Best wishes to your dad, Sue. And I agree with Theo on Modern Medicine....

Kat, you and the kids all look great!

Happy Belated Allyson!

Happy Fourth Noah & Grace! I can't believe four years have flown by so fast.

Today at coffee hour after church, a fiftyish guy I've seen every now and then for the past couple of months came over to say hi and praise Matilda's cuteness and sweetness -- all well and good, but did he really need to preface it by pointing at me, at her, and at me again and saying, "Soooo.... are you the mommy or the grandma?"

Dude! I've had that happen once--a checkout lady assumed I was G-ma. I'm fairly sure DH has been mistaken for a grandfather due to his extremely gray hair.

Happy Birthday, Allyson (late)! Happy Birthday, Noah & Grace (also late?)!

If I am with either of my sisters, they are often assumed to be the grandmother to whatever children we are with, and, sometimes in the case of my eldest sister who has every Spanish/Portuguese gene showing itself in her olive skin, etc., with the rest of us being fair - she is taken for their nanny and me their mother.

Happy 4-year olds, Kat!

Man, I do walk better with the brace and shoes that fit - but my foot is protesting being used the way its supposed to rather than it's old over-pronating ways.

I have to say this here so I don't say it out loud: Man, I am so disappointed my coworker didn't get engaged this weekend! They were in NYC for her 30th bday, and a couple of months ago she had evidence that he was looking at rings online. Ah well. (This is a couple that hardly needs to get married -- they've been together forever already. But still!)

Hec, it happened at the end of the West Wing too, but, you know, not real life.

Happy belated bday to Noah & Grace!!!

I have been going to pt for over 6 weeks now and my ankle pain is no better. wah. I have to call the ortho today and see what I can do next. Probably a cortisone shot although I know that's a temporary fix. Stupid complex joints!

Thanks for all the ma everyone. My dad is resting comfortably in ICU under observation until tonight. They may want to keep him in a regular bed for two more days. Unfortunately the ICU in my parent's town was full, so they sent him to another hospital that's about a 30 minute drive away.

I spent the some of the weekend working and a lot of it puking, and I'm working from home today when I probably should just be sleeping, and so I shouldn't feel guilty that my boss is emailing me as to why I'm not at our meeting when he never sent me a calendar invite, right?

Do they do anything different with their plant design? Or is it just standard biz as usual in their plants and protocols?

These days, the French operate three fairly similar pressurized water reactor designs, designed by Framatome but quite similar to the U.S. PWRs designed by Westinghouse. About 70 percent of U.S. plants are PWRs, which is a newer technology than boiling water reactors like Fukishima Daiichi. One advantage of PWRs is that the water that becomes steam for the turbine is separate from the water that circulates through the reactor, meaning that more of the plant is "clean." The French are also building at least one of the new third-generation plants that have more "inherently safe" features such as having the cooling water supply over the core so that it can be fed by gravity.

One advantage the French have is more economies of scale, since they've been able to build more-or-less cookie-cutter plants. Another advantage is cultural: the French are more inclined to trust technology experts and nuclear engineers and operators have a higher social standing.