Packing our bags, off to see the sights!

Well, its that time of the year again, where we pack our bags for another long vacation. In usual fashion, we're packing light, with only 2 carry ons each, so that we can hop on and off our transportation with minimum luggage lugging time. This time round, we've set our sights on the fair land of Spain, where it should really rain "mainly on the plain" or maybe it's "plane". Either case, I've got a compact umbrella packed so, we should are covered!

The flight to Madrid is just days away, and we're just waiting for the last pile of laundry to get done so that we can close up the bag and relax for the rest of the week. Our itinerary will take us actually to 3 nights in Seville first after we land in Madrid via a high-speed AVE train ride. Then 4 nights back in Madrid, followed by another 3 more nights in Barcelona to complete out our trip. Looking forward to a great time over in Spain.. Will be blogging again when we get back!

Clean Scan & Light the Night!

So we had my bi-annual Cancer screening results last Friday, and the scan came back clean! :) This time round, instead of the usual PET/CT, which personally I think is really uncomfortable, my oncologist and us decided to go with just a CT instead. So, in place of having to sit perfectly still for more than 1 hour, I only needed to get injected with a CT dye! Still, the contrast dye does have an interesting side effect of having a laxative included with it to make sure that the dye exits the body in a quick manner. So, I think of it as a free colon-cleansing session complimentary with the cancer screening! Eh! other people pay good money for this kind of thing! Anyways, the results were boring medically, which is how we want it to be, and we were in and out of the doctor's office after a brief chit-chat with my onco...

That same night, we went to see the fruits of our labor @ the 2007 Light-The-Night event in Corporate Woods. Weather was a little on the Chilly side (low 60's), but we felt really good seeing the kits that we put together from the previous week going to a good cause! Generally, it was a good party like atmosphere with kids everywhere, and enough pop and sugar to sustain them for most of the night! The Lighting of the balloons was particularly beautiful as the blinking red balloons and white balloons lit up the night sky.... There was a pang of sadness as it reminded us of the tough time that we had a few years ago, and for us, putting our lives now in better perspective. We hung around until the crowd started to make their walk, leaving the event feeling really good that we could do a little to help everyone out that night!

Here's a little video of us that night!

Have you ever seen so many batteries?

We've never seen so many AA batteries in one place before yesterday evening! We stopped by the local Lymphoma and Leukemia society Chapter to pick up a Light the Night volunteer package earlier in the afternoon. Basically the task is to pre-assemble a Light-the-Night balloons in preparation from the local walk on September 14th.

For the unfamiliar Light-the-Night is an annual charity event where people basically take battery lighted balloons and walk relay-style to raise money to fight blood cancers. So anyway, back to the hundreds of batteries.... The batteries go into a little red holder, then the light fixture goes into the balloons stacked up on the picture on the right. How many of these will we work on? Lets see, each battery box has 630 each, and I've got 2 boxes.. So I'm guessing about 600+ depending on how many defects we find in the assembly process.

The final product? This is what it looks like.

Basically the balloons will get inflated during the night's event. So anyway on this Labor Day weekend, we'll probably be busy working on these... Still, its a great feeling to be able to give back after what we've been through a few years ago. Hopefully our work goes to helping more people out!