2018-01-01 - Monday - Cold

I spent New Year's Eve with my brother Dave, at his apartment. When I went back to Eva's at about 1:30 am, the temperature on my car thermometer was zero. Yes, zero. No windchill, no other modifiers, just zero. No wonder the snow was squeaking when we walked on it.

Thank goodness I was heading south.

Later in the afternoon, I was at Scott and Rich's. Their dog Sydney loves to be tucked in and in fact will whine in the evening until someone does it. We tucked her in for a nap in the afternoon. She's a big baby, and I mean big. She's a great Dane and weighs in over a hundred pounds, but she's still a baby.

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2016-07-31 - Sunday - Cruising

Sunday we got on our ship, Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas to cruise the Caribbean for seven days. My in-laws came with us and we had eleven people all together.

We left out of Port Canaveral and were headed to Cococay in the Bahamas.

Our schedule was:
7/31 Port Canaveral
8/1   Cococay (Bahamas)
8/2   day at sea
8/3   St. Thomas
8/4   St. Maarten
8/5   day at sea
8/6   day at sea
8/7   Port Canaveral

These cruise ships are getting larger and larger and they carry a small city. The Freedom of the Seas is 1112 ft long, 185 ft beam, 28 ft draft, and has a crew of 1360. That's a small town by itself, add the passengers and you have a city.

Our cabin was 159 sq ft, and half of it was beds.
The kids bunks came down from the ceiling.

A Carnival ship left first.

Watching us turn around and head out.
Eva, Justin, Scott, John, Ryan, Meredith, and Stephanie.

The Flow Rider was fun to watch.

The main promenade inside.

Scott and Rich on the bridge.

Meredith and Ryan walking the deck.

Cruising off into the afternoon.

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2016-01-08 - More things that happened

Final catch-up.

01/01/2016:

Happy New Year! We had lots of great meals at Karen's brother Scott's house. He and Rich really lay out wonderful table.

Family around the table on New Year's Day.

01/02/2016:

Back in Charlotte and tired from the drive, we got some Chinese takeout. I felt a bit cheated by this fortune.

01/06/2016:

I've started doing my part of the annual Empty Bowls for Second Harvest Food Bank. We always make 300 bowls at Clayworks for the event so everyone is hard at work.

01/07/2016:

Our canker worm moth traps are doing their job. Last spring/summer the leaves on our maple trees looked like doilies because the canker worms had ravaged them. The flightless female moths climb the trees to lay their eggs at the top. The banding breaks the cycle by not letting them get to the top. As they only live a day or two in their adult form this is very effective.

Those wingless insects on the plastic are the moths.

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2015-05-09 - Saturday - Stephanie's Graduation

Been a long time. Let's catch up.
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On Saturday, May 9, 2015, Stephanie graduated from Western Carolina University.

It was glorious. We are very proud.

Stephanie is the first person in my family to get a college degree and it was the proudest day of my life. It was joyous. I teared up, but I had the biggest smile on my face that you can imagine.

Congratulations Stephanie! I'm sure you will continue to do great things.

Rich, Scott, and Karen.

Stephanie is in the purple and gold Batman hat.

On her way.

Happy.

Faculty.

Batman.

On her way up.

On the ramp.

On her way back.

"I did it!"

Very happy.

Brett and Stephanie.

Stephanie with her grandfather.

Posing.

Jennifer and Stephanie.

Pop-pop was worn out.

Meredith and Stephanie.

Views off the deck.

More view.

Even more view.

Sunset view.

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2014-08-09 - Saturday - To Rehoboth

Saturday, we drove to Rehoboth Beach, DE for our summer vacation.  The drive wasn't too bad, about 9 hours with a few stops and lots of laughter with Karen and Stephanie.  It was an easy drive with almost no interstates.

After greetings and exploring the house it was time for supper.  We had a nice meal and caught up and then it was off to the boardwalk and some Kohr Bros. ice cream.

The house has an integrated music system with a control panel and Boston Acoustic speakers in every room all connected to a closet full of components.  We can listen to our choice of satellite radio, terrestrial radio, CDs, or even an iPod. There were two iPod jacks available so I plugged mine in to "iPod 1" and had my music in any room I was in, even the balcony and the screened porch.  Nice.

Eva (foreground)
Justin, Meredith, Ryan, and Audrey at the 'kids table'.

Eva (standing)
Mark, Angela, Rich, Scott's hands, and Karen.

Stephanie and Pop-pop.

Pilgrimage.

I know it's blurry.
It was before I upped the shutter speed, but I like the movement.

Scott, Mark, Angela, Stephanie, Meredith, Audrey, and Ryan.
Notice how everyone is studying the menu board except Ryan.
I guess he's not used to someone having a camera in hand.

Relaxing on the balcony.

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2014-05-20 - Tuesday - Decking and salt kiln firing

Tuesday the deck was built and the Trex was installed.  Things are starting to look good.

I think the stars were aligned in my favor today.  Several things happened at once where timing was everything.

First, some background info:

1. The builder needed the information on the shingles that were installed on the house in 2007, so I called our roofer.
2. The pressure washing people were coming today and they were also going to clean our dryer vent.
3. We need an inspection before we can finish the footings.

Stay with me on this...

We decide that the building crew will go to lunch when the pressure washing people arrive and we should start washing the house on the corner where the deck is located.

The pressure washer arrived and the building crew left.

While the pressure washer gets started out back, I talk to my neighbor for a few minutes in the front yard about her new drip irrigation system.  Two more of the pressure washing people arrive.  It turns out they are the dryer vent people so I let them in and escort them to the dryer.

Just then my cell phone rings and it's our roofer.  He's in the front yard, so I go out to meet him.  He tells me that our shingles are GAF Timberline Charcoal Gray Natural Shadow style.  He points out that my neighbor has the other charcoal gray style, High Definition.  Good, now we can match our original shingles.

He mentions to me that while the pressure washing is going great on the soffits, there are a lot of catkins from our willow oak trees on the roof and he recommends that we get them removed.  I ask the pressure washer if he can get that stuff off the roof and he says no, but the dryer vent guy has a blower.  The roofer asks the pressure washer about getting his daughter's house washed and I notice a guy with a clipboard walking down the driveway.

I go inside and ask the dryer vent guy about cleaning the roof.  He says sure, gives me a reasonable price and I give him the go-ahead.

Now there is a guy on the roof with a leaf blower, a guy pressure washing the house, two guys building the deck, and my head is spinning.

I walk down the driveway and the building crew is filling in the footing holes since they passed inspection (ah, the guy with the clipboard!).  Progress.

All this happened in less than 30 minutes.  It was insane.

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The day got even better since we fired the brand new salt kiln at Clayworks that night.  There were some tense moments when one of the burners wouldn't stay lit because of a thermocouple failure, but Adrienne and Rich figured it out and the heat continued to climb.  Soon we were pushing salt "burritos" made of newspaper into the ports, dumping salt into the flame channel from a piece of angle iron, then spraying soda ash.

It was hot work, but it was fun and there was a high level of excitement for our first firing.

We should be able to unload it on Thursday.

Screen under the decking.
The Trex is installed using hidden fasteners.

A close-up of the fasteners.

Inspection permit.

Forced air burners on the salt kiln.

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