The last year has been beautiful

The last year has been beautiful.

I figured out how to better split domestic responsibilities with Michael and adopted the life-changing weekly spousal one-on-one meeting. I relished no longer having dinner be my problem. I went on daily walks with Maggie and Michael and marveled at the beauty of our home in the San Francisco Bay Area. I biked around San Francisco and enjoyed excellent food with Michael and Maggie, our very good girl. I took a multitude of pictures of Maggie and cut and threw endless pieces of carrots and green beans and radishes for her. I expanded the "foods dogs can eat" list on the fridge. I picked up trash and Maggie's and other dogs' poop at the park. I discovered a great new hike we can enjoy with Maggie. I comforted and distracted Maggie during thunderstorms and fireworks. I had Wellness Wednesdays workouts, dinner, and learning with Michael, Claire, and Maggie.

I took drastic measures to eliminate invasive weeds, built new garden beds, and coaxed the garden to be more like my vision, with strawberries, raspberries, passion fruit, olallieberries, lavender, snapdragons, carnations, blueberries, corn, onions, tomatoes, garlic, green beans, radishes, carrots, potatoes, lemons, limes, pomegranates, plums, apples, avocadoes, peppers, tree dahlias, lettuce, bok choy, nasturtium, cala lilies, camellias, hydrangeas, and more. I sorted a ridiculous amount of objects, mostly trash, dug up in the yard.

I created a baking calendar to make and enjoy my favorite goodies over the course of each year. After Reading How Not to Die, I adopted a vegetarian diet and developed a really healthy and delicious smoothie recipe. I had a delightful conversation with the person in the painting I inherited from my artist grandfather. I meditated and savored my bed. I mourned the decline of Twitter. I set app limits and loved it. I became overwhelmed with all the things I wanted to do. I drew boundaries. I finally processed an email that had been in my inbox for years. I paid someone else to take the headache of taxes for the first time this year and was ecstatic when we filed a few days ago.

I grew as an empathetic manager and cheered on many people at Techtonica. I was censured for advocating for inclusion. I received a raise. I lost a job. I learned about negotiating severance and shared what I learned. Layoffs caused hiring partners to back out of their agreements, so I negotiated contract terminations and found solutions for unplaced grads and launched a new Techtonica program to support past grads looking for jobs. I said goodbye to Techtonica's Partnerships Manager of three years and interviewed and negotiated with job candidates before hiring someone amazing who starts next week. I became the resident feedback expert. I learned about and advised and played Gartic Phone with Techtonica participants. I gathered feedback, implemented changes at Techtonica, and had the satisfaction of seeing participants and staff members thrive. I learned to stop working in the evenings.

I picked up antique woodwork and furniture restoration. I figured out how to safely and effectively strip lead paint through a lot of trial and error while devouring audio books at 2.5x. I acquired a foosball table, Eastlake furniture, and a barrister bookcase. I dusted off my piano skills and the perfect 1895 piano built in San Francisco and learned a song I've liked since I heard a friend play it in Leipzig. I visited lovely historic houses and joined an old house community. I saw a tiny Buddhist temple and learned about the history of Chinese people in Mendocino County. I installed rope caulk, bronze weatherstripping, and portières to make the winter less miserable for us.

After years of mostly business writing, I started writing for me again. I researched my great uncle who died the year I was born and found out some fascinating things about him from past students and schools he worked at, then wrote about him and my grandma. I received a letter in shorthand from my grandma to treasure forever.

I continued to learn about and try to be a better advocate of anti-racism. I managed not to suffer too much from allergies with a dog in the house, but was sick and had a mysterious skin bump and weird allergic reactions to stuff outside. I started having my prescriptions mailed, and was relieved that my doctor could prescribe the restricted daily allergy medicine, Allegra D, that I'd been buying every two weeks for years. I discovered the best non-fogging, sanitizable, breathable mask, Airgami. I lost my keys. I bought two of the most comfortable Duluth coveralls for projects but then couldn't stand to make them dirty.

I appreciated over 100 books, especially A Little Life, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, and Ejaculate Responsibly. I was in charge of the monthly family book club, mostly so I could talk to my family each month. I donated to organizations planting trees every month in hopes of curbing climate change. I grumbled about cars and smoke and noisy motorcycles and junk mail and sexism and people painting woodwork and more.

I enjoyed visits and email and text and cute and funny video exchanges with friends and family.

I'm pleased with the life I've built and who I've become and I hope to grow and experience like this over the next year, too.

Tl;dr: Life has been very full in the last year and I'm looking forward to more.

Recognized by LinkedIn

LinkedIn chose me to be on their first "Next Wave" list of professionals 35 & under—I was in the top 10 for software (you can read more here). This is what they wrote about me:

Any good engineer can solve problems; Glauser challenges the assumptions behind them. If you missed the #ILookLikeAnEngineer hashtag and billboard campaign in 2015, then you also missed how Glauser, 31, prompted women and minorities throughout the tech industry to empower themselves and to express their identity as engineers. In a similar vein, she’s now working on a startup that will help further empower low-income individuals by giving them free training and helping place them in companies looking to increase diversity. Glauser completed Hackbright Academy in 2012 and has worked as a full-stack developer in several different companies since then. In addition to her tireless efforts to create opportunity in software engineering, she also serves as the Lead for the San Francisco PyLadies meetup.

I don't really know how they came upon my name, chose me, and found out all of those details (it seems a little too specific to be directly from my LinkedIn profile, but maybe not) but it was definitely an exciting day with a lot of people reaching out and following me on various platforms. My feelings were varied from embarrassment and not wanting to share, to doubt that they'd chosen the right person, to being humbled by being placed with other seriously amazing people, to being glad to have some of my hard work recognized in some small way.

I ended up sharing in many places for a few reasons:

1. I was still in the midst of running the crowdfunding campaign for Techtonica and didn't want to miss any opportunity to drive traffic to Techtonica,
2. Michael threatened to share if I didn't, and
3. I'm always hearing about how women understate their accomplishments and I'm working on not doing that.

Hilariously enough, when some people from LinkedIn first emailed me and said I was in the running for an award and asked for my best address, I stupidly told them, "This is my best address," thinking they meant email address. When they came back asking for a mailing address, I became really suspicious and asked what they'd be sending and if my mailing address would be added to a list and doom me to never-ending snail mail junk. They didn't answer me the first time, and when they followed up, I again asked the same questions before they told me, "We want to send you a gift for winning, but please don't tell anyone yet, and no, you won't be added to any list." Still, I wasn't quite sure if these people were really from LinkedIn, so I gave them Michael's office address.





These sunglasses arrived in a box much bigger than the sunglasses. They were in a special plastic case nestled in nice packaging and all of that was wrapped in tissue paper. I told Michael, "These are either the most expensive sunglasses I've ever owned or the most delicately-wrapped sunglasses ever."

Thanks for the honor and the gift, LinkedIn!

Package from Claire

Our first package arrived with impeccable timing. My cold can go away and I can make stuffing. Yay!



 Thanks, Claire!

I'm Grateful for the Helpful Tech Community

FYI: ESPN's developer blog posted a picture of me.



See the woman next to me? Dheerja. She totally helped me figure out frontend stuff. I marvel and marvel every day about how helpful the tech community is. I never felt like this in academia; in fact, I felt quite left alone to figure things out myself, even by my professors sometimes.

Joseph McCullough Skyped with me to help me understand requests and parsing.

Kenneth Love chatted with me to help me get my Django stuff set up.

Skillcrush helps me by publishing information in understandable English.

Hy Carrel emailed to make sure I knew about a Python event and then introduced me to some helpful people at the event.

Julia Grace (my mentor) and Charles Ruhland looked over my code during the weekend after I sent a desperate email.

Christian and the other students at Hackbright have been generous in answering my questions.

David does networking so I can focus on learning.

Michael (that's my permanent boyfriend, a.k.a. husband) has talked me through my code despite not knowing what was going on himself, as well as through my "I want to give up" moments.

This list is never-ending, it seems, so I'm finally just going to go ahead and publish it as it is now to give you an idea.

Wedding Sunglasses

I have to tell you a story.

While looking at the colors I was considering for our wedding, I saw some mint-colored sunglasses online and I couldn't get them out of my head. I thought it would be fun to get a whole bunch of those sunglasses for the wedding party and I and my sister spent hours online looking for cheap mint sunglasses. It seemed like we weren't going to be successful.

Then one day, I was at Ross for some reason and while I was standing in line to get whatever it was I was buying, I saw minty sunglasses! I bought the two pairs they had and asked about calling other stores to see if they had them. Unfortunately, there just weren't enough within a reasonable distance, and the price ($3.99) was more than I was willing to pay for around 30 pairs. I wasn't about to give up, though, so I emailed the company on the tag, Icon Eyewear, and asked if I could get 30 pairs for a good price. To my surprise, I got an answer fairly quickly saying that they don't do retail, but asking what I needed them for. Because I'd heard so many times that as soon as people hear the word "wedding," their prices go up, I was hesitant to answer. But I finally answered with two words: "Wedding party." The man who'd written me back, Jack Woods, told me that he'd see what he could do.

The next day, which was eight days before the wedding, I was in Chinatown looking for cheap sunglasses because a friend had suggested that I just buy a whole bunch and spray-paint them the right color. Right as I was getting up the courage to bargain, I checked my phone one last time, and guess what? I had a new email from Jack Woods of Icon Eyewear. Here's what it said:

With a little persuasion I have convinced the powers that be to do a good deed for the day. Please send me your address and we will ship you 30 pairs on us for your special day.

Best of luck,

Jack

Whoa, what unexpected generosity! I was bursting with joy as I left Chinatown. Jack shipped the sunglasses to my parents' house and they were a fun addition to the usual boring-ness of the dressed-up wedding party.













Thanks again to Jack Woods and Icon Eyewear!

Windy Sunday on Bernal Hill

Beautiful windy, sunny afternoon on Bernal Hill.




It's a good day to live in San Francisco.

Why I Love Google So Much

Yes, it's true. For over five years now, I've had "I love everything Google" on my resume. So when a potential employer emailed me and asked why I love Google so much, I had to do a write-up. It's by no means perfect or complete, but it was enough for him to ask if I'd already written that before he even asked me. Of course, it was also enough for him to ask me why I don't just work for Google. Anyway, I thought I'd share:

Why I Like Google
by Michelle Glauser

I like Google because it was started by nerds who understood that usability and fun/art/interesting stuff/[insert something here] can go together, such as in the case of Google Doodles. I love the way that Google will take on diverse (dare I say "lofty"?) projects that seem worthy, whether monetarily promising or not. Google is admirable for its way of not even making the effort to brush off criticism; criticism doesn't stick because of Google's confidence in its products and its dedication to improvement, such as the way Google responded to an inundation of emails about Google Video being discontinued by saying they "should have done better" and creating a button to transfer videos to YouTube.

I think Google is the postmodern company--the company defies traditional boundaries for technology as well as for company culture. Some people hear about what Google employees enjoy and wonder how Google can ever get anything done with its employees jumping in ball pits and playing on giant chess boards, but Google understands that people will be attracted to Google's uniqueness, happy employees will stay longer, and creativity can blossom.

I love Gmail's seemingly paradoxical way of having a plethora of settings and yet a clean, simple design. I heart the settings that make their way out of Labs. I love the simplicity of Google Search, Google Analytics, Google Image Search, Google Books, Google Translate, Google Maps, Google News, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Google Chat, Google Docs, and Google Voice--all of these tools make my life easier. Google's dedication to realizing ever-better dreams hits a good note with me. Many times when I've thought, "Google should make something that would [fill in the blank here]," it hasn't been long before I've seen my uncommunicated idea come to pass. Impressive that Google can read minds, no?

I love that Google is unafraid to do silly things such as to come up with a setting so that before sending a message at night, you have to solve some simple math equations in order to prove that you're in a right state of mind. And what other technology company's name has become a verb in so many languages? I think that if other companies, individuals, and dare I say even governments would incorporate Google's products and attitudes into daily life, they would be making a step in the right direction.

I could go on and on (I'm sure you've seen that on my blog already), but I hope I've given you at least a glimpse of why I love Google so much.

Sunny Sunday

I had a fabulous day today. I woke up feeling happy from a telephone conversation I had with a friend as I was laying in bed, ready to fall asleep. The weather was so lovely I went to church without a jacket. Church was, as always, calming. I got to play the organ, and we sung two boisterous hymns that I really enjoy. The talks were well-thought out and the musical number was simply amazing (Elder Clawson played "Oh, How Lovely Was the Morning" arranged by Marshall McDonald), and Sunday School was, as usual when Brother Bauerfeind is teaching, amusing and informative.

Then, I had the opportunity of giving the Relief Society lesson about serving others (Sister Lederer played the piano for me in the primary). I purposely had them name the things that one would normally hear in a talk about service (that we follow Jesus's example, that it is actually serving God, that it blesses us, etc.), and then I said, "We're going to discuss some other things." President Monson's talk from October 2009 was the basis of the lesson, and these are the things I found interesting:

• He reminded us of our baptismal covenants, that we are willing to carry one another's burdens so they are light. He said most of us already are willing, but actually carrying, the way Jesus did, is something we sometimes need to be reminded to do.
  
• He focused on daily service.
• He asked, "What have I done for others?" not, "Have I done any good for others?"
• He talked about communication as a form of service! Wow. He said that we often live side by side but we don't communicate from heart to heart. (We talked a lot about this one, especially when something needs to be critiqued.)

We also talked about the five languages of love and how they help us to know how to serve people. I told them about developing love for my grandpa through service and listened to their examples as well. One sister told of how a friend of hers came to her and just needed to talk about things going on in her life. The sister felt bad that she couldn't really do anything concrete to help, but the friend was so thankful that she had done just that--listen. That was all she had needed. Then, I handed out post-it notes and we thought up some real things we could do this week for other people. Some ideas were:

• Visit a sister in a retirement home.
• Invite someone to eat cake with you.
• Call someone.
• Ask the bishop whom you can help in the ward.
• Fast and pray for someone.
• Fast and pray for ward leaders.
• Give someone flowers and a card.
• Write a nice card to a ward leader.

I also reminded them that there is a time in life when we have to be able to accept help (like when Mike had me write a list of everything I had to do besides my Master's thesis, and he figured it all out for me), and I encouraged them also to ask someone to do them a favor this week. I wish I could hear their reports later, but I'm not usually in the Relief Society anyway, so I doubt that will happen.

After church, I went home to get some sugar for a friend and then I had a bit of lunch and enjoyed sitting in the shade in the beautiful warmth wearing some awesome pink retro sunglasses that matched my shirt. Then I got to go back to the church to meet with the elders. The investigator who was supposed to show up probably ended up watching the World Cup, so they practiced teaching me. It was so uplifting despite the occasional roars from the surrounding area every time something exciting happened in the game, and I thought of some questions and got some good answers that I'd never really thought about before. And Elder Clawson, who I found out is an Olympus Titan, let me copy his music. Suh-weet.

Now I'm home and I'm ready to hit the sack. I love Sundays.

Steuer Fertig

So, my tax forms are all filled out and in the mail! Wahoo! (Thanks, Geli!)

And tomorrow I'm going to the temple. Hallelujah!

Happy Dogs Make Me Happy

Another happy picture.



















Found here.

Child at Heart

This makes me happy.























Found here.

Happy Hippos

Found here.

Please Send More Chocolate Cake So I Can Trade It for Jelly-Filled Donuts

Yesterday was awesome.

1. I got caught up on some desperately-needed sleep.
2. Both of my thesis advisers said they could meet with me about parts of my draft. (Better than nothing.)
3. Plans for next week worked out.
4. I spent about 12 hours doing the last part of research for my thesis. It also happened to be the most fun part, the part that made me pick this topic--reading through the more than 600 pages (175,000 words, yes the size of several novels) I have gathered about mommy blogs in the last two years.
5. I received no less than five Pfannkuchen/Berliner (that's jelly-filled donuts) from my roommates today. Last week, I was given a cake (thanks Mark and Julia) that had chocolate in it, so I put a note on it saying, "If anyone wants to trade this cake for some Pfannkuchen, that would be lovely." When pieces of the cake started disappearing and no Pfannkuchen appeared, I thought it had failed. Nope. Suh-weet!

Remember the cat and the duck outside my window (facebook stati)? Now there's an annoying, repetitive sound which is either a hamster of unusual size, some kind of extremely-lost jungle bird, or a monkey. And today it had friends around so it sounded like a jungle outside, but that and the neighbor downstairs using his electrical tools to build something couldn't get to me.

Now I'm going to eat another donut.

Stressful Successes

Reasons why yesterday and today were stressful, but good:

The German Brötchen I had for breakfast were crispy and warm.

I got some interesting comments on my blog.

I measured our apartment and made a map. My room is officially 10.17% of the apartment, and I got to be entertained because Aaron wanted to map it in AutoCAD and we fought over the numbers on the telephone until he realized I had my paper turned a different way.

I did a whole bunch of math to figure out how much to pay for the gas bill, and the number came out even. Sweet.

I didn't have any time to make plans for my class, but the time went fast.

After class, one of my friends (Renny) stopped by to say hello.

I couldn't find my bike after class, but I finally found it against a wall near to where I had locked it. (There are at least 300 bikes around there at that time of day.)

I got a step closer to getting paid for the last three months of teaching (I hadn't had any time to give the school a receipt since I'm a freelancer).

The secretary let me use her copy card to copy the myriad of papers I had to turn in for yet another 2-hour student job. (More hours just to fill out the darn thing.)

The books I interlibrary loaned (yes I just used that as a verb) haven't gotten to the library yet--meaning less reading waiting for me.

It was decided that I get to sit in front on the way to the Pentacost YSA conference.

My tomato plants (try 2009) peeked out of the dirt.

I got up at 5:15 for two reasons: to call my sister on her birthday (no one answered, but happy birthday, Heidi!), and to mop the kitchen floor. Yes, a.m.

My roommates and I had a good conversation today. (More on that later.)

The battery on my computer just up and died, but Apple said I can go get it replaced at my local Apple dealer.

Mike came by and helped me finish some of the things on my to do list.

He set up an appointment with the podiatrist for me. Maybe she can cure my crazy toenail. Or at least give me some tips.

Mike also picked up my inhaler from the pharmacy--that's right, I realized that my wheezing after football two weeks ago must be sports-induced asthma. Sica, you'll have to tell me how to use that thing.

I got some thesis writing done. But only a very, very little.

I seem to be a broken down old lady: my feet hurt, my shoulders hurt, my wrist hurts, my neck hurts, my toe hurts, my knee hurts, my throat hurts, I'm too tired to ever DO anything, I'm getting . . . less thin. But I'm still alive and most of those things are ignorable. Or I can at least only really think about one at a time.

I was amused as I got the answer to my question about where to part hair during a hair cut--I guess I parted my hair a little differently today (without even knowing it), and now I have one strand that's ridiculously longer than the others. As long as it's tucked behind my ear, it doesn't matter. I just consider it an extreme A-line.



I had lovely French music playing from my laptop, though I couldn't find where it was coming from (too many links open, I guess).

Now share your own stressful successes so I can smile.

Belated Birthday Shoes Story

So I just realized I never posted the post about shoes that I was planning on posting. Do you realize how spoiled I was this birthday? And it was so fun to have contact with so many people I love.

I love presents that are useful, and I definitely was in need of shoes. I mean, check these out:

That's my finger sticking out the side.














This is the very stretched-out heel, which caused a girl in my ward to tell me that my shoes were too big. And see how the strap had been sewn on by two different shoe repair stores?













That's a chunk that somehow went missing. You can't really see how deep of a chunk it really was.













Those shoes had served me well. They were the best for working at the FHL and awesome for travel since they were comfortable but versatile. (Thanks Mom!)

But I needed some new ones. And my friends and family made my birthday awesome by fixing that problem.

-Apparently my mom had a heyday at a sale, because she sent me four pairs of Sunday shoes!

-And Amy got me supportive new jogging shoes which I already took out for a run.

-And Mike, who has seen me pining away at the shoe store before, worked with Jenny to get me the shoes of my dreams. Rewind 13 years. That's more than half of my life, people. I was a dorky, scrawny fifth grader with long brown hair (wow, except for the scrawny part which I wouldn't mind now, I'm back to that status). Craig (of my Pink Lightning story) and John Barrett had the shoes that started the fad in our grade. Pretty soon, it seemed like everyone except me had Sambas--the black indoor soccer adidas shoes that looked so sporty and cool. But they were always too expensive for my parents and when I started buying my own stuff, I could never justify such a purchase. Sambas have had a firm grip in the clothing industry the whole 13 years I've wanted them, Adidas never saw a need to lower the price. Now, living in a city with a large population of students, I see even more Sambas and it wasn't long before Mike noticed me noticing them everywhere. So he asked a lot of friends of mine to donate a bit until there was a sufficient amount to get me the shoes. Yay yay yay!

Here I am, sporting the shoes I'd waited 13 years to get:














And notice the diagonal picture. Those German guys! (Click here and here for more about that.)

Thanks to Mom, Amy, Mike, Jenny, Seppl, the Dixons, Aaron, Antje, the Bertholds, Alex, Victoria, Robert, Petula, Jakobis, Dajana, Steffie and Holger, and Judith and Daniel.

Room Makeover

As I mentioned in my Stollen post, Sabine told me she had some curtains I could have and measured my window. Well, "I have some curtains you can have" turned out to mean "I could get you some curtains." On the following Sunday, she showed me an ad and asked what color I wanted her to order. I was so surprised that I pointed to the terracotta ones. She said she would have guessed that I would pick the orange (the selection wasn't that great anyway). Later, I kept kicking myself for choosing terracotta because I knew that I hated that color but the picture had looked so red, but I felt like too much of a beggar already to ask for something else.

A couple of weeks later, Sabine and her hubby knocked on my door. I was so grateful and glad to see them, and brought them to my room where I had set up a borrowed ladder. She started putting the rings onto the curtains, while he began to say mean things after holding up a too-short pole to the window. He told her how dumb it was that she measured wrong and that she should have measured the frame, not the window, etc. Because it was completely awkward, it seemed to go on forever, even after I made that descending "Oh" sound that says, "that's mean and that's enough."

I was beginning to wish that I'd never heard of curtains, when, after a bunch of shoving and adjusting of something inside the extendable pole and metal shavings flying around the room, he was able to make the thing wide enough for my window. We quickly hung the curtain and all was well in the world. (Sabine told me later that I was privileged to see Eberhard being fussy because most people don't see that, so I must be considered practically family. It made me think of my own grandparents before my grandpa became sweet, an appreciated and much-debated occurrence.)

It's amazing to sleep without neighboring apartment buildings' lights bothering me. It's amazing to be able to change without turning the light off and having to feel around for the tag so I don't put anything on backwards. It's amazing to open the curtains in the morning and welcome the sun when I'm good and ready.

I'm so grateful for the Werners. An unconventional couple, she's taller than he is and is the one who goes to work. They show their love through service, which is the best way.

The terracotta wasn't as bad as I thought. Then I realized the pink sheet I had taken from the used pile in the RIZ would make a good couch cover, so I threw that on. Together, the colors work somehow. (And to all those who are at this moment thinking, "Michelle having terracotta and hot pink in her room? Ha ha ha ha ha," let me say one word to you: "free.") So those two things, combined with the chair Mike gave me to match my piano bench, made my room have a nice new look.

Here's a picture. I like the solid colors, no matter how student-apartment-ish they are.
















See the Andy Warhol bag on the couch that Tanya and John (or Johnya) sent for my birthday? Awesome! A little kid at work kept touching one of the little decorations pinned to the bag (a banana) and then that piece disappeared one day . . . hmm. But anyway, I love the bag. There's a place for my keys, for change, for other little things, room for my stuff (even on Sundays), and it looks so artsy that I want to show it off to people! Thanks!

Sleeping Warm

This is what I wear to bed:















Hot, I know. Black fleece/thick material is my friend. And that rice sock has changed my life. Pre-rice sock I couldn't always fall asleep because my feet were so cold (even before I stopped heating my room). Now, it's not a problem at all. Sleep and being warm are important to me.

I thank the Lord for my warm bed every day.

Ward Christmas Pity Present

The ward gave me a Christmas present. You know, one of those pity gifts you get because you're alone. I thought it was nice of them, but in the back of my head, I was sad at the thought, "It's probably all chocolate, which I can't enjoy!"

Instead, I found this:













Not a single ounce of chocolate. Someone was either really inspired to fatten me up in other ways, or someone who has talked to me recently about chocolate picked out the sweets! Woohoo! Lebkuchen for me!

New Shades!

My sister sent me a Christmas present that was well-needed (one of my favorite kinds): new Shades. Compare the shades of the old, stretched-out Shade and the new Shade:













Seriously, people. I loooove Shades. They have saved my wardrobe (and they don't just have layering stuff). I don't have to worry about my back or stomach or too much chest showing anymore. Since the day I bought my first Shade, I have worn one every single day. That was in 2005. Wearing them so much obviously wears them out quickly, so I was really glad to get some new ones.

Thanks, Amy!

Hip Hip . . . Hooray!

You have no idea how happy it makes me to see my dad walking, though I still haven't seen a more current video now that he's had the new hips for several weeks. I hear that he got kicked out of therapy because he was doing so well.

If you see him, cheer him on for me. He's a good dad and he deserved to walk without pain after so many years.



Thanks to everyone who helped. I love you, Dad!