Back from London. I arrived at SFO and in the arrivals lounge was greeting by Jacob running to give me a big hug. Is there anything better than being the parent of a 3 year old? And it was great to see him running again after he got his cast off earlier in the week. It was also great to arrive in the sunshine after being in bitter cold London/Paris where we even had a touch of snow. Just to stay on the Jacob theme - he has finally replaced the love of his life (Edie) from London with a new infatuation (Lilly) at the JCC in Palo Alto. All week long he was pronouncing, "I want to play with Lilly," or "I played cake with Lilly" or "Can Lilly come over?" The cutest was when Tania went to pick him up on Thursday and the group in the JCC was singing Shabbat songs (note: they celebrate on Thursday since there is no class on Friday) and Jacob shouted at the top of his lungs, "I want to sit next to Lilly." Ah, young love.
And we are starting to really see light at the end of the tunnel in all of the 
Suster/Kandra sagas as evidenced by Kay now up, walking around much and generally looking like she feels much better - see! But we seem to be taking two steps forward and one step back, as Tania is now having health issues. Her joints have all swollen up and become painful making it difficult to even walk or hold Andy. After a week of pain she went into the doctor for blood tests, which was a bit scary but the worst of possibilities all came back negative. No big improvement on Tania's condition but at least she got the okay to take pain relievers from doc. (who as an aside is a female with the amusing name of Dr. Shih - pronounced "she" :-)
And how are the Suster / Kandra families passing their evenings away as we go through convalescence? (Yes, I had to look up how to spell this) We are undertaking that time honored tradition of 32 million other Americans every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings - filling our evenings with Simon Cowell, Paul "is she drunk?" Abdul and Randy "Dog Pound" Jackson. Jacob has even become a fan of American Idol this year and is dancing around during the songs. In case you missed it - the really annoying girl from NY got kicked off last night (2 months too late) along with baldy, blondie and the crooner. We collectively don't like Gideon (75/1 at the bookmakers) because his smile is too weird or Ace (4/1) because he is in love with himself. We like the girl whose mom is a music teacher, the young girl who was in the Lion King when she was 10, the big heavy girl and the Southern guy with the shaved head who needs braces {correction: Myron, the Amercian Idol aficianado, has challenged my description and we had to resort to the Internet. I can confirm that he has been proven correct that Elliot Yamin actually does have hair! http://www.idolonfox.com/contestants/He also corrected my spelling of Gedeon!} Tania & I also like the guy who sings Bon Jovi - I guess that is a generational thing.
And clearly the whole family can feel better about even the worst of Andy nights because he has learned the subtle art of charm. Young Andrew is now smiling on a regular basis, which I have decided must be an inate survival instinct of humans. Were 
he not smiling soon I think I would have been on the verge of selling him on eBay the other night for screaming the entire night when I had an early morning meeting. I guess Tania eating broccoli and then breast feeding might have made her an accomplice. But then I see him the next morning with a big wide grin on his face and it is hard to do anything but just love him. He is growing well and got his first set of shots at the doctor last week along with the "all clear." And his neck is developing well, which makes him more human-like and he can be balanced to sit up on the swing that Bubbie bought us.
And just to have one Mark technology comment to follow up on my last post, I attended a Web 2.0 conference this week at Microsoft's Silicon Valley headquarters in Mountain View. I am now 100% sure that it is a web 2.0 bubble (or I am now old and cynical). The presentations in the morning were by a bunch of geeky, 20 something programmers whose sole pitch to the audience of investors and journalists was how cool their technology was (it wasn't) with ZERO thought about how they would make money. It is clear the exit strategy is to be bought by Google or Yahoo! and make millions. 99% of them won't. And the one answer any of them had about making money was "advertising revenues". Anybody notice Google's stock slipping over the past few weeks? Might improve again but I would say that its decline is due to the realisation that the advertising market is not unlimited and one has to have other sources of revenue to continue growth. And the realilty is that 95% of Internet ad revenues are derived by the top 10 companies. We were so bored and turned off that we left at lunch time. We sneaked downstairs and ate in the Microsoft cafeteria. I can confirm that it is very cool. To quote Stuart, "better than Whole Foods." And it was. And if anybody knows Stuart you can find out his latest news including the announcement of the sex of his future baby and other happenings at http://www.s29lan.com/blog/.
Couple o' more pickies. Over and out.
What title song from the famous album by the Eagles best exemplifies Kay & Myron's stay with us in Palo Alto? Okay, so the album cover gives it away. 4 months to the day that Kay & Myron arrived in our "Hotel California" they have their tickets home for tomorrow morning.
