9:53 AM

The hotel we aquired, Hotel Blake, is very fancy. They gave us a great deal. All the rooms have wireless, it is very contemporary and the door man is wonderful and helpful.

I am adapting to big city life quickly. Its weird things you should expect to see but don't. Like the street lights have no button to push to cross the street. The hospital seems to run fully staffed 24 hours a day. I expected it to be like Des Moines hospitals. I am still a bit fearful of the El. I don't feel comfortable when people approach me for money or when some large man walks up to us just to say, "Have a good day!"" I think he was a bit loony. We see tons of cops everywhere, one even smoking his cigarette driving down the road. I rather do enjoy walking to get to places and people ride their bikes here as much as people in Iowa in the summer.

Dad apparently got very agitated in the MRI scanner last night. Whenever he has one, his shunt needs readjusted and they couldn't tell what he was getting at. So they don't know if they got any good images. They may need to sedate him and try again. I hope they can still do this today.