Okay , so I think I have the layout down for my site. I'm sure I'll move things around in the future, but I spent enough time tinkering with it yesterday. Hmmmm, where shall I begin? I suppose I'll start with our trip down south.

We decided to drive down to SoCal on the 24th, and come back on the 27th. Both sets of families protested at the short amount of time spent down there, but we were like, "too bad, suck up and deal!" Okay, well not in so many words, but that was the gist. Turns out, though, that it was a good thing we did things that way. No, there weren't the typical family tensions and stress - I'll write more about the family stuff later, but Zack forgot his inhaler. Doesn't sound like a big deal, does it? Well, as we disovered, that's the kind of thinking that will land you (nearly) in the hospital. As you probably know, the air in Southern California is a lot worse than the air in the Bay Area. Zack's mom also lives inland, where the air is worse than it is on the coast, and her house is run by 2 cats, Cleo and Squig. Cleo likes to climb all over you at any given opportunity (she's also a pill popper, but that's another story), and Squig pretty much keeps to himself. Zack is highly allergic to both of them. They have a dog, Twinkie (very sweet, but very dumb), as well, but she mainly stays outside. So as you can see, the conditions at Zack's house are not conducive to an asthmatic. But no fear! Zack's mom is a nurse, and she has some equipment for dealing with asthmatics - the nebulizer! Sounds very sci-fi, doesn't it? Basically, it's a machine with tubing hooked up to this breathalizer looking thing that distributes albuterol (same medication as an inhaler) mist over an extended period of time. Its effects last longer than that of a typical ventolin inhaler, but they do wear off, as we learned. Sometime, Christmas night, while at my parents house, the effects wore off, and Zack had an asthma attack. In order to counteract it, he tried a cocktail of various over the counter medications - Benadryl, Sudafed, Robitussin, and coffee. NOTE: this does not work. Don't try it at home. As a result, he got violently ill the next day, threw up about seven times, and could barely sit up. We managed to get him an inhaler, but it was too late. The drug cocktail eventually left his system, but he still had major chest inflammation. My parents, of course, tried to convince us to stay an extra day, or week, or month, but we got him back up to the Bay Area to the doctor, whose initial prognosis was "ya sound like crap!" There was also some talk of hospitalization, but the nebulizer saved the day. With the help of Prednisone, a steroid anti-inflammatory, and Codeine, Zack is recovering.