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!