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By Kim, December 6, 2009

It’s that time again, everyone – time to take Kim to the cleaners, ring his bell, wipe up the floor with him, use him for birdcage liner, etc., etc., by beating him and everybody else you can at picking the winners of the 34 college football bowl games running from December 19 through January 7. The teams playing in the bowl games will be known by about December 8.

• First Prize – an iPod Shuffle, 4 GB, engraved with your accomplishment, in your choice of 5 strikingly beautiful colors – or iTunes credit of $75 if you prefer.
• Second Prize – a 1 pound tin of Moravian Sugar Crisps. People have been known to try to come in second for these cookies. Sniffing the tin alone will raise your blood sugar to dangerous levels.
• Anybody else who beats me – some kinda chocolate. Last year it was a humongous Snickers.

It’s free, it’s fun, what more can you want? You now have an excuse to watch 34 football games, and your SO can’t complain because, after all, you’re trying to win them a Shuffle! Heh, heh.

Just go to the ESPN page at

http://games.espn.go.com/bowlmania/en/frontpage

to create your entry. After you create your entry, join my group. The name of my group is Kim’s Big Johnson. It’s a private group and you will need a password. The password is kimsentme.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO INVITE FRIENDS, there’s room for everyone.

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By Kim, November 24, 2009

Everyone Loves A Baby!

So, everyone’s been asking – well, close friends anyway – what’s up with the tongue thing?

I don’t want to overload the blog with personal stuff, especially somewhat distasteful (ha, I made a punny) personal stuff, but this is important to enough people to make it worthwhile. For which I am grateful. If you are looking for real estate stuff, skip this post.

Back in 2006 or so, my great dentist Pam Marzban became concerned about some white-ish material on the lower left back of my tongue. She suspected it to be leukoplakia, a possible precancerous condition, and sent me off to an oral surgeon (Dan Labriola) who could take a biopsy and ablate the area with a laser procedure, which he did. The leukoplakia was confirmed, but no cancer.

In 2008 Dr. Pam saw the leukoplakia again, but ran a new “Swish-and-Spit” test which came up negative.

This May, Dr. Pam saw a more dangerous looking red spot - erythroplakia. Back to Dr. Dan, who excised two chunks for biopsy and thought he got it all. The biopsy on one chunk was squamous cell carcinoma, with apparent negative edges; the other was negative but had enough interesting dysplasia that the area from which it was taken deserved careful monitoring.

Dr. Dan set me up for a C/T of head and neck to check for anything spreading, which I had done in mid July after the swelling from the excision was minimized. I went on vacation, and didn’t hear from Dr. Dan since we already had a followup set for October. The C/T didn’t show anything but a little swelling of the lymph nodes hanging over from the surgery.

Good ‘ol Pam (who insists I get cleaned at least 3x year – bad flossing habits) in late July saw the “bad spot” once again. When I got back to Dr. Dan in October, he took one look and said, “Kim, I want you to see Dr. Patty Lee [who is an otolaryngologist or ENT to most of us] because I think it’s back, and we need a broader view.”

I saw Dr. Patty right away and last Monday she took an even bigger chunk (under general anesthesia this time). Yesterday was my first followup and all looks “well.” The biopsy showed residual SQC at the prior site (not sure which one) but all the edges were clear. So once again, looks like we got it all. Next followup in mid-December.

Important things to think about:

• Oral cancer is nasty. Nasty-looking, nasty-feeling, and if you like to eat or drink (who doesn’t?), nasty to deal with. And, it can spread (metastasize). This most often happens when the cancer is in the back third of the mouth like mine, especially if you don’t regularly see a good dentist who looks for it.
• Using tobacco causes cancer. Don’t smoke or chew. I gave up the weeds in 1987 and got it anyway.
• Immoderate alcohol use can contribute. My use is moderate or less and I got it anyway.
• HPV is another known contributor. I don’t have it, but I got tongue cancer anyway.
• Cancer tends to run in families, so I understand. Not in mine, but I got it anyway.
• Tongue excisions hurt. I have Percocet (Oxycodone) and Lidocaine (in viscous form in a squirt bottle!) but it’s been over a week and the best I can do is sip soup or (with difficulty) slurp pasta that ’s creamy enough and small enough that no chewing is required. No tomato sauce or citrus, please. It’s going to be another couple of weeks before I can bear to move my tongue and have it risk scraping my teeth without causing enormous pain. (I have sharp molars that tilt toward the “bad spot.”) I stopped using the Perc after 2-3 days because (a) pills are hard to swallow and (b) even if I put them in a smoothie, I can’t drive and it’s not good for the ol’ digestive system, if you get my drift. I can’t brush my teeth, but I can gingerly swish mouthwash (ProHealth, no alcohol) to keep the halitosis under some semblance of control.

OK, this evening I am seeing some new clients! I will take my little whiteboard and my Lidocaine squeeze, and try not to breathe on them. Hopefully they will understand my rather clipped speech pattern. Yes, I could’ve put them off another week or so, but even though the mouth doesn’t want to work that much, the head, heart and hands gotta do something productive.

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By Kim, November 4, 2009

. . .  guess which one?

Image courtesy CrunchGear via Brendan.

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By Kim, October 19, 2009

Here is an update on one of our TJHSST kids from 2002 – Teresa (Thao) Nguyen and her band Get Down Stay Down.

New album – Know Better Learn Faster – released on October 13, featured on iTunes (as Chris says, “making it”), and including help from the Portland Cello Project, the Decemberists, Laura Veirs and others.

It’s vintage Thao on steroids.

See previous Thao post for the history and connections!

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By Kim, September 18, 2009

Notice anything different?

Over the past week I have moved from my old wordpress.com blog site to a new platform where I can (a) use my domain kimhannemann.com (formerly a rather bad template site) and (b) incorporate a great search tool called RealBird and other new features.

I’m still in the process of working all of this out, but I think you will find the changes worthwhile.

Let me know if you like or dislike anything about the new site.

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By Kim, July 14, 2009

Chris On-site

eSolar Plant

OK, for those of you who care about my family (of course all of you do) you might be interested in watching the National Geographic Channel at 5 PM on Thursday, July 16 where Sean Riley in World’s Toughest Fixes will participate in constructing America’s first large-scale solar power tower, courtesy of eSolar, Chris’s company.

Not literally his company, but he does have stock options. And he’s R & D-ing power tower designs.

In Fairfax County, that’s Cox HD channel 719 or Cox Digital Discovery Tier channel 160.

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By Kim, May 11, 2009

My youngest child Victoria . . . no more a “child,” to be sure . . . graduated from James Madison University on Saturday, with her older already-anointed brothers looking on with pride. It’s hard to believe this was the angsty teen who four years ago  in her first dorm room was putting her stuff back into the boxes as fast as her Mom was taking it out, insisting she wanted to go home.

Somehow we all survived that first month and she made the Dean’s List. Fourteen months later she was off to London on her own for a semester of history, literature, theater and pub crawling. Then it was the rigors of two years of regimented nursing school curriculum, and now she’s a BSN – or Bitchin’ Sexy Nurse, as I like to say. And a good one, apparently, because INOVA Alexandria wants her on the Labor & Delivery floor badly enough to drop an open RN2 position to pick her up as a fresh grad. She must have impressed them when she interned there last summer, and did her student nursing there afterwards. She impresses me, that’s for sure.

But I might be just a little biased, perhaps. A father’s prerogative.

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By Kim, April 15, 2009

March 2009 home sales activity for Fairfax and Arlington counties and the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax and Falls Church and the towns of Clifton, Herndon and Vienna (this sounds like a weather alert, doesn’t it?):

A total of 1,384 homes sold in March 2009, an increase of 11% over March 2008. That’s great, but look at this – pending home sales, based on signed contracts, are 2,306, up a fantastic 33% from last year!

Active listings – homes on the market – decreased by 20% from last year, with 8,069 active listings in March, compared with 10,123 homes available in March 2008. Fewer homes on the market usually means prices are poised to start rising. The supply of homes has again fallen into the under-six-months “seller’s market” range.

Another sign of strong activity – the average days on market (DOM) for homes in March 2009 decreased by 18% to 89 days, compared with 109 days in March 2008.

Sales prices continue to remain lower than those realized last year. The average sales price in March fell 17% percent from March 2008 to $395,512, while the median price was $335,000, also a decline of 17%. Interestingly, though, the average and median sale prices are both about 5% higher than last month.

Agents are reporting a considerable number of multiple-offer situations on foreclosures, and on attractive well-priced homes in good condition, particularly in price ranges under $425,000. If you are looking for such a home, be prepared to act decisively – and, if the home is right for you, don’t let yourself be outbid.

It’s Good To Have A Friend In The Business®

If you would like to discuss real estate questions, sell or buy a home in Northern Virginia – including Alexandria, Annandale, Arlington, Burke, Centreville, Chantilly, Clifton, Fairfax, Fairfax Station, Falls Church, Kingstowne, Lorton, McLean, Reston, Springfield, or Vienna – contact Kim today.

4.5% Listings with First-Class Service — Cash Back to My Buyers!

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By Kim, April 11, 2009

Yes, it’s true, we went to the b-i-i-i-g city. We have the photos to prove it. And you are going to see some of them.

After hemming and hawing over whether to take a so-so cruise for Janet’s spring break, we decided instead to visit New York. Janet had been listening to the Jersey Boys CD for a couple of months and was really itching to see the show, and she hadn’t seen Ellis Island. Apparently she missed that marching band trip, the one where the band director got on the wrong ferry leaving Ellis and left 3 busloads of high school kids and chaperons sitting in New Jersey for an hour wondering where he was. Battery Park, it turned out . . .

I was going to book a hotel in Midtown near the theater, but one of Janet’s friends suggested a small chain called Affinia. I found the Affinia Dumont on 34th Street in Murray Hill, and it was great. 35 stories but only about 7 rooms to a floor.

We had a junior suite on the 28th floor with a full kitchen and an executive desk setup, not to mention a corner view with the Chrysler Building out one window and the East River out the other. I felt like a big shot sitting there in my corner office. We admired a building across the street with nice gardens on some of the upper floors. At first we thought it was an exclusive condo, but it turned out to be the US headquarters and conference facility for Opus Dei (remember The DaVinci Code?).

The Barking Dog Bar & Grill – and yes, I did the usual and asked the clerk if he said “Barfing Dog” – was next door and served as the hotel’s restaurant. They have a small plaza where they welcome dogs to enjoy a meal with their owners (in decent weather). Their motto is Sit! Stay! Great place – we had breakfast there every day, and a couple of dinners too.

One evening we ran into Sandy Davidson, the owner of Annandale’s AnnSandra – one of Janet’s favorite shops – where Vicky has worked on and off for a couple of years. Sandy was also staying at the Dumont and was having Seder with her family and friends.

Weatherwise, New York did not exactly welcome us. We arrived late on a pleasant Sunday afternoon and toted our little suitcases six blocks or so up 34th St from Penn Station (we parked in New Jersey and rode the train in – yokels that we are, we first jumped on an Amtrak with our NJTransit tickets, and they booted us off at the airport to await the correct train). That was the last decent weather we had until we left on Thursday. Monday it poured most of the day, Tuesday was showers on and off, cold and windy, and Wednesday was more of the same with snow flurries. Spring, isn’t it lovely?

On Monday, Janet went to the ten-floors-of-shopping Macy’s at Herald Square, while I got in some exercise at the hotel gym (very nice, by the way). Janet had the forethought to be carrying the camera and took some pictures of Macy’s annual Flower Show, in between marveling at a whole floor dedicated to Petites and buying at least two pairs of shoes.

Monday evening we took Brendan’s advice and checked out Otto Enoteca, Mario Batali’s wine bar/pizza joint at 1 Fifth Avenue. Actually, the entrance is on 8th Street, but that’s waaaay too mundane an address for a celebrity chef joint. As is our practice, we went out on a limb with our dinner orders . . . she had the margherita pizza, but I was even more daring – pepperoni! With a glass of white zin! It was great pizza, and it was not done in an oven, but on a griddle.

After dinner, we went to find the Dessert Truck. Brendan told us it would be around St. Mark’s Place, just up 8th St from Otto. We searched the area twice, went around two blocks or so before giving up. We headed back to the hotel where we found the following note on the web site:

MONDAY, APRIL 6, 2009

we will not be open tonight because of the weather. please watch the NCAA men’s championship game instead. thank you.

No, thank you! We saved room for dessert, but in the end we were thankful to have avoided the calories and had a nice walk. Then Janet went for a massage while I watched the Big Game. I had already lost my shirt and pants in the Big Johnson contest, so it was all fun.

Tuesday we decided to check out some of the NY cultural scene and visited the Guggenheim Museum. Although I enjoy a variety of abstract and contemporary art – for instance, I liked the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Tate Modern in London – I didn’t enjoy the art in the Guggenheim. In hindsight, I think we would have enjoyed MoMA instead, but Janet was completely put off by the thought of another modern art museum, so we went down Fifth Avenue to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Now this is one huge museum. So big, in fact, it’s almost overwhelming. We stayed only an hour or so – despite the $20 admission – but we enjoyed the incredible display of European royal porcelains.

It was so cold, though, we wound up heading back to the hotel for a nap – but not before we stopped by Macy’s so I could check out the ten-floors-of-shopping and get a photo of the Empire State Building (being rebuilt, BTW).

That evening we had dinner at a nice place in the theater district, Rino Trattoria, before going to the show. The owner said that it’s been a tough few weeks – the economy has been keeping both the locals and the visitors away. He was out in the street offering to pay for your meal if you didn’t like it! We enjoyed the meal so we didn’t take him up on the offer.

Finally, we saw the show that was the purpose of our visit – Jersey Boys, the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Terrific show. Of course, the original cast has been gone since 2007, but the current cast is certainly excellent, and they are still packing in the crowd. We would see it again – I suppose that’s the ultimate compliment. And I understand it’s going to be in DC this coming October, so we probably will be seeing it again!

Last but not least, on Wednesday we braved the snow, wind and cold in New York Harbor to pay our respects to Lady Liberty and visit Ellis Island. Fortunately, I had booked reserve ferry tickets – otherwise we would have been standing in the cold, wind and snow for well over an hour just to get on the ferry. It was an impressive sight, especially when the sun came out in between the flurries as we were passing the statue.

We chose not to get off the ferry at the monument – we could not get tickets to go up in the statue, and it was too cold to just walk around outside – so we went on to Ellis Island.

Ellis Island was the point through which about 12 million immigrants, chiefly European, passed between 1892 and 1924, probably the greatest period for immigration in US history. (Restrictive quotas limited immigration after that time, and the processing moved to embassies and consulates overseas.) These were the third-class and steerage passengers on the steamships – the “rich” first- and second-class passengers were cleared to enter by the time the ships docked in New York, while the hordes of poorer folk were ferried to Ellis Island to undergo a number of screening tests to ensure they would not be “likely to become a public charge.” I know my grandparents were admitted from Denmark in 1909, but I could not find them in the Ellis Island records – it’s possible they had money enough to avoid it, but I wouldn’t have guessed that. About 100 million Americans can now trace their ancestry to Ellis Island. In the current immigration-unfriendly atmosphere, that’s amazing.

Afterward, we had a nice (but cold) stroll up the East River to the South Street Seaport. We’d been there before when Vicky’s TJ Marching Colonials played their Harry Potter show on a rainy October afternoon in 2002, but it was a lot more crowded this time. We ate a late lunch at Harbour Lights and watched people crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. Did I mention it was cold (and windy)? I guess they didn’t notice.

It’s Good To Have A Friend In The Business®

If you would like to discuss real estate questions, sell or buy a home in Northern Virginia – including Alexandria, Annandale, Arlington, Burke, Centreville, Chantilly, Clifton, Fairfax, Fairfax Station, Falls Church, Kingstowne, Lorton, McLean, Reston, Springfield, or Vienna – contact Kim today.

4.5% Listings with First-Class Service — Cash Back to My Buyers!