Washington DC

I said I would blog while I was in DC and I have been a little busy. It's been raining a good bit and Alan came in on Friday. We went to the Newseum -- a new museum about the news industry. It was fabulous and we spent 4.5 hours there. I could have stayed all day. Then we went to a Washington Nationals game which wasn't so good as they lost 11-0. Then we played 18 holes of golf on Mother's day. The best part of Mother's Day was that I got to actually spend Mother's Day with my son for the first time in three years.

Now the conference has started and we had our Town hall meeting this morning. I left it early and as I write this some people from the BBC America are filming this for a piece they are doing on Alzheimer's disease. I will let you all know when it is going to air. There is a lot of press here for the conference which is great because we need the publicity. It was encouraging today that so many people stood up at the Town Hall meeting to speak. They shared information and it was a good exchange. Tonight there is a Candlelight vigil somewhere near the capitol where one of our early stage advisory group members is going to speak. It should be rather emotional. I am hoping that the rain will stop and we will have some people there.

Tomorrow we have a full day of meetings and then on Wednesday we will be going to Capitol Hill to meet with our legislators. The BBC film crew is coming to Capitol Hill with me so at least I will have our legislators attention with a film crew in tow. To many of you that have asked -- the two year wait for Medicare is also big on the agenda here and we are hoping to make some impact on that subject as well as increased funding for research. So,to all of those that have asked me to speak about that -- I am and I hope we will be able to see the fruits of our labor.

I will write more when I can.