Recently Jackie moved in with us, which is really nice, so somebody can keep Renee and the cats company while I'm travelling for work. Jackie has added two cats, TT and Louise and the dog Lil'Bit to the menagerie. TT was a stray and hates her tail when she notices it. She's so afraid she won't eat again, she can only have one leg off the ground for a fraction of a second. Louise is the most precious little kitty, big eyes, little head, sharp claws. Luckily, she will leave you alone if you leave her alone.
I do some computer stuff at home (not *all* games ;), play the Chinese board game, Go (you can play on Yahoo), taking photos, role-playing games and hanging out with friends. These days I'm also into traveling and sculpting in polymer clay. Ask me about downtown Charlotte NC, New York City, Vermont, Montreal, Toronto, "The Redwoods", Saint Augustine (the city) and Niagara Falls.
I am the youngest of six boys and one girl. Mary died at birth (from I believe cystic fibrosis), Russ died at 23 (same). The order is Mark (over-the-road truck driver), Rick (doctor of Pharmacy), Luke (electic scholar of society and ethics), Matt (trucking company management) and me (computer tech, DB2 database consulting). My mother, Kay, is a artist and my father Francis (died 1993) was a high school science teacher after fighting in Korea as a lieuteniet and in World War II as a private in a Sherman tank. Mark and Rick were in the marines at the end of Vietnam (just missed action, thank God), and Matt got hauled into the army as a private after having a tough year during the death of Russ. He saw action in the (sadly the first) Gulf War. Luke has spent considerable time teaching and otherwise working in Taiwan then Japan.
My wife, Renee has a bachelorette's degree in psychology and sociology and has worked quite a bit managing her former employer's computer system. Recent pursuits include scrapbooking, geneaology and community building.
People comment on how very interesting our family is. Hmmm....
I have taken up Yoga, and this Wednesday I plan on trying submission-grappling. I've never purposely tried to strangle anyone, or break their bones, so this will be quite a change. I've been taught to ignore the wrestling instinct to avoid being on my back. In fact, that's the best place to be, since all four limbs are available for use. My cardiovascular system isn't up to snuff, but my muscles seem to be ok. I've met several grapplers and they all seem exceedingly kind and courteous people. My family thinks I'm nuts.
I was just reading about amazon.com and netflix. I was trying to figure out how to avoid the inefficiencies of sending the rental item back to some central distribution center, and rather send the item from one customer directly to another. Of course you don't want to violate the 2nd customer's privacy, so the post office would have to accept encrypted addresses, or provide a code with which the post office could use to do a lookup to a database somewhere to get that address. With the code lookup option, the whole setup would be more secure, but slower.
Using that, you could get a discount if you goto the website and print out a encrypted address or code and electronic postmark (so the post office gets paid). The address would be the next customer that requested the dvd. You wouldn't know where it was going, and the total effort to send a rental item would be reduced. We'd all get our rental requests faster and more cheaply.
I know some people in the publishing, distribution and postal industries, so I'd enjoy fleshing out any ideas.
In other news, I had a wonderful time in Columbia, SC, doing some work for the State. I stayed in a planned community north of town, called Harbison. Walking paths everywhere, set in woods with a large pond. The residents love it, and are always out with their families or exercising. The people were very nice, and never hassled me about my long hair. Which by the way, I decided to cut off...it just didn't seem to be me anymore.
I went to this big national forest, which is old growth swamp, with these giant trees. Just the right time of year, only got bit by one mosquito. Unfortunately there are not a lot of gas stations in the South Carolina countryside, and almost ran out of gas.
I had excellent luck exporing Charleston, SC. It's like New Orleans, except much bigger, much cleaner, with a better view (over the harbor). Don't get me wrong, New Orleans is charming.
I've continued my practice of Zen driving, stolen from Dirk Gently, holistic detective. It really does lead you interesting places, if you follow people who seem to know where their going. In Jacksonville, FL, I found this old Fort from pre-St.Augustine times, and this wonderful nature trail. I was busy watching out for alligators, when I should've been watching for rattlesnakes. ;) In Charleston, I found this nice beach, where it just so happens the first submarine, The Hunley (?), did its worst against the Union forces. Wasn't looking for anything. I suppose in some parts of the country, you can fall down and find history. Like in New Jersey, I happend to find where George Washington crossed the Delaware River.
Lambertville, NJ and New Hope, PA are twin cities with a big artistic community. The homes are just gorgeous, but too expensive for my tastes. There is a excellent path for miles and miles along the Delaware river. I talked with several very nice people, and actually ran into one who worked at the same building as I, in Princeton, NJ. I have found many proofs that it's a small world.
Renee and I had a lovely anniversary in northern Vermont last year. We stayed at this Resort, Smugglers Notch, inbetween the summer and fall seasons, so there weren't many people around, which I missed, but it did allow us more time to look into each others eyes. :) The mountains were excellent, but I'd hate to farm there. I'm always amazed at water, just coming out of these huge rock walls. There were boulders the size of houses. You have to understand, I come from central Wisconsin, and don't see that much. We did one or two events a day, and found plenty of time to recharge. I felt grown-up, but not old, being 34 at the time. We took a day trip up to Montreal, which I recommend. I felt very safe there, not that I hardly ever feel in danger, but rather like I could drop my wallet somewhere, and a good soul would return it. The Kittells might be related to some Kittells near Sheldon, so we decided to arrange a visit. They took good care of us, fed us and told us about their lives, their children and relatives. We ran into some more history there. In a nearby town, the northern most battle of the Civil War occurred, in order to draw the attention of the Union and capture gold to finance their cause, the South sent soldiers up to Canada, then proceeded to attack Vermont. They robbed some banks, and made the mistake of pausing to try to burn a bridge, which awoke the locals. This is a poor history, but it describes how exploring is fun. There was a nice lively little town, Albertsville, I believe, right by Lake Champlain, which has a nice little town square. We were researching a Kittell who teached school for years, and was prominently featured in the town's historical museum. We got a guided tour from the nicest older gentleman. The last full day there, we were driving back from Sheldon, and decided to take some back roads, which was excellent, since we ran into the most wonderful fall colors. Renee and I have been very lucky to have excellent weather on almost all of our adventures, and Vermont was no exception, which was amazing, since Lake Champlain, apparently, causes lots of over-cast days. So, perhaps September is the time to visit.
Princeton, NJ is another historic town. The downtown is much like Madison, except bigger and fancier. I had some excellent beer and food, a rare achievement, at the Triumph Brewery/restaurant. Walking around, the flowers were blooming and people were enjoying the unseasonably warm weather in mid-April. Seeing the architecture at the university was fun. I did notice this one area, designed to occupy statues in little alcoves, was virtually bare of sculpture. I wonder if they forgot? Also, it reminds one that your not in Kansas anymore, when you see the library of diplomatic history. They're very proud to have been to host Albert Einstein for many years. I just find that a little strange.
I drove down, about an hour, to Philadelphia. I have this thing about seeing why people attribute a place to a food. There are only two foods that remind me of Philly, the cream cheese and the cheese steak. I can't say anything about the cream cheese, but the cheese steak I had was wonderful. Good meat, good bread. I found the Rodin sculpture museum, three bucks, worth five times as much. The problem with sculptures in museums, you don't get to touch them...and Rodin's sculptures cry out to be touched. The man had very bad eye-sight, and found sculpture to be the great love of his life. He sculpted largely by touch, so that's how I think the work should be appreciated. Anyway, he did great work depicting hands and this buy Borgia...Man! did that guy have a look. Really a commanding presense, a French national literary hero, apparently. I've never read him. I don't trust the quality of translations, and I guess my time is best spent doing other things besides learning another foreign language.
The Salvador Dali exhibit was sold-out. My mom says, it's just as well. She wasn't terribly impressed. He was a freaky guy, who did surrealistic paintings. I won't try to explain, I suspect he tried not to be explainable. I did get to see a animated cartoon that he did with Disney. It was visually exciting and active, while tugging on heart strings. Other than that, the Philadelphia Museum of art is very nice architecture, very nice art, lots of places to eat which was strange, but I think they have problems with gangs...security said that I couldn't hold my sweatshirt over my shoulders...no explaination other than "museum policy". Someone later said, that everybody is still pretty freaked out over security in general. I figure we've all been spoiled here in the U.S.
Done with New Jersey, off to Boston (Westwood). I don't know whether it's all of Massachusetts, but they tend to only have signs saying the name of the crossing street. I don't know why, but sometimes figuring out the name of the street you're on is terribly difficult. A GPS would be handy, but it's no-where as bad driving there as it is around New York city. I didn't find anything concerning the "Big Dig" highway re-vamp as being a problem. I would recommend looking closely at a map before going, and get an idea where all 20 or so important towns are, since lots of signs reference the towns the road leads too.
The northeast is strange. The people seem to have short attention spans. Which also probably means they notice little things. So, good at one thing, bad at another. They also don't seem to be very good at cooperation, compared to the rest of the country. Maybe that's because they tend to be excellent at what they do, and don't usually need anyone else...or visa-versa, they're not good at cooperating, so they get proficient at working alone. So...not bad, just different. I miss working in the South. Going of Jackson, MS Monday, perhaps I'll goto the Casino for the excellent buffet, of in Vicksburg, look around a bit, see some history.
My brother visited me in Boston, we walked the "freedom trail" through the North End, Boston Common, Beacon Hill, Paul Revere's house, The Old North Church, "one by land, two by sea" etc. Very laid back exploring. The next day we visited Fall River, RI to tour a WWII battleship, and a submarine, then over to Woods Hole where the oceanagraphic institute is, caught a seal feeding, saw the ferry off to Martha's Vineyard...then to Hyannis for spoiled seafood... :( It tasted good at the time. I think the place was sort of like fast food, called "Cooke's", I think.
On my own, I drove around some, wound up by Fenway park. Boston has these great old old expensive homes. They're just all over the place. I never ran into any area that didn't look nice, not that I went looking. Drove through Brookline where JFK was born. It was really difficult trying to find places to eat that weren't crowded or really expensive or didn't look like good food. The word is the North End has a lot of restaurants, but it's a pretty good drive to go downtown. In NYC, downtown means the south end of Manhattan, I'm not sure what the corresponding word is, besides the North End. There's the Blue Hill Reservation (?) where, oddly enough, there is a big hill, looks blue from a distance. Well, it's big, lots of walking paths, you can see for miles and miles. I recommend it, near there is Houghton's Pond, which is a cool place to hang out, it has a beach, and parking...good luck trying to find parking in Boston...plan ahead. Drove out through Wellesley, I'm pretty sure that's the famous women's college...in part because the place is crawling with women, rich smart women. Found this one diner by the town square, I think there's only three restaurants open in the evening, one is in a hotel, and I think the other is crowded and probably expensive. No problem, the diner is excellent, beautiful and reasonable with good people. The waitress must have had special training or a interesting background, because she was very talented at looking people right in the eye...sort of caught me off guard, cause it's so rare.
