Birthday Weekend

My birthday weekend is wrapping up. Its been a good one, too. Friday was a fun evening spent with the family, though Kelly and I were too wiped to watch a movie or do much else after the kids went to bed. Thus it was pretty quiet.

Saturday morning was one spent dozing a bit in bed, though sleeping late has come to mean 7:30 now that we’re parents. A breakfast of blueberry pancakes and bacon soon followed, cooked up by Chef Kelly and her Noisy Chef assistant, Hallie.

After a good meal, we plotted the day’s activities. Rain was on the way, so my first choice of a family hike was out of the question. Instead, we packed up the kids and headed for the N.C. Museum of Natural Science. We spent the whole morning there chasing after gleeful kids, not minding the rain outside.

After getting home for lunch, the kids took their naps and so did the adults. I wound up sleeping 90 minutes, far beyond my usual nap, though I felt quite refreshed afterward. We were running out of time to get ready for our evening concert, so I spent the next hour finding a suit that still fits.

My parents (and Scott, who would be joining us) arrived soon after we got the kids up from their naps. After giving my parents the “plan of the day,” we said goodnight to the kids and headed out the door. We ate and got drinks at the Rockford before dashing to Memorial Auditorium for the symphony.

The symphony featured Edgar Meyer, a celebrated bassist. In my rush to get tickets, it didn’t even register who he was until five minutes into his performance. Meyer is the talented bassist who plays with Yo Yo Ma and Mark O’Connor on two CDs I love, Appalachia Waltz and Appalachian Journey. To see him playing five rows in front of us was just incredible. I walked around the entire evening with a stupid grin on my face!

After a good night’s sleep, we woke again around 7 and were once again faced with a rainy day. It was breakfast and then a trip to the N.C. Art Museum, where we marched around outside before warming up in the children’s play area of the museum.

After lunch, I met Jeff over at my parents’ house to help move furniture. Then it was back home for the kids’ naptimes, after which I hit the road for some volunteer work in Durham for the Rhine. Then it was playtime with the kids, dinner, bath time for the kids, and finally bedtime for the kids. Whew!

Now I need to finish packing for my trip to Seattle tomorrow. Fortunately, I’ve got a good biography on Benjamin Franklin to read on the long plane flights there and back.

See y’all on the flipside.

Musical Score

Today is my birthday (along with my twin bro Allen). I’ve got a birthday breakfast being cooked up by my wife and daughter. I’ve got a son marching around making sure I don’t get too far away from my birthday cards. I’ve got a gorgeous, springlike morning in which to go hiking with my family.

I’ve got a plastic sled gift from Hallie, amusing in light of the gorgeous, springlike morning. I’ve got a weekend to look forward to at the America’s Sail in July.

Later this evening, I’ve got a symphony to attend with my lovely wife. We’ll be sitting so close that we’ll be bringing our flute and piano along, just in case.

Life is good.

Office Park

The new office backs up to Lake Johnson Park. I can look out my window and see the wooded side of the lake. It’s so peaceful.

I lived at the neighboring Wildwoods of Lake Johnson apartments for three years and loved it. I still miss sitting on that screen porch, watching the woods and sky as thunderstorms moved through on summer evenings. That park will always be a special place to me. Its nice to see it every day again.

As I walked into the building after a lunch run yesterday, I heard a loud screeching above me. A hawk of some variety was perched above the third floor, looking regally over his domain. Though my lunch was getting cold, I couldn’t help but stop and admire that bird.

I’m going to like coming to the office.

Working Like A Dog

As far as work goes, Friday was the day my employer moved from our old offices to brand new offices. We’re fortunate not to be a big company (or at least our office), so the move was very smooth by most standards. The new digs are a big step up from the old ones.

Monday and Tuesday were busy with executive visits. Its led to some late days and little time for other things. I’ve been thinking I need a clone of myself to help with the load. No sooner did I broach the subject than it was approved! Tomorrow I interview a potential candidate to help with the fun stuff. I have to say that I’m impressed with the speed in which it all came together.

Tomorrow has more move-related work. Monday I fly to Seattle, returning Wednesday night. I conduct more interviews the rest of next week. The following week I fly to LA for two days of business (plus two days of travel). The following week I spend training technical staff, taking time out to get my wisdom teeth pulled. The week after I fly back to Southern California for a trade show. Then I stay here until the second week of March when I’m on the road again for four days.

Got all that?

Busy Weekend

I’ve been pretty busy lately. Thus the blog-that-writes-itself post earlier. I’ve got a minute now though, so here’s a recap of the past few days.

Friday night I spend some time with Kelly putting together a website for Hallie’s preschool. We’ve made a lot of progress but there is some cleaning up to do. Actually, Kelly has done far more work on this but needed my help with some of the tech stuff. She’s amazing, I tell ya.

Saturday I was determined to catch up on some long-suffering projects. I spent the previous weekend helping my parents with their new HDTV. This weekend was my turn to do some fancy hookups.

My parents gave me their unused, supersized VHF/UHF TV antenna, an antenna so big it barely fit into my car. I managed to set it up in an unused area of the attic, though, and the resulting picture made it worth all the trouble. My temporary solution was to snake the coax down through the attic stairway, but that obviously needed a better solution.

Since we moved into this house, I’ve wanted an easy way to get cables from upstairs to downstairs. I bought some swimming pool vacuum hose to serve this purpose but never got around to installing it. This weekend was the time to do that. I searched the attic for an easy path to the garage but wound up empty-handed. It would take more work to make this happen: I would have to take the house apart.

I took off the soffit vents from the side of the house to get access to the space above my garage wall. I then threaded the hose from the attic down the roofline to the top of my garage wall. I then went inside the garage and cut a 1.5″ hole up through the wall until I had a path for the hose. Unfortunately for me, the hole saw on the drill was a bit tight for the hose, so I had to spend another 20 minutes carving the hole out with the undersized saw.

Eventually the hose went through. I nailed the soffit vents back on the house, nailed the hose to the attic wall so it wouldn’t come loose, and went down to the garage for the coax I wanted to pull through the hose.

Oops. No coax long enough! Back to the parents house for some coax, which they graciously gave me in exchange for fixing their TV. I tweaked their TV a little more before returning with the coax.

The hose conduit worked like a champ. The coax was installed in about 10 minutes, whereas it would’ve taken over an hour to thread it through separately. Putting in that conduit took the better part of the weekend, but now I can wire up just about anything in my attic without so much as getting my hands dirty. The conduit also allows us to drywall the garage some day without sacrificing our ability to run wires. Woot!

That’s not the only thing we did that weekend. I put up three picture shelves in our den, measuring them precisely so they line up with the wall studs. This was one of those rare project where the holes I drilled were all right on target. I was skeptical of how the shelves would look, but Kelly has sold me on them. They really add a lot to the room.

Oh, and as someone already mentioned, the Wolfpack won and the Heels lost their games on Saturday. Gotta love that. I took time out from the projects to watch the end of the State game.

We had some good family time during all of that, too. I will be on the road frequently in the next few weeks, so I aim to enjoy all the family time I can get.

Casey Jones

Casey Jones
As Performed by Johnny Cash

Come all you rounders if you wanna hear
the story about a brave engineer
Casey Jones was the roller’s name
on a 6-8 wheeler, boys, he rode to fame

Caller called Casey bout half past four
he kissed his wife at the station door
He climbed in the cabin with his orders in his hand
Said this is my trip to the Promised Land

Casey Jones climbed in the cabin
Casey Jones orders in his hand
Casey Jones leanin’ out the window
Taking a trip to the Promised Land
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Cheap Thoughts: Self-Writing Blog

What if I could invent a blog that wrote itself? A blog that took the difficulty of coming up with topics completely out of the picture?

For instance, what if I added some software to an iPod or Treo that made it narrate everything it sees? Kind of like Closed Captioning but for real life?

Man, if this was a product I would buy one.

America’s Sail Coming In June!

The paper brought news this morning about the America’s Sail event which is coming to Beaufort, NC at the end of June. It’s a race of tall sailing ships as well as a celebration of the rich maritime history of North Carolina.

Speaking of rich, some of the sponsors are from the high end. Quotes in the article like “It’s on the scale of the U.S. Open” make me wonder if how many dubloons we’ll need if we decide to go.

Still, those tall ships should be fun to watch, even from the cheap seats. This sounds like one event I just can’t resist.

Highlights of 2005, Number 1: Italy!

Number 1. Italy! Of course you knew that our May trip to Italy would be the biggest event of 2005. While I’ve been to many places in my lifetime, our family trip to Italy will always stand out.

It was about this time of year that we began planning it. Kelly’s parents were visiting, there was plenty of bustle, and the idea was bantered around. I heard the plans but it didn’t really register with me. I guess I assumed it would never really happen. Travis was all of two months old at the time. I mean, how could we think of pulling off something like this?

But it did happen! We got our passports, purchased our tickets, picked out a farmhouse apartment outside of Siena, and soon we were counting down the days. Travis turned six months old right before we left and seemed jolly enough to reasonably make the flight. Hallie we had no question about, naturally!

The flight was a smooth one up until the very end. We all had a blast marching around the countryside and cobblestone streets; there was much pasta, wine, and gelato consumed; and we enjoyed living life like the Italians do for our lucky two weeks. Heck, we even took readers of the Raleigh News and Observer along, too. Aside from Travis’s unexpected visit to a Siena hospital, we couldn’t have asked for more (though the hospital visit was enlightening as well).

The flight back was fraught with obstacles. Perhaps the universe was suggesting we stay! We left Florence two hours late and missed our connecting flight in Paris, forcing us to stay overnight. It was terrible … listening to the fun the rest of our group had while Kelly and I were stuck in the hotel with the kids!

Oh well. Paris deserves more than a half-day. One day we’ll do it right.

Oh, and missing our Paris to Washington flight meant missing our flight from Washington to Raleigh, too. Rather than spend the night in the DC area, we rented a car and drove the six hours back home. I guess we couldn’t get enough of traveling.

As the new year kicks off, I find myself longing to be back in Tuscany. I suppose it gets in your blood. We vow to return some day, when the kids are a bit older and can better appreciate it. I’m sure it will have aged like the fine wine grown in its spectacular countryside.