Winter rambling

A bit of a lull in the weather since the most recent storm. The temperature over the last couple of days have been well above freezing so a lot of snow melting has occurred. I had shoveled some additional snow up until the melt then the snow got extra heavy but all in all the yard in decent shape.

Yesterday Carol picked up Ian at his college and they went to the appointment with the surgeon to check on how his foot was healing. All was good and he is off the crutches and can resume regular activities. He came home for the night, went to a couple of OA meetings after which he went directly back to school. He'll be at the school's hockey game tonight.

I've spent the day on a couple of projects from the office that I would have worked on Monday but with my aunt's funeral that morning I'm just taking the whole day off. I've also caught up on some website updates for the town's website. Tomorrow Carol and I will attend visiting hours at the funeral home.

Aunt Teen, 1920 - 2009

My Aunt Teen (Christine, one of my father's sisters) passed away Tuesday morning at the age of 88, she was my Godmother. One of 13 children, my siblings and I have more than our share of cousins just on Dad' side of the family (plenty on Mom's side as well). Aunt Teen enjoyed her nieces and nephews and I'll always remember her laughing at our antics.

Aunt Teen visited us at Christmas several times over the years, this photo is from 1974. From L-R: Dad, brother David, Mom, sisters Kathy and Doreen and Aunt Teen.

More fun in February

Repeat after me...
t_w_e_n_t_y - f_o_u_r__i_n_c_h_e_s__o_f__S_N_O_W
in my freaking yard! It's not like you never see snow pictures on this blog and there are some of the visitors that live in this region who know very well how much snow we have. A lot of people have been with out power for two days now. Somehow we dodged that bullet though the power "flashed" off for a sec, shutting down the computers and resetting all the clocks. We went to bed about 10:30 pm Sunday night with about an inch of fresh snow on the ground and a forecast of 10 to 16 inches - got out of bed at 5am Monday and the snow was ending and we were buried. I ended up not going to work - just spent the day clearing snow not that there are many places to put it all now or any that may come in the in the near future. Two months, mid April, I'll bet that there is still snow in the yard.

There is a pick up truck in the center of this photo.

Will the fun ever end?

February trudges on

Carol has had this week off so she's getting plenty of "self" time. Making great strides on the scrapbooking project. Yesterday she was around Portland on some errands and joined me for my noontime walk on my Eastern Promenade loop. Same route I took Ian on earlier this winter. Speaking of Ian, he's been pretty active as well as being challenged by his course work. Next week he'll have his ankle checked out again by the surgeon and if all is well then I think he can start putting full weight on the foot. I'm keeping busy with my side work, town website and correspondence. Things at the office are still a little slow but I've had work to do, just not enough to be pressured. I find it hard to work efficiently unless I have too much to do. Tonight the first snowstorm in over two weeks has begun. There'll be some cleaning up tomorrow night. I clearly reached that point where I'm biding my time until winter is over. Spring is the cure.

A Return to Earth from Deep Space

Finished reading William C. Dietz's "By Force of Arms" (BFOA), part of his Legion of the Damned series. It was the follow up to "By Blood Alone" I had read last summer. BFOA didn't have the wide ranging characters and depth of situations that it's predecessors did but was an exciting read none the less. This series as does Neal Asher, Iain Banks, Peter Hamilton and other writers really do a great job incorporating artificial intelligences (AIs) into their stories. Asher and Banks in particular put a lot of personality and strong roles into their AIs involvement of a story. In BFOA there is an entire race of robots called the Sheen controlled by an AI called the Hoon which presents one of the great threats to the Confederacy (species including humans from acrossed the galaxy) who have just survived a massive attempt to be overthrown. "For More Than Glory" is the next book in the series.

Next in line is "The Draco Tavern" by Larry Niven. Niven has provided tons of great science fiction of which I've barely scratched the surface. The "Ringworld" series send the reader's imagination soaring about a world with a wide range of humanoid species built on the inside of a ring that surrounds a sun and the mysteries of how the Ringworld came abouts. I've also read "The Protector", "Destiny's Road" and off and on I'll read one of the many short stories of "N-Space". Here is a Wikipedia link with a description of The Draco Tavern.

getting our RV on

Last Sunday was the Vacationland Camping and Outdoor Recreation Supershow in Portland that we attend every year as previous blogs will attest to. We began the day at Lois and Jim's for breakfast as Lois prepared apple waffles and sausage patties. There didn't seem to be as many RVs or campground booths as in past years since this year there was a huge space set aside for LL Bean outdoor activities people could check out, fly fishing casting and view kayak presentations. There were booths of services and destinations which hadn't been there before. Jim was interested in a electric scooter at a booth that a neighbor of his was manning.

A little Airsteam, they sure are the classic maker of RVs and item for item they are probably the most expensive trailers on the market without having the most features. Pictured below is Carol looking over the galley/dining area. In spite of how well made they are the mid to smaller size Airstreams are a little tight for our comfort.


The most intriguing and smallest RV is the T@B, a teardrop shaped trailer. It almost makes you think you could haul it with the electric scooter Jim was looking at. One thing a buyer needs to consider, how cozy do you want to be? Even tighter would be some models of A-Frame fold-down trailers of which there were not any at this show.

Though we liked a couple of campers looked at nothing blew us away in the range of RV we were interested in. As for the campgrounds with booths there were fewer ones from further away than usual which was disappointing. New was a booth promoting campgrounds in Vermont where we hope to go sometime this summer.

Great uncle

A couple of weeks ago Elaine invited us over to her and Steve's place for a small family gathering which included a visit with the newest member of the family, Brock their first grandchild and Mark and Megan's son whom I blogged about last month. Jeesh, I'm guessing I haven't held an infant for at least 10 years, our niece Deanna. That's too long a time to go without holding a baby, it helps one remember our humanity. Oh, and as a reminder about what can happen when you have a baby Brock loaded up his diaper while I was holding him, I handed him off to his Dad for maintenance. New Dads need all the practice they can get.

Happy Valentines Day

To all the visitors of my blog

Time out

Wow, two weeks without a blog. You'd think it was Lent or something. As usual my activities haven't left me with the time or energy to think about putting up a new blog or two. My goal today to to do several posts over the weekend to touch on some of my experiences during this period. To begin here's a photo of the clock I received for 20 years of service recognition at my place of employment. Every few months our office has an "all-associates meeting" where the office manager goes over our financials, status of major projects and proposals and employee recognitions one of which are five year milestones. As is the tradition over the last few years when presented with our certificate and clock we are asked what project we logged our first billable hour. Heck, I couldn't be sure. In those days there were about 10 graphic designers and a lot of projects in an office that had 4 times the staff as we do today. So I rely on one of the major projects of that time which I also used at my fifteen year recognition and the presentation moves on. It's a nice looking clock and now resides at the office with the certificate. All in all it's a good place to work, lots of friendly people in a great location. If all continues well I expect when the day comes I'll retire from there.