Time Flies

Wow! Time flies. I didn't realize how long it had been since I last updated our Raff blog. Now I've given myself a real challenge to decide what I need to write about since my last entry. So many summer activities I should have been telling you about!

The photo of Gil was taken at Beaumont to accompany the e-version of a landmark paper that's coming out in JACC (Journal of the American College of Cardiology) this month. His team at Beaumont has worked tirelessly to get the manuscript published and it's due out in its electronic version on September 13, 2011. (He's looking like the picture of health, isn't he?)

The next photo is of Willow who was enjoying her afternoon ritual of frisbee play with me. She's adorable and as I've shared with many of you, she is still rather "small" for a border collie -- Gil calls her our "teacup" border collie!

Jamie, our 12-year old border collie, was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia on some routine blood work recently. Since we found it early in its course, we're having her followed by a veterinarian oncologist who will advise if and when any treatment is required. Jamie is more active and happier than I have ever seen her although she is getting gray and moves more slowly these days. She can easily go on daily 3-mile walks with Willow and me so she's still got energy and stamina.

The third picture is of Marika's new apartment in Ann Arbor. She and a dear girlfriend moved in the beginning of September. Marika is working about 2 miles away at the U-M Medical Center doing research with  patients in the ER who acquire Staph infections. She's happy to be back in Ann Arbor but I can see she is having to make an adjustment to Michigan's weather and midwest approach to life. She clearly brought a lot of California attitude back with her which she is tightly holding onto.

Evan is coming to Ann Arbor to do a clerkship at U-M in radiology for the month of October. Glad to be able to have him "home" for a few weeks. Can't wait to have Marika and Evan over to the house in Milford for Sunday night dinners. Isn't it every mom's dream to cook for her kids again?

Laura and Adam are busy working and loving and walking Bodhi and enjoying their favorite parts of LA. They are the "loving couple" that Evan and Marika aspire to find for themselves.

Marika and I are in Pittsburgh today for her medical school interview at the University of Pittsburgh. (She has already had her interview at U-M.) Since we're only a short distance from Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, we're going to swing by there on Sunday for a tour. (Gil and I were there last year, and we loved it, and I had hoped that all our kids would be able to some day get there and see it. Little did I realize that Marika and I would be out here so soon and so close to the site. Lucky her!)

I've been struggling health wise recently and am undergoing a diagnostic workup for Cushing's syndrome. (I have a documented adrenal adenoma we've been watching for a couple of years.) I've had many of the syndrome's symptoms for the past six months and am near the end of the testing algorithm hoping to get an accurate diagnosis from my endocrinologist and formulate a treatment plan. I'll hope to update you in the next blog entry.

In the meantime, summer is on its way out. Fall, one of my favorite seasons, is on its way in.

Haiku

Catching the next wave

Taking our life by the reins

We ride out our dreams.

Wedding Joy

Here is the happy couple on their wedding day -- May 29, 2011. It's been a long wait for the photos but I guess that's not unusual. The photographer has recently posted 100's of them on her site and we're patiently pouring through them finding our favorites to relive that incredible weekend.

That said, Adam and Laura's wedding blog site is still up and (relatively) active. I visited it today and there is a countdown clock on its home page. It used to announce the number of days "until" the wedding. Today it announced the number of days "since" the wedding -- which is 46 days! For those of you out there who are married, do you remember Day 46 of your marriage?

On another note, in recent years, since Laura and Adam have been together, we have been sharing their Winter Holiday vacation weeks between Laura's family (in Boston) and our family (in Michigan.) This year is "our" turn and we arranged two years ago to go to our favorite place in the world -- our vacation timeshare in Princeville, Kauai.

We have two timeshare units and we've reserved them both -- one for all the kids (Adam, Laura, Evan, Marika and any of their invited guests) and one for Gil and me. Our dates are December 24th through the 31st. I can't believe we're all going to be able to vacation together for a week. It's unheard of!

Since Adam and Evan are both 4th year medical students, they will be "cast to the wind" next year for their residencies and fellowships. They have no idea where they'll be. I doubt that in the near future -- during their final years of training -- we will ever have a week together where we can ALL be together. So this coming December holiday is going to be one to remember.

Thanks to Adam for quickly jumping on recognizing the need to arrange and purchase our flights, we are all flying together across the Pacific and back again at reasonable costs. I usually wait until it's too late to get flights or seats together. Kudos to him for his proactive thoughtfulness.

Evan was just in the Bahamas for a good friend's wedding. He's now in Washington, DC visiting a friend from high school. And he flies to NYC to do a medical rotation at Cornell the last two weeks of July.

Marika is in Traverse City as you know, competing in four weeks of hunter/jumper classes.

I'm headed to Kentucky next week to celebrate my mom's 80th birthday and visit with family and friends.

Gil is in Denver this week at an international conference delivering four talks at the Annual Scientific Meeting of SCCT (Society for Cardiovascular Computed Tomography.)

July has been another busy month for the Raff Family. How about you?

Haiku:

July's been busy.

Summer is always that way.

Best months still ahead.

A Week at the Waterloo Hunt Club Horse Show

Summer greetings! We're starting the Fourth of July weekend and it's been a busy week for the Raffs.

Gil just returned yesterday from a week in Hong Kong where he was moderating a panel on cardiac imaging for Seimens. He added a day of sightseeing and is now back home adjusting to the 12-hour time difference. His summer schedule includes a trip to Denver this month for the annual Scientific Meeting of the SCCT (Society for Cardiovascular Computerized Tomography.)

Marika got home from Santa Barbara after spending 10 days in Honduras with the Global Medical Brigades. I will ask her to post photos and give a summary of her trip since most of us will not have the opportunity to travel there where she and her fellow volunteers set up daily clinics for the local villagers.

She just completed her first week of horse showing for the summer. We drove back from Waterloo last night (about a 40 minute drive from here and just west of Ann Arbor) where she competed as a rider with Fox Meadow riding facility in Temperance, MI. She has her "old touch" because she won (almost) every class she entered -- from Adult Equitation to the HJAM (Hunter Jumper Association of Michigan) Medal classes. Additionally, she was Champion and Reserve Champion in her Adult Division. Most of you won't know what that means but it's all GOOD! All this on a horse she had only ridden for two days prior to the competition and having not ridden but a few times in her four years at college!

She came home from Waterloo for a short 48-hour turnaround before heading up north for the next show of the season. She's spending today washing "horse show clothes" laundry and repacking for her upcoming four weeks in Traverse City. She will be staying with her friend, Lindey, in a camper in Traverse City and the girls always have a great time together. Marika is lucky in many ways: she is riding a horse which is extremely capable and kind, she is being trained by some of the best trainers at a well-run facility in the region, and she is getting to "decompress" from the past four years of intense preparation for medical school admission (grades, MCAT preparation, clinical extracurricular activities, etc.)

She will be starting her biomedical research position for the next year at U-M when she returns at the end of July. By then, she will have gotten tan, gained muscle mass and lost weight (How can you NOT lose weight when you are riding those 2,000 pound beasts?)

Adam and Evan started their fourth year of medical school early in the summer. They worked hard during their third year training and were each rewarded with receiving "Honors" in 5/6 of their clinical rotations. That designation will help them toward getting the residencies they are applying for after medical school graduation.

I am having a wonderful summer of gardening. My tomato garden from last year was an overwhelming mess of too-tall-plants and out-of-control tomato production. So I am growing them in containers -- the pots are on wheels and I wheel them around the driveway catching the sun as it moves around the house. My raised-bed tomato garden which was created for me two years ago has become an herb and lettuce garden and it's much more manageable. And filled with garden art.

I'm also spending time with our dogs -- taking them on outings as I do errands and walking them along the Milford Bike Trail. I'm also doing a lot of cooking and using the fresh produce from our farmers' markets. Tonight it's Asparagus Soup.

I also go to watch Marika at the horse shows and will spend the last week of July with her in Traverse City.

My favorite mom is turning 80 in two weeks. My brother and I are meeting in Louisville to take her and other family members out to dinner to celebrate.

No wedding pictures yet. Will put them on the blog when we get them.

Haiku:

Summer's lazy days

Cold gazpacho. Iced coffee.

Hammock time for all.

A Day in the Life

Yes, the wedding was on May 29th. Yes, I want to be showing all of you the photos and telling stories and describing what it was like for everyone who attended to have come from out-of-town. Yes, it was a "destination wedding" and the destination was ... Ann Arbor, Michigan?? What were those kids thinking? Well, the wedding pretty much went off without a hitch. We escaped the thunderous downpour that threatened nearby and sped up the ceremony by about 15 minutes so that we wouldn't be outside getting drenched. It did eventually rain but not before we got everyone inside for the reception's open bar and well-chosen dinner selections and friendly seating arrangements and toasts and dancing.

We don't have the official photos to post yet. We have photos from friends and family but I haven't received them yet.

So in the meantime, you're going to have to be satisfied with the photo above which was taken today of our visit to Bridlewood Winery in Santa Ynez.

We're here for Marika's graduation from UC Santa Barbara. She gets her diploma tomorrow with all the other Bachelor of Science in Biology majors. Gil and I have been here since Wednesday. We've had two glorious days with Marika all by ourselves. Evan is driving up from LA as I write this. Marika's dear friend from her competitive equestrian days back in Michigan, Gillian Grafton, is arriving tonight from Minnesota. Adam and Laura cannot be with us since they are still on their honeymoon in the Canary Islands off the coast of Spain.

We have been sampling every conceivable kind of cuisine on State Street here in Santa Barbara since we've been here. It's bittersweet knowing that Marika won't be here to visit anymore. On the one hand, it's always a great vacation. On the other hand, it's an expensive vacation.

Marika heads to Honduras for her second Global Medical Brigades volunteer travel on Sunday, the day after she graduates. When she gets back to the states after ten days, she'll pack up all her belongings from the past four years and bring what's worthy back to Michigan for the next year. More on her plans later. (She's applied to medical school for the 2012 class and will be working this next year in research at U-M.)

We had lots of friends and family staying at our house for the week prior and the week after the wedding. Gil's sisters, Genie from California and Meryl from Israel, and my mom all stayed for the full two weeks. We cooked, we gardened, we took turns playing frisbee with the dogs, we shopped, we got to know more about one another than we ever wanted to know. We made pots of French Press coffee each morning and poured glasses of wine each night to enjoy on our recently built simple but functional wooden deck in the backyard.

So I owe you all a full accounting of the wedding with photos but it won't be today's blog entry.

Haiku

Weddings bring great joy

More time planning the event

Than I imagined!!

A Big Week and Weekend for the Raffs

We are having a most wonderful week filled with many simchas (Jewish for blessings!)

We celebrated my 59th birthday this week, our 32nd wedding anniversary, our dog Willow's one year birthday and we'll soon be celebrating our BIG wedding coming up this Memorial Day weekend.

The first photo shows Laura's wonderful family from Boston and Texas who arrived midweek to help assemble hotel guest welcome baskets and help with transporting flowers, vases, table decorations, etc. to and from our house here in Milford to the Ann Arbor venue for the wedding events.

The second photo shows us after our "one" of our celebration dinners this week. We had just taken everyone out to dinner to Cinco Lagos (Five Lakes) restaurant and had come back home to relax and visit with our most recent wedding guest arrivals -- Genie (our stem cell donor) and Meryl (our Israeli family) arrive most recently.

We have to quiz Meryl every time she comes to visit us. How many grandchildren? How "old" is the youngest one you still have at home? (20 grandchildren from her five married children and age 15 is the youngest of her "still at home" children.)

I will be updating this blog very soon because we will have wedding pictures to share.

Until then....

Haiku:

Time to be present

Many simchas and blessings

Take time to savor each one.

A Trip to Washington, DC

The top photo is a giant moth or butterfly in the butterfly exhibit at the Museum of Natural History in DC where you could walk into an enclosed space and let the butterflies land on you and walk on you then fly on to the next fower. Those with bright colors on -- like Gil in his pink salmon shirr -- got bombarded by flapping wings.

Gil and I were in Washington, DC earlier in the month for a Nuclear Medicine conference he was speaking to. We were also lucky enough to have dinner one of the two nights we were there with his old boyhood friends from Brooklyn. Storied were regaled. Embarrassing moments were shared. "Well, we were a lot younger then." was heard all around.

Gil is sitting next to Smithsonian Institution's Castle in a little "pocket park" that I insist we visit each time we are in DC. It is called the Mary Livingston Ripley Garden and I like that so much of it is at waist level so there's not so much bending down and squinting to see the names of the plants.

Our wedding is coming up in 11 days and the plans are coming together. My next blog entry will give the details and capture in photos the "work parties" to make everything ready for the big weekend. I think the rain is going to stop and let us have a beautiful sunny weekend for the event.

Haiku

Love interests hang

on the most fragile of threads

Barely within reach.

A Scottsdale Wedding

Oh, what fun we had! Six of us flew in from Albuquerque for our friend, Judy's, wedding in Scottsdale. A quick 72 hours but we knew how to take advantage of the short amount of time we had to re-bond with each other, witness the marriage and celebrate our friend's good fortune at finding love with her new partner, David. Can you feel the joy in our expressions?

Of course, the Raffs have another wedding coming up. Adam and Laura in less than six weeks will be committing to their own vows. RSVPs are coming in, travel plans arranged and the excitement of the upcoming day is mounting.

Family from as far away as Israel will be here to celebrate the happy couple's union! Can't wait.

Had a rather wintry day today but hope it's the last blast of cold air until next year. I really want to get the garden ready for our wedding guests who need to see the house and yard in bloom!

Gil and I continue to attend meditation retreats in Michigan when we can. It has been an enriching experience in our lives and our relationships -- for one another and for our family which is spread far and wide.

Haiku:

In all of the world

the union of a marriage

makes all things seem right.