sphincterotomy via an endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreato­graphy (ERCP) procedure at a hospital in Indianapolis.  Although it helped for a little while, the intermittent pain returned last summer.

Yesterday, after we foisted parental duties onto grandma, I drove Chris back to Indianapolis for an MRI and another consult with the surgeon.  We were then planning on driving home before the girls went to bed.  We arrived a little early in Indy so we hit the downtown mall to kill some time.  Without the kids in tow, Chris had the luxury of actually trying on clothes in the store before buying them.  She bought a pair of jeans and five pairs of underwear. We promptly got lost heading to the hospital because we had wandered off the little map that they mailed to us ahead of time.  Our GPS never left the minivan back in our garage at home.

The MRI didn’t reveal much, but since the procedure did seem to help before (at least for a little while) it was agreed that it was worth another go around.  And, as luck would have it, there was spot available for surgery the next morning.  Not wanting to deal with stomach pain over in Vietnam this spring, Chris quickly agreed.  It also saved us from another trip to and from Indianapolis.  The only real problem was that we weren’t prepared to spend the night.

After a last minute downtown hotel check-in, we drove to the local Pharmacy in the evening for emergency overnight toiletries.  My wife and I have differing levels of toiletry emergencies.  I grabbed travel sizes of:

• Toothbrush
• Antiperspirant

I talked myself out of getting a disposable razor blade and shaving cream.  The cheap, non-tilting blades scare me and I didn’t think it was worth the hassle of buying a nicer shaver.  Meanwhile my wife grabbed travel sizes of:

• Toothbrush
• Toothpaste (to be shared with me)
• Mascara
• Eye pencil
• Compact
• Blush
• Hair spray
• Antiperspirant
• Moisturizing shampoo
• Moisturizing conditioner
• Liquid makeup
• Comb
• Curling Iron (full sized)

She almost got a hair dryer too, but I suggested that the hotel room might have one built into the bathroom wall.  And even though we probably could have re-worn the same clothes for the next day, we went back to the mall for a clothes.

I went to Eddie Bauer and got a shirt, socks and underwear.  They literally only had one pair of medium underwear in the entire store.  In the back, on the clearance rack, they had thin, yet stiff blue boxers with dogs on them.  Not my first choice, but I figured they would do.  Meanwhile Chris, who was going to spend almost the entire next day in a gown anyway, went back to the store where she had just hours earlier purchased jeans and underwear and got a sweater, camisole, socks and pajamas.

It was an early surgery so we set the alarm clock on my phone for 4:45am.  And we promptly got lost again trying to get back on the map that only displayed the two blocks around the hospital.   The surgery seemed to go just fine.  Instead of a sphincterotomy, they put a stent in the bile duct this time.   We found out in the recovery room, that it is a temporary stent.  So we will be driving back to Indy in a couple of months to have it removed.

But this time we will be prepared.  I will pack the GPS.

And briefs that don’t bunch up when you’re sitting in the little chair next to the recovery room gurney.

I was tagged in a Facebook note by friend. I’m responding here:

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

1. I have 3 beautiful, but very different, daughters.
2. I was born to be a dad; fatherhood is so cool.
3. I am an avid (albeit warm weather) road cyclist.
4. I live for the annual Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure.
5. My wife is balking at my desire to get a third (fixed gear) bike.
6. I am a software engineer and first wanted to be one when I was 13.
7. I play the piano.
8. I once skydived.
9. I cannot smell.
10. I cannot see magic-eye images either.
11. I don’t have cable TV.
12. I still like to do Sudoku even though that is so yesterday.
13. My favorite color was blue when I was young, then it was green and now it’s burgundy.
14. I like amber beer, but I like both wine and Coke Zero better. None of which I drink very often.
15. I gave up on Anathem after only 300 pages.
16. I plan to drink the Apple kool-aid this year and get a MacBook Pro and iPhone.
17. I have no idea how to get my oldest daughter to eat veggies.
18. I have no idea how to get my middle daughter to stop apologizing for everything.
19. I have no idea how to get my youngest daughter to use her inside voice.
20. Off-white is not a good carpet color when you have a cat that throws up regularly.
21. My last bowling score was lower than my last golf round (pathetically for just 9 holes).
22. I always won the arguments with my first wife which is probably why I’m married to my second.
23. My wife does not read my blog or twitterings.
24. I like Facebook for status updates, but find the application requests from others cumbersome.
25. I hate obligating others to do this so tag yourself (if you want) and link to your entry the comments to this post.

Claire loves playing outside in the snow.  She’ll roll around and try to catch snowflakes on her tongue. While I was shoveling the driveway, she was attempting to make a snowman.  It didn’t pack too well and I told her it looked like a Hershey’s Kiss.  When I was done shoveling, she put the officially named “Hershey” snowman on the garage freezer and came inside.

Caked in snow, I told her to take off anything that was wet.  She promptly stripped down and announced from another room:

I’m only wearing a bandaid and my hair.

One by one, we are crossing off items for our trip to Vietnam.

We now have an English translation of the last letter from Marissa’s birthmother and we are in the process of having our letter back to her, announcing our travel plans, translated into Vietnamese.  We don’t know yet where Marissa’s brother lives, so hopefully we can adjust our plans.

We’ve made airline reservations for the flights over and back.  We are travelling through Chicago and Seoul and it’ll be about a day in travel time each way.

We will be applying for visas to enter Vietnam this week, but we first had to have passport pictures taken for the application.  Rather than pay $15 each for a couple of polaroids, I took pictures against a off-white wall and did the photoshop thing.  This (obviously a higher-res version), printed on 4″x6″ will yield six 5-cent 2″x2″ visa photos.

Chris took two pictures of me because she said I looked like a terrorist in the first one.  I should have photoshopped a haircut for myself.  At least I cropped out the numbers she had me hold up to my chest when the picture was taken.  :-)

Because first graders don’t always remember to share what the learn in school, each week Claire’s teacher sends home a summary of what the class discussed.  For the first week back at school, the first graders learned about Venn diagrams and germs.  She sent home what each child in the class remembered about the germ lesson.

Hayden shared:

Bacteria are the biggest germs (bigger than viruses).

Madison learned:

Not all germs are bad. There are good germs in yogurt.

Michaela reported:

There are medicines for bacteria but not for viruses.

My very own daughter, Claire, said:

Don’t pick your nose.

In the first letter she sent to us, Marissa’s birthmother let us know that she had another child, Ri, fifteen years older than our daughter.  For the first few years when he lived at home, he would read the letters we sent in Vietnamese and help her write letters back.

We learned a several years ago that he had moved from Danang to Hanoi and had since met a young woman.   The last letter from August indicated that they were going to get married.  And today we received another letter, which although we have yet to have translated into English, obviously contains many photographs of the ceremony.

Ri and his bride

We hope to meet Marissa’s brother and his wife in March.