The newest little Overpeck

Craig and Heidi are the proud new parents of a handsome baby boy weighing in at 6 pounds, 13 ounces. Kate and I visited Heidi, Craig, and baby Aidan Jackson Overpeck at Lankenau Hospital on Saturday afternoon. Aidan was born at 2:30pm on Friday, January 26, so when we visited about 24 hours later, Heidi was still able to count the number of times tiny Aidan had "pooped" and "peed" on one hand.

My Little Brother on NPR

So I was listening to Marketplace, the nightly NPR show about the economy. OK, truthfully it was more like background noise as I worked on something for the upcoming NCEMSF conference. The radio story was about how pension funds are increasingly serving as plaintiffs in class action lawsuits against companies in which they own stock. I heard Alisa Roth of Marketplace interviewing on expert on the subject, and the person's intonation sounded amazingly like Adam. Later that night I got a call from Adam, who hadn't realized that the phone interview he had done earlier that day was for NPR, nor that it would be broadcast that evening.

You can hear the story on the Marketplace site.

Adam tells me he has other interviews scheduled with The Financial Times and The Economist.
Good job, little brother!

It's a zoo out here!

Kate and I had both previously been to the San Diego Zoo, but we had never been here together. My last time here was in August 1998 with my brother, Adam. Kate was last here in July 2005 by herself, on what she described as "the hottest day that entire summer." Today was a completely different experience since the weather was beautiful (albeit a bit on the brisk side) for a day in the zoo. There were no lines, and the $8 discount coupon made it cheaper to get the "Best Value Ticket" package compared to a plain admission.

Much of the zoo was as I remembered it. We especially enjoyed the polar bears, the giant pandas, and the koalas. There wasn't much activity in the koala paddock, but they were cute to look at nonetheless.

We took advantage of a photo opportunity afforded by this shiny metallic polar bear sculpture. A nice Australian woman from Sydney took our picture.

Panda trivia: did you know that pandas in the wild poop (Kate's word choice) up to thirty times a day due to their highly fibrous bamboo diet? This was news to us...


To finish the day at the zoo, we saw the sea lion show, which was quite good. The highlight was a sea lion dancing to Jennifer Lopez's "Let's Get Loud." The conga line with the trainer and the sea lion was a show stopper.

We finished out our evening at Pick Up Stix, a great Chinese restaurant chain that doesn't exist on the east coast. I wouldn't call it "fast food," since each order is cooked on demand, but it was reasonable, and tasty, and the staff at the Poway store was especially friendly.