First leg done - at my parents'...

On my way!

Finally made my last stop... And I'm on my way!

Well!...

...as of two minutes ago I'm on vacation! Just took my work email off my phone...

I would like to say...

..for the record, the contrast solution for CT scans is immensely unpleasant. If <<>>the side effects I've heard about online are anything to be believed, the rest of my day/weekend isn't going to be immensely pleasant either.

What if they're calm - they can't go in the back?...

Aidan's painting

Aidan created this over the weekend for my office - my new department does an art thing for the staff's kids. It's pretty adorable. I tried to encourage him to use a bit more of the canvas, but he insisted he was done.

It's difficult, of course, to convince him he wants to sit down and concentrate on this type of thing; he'd much rather sit down and concentrate on playing games of various sorts. I got him to stop grumbling by just saying "Okay, today's the only day you have that you have time to do this before it has to be turned in. Do you actually want to do it?" He said yes, settled down, and worked on it. Which I'm happy about on multiple levels - partly because it's awesome to have a kid you can reason with, and partly because he actually chose to do something besides playing, which - some days - is a really nice change.

Uh oh...

Apparently the Russian space program is having a bad day:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/07/proton-m-launch-three-glonass/

Of course, that article confuses me on one important point: it's unclear to me whether they really meant "causalities" every place they put it or whether they actually meant "casualties" in one or more of those places. From context, I couldn't tell.

Not knowing causalities is cause for concern; not having casualities is cause for celebration. Hmmmm.