Waichi came over last night to say hello and because she has mice and a leak staining her ceiling. As a downstairs neighbor these are reasonable reasons to visit and say hello. The benefits of a second floor apartment include that mice don’t tend to go beyond the first floor and the climb up the stairs isn’t as bad as the third floor. It also doesn’t get damp and flooded like a basement. But the second floor apartment dweller does need to worry about how to escape in a fire since it is a long jump down, potential babies falling out of windows, and solving mysterious problems of leaks and mice. The solution we came-up with for the mouse problem was for Waichi to borrow Jeremy’s cat. There is no solution to the ceiling leak problem but I’ll continue to investigate it.

Waichi is winning an award for being a good doctor and volunteering with doctors without borders. They are flying her down to Washington to be pinned with a medal by George W. Bush in the rose garden of the White House. I was wondering whether the president actually pins things onto people or if he just hands them the medals and walks away. I would imagine that people wouldn’t be allowed to get too close to the president with sharp objects and a doctor might be able to sever a key artery with a pin so I don’t think they will be giving her pins.

Waichi also told us a funny little true story. It was about an emergency room doctor and his wife. The doctor receives a call on the phone from the emergency room and calmly talks to the person on the other end of the phone. His wife then asks him whether he will need to go into the emergency room. He tells her that he does need to go and that she ought to come with him as well in a calm and collected voice. His wife starts to get worried and frantic and asks him what the problem was. He calmly lets her know that their son had been drinking and got into a motorcycle accident while driving home. She then started acting hysterical and wanted to know why he too wasn’t hysterical as well. He then let her know why he could remain so calm in such a terrible situation with this statement - “I have been waiting for that call my whole life.”