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About a month ago, Robyn and I swabbed our cheeks to collect DNA samples to send to DNA11. This company performs a gel electrophoresis, extracts certain markers and makes amazing portraits out of them.

Here we are collecting our DNA last month:

And here’s the result. Keep an eye out for the pics that describe what markers are highlighted:

I managed to smuggle some secret footage of the square dancing that went on at Kate & Gary’s wedding this summer.

Click on share - it’s Clearspring-enabled (blatant self-promotion), so you can send it to your friends.

It has been a long time coming, and I’m so happy to finally see them together. Congrats to my mom and Gary on a beautiful wedding and best wishes for a long life together.

You can see the photo album of the wedding preparations here, and of the ceremony and reception here.

Robyn and I have escaped Long Island for a bit to have some fun on the west coast.

We flew into LAX on Wed and are out in Redlands now. The plan is to attend (Robyn’s mom)Kate & Gary’s wedding this Friday. Robyn and I are both in the wedding party! Then we head back into LA on Saturday and spend some quality time with Jason & Doris, Albert & Julia, and their newborn Eric.

On Sunday, we take the ferry over to Catalina Island for a week of kayaking, snorkeling and other random water activities.

Once we’re home, I’ll upload all the pics into the local photo album. But until then, I made a flickr stream with the tag vacation07, and will be uploading there as we go. I made a badge below that will update as well.

A beautiful outdoor wedding in Massachusetts on a perfect day. Go here to see all the pics.

Mom’s in the hospital for recurring heart racing and lightheadedness. She went in with some serious tachycardia that started the night before. Here’s a pic:

Heart rate of 137! She also had atrial fibrillation - I think - because there’s multiple irregular P-waves. Take that reading with a grain of salt. Robyn taught me a little about reading EKGs, but I’m an armchair quarterback here.

They thinned her blood a bit, and while she, her PCP and I were talking, she said she felt lightheaded. At the same time the EKG flatined for 3 seconds, and then she went back to a normal (sinus) wave and heart rate:

She experiences lightheadedness, but it’s her heart stopping. Pretty scary.

More tests tomorrow and possibly intervention. We’ll see what happens.

Update (3/23/07):She needed a pacemaker - and got one yesterday. Very simple procedure that didn’t even require general anesthesia. It even came with an instruction manual.

She has a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (a thickening of the heart muscle) that caused her sinus node (the heart’s pacemaker) to function poorly - or in her case, be slow on the uptake after she comes out of those fibrillation spells. This pacemaker will take over when that happens, so there’s no risk of those 3 second pauses anymore. However it will not stop her fibrillation. Instead, they upped the beta blocker medication she was on to try to decrease those occurrences - which they can do safely now that she has a pacemaker in there.

Here’s a picture of the EKG history when her heart stopped. First line is atrial fib, second is the 3 second pause, and then it goes back into sinus bradycardia (slightly slow heart rate with a normal rhythm).