Atlanta airport

On way to San Diego (OK, Carlsbad, for those who care) California, I flew via Atlanta, GA airport. This is not normally an airport I fly though except when going to Florida, and it has been a while. This is a fairly new airport (maybe they built it for the Olympics 8 years ago, I don't know), and it has several peculiarities.

After eating lunch, I was walking to my gate I needed to attend to my biology, so to speak. No problem, just follow the signs. Well, I walk, and walk and walk down the terminal corridor, and the helpful signs gave up directing me. No bathroom! I turn around, and walk the 100 m back to where I had started. I go the other direction, and finally have to walk another 150m before a find a place. Do they really space their bathrooms 250 m apart?

Inside it was very clean, very modern, very new. And of course had a fancy sink with a "touchless" design. Two faucets, identical - one to the left, one to the right. Well, I want HOT water, so I select that one.

Green soap gets deposited onto my (dry) hands. Not what I wanted, and not my style. So, without thinking I go to the right. Yup, a gushing stream of cold water is deposited on my hands, what takes the dose of soap and splashes it onto my shirt. Really, I am not lying!

GRRR. I look at the taps - surely these should be labeled! Well, they were - when you hold your head just right with the light you can tell that "soap" and "water" (they didn't say cold) are etched into the shiny metal. A bit too subtle for me, I guess.


The rest of my bathroom experience went normally, I am happy to say.

Now back to the airport corridor. I bought a strawberry smoothie (only on business trips, I am always too cheap to pay for them myself). After drinking it, I throw it in one of the many shiny trash containers every 10 meters down the hall it seems (guess they figure more people throw out trash then go to the bathroom). No problem. I then stand nearby waiting in line to board my flight. Several minutes later, the garbage can I tossed my drink into starts making noise. They are electric trash cans! A light goes on, there is a whirring and crunching noise, the can burps (just kidding), and it becomes quiet and smiling again.


Next time I come back to this airport I think I'll bring a really heavy weight plastic bag, and fill it with some air!! Or bubble wrap. Or an aerosol can of, say shaving cream. THAT ought to be fun!

Speaking of such things, while I was standing in the luggage screening area in Rochester, I overheard a snippet of conversation - don't know how it turned out--

Screener person, sitting at the X-ray machine to traveler: "Hey, is that a football you have in your bag here?"


Passenger - "yup, you got it - bringing with with me to Florida to play on the beach!"

Screener - "Yeah, only one problem - we're going to have to cut it open, you know to see if anythings inside".

Passenger - "You gotta be kidding!"

Screener - chuckles..

Sometimes you just have to say something, and this one is a week overdue now:

It took several years, but certainly no one can say you hardly know each other! We look forward to your upcoming wedding, presumably this summer.

VERY cool!

Aurora watch...

Today has been really warm - it got up to about 12 degrees today. Now, just around midnight, it is still a bit over 10. I walk outside - there is a warm wind and it is very quiet. I hear the dry oak leaves left on the tree cracking in the wind. A coyote is heard in the distance. Wth some imagination I could easily believe that it late September instead of mid-December.

There is an aurora watch tonight! Here we are, in the minimum period of the solar sunspot cycle, and there was a big solar flare yesterday. Well, I was looking during my walk, and unfortunately there are some low scattered clouds filling in. Did I see some light green flickering in the northern sky? Well, maybe. It would be good to believe. But I expect it was my imagination.

Today's highlights

Christmas is coming! 11 days until Christmas! I have actually started my shopping, if you count mail order as shopping. Next week is going to be pretty busy because I am in California!

I am surrounded by students. Two in my own household. I came home from volleyball at 10:30 pm, and both Gwendolyn and Nina were working on papers, each due Friday. For Gwendolyn, this is the end of a semester. For Nina -- well, just the end of a week.

Now 11:15 - G is going upstairs to "rest" - I'm supposed to come get her at midnight so she can start on her next paper. Nina also is getting done with her first paper, and has not started her second one yet. Me? Typing a blog - a waste of time by comparison.

Speaking of volleyball, Thursday night pickup was very good tonight - everyone was good, and I was one of the weaker players on my team, which is how I like it. Everything went well, and I didn't kill myself (always an option).

A new solution to an old problem...

Here is the problem - you have a canal, and it either needs to change height (think long "sloping" canal), or intersect another canal system or river at another height (this would correspond to the "waterfall running into another river".

Well, there is a classic solution to this problem, one that has developed over the years into a fine art - the "Lock". If you never actually sat down to think how they work, it is fascinating in its simplicity. Here is a cool simulation that shows the basic idea.

Summary of cool points:

1. The lock can operate in both directions - boats can go up and down


2. It theoretically takes no energy to run the lock, if you don't count the change of height in the water. Put another way, no water is pumped, and there is only friction on the doors.


3. It is pretty fail safe. By angling the doors slightly toward the upstream end, it can be arranged that the pressure of the water against the doors forces them closed - only after the water level is equalized will it be possible to open them. Terrorist-proof!

This does not mean that locks are not without a few problems:

1. There is a practical maximum height to a lock. If the lock gets too high, those really tall doors have to be quite strong to hold back the water. Note that the door height it not the depth of the canal, but rather then drop required plus two times the canal depth. When there is a big drop, a sequence of locks must be used - in some cases upwards of a dozen. It takes a long time to traverse these, and people get bored.


2. You have to fill those big locks full of water each time, and the water height is again twice the canal depth PLUS the drop across the lock (this is true even with cascaded locks). And of course the volume is proportional to the length of the lock. All of this filling takes a lot of time, and it can actually take a lot of water. If the drop is high and the canal shallow, the canal gets to flow like a river, even if it is flat!

Well, there is another way, it has just been impractical until recently. Consider if you could take a strip of the canal, ship and all, lift it with a crane (think LARGE bathtub!), rotate the crane and place it alongside the (lower) canal. Then open the walls to the bathtub and off goes the ships.

Well, cool idea, but not practical. Consider:

1. One hell of a big and heavy bathtub! No crane is going to be able to life it.


2. It would take a lot of energy to move the bathtub uphill! Bundles of energy.


3. Big disaster in the making. Heck, we can't even build bridges without them falling down occasionally.

And that's how the world stayed - until 2002. But not so fast - it wouldn't be fun for me!

The first step is to take a lesson from a vernicular. There are the cable cars that ride up and down a mountain, usually in pairs. They take little energy, because the car going down helps to pull the car going up - if the passenger weights match exactly no energy is required.

How does this relate to our canal problem? Well, let's take the bathtub now, put it on wheels with a cable arrangement, and make a vericular. Now we have solved the energy problem, provided the cable does not break. And you get a bonus - it doesn't even matter how much the ships weight, because they displace exactly their weight in water (think about this some...).

Now we get to our modern solution. Since pictures are worth a thousand words, take a look at this link on the Falkirk Wheel.

Talk about cool things! If you want to see it in motion, click this link and select the "presentation video".
Now, a couple of things I find are really cool about this:

1. The two sides exactly counterbalance each other. They claim that to perform a rotation uses about as much energy as boiling 6 tea kettles of water!
2. It is pretty fail safe - no cables to break
3. It uses some really techie gear work to keep things from spilling. Interested? Read about it here.
4. Form followed function, but the form is really nice!
5. It uses very little water - only to the depth of the canal. And water is returned, in a way. Put another way, although some mixing occurs, the same water keeps going back and forth (except that "vacated" when the boats leave). So you could say that no net water is transferred between the canals (or two rivers). Compare that with the canal lock system (it is estimated that if the Falkirk wheel was built, the previous system in the same place took 11 locks).

Isn't technology wonderful?

Normal weekend day, nothing special

Well, today has turned out to be pretty normal. It was finally time to put the snow tires on the cars (OK, only one car, havn't gotten around to the others yet). Chocolate chip cookies were baked (yumm), and Nina cooked some Borsch. Ok, LOTs of Borsch. Also yumm. So I guess it was a yumm day.

Oh, one other amusing thing. G now officially has purple hair! This just proves that you are never too old for this. Here she is:


Heck, not only is her hair purple, but she can be color coordinated as well!

Engineers will be engineers...

In our building at work, they are replacing all of our conventional phones with brand new "Voice over IP" phones. For now, don't worry about what VoIP means. The only important thing for this post is that the phones are really cool, and have big, 7 x 10 cm graphical displays. There are lots of "soft" keys whose function is labeled on this nice, graphical display.

You can program many "speed dial" numbers in the phone. However, since this is a VoIP phone, you don't program this into the phone, but rather you go to a web site to do this. Here you enter your user id (which is our standard ID we use inside the company) and there is an initial preset password set to "12345".

You log into the web site, change the password, and then program your phone with your speed dial numbers. For each speed dial number, you can also give it a name that displays on the screen. Your first speed dial number is always displayed, and is activated by pressing the button to the right of it.

I programmed some numbers, changed my password, etc.

As it happens, this saved me!

Engineers, you see, like to play! And speed was of the essence, since most people had not used with their phones for the first time yet. So, guess what, since everyone's user IDs were known (they match our email addresses), the game of the day was to set someone ELSE'S speed dial number and the all important label which displays. Some of the favorites were:

• "Speakerphone"
• "Configure"
• "Redial"
• "Mute" and
• "Help"

When the victim walks up to their phone, of course all they see is this string - they never realize that someone actually set it to do something. Said victim may press the 'configure' key, only to find out that it calls the local pizza shop. Another favorite trick was to call your own phone - as it turns out, you can do it, and yes, its very confusing if you don't realize what you did.

And then there are the poor guys whose "new" password is being held for ransom, until the appropriate bribe is paid.

How NOT to design a toilet stall....

Several years ago they renovated the Univ. Rochester's Strong Auditorium. This included the men's bathrooms. Very nice, very clean job. You could probably play a four person bridge game around the single throne in the handicap stall.

There's only one small problem...

First, lets talk about the design. You walk into the stall and a very nice, automatically flushing toilet is sitting there staring at you (looking inviting, of course). So you turn around, and sit down. On your wall to the right, near the door is the all-important toilet paper roll.

So far, so good. In fact, you start to notice that it is a WARM toilet. U/R is heated by steam, and the water supply line seems to run near a steam pipe.

We'll skip the part you do between sitting down and getting ready to leave.

Now, time to finish up. You reach for the toilet paper. Damn - can't easily reach it! (What were they thinking - what DO people with wheelchairs do? Well, you leeeeaaannnn forward. There - got it.

Now comes the unpleasant surprise. Remember that automatically flushing feature? Well, the darn toilet now flushes with abandon. And guess what, just like Niagara Falls, the rapids at the bottom throw up lots of spray! Result? Wet cheeks! Well, what do you do about that?

You learn forward to get some more toilet paper....

Orlando, FL day 2

I know, I'm starting in the middle of something! Well, when you haven't been writing in a blog for a while, sometimes it is better to write rather than think about explaining.

Orlando, Software Defined Forum conference. This year I am just attending, no presenting, so it is a pretty easy trip. Wake up, eat, listen to some papers, eat a morning snack, listen to some papers, eat lunch, listen to some papers, skip listening to some papers and do some "work work" sitting alongside the pool with my laptop, listen to some papers, eat dinner, visit vendors booths, talk too much until I am silly tired, then my evening begins.

Tonight the evening began at 8:30 pm. I started by just resting and recovering (i.e stay away from people, read and daydream). Then, I put on my running cloths (it is around 20 degrees C here at night), and walk out to the main road we are on. I get on a local bus (doesn't really matter where it goes, as long as I watch WHERE it went), ride it for about 15 minutes, get off, and then run home.

Actually, it was a little more controlled than that - in the part of Orlando I was in, there is a really great trolley bus that has numbered stops, and essentially works like a metro. Here is a link: http://www.iridetrolley.com/ I measured off 6 km on my map, figured out which number that was, and then I actually knew how far I was running. It worked great!

Tonight I was walking on the trolly trail with Anya and Chimay (our occasionally visiting poodle). After running this path so many times it was a rare pleasure to just be able to enjoy walking it and enjoying all of the nature that is there. The frogs are croaking away, the birds are nesting, and I even saw a fish in the swamp.
Anya managed to actually corner a groundhog! This is luckily a rare event – usually she chases them, but they magically disappear down on of their networks of holes, leaving a poodle intently staring with a madly wagging tail…. But not this time! She had run off the trail, and was barking and barking. I called her back and Chimay came but Anya continued barking without moving – uncharacteristic for her. I run towards her saying to myself “please, don’t let it be a porcupine!”. Well, no, it was one, brown, vertical groundhog, standing its ground for some reason. Nose to nose. Anya’s tail wagging wildly (does she like want it to play? Who knows!). So I pulled her back and scamper scamper off it goes.
Later on, I found a painted turtle, so I stop and look at it. Pretty thing, about maybe 15 – 18 cm large. Not moving. I sit there and watch, then I notice said turtle is backed up to a small hole, newly excavated. Look a little closer and, sure enough, there they are – a number of eggs (at least four) in the hole, with presumably more on the way. Plop, plop, plop! How she dug the hole I do not know – it had perhaps a 3 cm hole at the top, but was clearly “dug out” below, i.e. wider below ground than the hole itself – you could see the eggs spilling out to the sides! After watching for a while (the dogs weren’t interested it seems), I left her to do her thing. But I left a marker in the dirt to keep checking back as August approaches.
(For some great pictures of painted turtles, see http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/StratfordLandingES/Ecology/mpages/eastern_painted_turtle.htm )

This entry is primarily directed toward our exchange student-to-be, Nina, but for others out there, it gives some views of Perinton and Fairport village - suburbs of Rochester, NY.

Although this is a a photo essay, it does not pretend to be "deep photography".  Indeed, this entire gallery was taken on a somewhat delayed trip to buy some chocolate at Wegmans!

OK - Perinton.  40,000 people live in Perinton.  Let's start here:

Perinton is a township.  What is a township, you ask?  Well, at least in this part of the country,  you start with hamlets (smallest), then villages, then cities.  These are shaped whatever they are shaped like (often sort of roundish), and pretty much match up with the similarly named things in Europe.  Multiple villages and cities in turn sit inside of townships - which are generally rectangular shaped areas, each with its own local set of officials and local government.  Multiple townships are divided into counties, and then multiple counties are divided into states, of which there are fifty (although it would be OK with me if Texas were to split off into a country by itself).

OK, glad we got that straight!  Well, the best place to start is home - so here is the front and back of the house to give you a feel for it:

No, the dog Anya is not trying to eat anyone, it was hot out and she was panting!  The only thing she eats is tennis balls (or at least she tries), dog food, and carrots.

The house was too messy to take pictures of inside, but here is the living room - a very cool room with lots of light.  Sort of like a treehouse!

We pretty much live in the woods, but on a road with other houses.  This is a picture of our street (our house is to the left),

And this is the end of the road where the school bus stop is.  I wish it was warm, green and lush like this all year - but I'm sure it feels differently when the sun is rising over the newly fallen snow in the middle of the winter (while waiting for the bus...)...  Oh well.... back to summer...

Speaking of school, here is Fairport High School.  I won't lie -- it is way bigger than the picture shows, but far too scary if I show the whole thing!

Now just a few pictures of the Fairport.  I know this gets confusing, because Fairport is a village located inside the town of Perinton.  So think "little city of 5,000 people".  This village lies on the famous Erie canal.  Here is a shot of the canal to give you the general idea.  Less than 80 years ago I think there were still horses pulling barges of goods down this canal.

Although much of Perinton is quite modern, Fairport has a bit of an older, more intimate feel to it.  Less than 100 meters from where I took the picture above, here was someone's back yard - OK, not everyone's back yard looks this pretty and rustic (often the are just mowed lawn with a wooden deck and chairs), but I just liked the juxtaposition of this next to the canal:

But back to the Canal.  You can't have a canal without boats. I thought this one looked kind of cool -- it is a real "work boat" that was being used to perform repairs to a bridge in downtown Fairport:

Next (again, remember I was taking this while driving to the grocery store), I thought I should take a picture of a typical suburban neighborhood.  Suburbs are a pretty foreign concept to anyone who has not been in the US.  In Europe, if you exclude the largest cities, you pretty much have a large, densely populated city, and then at the edge suddenly the houses thin out until you have country again.

In the US, it works somewhat differently.  Since everyone lives around their cars, distance is not a major problem.  As a result, you have a city, which although it has quite a few people, more and more it is where all the businesses and some shops are.  But often the people with more money don't actually live there.  You have a large road system going into this city, and then smaller towns and villages pop up within about 30 km of the city.  But in some cases you don't even have a village - instead you have a large area of houses and shopping centers and schools to support them.  They become small, independent communities with no real "need" for a city.  THIS is a suburb, and a good percentage of Americans live in one.

Our house itself is really in the country, not in a classic suburb.  However, here is a typical upper-middle class suburban street and houses just to get an idea on what they are:

Well, here my trip ends.  I have arrived at one of the most common destinations in the Rochester area, Wegmans food markets.  These don't look very impressive from the outside, but they are great markets, and they started here in Rochester.  They have also been voted in the past as the "#1 Best place to work in the United States".  But, I will save this for another story!

 All done!

Today we did something very cool, and lots of fun - I highly recommend it.  In the morning we rode our bicycles to the nearest bus stop, and waited until the bus arrived.  Each bus comes with a bike rack on the front bumper, and we put our bikes there.  Then then got on ourselves, and took the bus into Rochester downtown.  When we arrived, we took the bikes, rode towards the river, and got on the Genesee river loop trail http://www.footprintpress.com/Rochester/geneseeriverdowntownloop.htm.  This trail is part of the Genesee Greenway trail, which recently has been added to to the national trail system ( http://www.americantrails.org/nationalrecreationtrails/trailNRT/GenesseeRiverway-NY.html ).  We rode this trail until it intersected the Erie Barge canal, which also has a trail running its length (actually, the trail runs the full length of the canal, from Buffalo to Albany, over 750 km)  - essentially the same "mule trail" that was used to tow the barges long ago.  This we followed into Bushnell's basin, where we got off and had Abbot's ice cream cones.  From here we rode home on the local roads.

This was a fantastic trip, and leaves me wanting to do more.  The canal itself is very flat, of course, and it feels like you can pedal for miles. You can ride this trail all of the way from Rochester to Letchworth state park - the only question is how one would get home afterwards (buses don't go there).   Our trip was shorter, only about 40 km, we we did in about 2 hours on the bikes.

OK, this is kinda funny.  For my personal email, I use Google "gmail".  Gmail is very cool, and I highly recommend it.  Unlike many free email services, it does not flash random ads in all sorts of colors at you.  But they still need to make money, so instead they took an innovative approach - they take the text of the email you are reading, and use it (with some special artificial intelligence, or so they claim) to select several links (no pictures, just clickable links) for ads which are relevant to the email you just received.

Well, sometimes this works well, and sometimes it is rather amusing.  Take a note I received this morning:

Chuck,

You may be aware of this, but the formatting on the forum is all messed

up and I can't read your latest post.

Steve

And what ad did gmail think was "relevant"  for this?

 Put an End to Bedwetting    !

 

Just got back from an Adirondack trip yesterday.  Masha, a friend Elizabeth and I successfully climbed the combination of Algonquin and Iroquois peaks - the second and I think the 8th highest peaks in NY.  I have actually been up Algonquin three times before (all wonderful, BTW), but this was the first time on Iroquois.  This peak connects with Alg. along a ridge, which also passes through Boundary peak.  It is a "trailless" peak, although there was a well established herd path and even some yellow marks on the rocks.  But the news of the day here was that boggy MUD that one had to traverse to get there.  Actually, it was not mud, but rather a peat bog.  If you stepped in the wrong place, you were sunk up to your knees.  Luckily, I poked with a hiking stick, and never went in above my ankles.

Once we got there, it was worth it.  There was no one else, and the peak itself is "narrower", so you can see all around.  Very cool experience.

No injuries, although Elizabeth did have some non-trivial "toes are too wide for her boots" which caused here quite a bit of pain on the way down.  Overall the hike took 10 hours.  3.5 hours to scale up to the top of Algonquin (with several breaks), 1 hour at the top, 2 hours to/from Iroquios, and 3.5 hours down.  It was surprising that it seemed to take as long to go down as up - since it felt like it was much faster.  But the clock doesn't lie, I guess.  Strange.

Highly recommended.

Last night I was working in the front yard, and from the road I heard a "thump".  I didn't think much about it, but later heard several more - "thonk"........"thlump".....

Hmm.  Now this has my attention.  I watch the road, which is the general direction the sounds were coming from.  Wait a bit.  Swat at a mosquitoe.  Wait some more.  And then....THUNK!  A pinecone hits the pavement.  Well, we have some very tall pine trees that overhang the street, so I look in the top, probably 20 meters overhead and find a grey squirrel - we have lots of them.  He was busily chewing off the stems so the pinecones would drop!  Usually I thought that squirrels grab a cone and eat it in the tree,  but clearly this guy had a different idea.  How do I know?  Well, I looked out this morning, all of the pinecones were gone! :-)

 Once again, I need to bring this blog up to date.  Sooo much has happened.  It is one of those unfair things in life that when things get busy, lots of stuff happens that would be interesting to read about, but then I don't have time to write any of it down.  Gee, sounds like a time management problem for me! hmmmm.  Well, time to get to a quick summary.

First, (re)enter Masha:

Welcome back!  Masha spent the 2004 / 2005 school year with us, and has now recently completed her first year of Medical school in St. Petersburg (and doing very well at it).  The three of us had talked about her visiting this summer for a month or so, and everything worked out very smoothly.  She arrived in mid-July and is now happily eating watermelon, watching many DVDs (Netflix to the rescue), and of course hanging out with us and our strange summer activities.  Of course we are enjoying having her here immensely, and planning a full summer.  Updates as they happen (and as I have time to write about them).

The other piece of excitement is that we are going to be hosting Nina from Novgorod this next school year!  Her name is Nina, also known as  "Brave Nina"!  

It is a funny story, because the first person to tell Nina she had a family here for the year was Masha.  We were talking with her on the phone arranging her trip here, and told her about Nina.  She immediately asked for her email, wrote her, and then they met.  And you know the amazing part?  Even after surely hearing all about us, Nina is still willing to come and stay with us :-))) .  We have since exchanged a few emails and had a telephone conversation with Nina, but of course we still don't really know much about her.  But we do have pictures, so here she is - somewhere unknown in Russia with her Mom:

More about Nina as she arrives, I'm sure. In the meanwhile, the summer goes on, and busy it will be.

We are planning something each weekend, and trying to squeeze everything we can get out of summer.  One month can come and go so quickly.  Hopefully in addition to sailing and walking and bicycle riding we will get to the Adirondacks and to the ocean in New Jersey.

Gwendolyn is not getting to play and rest as much as Masha and me.  She is working hard at her nursing training.  For the next three weeks in August she has "clinicals", where she follows other nurses around in various hospitals and practices her, well, "nursing stuff".  By the time she is done with this she will be qualified to do all sorts of stuff, from doing examinations, to diagnosis,  to giving injections and (gasp!) setting IVs.  She is practicing everything on me, but one rule remains - no needles! :-)  There are stories she has to tell, but they are almost rated R, even though they are hilarious!

During the summer my company has instituted summer hours, where we work four 10 hour days instead of five 8 hour days.  Interesting concept, and gee having that Friday off does seem to make the weekend much longer.  But those OTHER four days!  Work starts at 7 am, and runs until 5:30.  I feel like a high school kid getting up that early!  :-)  Now all we need is a school bus!

 

All told, I think it is actually a good deal for the company. Yes, it takes me a while to wake up and start working, but heck, that happens each day.  After that, I get a longer, uninterrupted work day.  But boy does that morning go slowly!  Once you get to lunch, you are good to go, however, as the time between lunch and when I normally go home is about the same.

 

Then you have Friday off.  Well, here

I just got back from giving Anya a short run on the trolly trail.  After a reasonably warm day, it is starting to cool off - down to 21 degrees now.  The lightning bugs are flashing, it is finally starting to get dark, with a deeping blue-violet sky.

But this is not a normal night - it is the Forth of July-- Independance Day.  Since the start of my run, the sky and soundscape is filled with the sound of random fireworks.  Some of city-sponsored displays, shooting high into the air with great sprays of colored flames, and many are just individuals setting off their charges of smaller fireworks.  A very cool experience.

In past years we have watched these from the water at the yacht club.  But on those nights we took the next day as a vacation day, so we could simply drop into a tent afterwards and sleep.  No such luck this year - I myself did get a "5 day weekend", so I feel like I have had a vacation, but G cannot claim being so lucky - she has a major paper due tomorrow (Wednesday)!  So she has been writing and writing.  She did camp with me last night at CYC and planned to stay today also, but the weather was on-and-off raining, so she came home.  I stayed and raced an awesome sailboat race (I will spare you the details, but it was windy!), and came home around dinner time.

Sailing this year is strange - it seems (and I am not the only one to say this) that it has been really windy this year.  Many weekends sailing was exciting, true, but not very relaxing, with much concentration required to just keep the boat upright.  But all told, no complaints.  Although a bit unusual with all of G's studying, I have actually been able to enjoy this summer quite a bit.  I am looking forward to more.

Well, no doubt, this has been a classic rainy day.  At the beginning of last week the temperatures were in the mid-thirties, but now we were lucky to get to 18 today.  It rained, and rained, and rained.  My accomplishment for the day?  I spliced a split-bridle mainsheet (don't ask, just don't ask!).  Exciting, huh?  And house cleaning, etc.

Tomorrow I try to sail (we have not actually gotten a race off in V15s yet - the first week it was crazy windy, and last week then canceled racing due to no wind at all), but if I do, it will only be for a bit - I have to fly out to San Diego, CA for a TWO HOUR meeting on Monday.  Groan.... I am trying to figure out how to make lemonade ("if life gives you lemons, make lemonade!") out of this lemon I have been given - still thinking how.

This entry is really for my own reference, as it is the most reliable place my history gets recorded that I can find again.  Everyone else, just skip this – it is boring.

Conditions – 22C, wind N 5 mph, cloudy, quite humid and wet, but not raining.

Everything here is raw data off the watch – no 20 second or distance corrections.  Also, my GPS gizzy had  lost sync just before the start, and presumably started a bit after the start, so the first lap distance is a bit messed up.  I also from memory know that the heart rate monitor was messing up for laps 6 and 7 – trust me, the average rate there was in the low – mid 170s:

            Lap 1: 4:22 -- 8:42/mi  -- Pulse 156

            Lap 2: 3:34 -- 7:09/mi – Pulse 166

            Lap 3: 3:48 --  7:33/mi – Pulse 169

            Lap 4: 3:41 -- 7:19/mi – Pulse 166

            Lap 5: 3:27 – 6:59 – Pulse 174

            Lap 6: 3:44 – 7:25 – Pulse 166 (?)

            Lap 7: 3:30 – 7:13 – Pulse 164 (?) - .486 miles

Well, it’s that time of the year again, and this last Thursday I once again ran the Corporate Challenge.  This is a race sponsored by Chase Bank that is run not only in Rochester, but in 11 other cities, including Frankfurt and Johannesburg (
Africa
).  This year there were 9,300 runners (and walkers), which believe me was MANY, but no nearly as many as had just completed the race in Frankfurt about 6 hours earlier – there they had 63,390 participants from throughout Germany!  So running is alive and well in !

In past years I have related the experience of running this race. It is the only race that I try to “seriously” run each year (my third).  It is an interesting mix of emotions in the week before, because at one level I am looking forward to it, while at another level fearing what I know from prior experience – that as good an idea as it sounds before the race, actually during the race you know you are going to feel SOOOO bad, and only want to quit.  This only happens when you run the race at the limit of your ability, but it is very predictable, and sure enough, this time did not disappoint.

This year it was about 6 degrees (C) cooler than last year, and no sun – both good things from a runner’s perspective.  It is hard to say if I was better or worse from a training perspective – my weekly mileage this year may be a bit worse than last year (Masha and I ran 5 km almost every day), but I have been doing more peak mileage – several 11 km runs, and many 7 and 8 km runs. 

My “official” finish time was 26.14, and my course time (removing the 20 seconds to get to the starting line) adjusts to about 25:55, for an average pace of 7:24 per mile.  This was a bit 18 seconds off last years pace, so no personal best for this race.  On the other hand, I didn’t almost pass out this year either, and generally I managed myself better – so we will call THAT an improvement.  For people who have never done it, it is amazing how strongly you want to quit mid-race.  I am still amazed at myself that I didn’t.  Sure, you are tired, but your brain also plays some mighty funny games.  But I won the will power (or is it stupidity) battle and finished at pace.  I don’t know where I stood with my company team – there were 150 runners and walkers from Harris this year.  If I find out I will post it.

Tonight I was walking on the trolly trail with Anya and Chimay (our occasionally visiting poodle). After running this path so many times it was a rare pleasure to just be able to enjoy walking it and enjoying all of the nature that is there. The frogs are croaking away, the birds are nesting, and I even saw a fish in the swamp.
Anya managed to actually corner a groundhog! This is luckily a rare event – usually she chases them, but they magically disappear down on of their networks of holes, leaving a poodle intently staring with a madly wagging tail…. But not this time! She had run off the trail, and was barking and barking. I called her back and Chimay came but Anya continued barking without moving – uncharacteristic for her. I run towards her saying to myself “please, don’t let it be a porcupine!”. Well, no, it was one, brown, vertical groundhog, standing its ground for some reason. Nose to nose. Anya’s tail wagging wildly (does she like want it to play? Who knows!). So I pulled her back and scamper scamper off it goes.
Later on, I found a painted turtle, so I stop and look at it. Pretty thing, about maybe 15 – 18 cm large. Not moving. I sit there and watch, then I notice said turtle is backed up to a small hole, newly excavated. Look a little closer and, sure enough, there they are – a number of eggs (at least four) in the hole, with presumably more on the way. Plop, plop, plop! How she dug the hole I do not know – it had perhaps a 3 cm hole at the top, but was clearly “dug out” below, i.e. wider below ground than the hole itself – you could see the eggs spilling out to the sides! After watching for a while (the dogs weren’t interested it seems), I left her to do her thing. But I left a marker in the dirt to keep checking back as August approaches.
(For some great pictures of painted turtles, see http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/StratfordLandingES/Ecology/mpages/eastern_painted_turtle.htm )

Just got back from an evening sail.  No, there was not really any wind, but it didn't matter, really.  The boat drifted around in near calm, very quiet - sort of a lake of solitude in the middle of a busy world.  For some reason it reminded me of racing in light air in the Chesapeake bay, when there would be a light fog, and foghorns in the distance, playing their random pattern.

May has passed - almost on the first day the leaves came out, replacing the flowers on many trees.  Flower petals from the cherry trees on the ground, dogwood trees blossoming at the bottom of the street.  The leaves come out, the world turns lush.  Birds singing everywhere, calling to stake their claims to their new habitats.  Several times I have seen a baby fox on our street, usually in my headlights at night.

Middle May, the locust trees, which have still even begun the thoughts of leaves, break into spectacular blossom in an otherwise green world.  This lasts one week, and then they too are replaced by new, light green leaves.  The maple trees have already formed their helicopter seeds, and the dandelions have already spread theirs.  By the end of May, all the infrastructure is in place - the plants are ready for the serious stuff of life - growing taller, and yes, starting to store food for the winter, still long to come.

Been too long... Well, while I was obviously not blogging, spring has arrived here - no doubt this time!  The flowers are out, the leaves are getting ready to come out on the tree, and for the better part of two weeks it has ben between 10 and 23 degrees.  It hasn't even rained much!  So in summary, no complaints.

Our fledgling Vanguard 15 sailboat fleet had its first real organizational meeting, and while there are still things left to be decided, it is off to a good start.  We plan to put our boats on the blacktop on the 13th of May - in almost exactly one month!

I have been continuing to run occasionally, perhaps up to 3 times a week.  Now the weather is better, I will work on 4 x a week - some short, some long.  Biggest empasis is just on doing it.  Of course, although satisfying (and allowing me to eat more, my favorite hobby), if I were good I would work on stretching and upper body strength.  Oh well....

A new short-term obsession - figuring out how to better write web pages, at least the easy way with FrontPage.  I know, some of you are wretching, saying what's a self-respecting software engineer doing using a WYSIWYG program?  Well, truth to tell, I are not really excited about doing web programming, just being able to do some simple web site stuff - and FP should be the tool for that.

The last volleyball session was today - and in not very good style, I finished off the season playing really badly!   Perhaps I shouldn't have taken a nap before, as I never completely woke up.  Or maybe because I am feeling just a tad "off" - hopefully not a cold attacking just in time for Easter.

Spring has arrived

Today it is going to get up to 26 degrees and sunny!  And the first flowers are blooming.  Life is good for me.  G's life is less good, because she gets to watch all this from a chair - recovering from foot surgery.  Lots of other things going on, all at once.  I am working to organize the new Vanguard 15 fleet - our first "real" meeting is a week from today.  And work is reasonably busy.   Arkontheridge (that is our domain) now has web capability, so I will be learning how to build basic web sites.

More later.  Sorry to all I have been such a bad blog writer!

Today it is going to get up to 26 degrees and sunny!  And the first flowers are blooming.  Life is good for me.  G's life is less good, because she gets to watch all this from a chair - recovering from foot surgery.  Lots of other things going on, all at once.  I am working to organize the new Vanguard 15 fleet - our first "real" meeting is a week from today.  And work is reasonably busy.   Arkontheridge (that is our domain) now has web capability, so I will be learning how to build basic web sites.

More later.  Sorry to all I have been such a bad blog writer!

Chuck’s trip to
Florida

In the beginning of March, I went to
Florida
for one of my “multi-phase” vacations.  The primary motivator for this trip was to visit my Mom in
Naples, Florida
, and see what could be done about her poor trailer, that got damaged quite a bit during hurricane Wilma last fall.  Blown away (completely – you don’t even ask where they went!) were her screen porch and carport, as well as some windows.  All told, quite a mess.  My sister Kathy had visited in January and done some magic (she painted everything!), so things were not nearly as grim as they had been in the past.  Either way, here is what is left:

 

 

One the larger tasks was to do some work on the wheelchair ramp.  This used to be covered by the now-missing screen porch.  Now it is working on getting a suntan with occasional baths.  So at least a no-slip surface needed to be added to compete with the algae that will come with time.

 

Secondly, her electric wheelchair has taken up bungee-jumping over the side!  See those side rails?  Well, when the chair gets bored of going just up an down (booorrriiiinnnggg!), it instead decides to jump over the side.  This is, well…. “disconcerting” to the occupant!  Well, to solve it, in added on to the side rails so the chair cannot jump.  And did some other things around the house.  We also went out to dinner several times, and had lunch with “the aunts” – here is my Mom, Patty and Ro.  Can you tell they are sisters?

 

(First, in case it is not clear, "mess production" is a play on words, after "mass production", which this was).

Time for the annual cabbage roll cooking! Start with a kilogram of meat / rice mix, and a large, 2 kg cabbage.  Make lots of rolls, two full pans for the oven (I think I made around 30 cabbage rolls).  Fill the cabbage leaves with meat, roll up, put in the pan, then pour the tomato sauce (with lemon juice and "sour salt", a.k.a. citric acid).  Bake for 1 1/2 hours.  Result - many rolls.

Now what do you do with them?  Well, the goal is to freeze them for long-term keeping.  So I put them into vacuum pack nylon bags - sometimes one roll, more often 2 to 4 rolls per bag.  Add some sauce.  Now the trick is how to evacuate the air from the bags (ALL of the air) without sucking out the contents of the rolls.  Easy - freeze them first.

This works best in the winter...  Roll up the tops of the bags, and then set them out on top of the hot tub to freeze.  Luckily tonight it was -8 C, so they actually DID freeze.  Here is a picture:

Once the contents are frozen, you then use the "suck and seal" machine to suck out the air then melt the top of the bag.  The result freezes for up to 2 years - picture below (this is actually chili, from a past project, not a cabbage roll).

First thunder of the year!!!!  Yeah!!! Spring is coming!

(Florida trip report due soon - many photos to sort, etc.)

Well, I am completing the second day of my "vacation" in Florida.  I put that word inside quotes, because the first order of business is fixing various things in/on/around my Mom's mobile home, which got pretty beaten up in hurricane Wilma in November.  Kathy proceeded me in January, and also had a working vacation, cleaning and painting everything in sight.  I am doing things more like replacing hinges and doing some modifications to the wheelchair ramp she has.

The weather is perfect (of course) - sunny with highs around 25 - 26 deg C, lows about 19 deg C.  Last night I slept out under the stars and it was wonderful.

Now the the important thing in life -- the continuing search for the perfect Butter Pecan ice cream.  As those of you who know me know, everywhere I can I tend to order BP ice cream, to compare them.  Some are rather bad (Friendly's restaurant takes last place honors), but I have found a new high.  It is hard to actually imagine anything better.  The place?  Brewster's in North Naples, Florida.  It is fresh ice cream made "every morning" (I thought about this, and decided that this does not guarantee the MY ice cream was made that morning, only "some ice cream is made every morning"), and is very soft in texture -- Abbot's consistancy.  Full pecans.  Wonderful!

To earn my ice cream, I did at least go running.  Like our last vacation here, I am going to try to do this each day here (Masha and I last year vowed the same, and at least got running several times).

Monday - more work here.  I will probably visit the Thomas Edison / Henry Ford museum in Ft. Meyer's in the morning, then do a bit more work, and go swimming with my mom.

Tuesday - probably a visit to Corkscrew swamp in the morning, then lunch with my aunts (Roberta and Patty).  I will then go somewhere - not sure yet.  Maybe sailing - thinking about it, at least.

'Nuff for now.

BIG, fluffy Snowflakes!!!

All around, everywhere!  Winter finally!

OK, I've been doing my research on this little by little through the week.  The project?  How to clean and protect an aging vinyl floor.  For those who don't know, our kitchen has a really wonderful brilliant white floor that is now about 10 years old.  The problem, of course is that it was no longer white - more of a light, smoggy grey in places.  Normal cleaning does nothing.  So what to do?

Well, I wouldn't want to miss out on a mini-obsession, now would I?  Several elements - cleaning solutions, cleaning method, and (once clean) protection method.

Being a chemist at heart, I attacked the cleaning solution problem first - doing trials on small, labeled floor patched during the commercials in the Olympics.  The candidates were:

• 409 cleaner (standin for "standard soap / surfactant


• Lemon-scented "goo gone" - (standin for "hydrocarbon solvent")


• Acetic acid, 1 % (with a bit of detergent thorwn in as a surfactant)


• Ammonia, diluted 1:10


• Ammonia + Ethyl alcohol (strong imitation of windex, without the blue)


• Tri-sodium phosphate, medium strength solution

I will save you all of the details - the ammonia placed second, with the TSP placing first (which was also the cheapest).  You can just imagine the 10 labeled patches on the floor, all a varying amount of clean!  I'll spare you the pictures.

Next - how to clean the darn floor.  Its pretty big, so we need to think big.

• First disqualification - get down on your hands and knees and scrub with a cloth - even with a small patch, my back ached for several days!


• Works better - grind a cloth around with you foot.  Much better, no hurting back, uses your weight.  TOO SLOW, however!


• SCrub brush - works great, but there is the back problem!


• Rented electric floor scrubber machine - BING!  we have a winner!  Get it a soft pad, sometimes used for polishing, to avoid grinding up your floor.

So this morning we rented the machine ($30 for a day - a deal!).  Learning to "drive" it took a bit of getting used to - it has one large rotating pad, so you lean the machine forwards or back to make it go left or right.  Throw some water / TSP mix on the floor, and scrub away.  The entire job probably took 20 minutes of scrubbing - far less than getting the stuff out of the room.

This left us with one white floor, but still with no gloss, because the polyurathane top coat had worn off years ago.  We rinsed / dried it twice, then applied a commercial polyurathane vinyl top-coat reconditioner on it.  One base coat plus one thin top coat.  Result is wonderful, white and glossy! And I check an obsession off of my list!

 

After being sick on her vacation for a whole week, G wanted to do something fun tonight.  We decided to go to the downstairs Cabaret "The Water Coolers".  This was a set of skits, centered around the water cooler at work, joking at all the things that go on around an office.  Very funny!  Highly recommended!

OK, I learned this from a friend.  With a little practice :-) its really easy...

What, you say, is easy?  Eating a kiwi fruit.

Yeah, I know, you once tried eating one of those cute, green fruits, and I'll bet you that you don't eat them very much any more, because they are just more trouble than they are worth.  Peal them? - forget it!   All you get is a slippery, slimy mess that you couldn't even think about eating when the time comes, because you forgot to wash your hands first and started wondering where they had been recently.  OK, what about "slice and scoop" -besides sounding like a surgical technique, this used to be my favorite method, but for me, I needed a special, curved serrated knife to do it really well.  And you always felt like you left a quarter of the fruit inside the skin.

Nope, the best way to eat them I learned from my friend Kevin - you just eat the darn thing.  You got it - scratchy skin and all!

OK, the first time you do it it will seem a bit strange - but look on the other side - wasn't it easy?  See, I told you so - it WAS easy, wasn't it.  And the second time you realize that it is actually an eating experience.  The skin (yes, chew it - try it!) is somewhat tart, which balances out the rather sweet kiwi.  I actually look forward to the skin now.

Oh, and one other thing to trust me on -- I know what you are wondering --- yes, the skin does, errrrr,  "digest" completely.

Next week - a my next feature - increase fiber in your diet by eating your used sandpaper!  Followed by "sunflower seed shells on your salad as a garnish!"

Yummmmmm!

I just need to mention the obvious: the Olympic women figure skating is incredibly beautiful, and just totally amazing.  All of the skaters are awesome!  Three performances to watch in the short program were (in order) Kimmie Meissner, Irina Slutskaya, and Sasha Cohen.  Slutshaya and Cohen both had amazing programs - but that was somewhat expected.  Meissner to me was the great surprise - so full of life, and pure wonder of being there, skating in the Olympics.  The sheer wonderment really showed.

While this link lasts: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2006/02/21/sports/20060222_OLYMPICS_SLIDESHOW_index.html

I am also amused that to my strange mind, Sasha Cohen may actually look more slavic than Slutskaya (G looked her up - and yes, her Mom is Ukrainian, and she does indeed speak Russian and presumably Ukrainian).  She also (amusingly enough) skated to a Russian folk song.  Irena skated (also amusingly) to Dies Irae, which translates to "day of Wrath".  But it didn't matter - the music was great and Slktskaya's program was skated perfectly.

The finals are this Thursday.  I don't know who to cheer for - if Sluskaya wins, it will make up for last Olympics, where she placed second in a surprise (but well deserved) upset to Sara Hughes.  It will also give Russia golds in all three skating events, something that has never been done before.  On the other hand, Sasha Cohen has incredible art, and in the short program, showed she has what it takes.  Or there could be an upset - you never know.  That's skating!

Yesterday was G and my anniversary!  To celebrate (part 1), we ate, of course:

VERY tasty!  Tonight we will go out for dinner - still deciding where.  The Olive Tree (Greek) seems to be a frontrunner, although Indian is always there on the list...

And I was also a good husband, and bought some flowers - irises, which were prominent at our wedding.

 

It just happened - Gwendolyn just finished the last web-based test on her Nutrition course.  She is now DONE and very happy that it is over.  Her final average was 97.5%, which "should be good for a A".

This is her progress chart, now complete.  As you can see, she is smiling!

For each of the 22 chapters (652 pages), which were grouped into 12 exams, she had a 7 step process to study as follows:

1. Pull all material from the course web site


2. Type up the vocabulary for the chapter and make entries in table of acronyms


3. Take all of the teacher-provided materials (except lecture) and reformat into G's personal style.  Then print .


4. Take lecture, put into specially created word template - format using outline styles


5. Read and highlight chapter, with the outline of the lecture open on the computer.  Augment outline as necessary.  Print.


6. Review all printed material (i.e. actually study).


7. Take test...

Each step gets colored in on the "control chart" - exhibit A. - Yellow for "in process", green for "done". Earned value, practices at home.

Congratulations, Gwendolyn!

Well, several days ago winter finally arrived - it is -10C out at the moment, and there is, well, maybe 15 cm of white, fluffy snow on the ground.  I may have to actually shovel the driveway - only the second or third time this year, and this is February!  Its going to stay winter at least through the week.  It will help me enjoy California next week ;-)

This has been a busy week at work - just a lot of things to do.  I am collaborating with Eric on a paper (although I am worried I am not going to be able to give it a fair share of my time), and there is some standards activity going on, which is OK.  Next week I go on a combination trip - first to San Diego (CA) for a 2 day meeting, then a one day meeting in Denver, CO, then back home again.

I have been doing at least a reasonable job of keeping my exercise up - the last two days I ran (yesterday for 6.5 km, tonight for 7 km) - enough that my toes complained with some small blisters.  So no more running 'til Saturday.  Tonight it was easy because I had plenty of good distractions (and believe me, running on a treadmill NEEDS distractions).  I had the pool people to watch (waterslide and all), an MP3 player to listen to, and, special, tonight only, a girl and guy (they seemed to know each other well)  high school students (Juniors or Seniors - hard to tell.  They were loudly chatting away about everything high school - chemisty homework, falling asleep sitting up, what all their friends were doing, who is going to the snowflake ball, why ___ is so quiet lately.  Amusing.

G is almost done with her nutrition course, and doing very well, of course.  We both agree it will be GOOD for it to be OVER.

OK, you are all in for a real treat.  A friend told me about this one - and sure 'nuff, its on the web.  I won't explain, you'll have to look yourself - enjoy!

http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/dinoriki/phliez/work-well-together.html

Another blogger's reflection on this: http://www.aprilkelly.com/rambles/Wildblue.htm

   :-)

 

Weekends are good.  Winter has once again returned, albeit in a rather mild way - lot of wind.  I'm afraid nothing much happened today - it was a day of rest, at least for me (G has been studying furiously in Nutrition, trying to finish as much of her course as possible before classes begin - taken 3 "weekly" tests this week, with more to come.).  I hung out, took a walk, and went skating (late night - 10 - 11 pm) - it was nice to get back on skates and remind my leg muscles what they are about.  The good news is that at least I still remember how to do it, although I certainly won no gold medals.  Even had one good fall, but I am still in one piece.

Tomorrow (well, looking at the time, 12:30 am, I guess "later today") G gets a well deserved break and we are going to go to the zoo!

Anya says Hi!

 

Well, I'm beginning to feel a bit guilty about our strange weather here now that NW Russia is having such a cold spell - maybe our turn will come soon.  But here it is -- +13 degrees, and once again, people are not wearing jackets to work. It is a repeat of this time last week - last Thursday we had the same.  After that, it had indeed turned back to winter, with some reasonable temperatures more in the -8 range.  And it snowed, and the world once again turned white - it actually made sense to wake up and look outside.  January should have snow.  But then Tuesday it rained and the world once again turned green.  And now its warm.  Lunchtime walk, I think.  We'll see.

My sister had been visiting my Mom in Florida, and left yesterday to go back home in Canada.  She is in for a rude surprise, as Florida was in the mid-twenties temperature wise, and it is now -14 back at home, with -21C forecast for tomorrow.

. . . Almost like St. Petersburg, at least at the moment!

The last two nights I have been making an incremental dinner - there has been no time to cook, so after getting back from the gyn at 10:20 I start to cook.  Two days ago I did chopping, and last night I cooked.  A stir fry dish that if nothing else is pretty.  Hope is tastes ok.  Here is a picture:

Wonderful sunrise this morning.  Motivated me to get out of bed (to take a picture of it).

And it is going to be WARM today (about 15 degrees).  To celebrate, I am not going to wear a jacket to work! :-)

Yesterday was a great relief.  Work has been, well, "highly variable" in the motivation and general esprit du corps areas.  So disappearing in the mid afternoon was fun.  I did several things.  First, because I just wanted to MOVE, I went running aside the canal.  I started at the Lyndon rd., ran along the canal until I got to Fairport park, then ran back again.  10+ km, but not really a great problem - it was just so nice being outdoors without a jacket, and I didn't run fast anyways. Sure enough, there were many other walkers and runners out, so I was in good company.  I then walked for a bit, listened to the birds, stretched, and went home. 

After dinner I played volleyball.  I SUCKED big time for some reason (maybe it is because my legs finally decided to go on strike), but still had fun.  I slept well.

Eleven degrees (C) and sunny outside.  There is NO WAY I am staying at work.  What is vacation for?

I'm outta here!

This has been a strange sort of winter, and especially a strange January so far.  The middle of January is on average the coldest time of the year, average temperature wise.  Well, so far, this has not been the case.  It has not been exactly balmy, but not very cold either.  If I think about a typical day the high would be about 0 and the low perhaps -5.  Ok, for one day it probably got down to -11, but that was unusual.  Today it was about +5, and this Thursday it is supposed to get up to +10, or so they say.  If it does, maybe I'll take several hours of vacation and, I don't know, ride a bike or something....

Snow wise less than normal also.  So far average wise we are about 20 cm of snow below average.  Outside?  Green grass, no even very much mud.  Perfect weather for early April.

... Boy, I expect we are in for a rude awakening sometime soon...  I can see it now - some day I will wake up to a meter of snow and -15C temperatures... brrr...

New Years was pretty uneventful.  I started writing a "New Year's" blog entry, but then, in classic style never finished it.  Well, that opportunity was lost - I will have to wait another year for that...

Let's see, time for an obsession rundown for G and me:

Chuck's obsessions - fewer than normal

• Getting exercise: doing reasonably well here.  Ok, my motivation is not very pure - the more I exercise the more I can eat.  And I LOVE to eat...  But either way, I am managing to get some sort of exercise most days, either at the gym, walking, or (weather permitting) running outside.  At the gym I am mostly doing stairmaster and treadmill (running, not walking), and stretching (still my major weakness).  Overall goal by spring - 166 lbs (76 kg), which is about 8 lbs (ok, maybe even 9) below where I am.  But I give myself until June 1 to get there, so it should be pretty easy.  <Of course, I have said that the last 2 years and failed...>


• UML: This is a work thing.  I need to learn and understand UML 2.0, since knowing this is the bread and butter of my job, and I will never have time to get it right at work.  I don't do this stuff that often, but mid-winter is a good time.


• UML tool evaluation: part work, part play.  Evaluating demo versions of SW development tools that really do cost $13,000 a copy!  Better my company than me buying it.  Makes MS Office Pro look cheap!


• Budget: We don't really have one, and we need one.  Slowly working towards getting one set up.  At least all of our past year expenses are categorized now, so we know what we have spent before.  (We are actually doing pretty well).


• Oboe: Unfortunately, NOT an obsession at the moment, and needs to be.  Well, someday.

Gwendolyn's obsessions - few, but intense...

• Classwork: Anatomy done (A+), now working Nutrution, as well as Human Growth and Development.  She is trying to complete two one-semester courses over Christmas break.  May even succeed.  Unfortunately almost killing her at the same time.  Everyone keep your fingers crossed and think kind thoughts.


• More classwork


• And more classwork yet


• Blockbuster Online DVD club: Hey, you have to do something besides study.  So G has a continuous stream of DVDs coming to her.  This was a familiar experience when Masha was here, but...  G averages about 3 DVDs per week it seems.


• Sewing: obsession in remission.  But always there if the going gets tough!

Gee, what else is there?  Well, the living room roof replacement is now completed, but a new spot has shown up on the "flat spot" on our roof.  From what we understand, not a roof failure, but a siding failure.  But SOME DAY we will have the house fixed up.  Then we can work on getting the water damage to the drywall fixed.  It never ends.

Well, that's all for now...