Outdoor Guitar

I picked up an old beat up guitar to have something to play outside while sitting on the deck. The armrests on the deck chairs are always in the way and would chip the finish on a nice guitar. The original paint on this one was black and it had some bad buckle rash on its backside. I sanded it down and gave it some stain and an oil finish. Now I can play outside in style without worrying about banging up a good guitar.

Swimming with Turtles

In  Mexico, JP set us up with an excursion to swim with sea turtles. She was told that it would be a small private group from our hotel and it was a short 30 minute drive to a secluded spot where we would have a very special chance to swim with the turtles. The van that picked us up was packed and it took us an hour to get to our destination. The "secluded" spot was a national park with a thousand other tourists on the beach and in the water. Nonetheless, we had a great time.

 

After swimming with the turtles, we went into the jungle and swam around in some cenotes (sinkholes). The water was crystal clear and chilly. The bottom of the cenotes dropped away to dark caves - I cannot imagine doing a cave dive.  

Valentin

This year marks our 25th anniversary. To celebrate, we went to Mexico for a week with our friends. We went back to the Valentin Imperial Maya (30 minutes south of Cancun) where we went five years ago for our 20th. It's a magical resort with something for everyone - white sand, solitude, parties, dancing, Cuban cigars, awesome food, and cold drinks.

The Gs and Ns made it more fun. I can't imagine going to someplace like this without taking friends along.

We had perfect weather every day - nothing but sun and 85°. 

Here is a link to the rest of our vacation: Vacation Photos

Nana's Birthday

Nana came out to stay for a week and celebrate her birthday in style at the Wilderness Ridge lodge. As usual, the food was excellent and very tasty. 

Last Snow?

Hopefully this was our last snow of the season: 3/19/16. It was a normal day and then out of nowhere a blizzard blew in and snowed cat & dogs for 10 minutes. Then, in true Nebraska fashion, the sun came back out and it was a nice day and the Gs came over and we made pizza.

BG has a huge basil plant that she harvests to make her own pesto sauce. It's incredibly delicious!

How to be a Dictator

CP's routine for speech this year is "How to be a Dictator." He made it to district finals - this performance was the night after finals - he was ready to change out of his suit and play video games.

G&G Visit

G&G stopped by for a few days on their latest cross-continent trek. It's hard to believe how much the boys have grown while we've been here in Nebraska.

Grampa got in an afternoon nap out on the sundeck.

Tight Fit

Now that we have three cars, we had to clean up the third garage stall so that we could get them all inside. Somehow JP did it while I was out of town.

Roadkill

L loves heat, whether it's from fresh laundry, the dishwasher, or a Nebraska sunny day. Whenever the fireplace is on, you can always find her relaxing in front of it. If she were any larger, she'd look like a swelled up raccoon taking a nap along side the road.

Neon Knights in Rocksmith

My favorite video game just got a little better. I finally created my own custom song. It's not really my own song - it's a Black Sabbath tune from 1980 - but I put together the files so that I can play/stumble along with rhythm or lead guitar and bass.

Funny

Last night we went with our ex-neighbor friends and some others to the big city of Omaha to Funny Bones - a comedy club. We had a great time laughing until it hurt. 

Lincoln Blizzard of '16

This past week we were blasted with a major snowstorm. We only got 7", but it was wet and heavy and the wind was howling. I attempted to go to work, but it was snowing and blowing so hard the road would completely disappear at times. It wasn't worth it, so I turned around and worked at home on my laptop with the boys. JP made homemade chicken noodle soup and we rode out the storm in comfort.

The Day After Tomorrow

Sunday, our NYC snow bonus day, was awesome. At some point during the night, the snow stopped and the city cleaned off the streets. Officially, Central Park received 26.8" of snow, just 0.1" short of the all-time record. Most of the sidewalks were clear and we were able to make our way unhindered to Rockefeller Center for brunch. The skating rink was cleared and there were a dozen kids with rosy pink cheeks skating around.

The Atlas sculpture is 40 feet tall. This was the nicest art we saw all day; from here we spent a few hours in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Halfway thru JP and I looked at each other and said "The Emperor has no clothes."

Later that night, we went up to the Top of the Rock for a gorgeous view of the snow capped city under a full moon.

Monday morning, we had a couple of hours before we had to leave, so we ambled over to get the must-have photo of the snowbound NYC puclic library from the weather apocalypse movie "The Day After Tomorrow"

NYC Snowmaggedon 2016

It snowed all of Friday night and on into Saturday. When we got up, we couldn't see the street below from our room due to the snow. The city enacted a travel ban for cars, which made it eerily quiet - imagine mid-day NYC without any cars, buses, or honking cabs. Just quiet snow.

We made our way to the subway and figured out how to take it to within a few blocks of the Met Art Museum, where we spent most of the day. They closed early due to word that the city would be shutting down the subway at 4:00. We wandered through Central Park; there were a billion kids, dads, and dogs romping in the snow. As we got to the subway station, a train was just pulling away - it was packed tighter than a Japanese rush-hour subway. Our eyes widened a bit as we watched the overstuffed cars race away. The next train arrived for us, and it was empty! This was our how our luck ran all weekend.

By afternoon, we had about 24" of snow in Midtown. We made it back to the hotel with no problems. The restaurant with our dinner reservations called and notified us that they were closing - no dinner tonight. We found a cozy Irish pub around the corner from the hotel and had some yummy comfort food instead. After that, we trudged down the middle of the street and settled in with the other snowbound hotel guests. 

We expected more traffic than this on a Saturday night in NYC.

Birthday Escape

Last October, I got bumped from a flight and was given a travel voucher for my troubles. Awesome!! I started looking into destinations to take JP for her birthday. We've talked about getting away, but never do. This was my golden opportunity to surprise her. 

We've never been to New York City and have always wanted to go, so I started looking into it. Just before Thanksgiving, Hilton sent me an email about their Black Friday hotel sale: 1/3 off, so I booked two nights at one of their fancy NYC hotels at a rate that we could afford. Now all I had to do was keep it a secret until January...

We were scheduled to fly on Friday, 1/22/16, the same day that a major nor'easter was forecast to destroy the east coast. All week I monitored the weather outlook as the hype and excitement built. By Wednesday night, it looked like NYC had a 100% chance of 5-8" of snow. I decided that I had to spill the beans to JP - I didn't want to drag her on a trip through East Coast Travel Hell if she wasn't up for it. Delta beat me to it and sent her an email telling her to check in for her flight to NYC. She called me with more than a few questions. When she finally realized that we were going to NYC for the weekend, a 40-mule borax team couldn't have pulled her away from going. We rescheduled our flights to add a day and leave on Monday rather than Sunday, just in case the city got some snow and slowed down the airport.

Our flight in was flawless. It only took 30 minutes to get from LaGuardia to midtown Manhattan. We checked in to the 42nd floor of Towers the Waldorf Astoria and set out to take in the city. We had dinner at a seafood place a few blocks from the hotel and then headed west to the Lincoln Center to snap a selfie. 

We had reservations at Dizzy's, a jazz club near Lincoln Center on Columbus Circle that overlooks Central Park. It was truly magical listening to professional live music with the city as a backdrop. Halfway thru the show it started snowing.

January Chill

We finally got a taste of winter. GP was flabbergasted that we had ice on the inside of our windows. What? How is that possible?!? Where did it come from? 

Brrr.

Funny that the cats never seem to notice that it's cold outside.

Puzzling

What do you do with a snowbound houseful after the holidays? No one can eat another bite, All the presents have been opened. All the video games played. The tree has been put away. No one can watch another poorly matched bowl game. The new Star Wars movie has been seen. What to do?

Get a 1,000 piece puzzle for $10 and spend the next few days fighting off the feline helpers while putting it together. V was never so happy as when the final piece was put in place. The puzzle is now hers.

Christmas 2015

So far this year, we've had wonderful weather. Up until Christmas Eve, it had been warm and sunny and snow-free. No one thought for a moment that we would have a White Christmas. We were wrong!

This year we flew Nana out from IL rather than having her fight the weather and drive. Getting here was no problem. Going home, though, O'Hare slowed down due to some rain/snow/ice and we got two bonus days with her while Chicago thawed out. This was the first time in 17 years that G&G didn't make it - we missed them, but are looking forward to seeing them at Spring Break in March.

As usual, we all ate too much each and every day, both at home and all the surrounding restaurants.

Datalogger II

Just before Christmas, I received an awesome present at work: prototype samples of our new Datalogger! The one I developed in 2012 has some limitations that are holding us back in our quest to acquire more data. The old one was an 8-bit Arduino compatible setup.

This one departs from that simplicity and is a full fledged high-end piece of hardware. It has an 32-bit ARM processor running at 80 MHz with a full megabyte of memory. The main circuit board houses the power supply, CPU, accelerometer, and SD card. There's a small module that attaches for a GPS puck, and a large daughterboard that holds all the signal conditioning circuitry. We have a CAN interface as well as K-Line so that we can converse with our engines. Also on the daughterboard there are 8 RGB LEDs, a bluetooth module, a couple of high-current outputs, an analog out, and a bunch of hardened inputs. If anyone wants one, let me know - we're looking to increase production volumes to get the costs down.

Hole in the Ceiling

Last month GP and I were in the basement studio playing Rocksmith and he asked me if I was ever going to do something about the spot on the ceiling of the closet. "What spot!?!?" I asked him. "That one right there on the ceiling."

I immediately though the worst - the closet is under every water/drain pipe and HVAC duct in the house.

We cut out a patch and found that it was drip from a seeping butt joint on one of the water lines. I'm not a plumber and I don't enjoy sweating copper joints, so we called in an expert. He was able to make the repair in less than 30 minutes.

It took $20 and an hour to patch up the hole and retexture the pattern. The studio is good as new again.