Just some more pictures.

This was shot as C walked off the stage at graduation. Can you see the relief in her face? It is more of a look that says: I am tired from staying up all night.



Here are a couple more of C and Prom. Here is the rainbow of dresses that we saw:

Pictures, Part 3

Here are some more pictures, this time from the trip up to Maine.

Since I was not along when these were made, I cannot further describe the scenes. These are from or near the "Northern Estate" of AP/UJ. These are not the standard east cost beaches:









And one from New York, from the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, looking east, toward the UN. You can see the Chrysler Building on the left.

Pictures, Part Deux

As promised, here are some more pictures. One is funny, IMO, but the rest are from C's Senior Prom.


C in the Duke Gardens



C and her roommate in the Duke Gardens


Another of C at Duke Gardens:



The group of people that we took to Duke Gardens for Picture taking:



Hi sis! ( I will change this pic in a day or two, but for now, enjoy!)

Pictures, finally, part one

I have dumped multiple cards onto my hard drive and will endeavor to post a few pictures each day over the next few days. Because the pictures are from multiple cameras, there may be no discernable order to the pictures. I will add a brief description for each picture.

Here is a picture of A and her boyfriend, A.


Here is C and A at C's graduation.


The Fam at graduation.


Here is C with Uncle D and Aunt J


This is K and C on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building

Africa - A new take

I was directed to this remake of Toto's Africa. It is a pretty good, uplifting video. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Travel- A wordy post

Last week I traveled to New England. This time, however, K and C went with me.

We stopped by AP/UJ's house in CT and got to see them and TJR on the way up. The so graciously offered (and we accepted) the use of their Maine estate for a couple of days while I worked in the area. (This is an informal thanks for the use of your home and hospitality on the return trip.)

So off K, C and I went toward Boston, then further north. The trouble with my schedule is that it changed from needing to be in ME, to not having an appointment in ME all week. The schedule shifted a bit west along with south. So K and C dropped me off at a hotel in Lawrence, MA, then proceeded to ME. According to K and C (not a chicken place), their stay in ME was very nice, given the constant rain and 50 degree temperatures. They also traveled to Bar Harbor to visit a friend of C's from school that is doing some research at Jackson Institute.

On Thursday after business calls are finished for the day, K,C and I (the sunshine band) meet back up and we head to RI as I have business appointments there on Friday. It is still raining on Friday AM, but while I was working, C/K took the opportunity to visit Newport, RI and see some of the big houses there.

After work on Friday, we traveled back to CT to return the keys for the northern estate to AP/UJ. While the AP served a wonderful ham dinner and all of the local cousins and their children came over for a visit. It was great to see everyone. While we were in CT, the sun was out making for a nice visit. As soon as we left, the rain was back. C/K and I left at about 9 PM, headed for a day of sightseeing in NYC on Saturday.

The van was parked on the NJ side and a ferry was used to go into the city. It was the same ferry group that helped the flight that landed in the Hudson.

It was a wonderful Saturday in NYC, going to the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, riding the Gray Line bus for sight seeing, visiting Times Square. It is fun to ride an open top bus, in the rain, not so much.

We even visited Canal Street to see what all the hubbub is about there. I will say, from a guy perspective, Canal Street and the associated mess that is there was less than exciting. C/K did get to see some back rooms full of interesting merchandise, but I was people watching from the street or sidewalk, so it just added to the day. Departing NYC about 8PM, all of us were tired from a long day of walking and riding in the occasional rain.

Driving toward home, we stopped for gas at a rest stop on the NJ Turnpike. A minor set back occurred as the van would not restart. Irritating a lot of people as we blocked a gas pump for about an hour, the service station attendants and I attempted every thing we could imagine to get the car started, but to no avail.

A tow truck was called and with that, C/K and I got to spend an interesting evening in Bordentown, NJ. From the tow truck business office, I called all the hotels in the area and found only one room available, at the Hampton Inn, a smoking room with a king sized bed. Being our only option, I took it. There was a significant returning presence of Reservists from Iraq to Fort Dix so there were many families that came from far away and also many people traveling to Six Flags, clogging the hotels.

The car needed repaired on a Sunday, and fortunately the tow truck driver left the van at a place having a mechanic working on Sunday. The mechanic arrives at about 10AM and diagnosed the starter on the van failed without warning and needed replaced. I walked from the hotel to the service station, about 2 miles, as C had accidentally left her glucose meter in the van when we dropped it off. As I got to the service station, the mechanic had just diagnosed the starter problem. It would be 45 minutes or so until the starter arrived and about an hour for installation. The owner of the station even let me use his personal vehicle to get back to the hotel.

Blatant Plug: If you are ever in need of service or gas and are near Bordentown, NJ, Exit 7 on the NJ Turnpike, please visit Bill Waite's Service Center. He was a really nice guy and fixed the van at a reasonable price. He will get my vote as a good business to use.

Minus a few $, but none the worse for wear, we were back on the road at 1:45PM. Garmin said we would arrive home at 8, but little did Garmin know of the traffic. At each of the toll plazas in Delaware and MD, there were significant lines of traffic that even an Easy-Pass could not overcome. Miles and miles of traffic. Coming out of the bottom of DC, from I295 to I95 was solid, bumper to bumper, inching along. I95 continued to be solid, bumper to bumper, slow moving traffic for 15-20 miles going south, all for no apparent reason other than quantity of cars. When the traffic did get up to speed, cruise control was not an option as there were too many vehicles too close together. It was only after passing Petersburg, VA and reaching I85 did the traffic thin. We arrived home at about 10:30PM.

Think of this: How many people get to travel by Van, Bus, Ferry, Subway, and Tow Truck in the span of 24 hours? The only things missing were a pack mule and airplane.

K and C had a great time in their travels, and NYC was enjoyable for us as a family. It was also really wonderful that AP/UJ, my cousins, and their children all took time to visit with us. It was a memorable trip.

This Weekend

Working on the house this weekend will be interspersed with trips (3 round trips) to Durham, NC. It is prom weekend for C, so she needs a car for hair and nail appointments. That is the Friday trip. Saturday afternoon around 3PM we will meet with her and friends at the Duke gardens for pictures, and then Sunday evening we will need to retrieve our car from C. Figure about 2.5 hours round trip (actual travel time is a bit less than 2 hours. C will look beautiful in her dress (as nearly all the Prom young men and women do).

It is our last Prom. Our little family is nearly all grown up, sniff, sniff.

Sorry it has been a month

But K and I have been working on a remodel job for the laundry room. I built a cabinet on one end that matches our kitchen cabinets in style/look, we will be installing a new, stacking front loading W/D combination, which meant relocating water/drain pipes, rewiring some outlets, building a wet wall, laying tile, installing trim, painting, installing the new dryer vent in the roof. All that mixed in with a normal dose of my travel schedule.

It will be 95% completed this Sunday, before I leave for Upstate NY for the week. The last thing I will be building is a cabinet over the new W/D combo that will hide the dryer vent pipe and have a short bar for hanging clothes fresh from the dryer. But that will occur another day. One cannot have too much storage, even though we have 2x what was here when we bought the house. Pictures will be posted next week.

Next up is a master bathroom redo (already started).

Sometimes Travel is not fun

and today was one of those days. I was to travel from Greensboro, NC to Philadelphia, a non-stop flight. One take off and one landing.

So I got to the airport on time for the departure, at about 1:30 for a 2:45 departure. Greensboro is a small airport, so there are rarely any line, let alone a long line. I was through security in a breeze and got to my gate where the sign said "Flight Delayed" with no estimated departure time.

So we sat and sat and sat. First, the flight was to depart at 4:45, then 5:30 then 6:15, until we finally left at 6:30. It seems the slightest bad weather (rain) just bogs the Philadelphia airport. On top of this, plane of the person I am to meet was even later, by an hour and forty five minutes.

Even though my cell phone is a PDA with email capabilities, there is only so much one can do on an itty-bitty keyboard. Well, there was 4+ hours of my life I will never get back.

College

C applied to several colleges and Universities. South Carolina, Elon college, Campbell, Ohio State, East Carolina, North Carolina Central and UNC-CH. I am not sure if I remember them all. She got accepted to them all. Now comes the fun part.

Her first preference is for UNC-CH, because of the programs available and A is there. but Ohio State and South Carolina are making a good push for her time as well. There are a couple of other factors that will play into this as well, but it is going to be an interesting two weeks of (in)decision.

I've been quiet for a while, but

I found this song to be an interesting bit of pop, from Hannah Montana.

Another version:

Before she left

C got her hair cut. She was growing it long for donation to "Locks of Love" and wanted to have her Senior pictures with the long hair. Well senior pictures are over, she was tired of long hair, so got it cut.





I think it looks great. And it is way easier to manage for her.

C Update

We got a quick email from C late yesterday saying she is having a great time. She did get to see monkeys and toucans in the wild during a trip into a rain forest. She will be back around Midnight tomorrow. We are not scheduled to greet her at the airport as this is a school trip, but we are going anyway. She will need the hug and greeting smiles from us (and if she does not, we need them from her).

Mom would have killed my brother and I if

we had tried this. But yet, I could see us doing this if glow sticks would have been around when we were in our mischievous youth period. Still, it is fun to watch and think about the time gone by.



I am sure if we had done it, it would have been innocent fun. Are you listening HO/LO, MP/EP or TL?

C is away

C is on a mini-term trip to Nicaragua. There she is studying deforestation's effects and international commerce relating to coffee production. She will be there for about 8 days. I hope she is having a good time where it is +90F there and will be 13F here tomorrow.

I love global warming.

It is snowing

Here it is, March 1 and it is snowing outside. It is 9:36PM and there is one inch on the ground, and it is snowing hard. They are expecting between 4-9 inches of snow overnight. Being dark, no pictures are available. However, It would be difficult to post them as the power is intermittent.

Update:

I was here at the computer, but saw lightning and heard thunder. Isn't there some adage about these in a snow storm? It was really weird.

School House Rock

I had not seen this one before.

Sorry for the quiet

I am trying to shake a silly cold that has me feeling miserable. There has been a bit going on, and will probably dump sometime this weekend. Until then

Not much of a decision

C has heard from many colleges about acceptance. Ohio State, North Carolina Central, Elon College, are several that have accepted her that I can remember. She was waiting until today to find out if her first choice was available.

And today, C was accepted to UNC Chapel Hill. I think she is 99% certain to enroll there.

Congratulations C, we are proud of you.

I know you feel for me

But there has been a lull in activities around the homestead. K and I are deciding many choices for remodeling a bath and laundry room with demolition to start in a couple weeks, after....

I will be traveling to Boston next week for a meeting at HQ. We are doing some training with a couple of our colleagues from China and I am to give a talk and take them on some end user calls.

After that it is on to Key West for an International Sales Meeting. I leave bright an early on Monday, and get back on Thursday about Midnight. The faster I can get away from the group, the better for me.

The girls are back at school, so it will be quite quiet for a while.