Life is Sweet

Sometimes you just have to realize that life is pretty sweet. Yes I am a little depressed that Andrew isn't here (he knows that always happens to me), but in general I've got a lot to be thankful for, like these new lounge chairs! The photo shows my view right now and a shot of me with a Stella beer. I found out that drinking Stella means I'm a 'chav' - look it up online, it means white trash in Britain, but I don't care, I like it! Anyways, today was a good day, I got a lot of yard work done and I've had one of those times when I love my yard and don't see all of it's imperfections. I managed to use up all the 3 cubic foot mulch bags - those bags are just too heavy for me, so from now on I am only getting 2 cubic bags. I've got the music on and have my laptop on the deck using wireless. Love that!!! Harley is under the other lounge chair and Sidney is somewhere in the yard I guess. I think I will go down for a forest walk with the cats. The weather right now is so perfect - no humidity and mid to upper 70's with sunny skies and the odd cloud passing by. I love it!!!

Sailing Club

Andrew left yesterday morning for another business trip, this time in San Jose. He'll be back late on Friday night. So I am on my own for the week again and I'm happy to have the cats for company. Last week we found out that we have been accepted into the Keowee Sailing Club, which means we will be moving our sailboat from Lake Hartwell to Lake Keowee. We really like being at Big Water Marina on Lake Hartwell - the sailing is great there and the service from the marina is excellent. The only thing wrong is that it takes about an hour to drive down there one way. The advantage of Keowee Sailing Club is that it will be only about 10 minutes away. Another thing is that we will now have boats in both lakes (powerboat in Hartwell and sailboat in Keowee) and so we can choose which lake we want to visit (aren't we spoiled!!) But the disadvantage is that the sailing club is a self-help club, which means we will have to be able to handle emergencies and any other situations by ourselves. Hopefully we can make good friends with the other club members and learn a lot about sailing and about sail boats in general. Andrew gave me the task of figuring out how to get the mast down and get the boat over to the new lake. Yesterday I drove down to the boat and took some photos so I could study the mast connections and the lines and try to figure out what we would be doing. While walking back to the truck I stopped to talk to this guy, who turned out to be the owner of Big Water Marina. He was super nice and it turns out we can hire them to do everything for us, including driving the boat to the new slip and launching it. It is totally our choice as to what we want them to do for us. Well this totally relieved all my stress about the whole situation. Last night I talked to Andrew on the phone and we decided that we will get them to do everything. Yeah! I don't mind paying a bit of money to minimize my stress level. So we will try to get this all setup for the weekend of May 12. Driving back home from the marina I stopped at Lowes to check out their lawn chair selection. I've been wanting to get some of those lounge chair chaise-type chairs so I can lay out on the deck and suntan. I found exactly what I was looking for at an excellent price, and so I was able to get some cushions as well. So now we have a comfy spot to lie outside and take a nap (which I tried out yesterday afternoon and it was lovely, 75 degrees and just a slight breeze, perfect). Today I will be going grocery shopping and then doing lots of yard work, spreading mulch and cutting back dead branches and leaves resulting from that late hard freeze. I discovered yesterday that my baptisia is blooming this year. I bought the plants as tiny seedlings from a mailorder company and have been patiently waiting for 3 years for any blooms. The blue color is beautiful.

New Job

Although I'm not officially in my new position, I recently started to work on the new job, so I've been spending half my time at my old job and half my time at my new job. The new job is going to be pretty neat I think. I'm going to be working on clusters. Central management of high performance computing (HPC) is the latest craze to hit campuses across the country. I am joining a group at the campus level to help in managing and sysadmin'ing the machines (which means installing hardware and software, and then keeping them running). I will be working in cubicle land which is a real switch for me. I've always had my own office for all my jobs, most of them with windows even, so you could say I've been very spoiled. Most would call moving to a cube a downgrade, but for me it is a novelty and I am looking forward to the experience. Everyone in my new area has been very nice and welcoming. One downside is that I am not working on the central campus - I am out at a research park about 20 minutes from home. This means that for the first time I can think of, Andrew and I are not going to be car pooling. Both of us think this sucks, but it does have its advantages, such as Andrew can ride the harley to work. The first cluster I am in charge of is called 'axiom'. It is 3 racks wide, each rack basically looks like the photos here, front and back (the back is with all the wires). And yes, I understand what all these wires are doing! There are many more cluster systems to come. The job switch is interesting to me since for 20 years I've basically been doing the same thing (general sysadmin stuff) and it's getting pretty routine and boring. Now I get to learn something new for me and this challenges my brain since I don't know all the answers. And I will be working with some top notch nationally respected people and this is pretty cool.

Relay for Life

Friday night Andrew and his band played at the Relay for Life benefit on the campus behind the library. They were on from about 7:00pm to about 9:00pm. Andrew figures he had a little bit of stage fright since he thinks he messed up several times. I didn't hear any mistakes but perhaps I can't pick them out as easily. I made a couple of movies, here and here. The sound wasn't that great on this camera so realize that in person things sounded way better. I tried filming more in the front but I got blown away by the amps. The organizers had set up all the luminaries to create this very large walking square that the participants would walk throughout the night until the next morning (12 hours straight I think). I made a luminary for Bernie and actually found it later on in the evening when they were all lit up and I went around for a lap or two. They are going to raise a ton of money for cancer research based on the number of luminaries out there, plus they had lots of corporate sponsors and other fund raising activities. We left after tearing down the drums (I play the part of roadie) since Andrew still had to pack for Europe that night.

For Andrew

Andrew made it to Stockholm on Saturday and got to fly business class (the company booked the tickets for him), so the flight was great. He called me last night at 10:00pm my time which was 4:00am his time - he is jet lagged. Hopefully he is doing ok at 'work' today! Anyways, I promised him some pictures of the cats. The weekend for me was pretty good. I am in a total reading mode lately and just finished 'Julie and Julia' which I took out from the school library. It is a book written by a blogger - her blog got very popular online and a publisher offered her a book deal. Her blog was all about her project where she decided to cook all the recipes from Julia Child's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking'. I happen to have a copy of that cook book so it was fun to look at the actual recipes as they were mentioned in the book.

I'm Mad at Mother Nature

This last freeze has zapped all my plants. I took photos before the freeze to have something to look at. Pretty much all the new growth on everything has now turned brown. All the spring flowers and blooms are now brown mush. I am curious what the summer is going to be like for the crepe myrtles. All their new leaves are dead and so does that mean no flowers this summer? I sure will be doing a lot of dead heading in the coming weeks to get rid of all the dead material. I was able to save my 4 tropical deck containers by putting them in the greenhouse. Luckily I was lazy and hadn't planted out my little baby herb plants yet, and so I was able to save all of those as well in the greenhouse. This weekend Andrew is off to Europe for a week for business. First Sweden and then Germany. That means it will just be me and the cats here at home. Hopefully I can get a lot of yardwork done because when he gets back he wants to go sailing. We need to practice the things we learned on our trip before we forget everything! We have also booked our trip in June to Warsaw, Poland, where Andrew was born. Andrew's mom is renewing her MD diploma after 50 years of use and so we decided it's a good excuse to get everyone over there at the same time. This will be Andrew's first trip back to Poland since leaving it when he was 7 years old. We made a most excellent vegetable lasagna awhile back. I had no idea that vegetable lasagna could taste so good. Andrew was really impressed as well. It has zucchini and portobello mushrooms and tofu. Doesn't sound that appetizing but it was great. I just finished reading a Gordon Ramsay autobiograhpy - he is a British chef (Hell's Kitchen, etc.) and hates vegetarians. I respect how he has pulled himself up from being a welfare kid to owning several top restaurants with Michelin stars. Just goes to show how hard work can get a person somewhere if they are truly motivated. Oh, one more trip for me on the agenda this year. In October Andrew has a conference in Rio de Janeiro so Mindy and me are going to join him. We'll be staying at the conference hotel right on Copacabana Beach. It will be nice to have Mindy there since I won't be alone most of the time like I usually am when I accompany Andrew on a conference. This trip is good motivation to keep up my morning workouts and keep eating healthy. I haven't yet missed a day of working out, but I think I still need to work on my eating habits since I've only lost about 6 pounds since January 1. Way off from my original 1 pound per week goal. I just love food too much I guess!

Sailing Trip Part 6 (The Final Part)

Thursday was my turn as helmsman, so I led us out of Robert's Bayou and down the intercoastal waterway, under a bridge and out into the Gulf. It was a windy and wavey day, and I was glad I was steering, cause that meant I could hang onto the wheel and stay pretty stable. Unfortunately, Arlin was navigator and being down in the cabin meant he was getting seasick. After an hour or so he ended up puking off the stern, but he felt much better after that. No one else got sick but I did feel a little queasy after going down below to use the bathroom. I guess once you lose sight of the horizon and the fresh air, the wavey motion gets to your stomach. It probably didn't help any of us that we drank a lot last night either, alcohol is supposed to make seasickness worse. It was very exhilarating to be at the helm with the 3 to 5 foot waves and 25 knot winds. Then I had to steer us into the wind so the crew could raise the mainsail. It got jammed half way up and so I had to fight to keep the boat pointed into the wind while the guys fixed up the sail. They raised it up, then deployed the jib, and we turned off the engine and now we were sailing! It was also exciting to tack in those conditions, I had to make sure that I made my turn right after the crest of a wave. All in all a very exciting day. We ended up having to motor a little towards the end of the day since we needed to get back inside the intercoastal waterway and the wind was against us most of the day, therefore we weren't making the best time under sail alone. We passed a few channel buoys which indicate the entrance to the waterway. We stayed overnight back at the home marina and had a nice dinner at the Atlas restaurant right there at the dock. Friday morning we took our second exam, for Bareboat Chartering, and everyone passed that one pretty easily. Then we took the boat out for another pump out and fuel up, and practiced some 'back and fill' manoeuvers. Then we had a short sail over across the bay to learn how to pick up a mooring ball. Then it was back to the dock and the trip was over. The drive home was long but uneventful and we were in bed around midnight. The first thing we did on Saturday morning was go pick up the cats. They were very happy to come home and wanted outside right away.