Feeling bad

Since Monday a week ago, my son has been feeling tired and spent most of the time in bed. On that same Monday he complained of stomach pain and a headache, but little else. Well this Monday at 1215 in the morning he came into the room complaining of severe stomach pain and we took him to Roxborough Memorial Hospital's emergency room. He spent the night there and in the morning was transferred to Children's Hospital where he underwent a two hour surgery to remove his ruptured appendix.
Apparently the pain he felt last week was his appendix rupturing and all week it was leaking into his stomach cavity. I can't imagine how was getting by, but just said he was tired.
The surgery went extremely well and he is resting comfortably. He will be in the hospital for at least a week, maybe more, but the good news is that he will recover fully.
For a kid who had never missed a day of school and rarely ever felt bad, this was quite a shook.

The District II

It is Cherry Blossom time in the District and I joined everyone else converging on the Jefferson Memorial yesterday. This year marks the 93rd celebration of the original gift of the 3,000 cherry trees from the city of Tokyo to the people of Washington in 1912, but it marks the first year that I am in town in order to document it.
In a couple of hours I managed to fill a 512 MB CF card which translates to 270 images. I present one below, however I did manage to get a few wall hangers also.

Conspiracy?

I've never been one to believe in conspiracy theories and I believe Arlen Specter's "Single Bullet Theory," however, I just returned from Dallas, Texas, and for the first time in a very long time, my images are corrupt. Let me be more specific; the images from the National Science Teachers Association's national convention that I was covering all came out fine, but the images of Dealey Plaza I made on Saturday morning, are all corrupt. I managed to rescue a few, but I am unable to open the best ones. Conspiracy? I'm starting to believe.

The District I

What do you do when you are in town on a Sunday, fresh off of three days at the National Press Photographer's Northern Short Course, and made a promise to yourself that you would take more photos? Well, you head into the District with your camera and little else. I rode the Metro and exited at Federal Triangle. After emerging above ground, I turned and immediately saw the red hat coming (image 1), so I stopped turned and made my first photo of the day.
As I made my way towards the Mall, I noticed some police activity, and then saw people starting to form along Constitution Avenue. It looked like a parade was going to start, but I couldn't imagine what the occasion was, so I crossed the street and entered the Smithsonian National Natural History Museum and spent about 20 minutes photographing the male African elephant in the Rotunda (Triptych).
Leaving the museum I found a bench to wait for the parade to start and it didn't take me long to realize that this was the St. Patrick's Day parade. My internal calendar is still getting over the move. So I set my camera to ISO200 and f22, which resulted in shutter speeds around 20 to 40, allowing me to get some movement in the dancers feet (image 3), and to get some pretty cool panning stuff. The last photo of the day is a couple leaving the parade route. The american bag chairs caught my eye, so I followed them. Now off to find a Guiness.