letter dec 2

Dear Everyone,
There has been a lot of activity chez Brown over the last two weeks. Foremost has been our trip to Minneapolis. We left Wednesday afternoon in the face of bad weather. We left around noon, and so missed the bulk of the rush hour traffic - - a lesson learned from our drive up two years ago. Andy and Gail were not so lucky, driving to pick up Joey at U of Chicago in the mid-afternoon, and then fighting through traffic all along the Chicago metropolitan area. They drove straight through to the Radisson hotel in Plymouth, and arrived sometime around 1:30 am. We, on the other hand, arrived at the Kalahari resort around 3 Pm after driving through about an hour of snow. The boys had a lot of fun, but I think Nicola was a bit lonely without some girlfriends to share the fun. The biggest hit, as it was on our previous visit, was the standing wave machine that allows you to ‘surf’. I was able to get to my knees, and in the evening Jasper tried to stand up. Maybe we should visit Hawaii on some vacation in the future. The Kalahari was nice, but the novelty of the first visit has worn off, and how often can you go down on a water slide? Considering our Thanksgiving schedule, we are not due to go back for at least four years; I don’t know if we will return, although Jasper hopes otherwise.
We left the Kalahari at 11 AM, and made it up to the Radisson around 3:15 on Thanksgiving day, and I don’t recall what we did in the hotel for a couple of hours other than play with the ’dial-a-bed’. Apparently one can set the degree of firmness in the beds. I think they have an air-inflatable bladder hidden within them. Unfortunately, we all had queen-sized beds, and if the firmness was set exactly the same on both sides, you felt like you were sleeping uphill or downhill all night. I can’t recommend this project; it’s like building a bed to be lumpy.
We got to Jeff and Joan’s house at around 5. The house was already filled with assorted Browns, McGuires, Jensens, etc. Appetizers of pate and guacamole preceded a traditional holiday feast had been prepared by Joan with turkey, stuffing, cranberries, mashed rutabaga, mashed potato, etc. As an afterthought, I think there were at least eight pies: apple, pumpkin, pecan, and blueberry. We all played with L’Infanta (Evelyn); the boys had a Mortal Kombat tournament downstairs; Ariann was putting the last touches of a slideshow together for the big event on Friday. One highlight was the speeches in Temanian prepared by Joey. It was very Dada.
Friday morning we went to a brunch at the McGuires. There were bagels, smoked fish, fixings, several kringles, really hot coffee, and ginger babies. We all got a look at Chris and Vanessa’s house, which seems to be in great shape. Later, older boys drove to an accordion store in St Paul (http://www.accordionheaven.com/ ) where Joey bought a concertina, a small type of diatonic squeeze box with 30 keys (I think). You can read more about these reed instruments here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concertina . Afterwards we all drove to the mall of America to watch Beowulf. This movie used CGI techniques superimposed on the actors, so it was like watching a well-crafted video game. The dialogue was horrendous, and the visuals were really not that exciting, a nude Angelina Jolie notwithstanding. However, I actually did spend some time thinking about the philosophical message of this film. Is it worth going for Glory over Gold? Does either make you happy? Even if you achieve glory everlasting, you won’t be around to appreciate it, and most people who attain glory have a lot of regrets. I’d rather hide in my hole. Meanwhile, Cindy was a Sherpa for Jasper and Lucas as they rode the rides at the Park at the MOA (renamed from Camp Snoopy). The girls were shopping for stuff.
Friday evening we drove to the famous IDS tower (http://www.ids-center.com/). Built in the early ‘70s, it is no longer Minneapolis’ highest building, but it still serves as an architectural landmark. Sasha Jonavovich’s family had a reception at the top floor for Sasha and Ariann. There was some mingling of the two families. We enjoyed the slide shows of the youth of Ariann and Sasha, and liked the toasts and speeches. I especially liked the story of Ariann opening a Wells Fargo bank account, and her manager being Sasha’s aunt. After the meal we went home, where I took a startling hot sauna with Joey and Jacob.
Saturday morning I played with the boys and Matt Jensen in the hotel atrium. Jasper had gotten a book of paper airplanes from Vanessa, so we made most of the models, and threw them from the fifth floor. This sapped some energy. Then we went to see Mr. Magorium’s Magical Emporium, starring Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman and Justin Bateman. Very cute, and Ms. Portman is taking the Audrey Hepburn look-alike contest to new heights.
Then it was time to get ready for the wedding of Ariann and Sasha. This was held in the Semple Mansion in Minneapolis (http://www.semplemansion.com/), a beautiful turn of the century pile of stone. A lot of the rooms are rented out for small offices, but there is a very nice ballroom on the third floor, and a locked up wine cellar in the basement (in an actual vault from when the mansion did a stint as a bank in the 1960’s). The wedding ceremony was short, apparently all Bahais must do is affirm that they will follow God’s law, but there were some other readings and songs. We all had a good time, but I am one of the stick-in-the-mud’s that left early – around the time the band started, so I haven’t personally experienced the dancing prowess of the younger Jensens.
Sunday morning we packed up and drove home with stops at a McDonalds for a morning snack and a Culvers for lunch. Jasper did very well on this trip, only getting sick once, on the drive from Vanessa’s house around all of the lakes, to Plymouth. We all had a good time
Back at Loyola, I had a couple of days at work, and then I took a field trip with Dr Hammadeh (director of surgical pathology), Leela Arackal (Histology supervisor) and Jim Robinson (our new Anatomic pathology Lab Manager). I was going in my new role as Director of patient Safety and Quality Assurance. This is a job that the new chair crated and appointed me to. I don’t know how Machiavellian this was of her, since this job keeps me out of her way, and it is one that will be difficult to succeed in, because real changes in quality require resources the hospital is unlikely to cough up. Anyway, we were going to Henry Ford Hospital, because over the last two years they have justifiably become known as a leader in Anatomic Pathology Quality. This has been led from the top by Dr. Richard Zarbo, who instituted a system wide change in their practice, calling it the “Henry Ford Production System” http://www.henryford.com/body.cfm?id=47242 . Just as Henry Ford could make a car out of iron ore in three days by getting rid of wasted time and effort, and decreasing opportunities for error, so Dr. Zarbo and his team of quality engineers completely changed the workflow and process of creating a microscope slide from raw tissue material. Everything is bar coded, work stations are standardized and optimized for efficient work, etc. They are diagnosing small biopsies the same day that they receive them.
Anyway, our trip began late Wednesday with a limo to O’Hare. Our plane was delayed an hour, so we arrived in Detroit around 8:30. We went to our hotel, the Ritz-Carlton (a really nice hotel, we got a hospital discount), and then Dr. Hammadeh, who had done a fellowship at HFH in 1993, took us to a Lebanese restaurant called La Shish in Dearborn http://www.lashish.com/locations.html . This has developed into a small chain of restaurants in the past 15 years. However, the owner has run away to Iran after it was alleged that he had defrauded the US Treasury of over 8 million dollars! So, fewer people are eating there. We were all hungry and over ordered food. I really enjoyed the raw kibbee, which is a lamb tartar mixed with olive oil and bulgar wheat. We had other Middle Eastern fare – hommus, baba ghannooj, etc.
On Thursday we went to HFH, where we first had an hour-long presentation on the production system. Then we got to sit through a monthly presentation called ‘Share the Gain’, where six different quality improvement teams talk about a problem they found in specimen processing, and how they fixed it. We had lunch, and then a tour of the different work stations. It was very enlightening, especially the enthusiasm all of the technicians showed for this ‘new’ method of doing things. There were lots of pithy sayings by henry Ford posted everywhere. Similar ones were alos in the hotel, perhaps because it is across the street from Ford world headquarters. Afterwards, the four of us met back in the hotel, and defined some simple fixes that may help us become more efficient, with more to come in the future. Later that evening, Dr. Zarbo and his team of three quality engineers took us out for Italian food. We stayed overnight, and came back to work on Friday, where I had some interesting pathology cases waiting.
Lastly, I want to mention last night’s dinner at La Brasserie Ruhlman Steakhouse. This has not been open long enough to have a website! This was a belated birthday dinner for Andy and me, thrown by Barbara and Roger. We started with Steak tartar and cocktail – negronis, sidecars, and champagne. Entrees included duck a l’orange, cod stew, tuna, steak au poivre, and braised short rib. For desserts there were pot au crème and lemon tarts. The food was quite good, but I thought the service was so-so. A couple of people seemed to suffer from some GI distress later, but I don’t know if it was food attributable. I got some licorice (salty fish), and a new bird feeder. I also returned Andy’s present to me, a Williams and Sonoma hand operated fruit juicer, and got a Cuisinart electric ice cream maker. We are going to make coconut ice-cream as soon as I finish this letter!
Love H.