More Pictures from Thanksgiving at Grandma's and Grandpa's

So, took some pictures at Grandma & Grandpa's house at Thanksgiving...

Here is Grandma and Grandpa's FAVORITE child, Daisy.


Daisy and Grandpa doing what they do best.


Thanksgiving breakfast with the family.


More of the same


Still more..


Even more...


You can guess who got the ham scraps...

Indiana

So, after leaving Omaha on Saturday morning, we went to Janey's Cousin's house in Indiana, where we found a party still in full swing! Some relatives were over from Chicago and they were ooing and aahhing over some cloth rolls. Turns out that they have a contact in a Fabric mill that makes denim and kakhi for Levis and Tommy Pullmyfinger (Hillfiger). They had rolls of the stuff. So, we ended up with rolls of the stuff. Tanks goodness we took the truck. We brought back with us 6 rolls of denim and corduroy and lots of cut kakhi material. Some will be made into futon covers (For when we use the futons as couches) and some will be made into clothes. We hung out and had dinner on Sat night. We stayed up until all hours talking. Sunday morning, we had breakfast and then lunch, talking about gardening the whole time. Janey's cousin Roger likes to garden. We have had tomato soup base made from tomatoes out of their garden, apple bread, made from apples off of their trees. Pecans from their trees. Melons from their garden. You name it, they either grow it or have tried to grow it. Now we have catalogs of trees and fruits and vegitables all from seed or as 3-5' tall trees.

It was just a 3.5 hour drive back from Indiana to home in Ohio, so we did that sunday afternoon. Very nice weekend.

p.s. We found out later that Saturday afternnon it started to snow in Omaha. Looks like we left at the right time.

and back again...

Never finished my story about Turkeyday weekend. So, we hung out at Grandma and Grandpa's house on Wednesday afternoon. We chatted and looked at pictures, both on the laptop and in albums. We started prepairing the Ham for thursday breakfast. We played with Grandma and Grandpa's new dog. Daisey is a beagle mix (Grandma thinks the other part is wippet, but hard to tell) that loves to smell things. Problem is, when she stands on her hind-legs, she can stick her nose up on the table, while we were eating.

So, Thursday... Uncle Phil & Aunt Corey & David & Megan came up from Lincoln, NE for breakfast, and Aunt Karen & Uncle Charlie came over as well. He had that 12lb ham along with eggs and waffles for breakfast. We hung out for a few hours looking at pictures again (both on the laptop and in albums...) and generally caught up. Being that I grew up in California and only got to see this part of the family on the occasional summer and holiday, I am enjoying that they are now just a day's drive away...

Thursday afternnon. Phil, Corey, David and Megan went to Corey's family's farm for Turkey, and Karen & Charlie went home to cook the turkay for our feast. Grandma. Grandpa, Janey and I went over to Karen & Charlies later in the day. We ate until we made the chairs creak. Around midnight we went back to Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Friday we just hung out and chatted most of the day. I helped Grandpa empty the gas out of his lawn mower and prepare the snow blower for winter. We replaced the spark plug and mixed up some 2-stroke gas and made sure it would start. We watched Nebraska loose their final game of the season. (boo)

Saturday, we had breakfast with Grandma and Grandpa, then we drove to Indiana.

Over 2 rivers and through lots of snow...

...to grandmother's (& Grandpa's) house we went. Janey got to experience her first mid-western snow storm. I discovered how well her little pickup works in the snow (very well, but would do better with about 100lbs extra in the bed. Gonna have to get a couple of bags of sand before winter really hits) and we found tha even with a couple of hours of 30mph driving (near white-out conditions in Illinois due to the snowstorm) we can make Omaha in 12 hours or less. I'll post more about Thanksgiving later. I'm using these posts to try out e-mail posting along with a delayed outbox from my new handheld.

I don't have to help you...

Today I learned that I don't work for the entire GRI. There are several departments, and I work for Genome Science, who also happens to be the managing department of the GRI. If one of the other departments wants my help, they havfe to pay Genome Science for it. Now it would be nice if I could tell who was who... Gonna have to figure that one out.

Working...

So, I've just started working at the GRI (Genome Research Institute). Really cool people. But they all save up issues for a while, then attack all at once. Today, I walked past an office and was beckoned in. Lady wanted to connect her Zip drive, and BTW, she wanted to print to a different printer, and BTW, she didn't think she had a DVD drive, why wouldn't it find her CD-ROM drive....

After being one-more-thinged for about 30 minutes, I was out of there. I enjoy working here, but gonna have to kill some people...

Certainly a lot of weather we've been having lately...

For the past 2 weeks we have seen everywhere from 70 degrees and clear to 38 degrees and clear and 50-60 degrees and raining like mad. We woke up to a dark and gloomy day, but I felt better than I have in a couple of weeks because yesterday we bought a humidifier. For the past couple of weeks, I've been waking up all dry and parched. I plugged in the Humidifier and it said that we were at 21%!! No wonder I felt all dry and cracked and parched and Janey's been all kinds of itchy. The weather has been pretty mild compared to what it could be.

I really like it here. There are 2 things that I really don't like about Ohio. I don't like that our families are far away. I wish they were here with us. I also don't like the damn smoking in restaurants.

Rant on...

I hate it when I'm in the middle of a meal, and I'm really enjoying the flavors of whatever I'm eating, and some inconsiderate ass lights up in the middle of the non-smoking section (At least that's where we asked to be seated...) and starts puffing away. Now all I can taste is smoke, all I can smell is smoke. My food now has no meaning to me, and all I want to do is get out of there. I miss the whole no-smoking indoors thing in California.

rant off...

I like going to museums...

Today was a holiday, so the Yates-Nebbler Fellowship (The one that pays Janey to go to school) had an event where we went to the "National Underground Railroad Freedom Center" We heard from the Dean of the Graduate school at UC. And also the Nebbler of the Yates-Nebbler Fellowship. Then we went on an abriviated tour of the center (Like any of the Smithsonian museums, this place would take a day to "See" everything, but even longer to learn most of the lessons held here...) that lasted around 90 minutes, then back to our meeting room so we could eat a catered meal. It was hors d'voers. Tasty stuff. Been a while since I had a sweedish meatball. Then back on a bus to head back to where we left the car. Very inspirational museum. I know another place that we are taking our out-of-town visitors.

And now for some really odd flashtunes...

I have been collectiong links to so really odd flashtunes. The kind that will make those around you think that you are going slightly mad...

You gotta have badgers.

No party is complete without Llamas

And here is a cartoon all about Lions & Tigers

Everybody loves both Magical Trevor as well as the Chocolate.

More info about stuff.

Lots more random stuff at Albino Blacksheep and Weebl & Bob

This is not a flashtoon, but it is a funny cute movie (Quicktime...) But this is not how I feel...

It's good to have a big pipe...

So, here I sit at 12:30am at the Vontz Center for Molecular Studies downloading different Linux distros. Since I am functionally incapable of getting Debian to boot up to either KDM or GDM, I'm going to be trying SuSe 9.1 Personal and 9.1 Pro, Mandrake 10.0, and Fedora FC2. Who knows. At home, I've been using bittorrent and straight downloading. I rarely, if ever, saw better than 30KB/sec. Here, at the Vontz, I'm getting 1570KB/sec. 2 downloads at the same time max out the 100mb/sec ethernet connection. I would bet that a gigabit ether (1000baseT) connections would have seen even faster downloads. Anyways, it's good to have a big pipe.

Tonight I felt like cooking. So I made an old family favorite. Chicken Crescent squares. "What's in it?" I hear you asking. Well, I'm not gonna tell you. But, Janey is taking half of one for lunch tomorrow, so it must be good. Sure looks good.

The Case of the Dissapearing CreamCheese...

I know that I purchased a 6-pack of 8oz Philly Cream Cheese. I remember taking out of the fridge section of Costco. I remember putting it in the backseat of the truck. Janey remembers touching it when looking through stuff in the back of the truck. It's on the reciept. What I don't remember is taking it into the apartment. Nor does Janey remember putting it away as I was carrying stuff in. What I want to know is, "How does a package of cream-cheese, and this was a big silver box, dissapear between leaving the Costco Parking lot and arriving at the apartment. That was $6 worth of cream-cheese. That was many bagles, lots of crab salad and spinach dip represented by that silver box with the blue and red lettering. So, Kroger's has Philly for $1/box. Same price as Costco, but I didn't have to buy 6 packages....

I went to Greatclips. Not normally a portent of doom, but in this case.....

About 5 years ago, my sister (Now a nurse) was in beauty school. She was learning haircuts at the time. I thought I'd be a nice guy and go in so she could cut my hair in class and get some credit. She did the top and sides just fine, but was spending a lot of time trimming in the back. I kept feeling more and more of a draft on the back of my head. I started to get really worried when I noticed her classmates walking by slowly and looking at me funny. I got very very nervous when her teacher walked up and stopped and my sis turned to her and said "It's my brother" and the teacher looking releaved. That was one of the worst haircuts I had ever had. Until today, it was the worst.

So, I'm sitting in this chair. The "barber" (You'll se the reason for the quotes in a minute) is trimming the top ok. The sides are getting a bit short, and she keeps on breaking out the clippers to even stuff up. The sides are getting closer and closer to the top. Now, hopefully I'm starting a job soon, and I sorta need to look presentable, so I finally say, "Just buzz it all off. Use the #4 guard." I have never said anything like that my entire life.

I have the fear. The fear that my head will be all lumpy and misshapen. So, she clippers it all off. I put on my hat and go home. Only to find out that she can't even do a buzz-job even. There's some long bits here and there.

I have a brilliant idea. I have a "Beard Buster". Sorta like clippers with a built on guard. You can adjust it to almost any length. I turn the dial to 4. I start in the middle. Oops. #4 on the beardbuster is not #4guard on a pair of good clippers.

It's not what I had in mind, but I like it.

New Haircut

Now I remember....

I am a food snob! i can't belive the lack of certain foods at most grocery stores. Thank goodness we found Jungle Jim's. I was talking with one of Janey's classmates and she had never heard of eating raw tuna. "Isn't the tuna in a can raw?" I'm not making fun, just showing some of the cultural differences between western Iowa and the California Bay Area. I am also a beer and wine snob. The big bilboards around here for wine are advertizing 0.9g of carbs. Not great taste, not fermented naturally, but 0.9g of carbs. Somehow that doesn't inspire confidence. You know how you can walk into a Safeway in California and pick up any number of around 20-30 microbrews? You can't do that here. I like to look for local microbrews anywhere I go, but all the local ones around here are fizzy yellow beers. I don't drink fizzy yellow beers

Anyway, I have recognized that I am a snob. At least about food/wine/beer.

great...

I was all set to make a new post, but then I forgot what I was going to post on. So, I'll just put up some links. Like this one is my wonderful wife, Janey. I have a link to a website about my car, and the stuff that car people think about... These are my wife's good friend and her fiance... Cathy and Fred. This one is one of my Wife's old college roomies.

This site has some very very funny cartoons. This other site is made by the same people as that last one

That's it for now....

Are there really any groceries here?

Yesterday Janey and I went up to a grocery store. Not just any grocery store, but Jungle Jim's. This place is big. It's a grocery store like Little Americe is a truck stop. Imagine, if you will, that Trader Joe's merged with 99Ranch Market and then grew to the size of a Costco and a half. This place is odd. At one point there is a beer/wine section that would make a Beverages and More close up in shame of not having any selection. There is a walk-in Humidor that puts most tobacconists to shame. There is a selection of cheeses that you wouldn't believe. Their natural foods section is the size of a standard grocery store. The place is like a gourmet's theme park. Heck, outside they have an old Disney Monorail train mounted above the parking lot. Inside there is a re-creation of the S.S. Minnow. I counted 2 fire-trucks, 3 Nascar (Show cars, not the real racecars...) and 5 palm-trees. There are penguins in the freezer section. I could have spent more than the 2 hours we spent in there. In the beer section, they even had my favorite beer. I am definalty shopping there for the more exotic foodstuffs that Janey and I both like.

Other items of note:
An abso-frickin-lutley huge hotsauce selection
Jungle Jim himself walks around the store
There are singing characters all over the place and even a Live Band!

There are even more attractions that I haven't even touched on.

Below is a picture of the Monorail in the parking lot.

Jungle Jim's

Let me take a look up here.....

So, I was talking with Janey, and she told me about a PhD at her school that looks up noses. Really. And she's a neuroligist! In your nose's mucus membrane is the only place that neurons actually contact the outside world. AND (get this) in Alheimer's patients, the neurons in their noses had the same type of damage as the cells in their brains. So, next time an MD looks up your nose, (s)he could be looking for brain damage!

Tweetle Beetles,

Stop it! Stop it!
That’s enough, sir.
I can’t say such silly stuff, sir.

Very well, then Mr. Knox, sir.
Let’s have a little talk about tweetle beetles….

What do you know about tweetle beetles?
Well…

When tweetle beetles fight, it’s called a tweetle beetle battle.

And when they battle in a puddle, it’s a tweetle beetle puddle battle.

And when tweetle beetles battle with paddles in a puddle, they call it a tweetle beetle puddle paddle battle.

And when beetles battle beetles in a puddle paddle battle and the beetle battle puddle is a puddle in a bottle…

…They call this a tweetle beetle bottle puddle paddle battle muddle,
and…

When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle’s an a poodle and the poodle’s eating noodles…

…They call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle,
and…

Now wait a minute Mr. Socks Fox!

When a fox is in the bottle where the tweetle beetles battle with their paddles in a puddle on a noodle-eating poodle.
THIS is what they call…

…A tweetle beetle noodle poodle bottles paddled muddled duddled fuddled wuddled fox in socks, sir!

Fox in socks, our game us done, sir.
Thank you for a lot of fun, sir.

— excerpt from ‘Fox in Socks’ by Dr Seuss (1904 - 1991)

I didn't

But I have been holding the volume down on the music and I don't turn on the sub on the PC much anymore. This really sucks. The walls are plaster and lath, but the ceiling and floors are paper. You can't hear your neighbors, but a good jump feels like you would end up in the apartment downstairs. That apartment that I had in Walnut Creek was concrete construction. No sound at all came through the walls or the floors. In the model home that we looked at last weekend, I jumped up and down as hard as I could. In all the rooms on all the floors. Feels very solid. 12" on center joists and 16" on center studs in the walls. Also interlocking sub-floors.

The people upstairs

I really really can't wait to get a house. You see, Janey and I live in the 3'rd floor of a 4 floor building. It's a decent place. The entryway in on the 2.5 floor so we have to walk up 6 steps to get to our level. I don't know that I would want to live on the 4'th floor as we would have to go up 1.5 flights of stairs will all of our crap when we moved in, and the same amount back down when we will move out. The people that live in the apartment just above us like to play football. Tackle football. at 11pm and later. Tonight it started early. Around 8:30pm. I thought that if it was a bunch of guys that were rooming together, I could go up there and say something clever. Something like, "Hey guys, could I join the football game?", and we would laugh and they would try to hold it down. Well, it didn't go over so well. Guy answered the door. His SO was in the other room and she screams "Who the hell is that?!?!" The words just came out of my mouth. I couldn't help it. From the other room the SO screams, "Well that asshole plays his music too damn loud!!!" So here I sit. I wrote an apology letter that I am still contemplating sticking to their door in the morning, but I don't know if I will.

Geeze I wish we were in a house already. Come on, Matt. You said that you wanted to hire me 3 months ago, already!

Starlings

Tonight Janey and I went down to UC. Saw a performance of the Starling Chamber Orchestra. Very very good players. Not one of them over 16. Incredible. Also, the music Conservatory is a very very cool building. Had fun. Only a 35-40 minute walk either way.

Looking at homes and hooters

Yesterday, Janey and I looked at a new development (new homes that is...). It's about 15-20 minutes out of town, so it had been missed by our previous searches. Our previous favorite housing development had been very close, but this new community offers so much more for just a short drive. It has large park areas, playgrounds and ponds. The people that we saw were very nice.

Old favorite neighborhood benefits: Small neighborhood, we could afford the largest floorplan in the neighborhood, huge yards. Downsides: Small neighborhood, we would be the biggest house in the neighborhood, huge yard to mow.

New favorite neighborhood benefits: Lots of open space, many parks and bike trails, the lots are more square rather than the football fields at the other neighborhood, we would be squarely in the middle of the house sizes (Helps for re-sale), the houses are nicer for equivalent money, the neighborhood will be growing for another 5 years, so the house values will be going up steadily for the next 5 years and who knows what happens after that, the houses have a 30 year structural warranty. Downsides: HOA(but only $200/year), commute (Around 20-25 minutes to drop Janey off and then another 10 minutes for me to get to work. It's far enough out there that Janey wants to carpool, but she could also carpool with her classmate that lives in the same neighborhood.). That's about it.

The 3 models we liked are: Burton, the Bromley, and the Landon III. All were very nice homes. We liked more, but by the time we would option them to where we would want them, they got expensive. Now all I need to do is hear back from my future boss on when I start, then M/I Homes can start.

After lookig at homes, we ate at the Hooters that's just 5-6 miles away from the neighborhood. I wish this restaurant had been around CA when we lived there. Good food, and delightful eye candy. This is the one we ate at.

Walking around town and more food.

I like food. I enjoy exploring. Last night Janey and I had a fair amount of both. We walked about 2 miles to Ludlow avenue in the Clifton district of Cincy. Decent walk. Some hills, but not too bad. We looking into lots of little shops. To me it seems as though Berkely and Piedmont had somehow joined and merged and was transported to Ohio. There is a very cool Neuvue Retro furniture shop called Paolo. It was actually 2 shops. One was a custom jewlery shop and the other was the furniture shop. Same guy ran both. This guy makes custom jewlery in house. He specializes in platinum. Going to have to remember this shop.

We ate at a very cool burrito shop. Reminded me of Planet Fresh in Livermore. It's called Habanero's. Anybody that decides to come out to visit us (plea for company) will be taken there if in the mood for very good, somewhat unique burritos. When we had come out to visit before, we went to a place called the Cactus Pear. That's a bit more traditional mexican. We each ate half of our burrito, and then walked back to our apartment. Actually, Habanero's feels a bit like Planet Fresh style burritos mixed with Dos Coyotes style decore and salsa. The fact that Dos Coyotes and Habanero's both seem to exclusivly be staffed by tattoed and pierced college students doesn'tr hurt that impression.

Thoughts for this entry: While I would have gone wherever Janey had picked for her PhD program, I am very glad that she picked Cincy over NYC. Utah would have been good too, but I think that Cincy is culturally diverse enough that she doesn't stick out too badly and while it's very religious, it's not LDS.

Local food

I played chauffer for a while for Janey. I actually had her drive so she could start to find stuff in town. We went to the GRI (Where I will be working soon) for her Journal Club class. Then we went to Gold Star Chili and had chili cheese fri's and 3 Coney's between the 2 of us. Chili in Cincy is odd. More like a meaty spagetti sauce. That impression is not helped by the fact that they serve chili here in "ways". 2-way chili is Chili over spagetti, 3-way adds grated cheese to the top, 4-way adds chopped onions to the top of that, and 5-way chili adds beans to that. I think that my favorite is 3-way. I'm not so much into chopped raw white onions.

Observations for the day. While the freeways are less crowded, I feel that they are much much more dangerous. Part of the problem is that big-rigs have no lane restrictions. They can be found in any lane. They seem to be in the middle lane by default. Then never go right unless they are exiting the freeway, and usually go left with little or no signal at all, and will stay there long after they pass people. I never thought I would say this, but I miss California drivers.

Job?!?!?!

So, thursday, I got a call from my (future) boss. "While I can't offer you the job officially until the paperwork gets back and filled out, but would you like to come in and tell me how you would like your office and lab space set up?" Well, duh!

thoughts

I feel lost and alone at times, but she is always there for me. I feel stupid at times, but she helps me throuh them. I feel immature at times, then she needs my help. I am 5 years old, and I am 50 years old. I am incompetent and I am omnipotent. I love my wife very much. Some days I take her for granted. I need to stop doing that.

Arguments.

Sometimes, I end up saying things that I think are funny, but are hurtful. I hate that. I wish I had a way to sense when a comment that might be innocent to some, would be hurtful to others. There are days when I don't want to talk at all for fear of upsetting the one that I love.

First post ever to a blog

This is my first post. Still getting everything about me set up. I just got a call from my future boss. I should be starting work sometime this week. Soon after, Janey and I are going to buy a house (I'm going to have to be that responsible??) and then a car. We only have rwd vehicles right now, and it snows where we live now! So, hopefully an AWD vehicle is in our near future. Still working on getting pics into this page. For now, I'll try to get some pics of Janey and I. As part of this, I will be posting back blogs too. Some notable weekends and events.

Pictures of Janey and my apartment.

This is not my first time living in another state than my family. But this time, I have an advantage. This time, I have my wonderful and loving wife with me. here is our apartment. The 2 paintings that you will see are by my brother-in-law Richard. He is a wonderful artist, and it was all Janey and I could do to get these paintings out of the house. We would love to take and display almost all of his works. We are very honored to have these pieces.

a Day at the beach

Janey, Cheryl, Cathy, Fred, Rosella, Marc and I all went to the beach. Here are some pictures.


Driving to the beach


My wife and I at the beach. Isn't she cute?

The Pride weekend in San Francisco

Janey & I, Fred & Cathy, and Cheryl & Joey all went to the Pride Parade in SF. Quite a spectacle. I had never been. Was good to see all the different lifestyles all out walking the streets. There was everything from lesbians, homosexuals, leather people, transvestites, transexuals, and straight people all out hanging out together and having a good time and lots of alcohol. I feel that acohol is the cause of and solution to most of the world's problems.


Cheryl & her Brother Joey at the pride weekend


Fred and Cathy at the pride weekend


Cathy, Joey and Cheryl at one of the stage shows.


Stage show


There was good Naked.


And there was Bad Naked