View from the Verandah

 Okay, ladyeorann, I owe you one.  Several.  :-) You have officially gotten me hooked on ICanHasCheezburger

ultrageek came home from work yesterday and I had to show him .  Soon we were both rocking with mirth, tears streaming down our faces, gasping for breath.

I was awake until nearly 2 a.m. last night, gazing at LOLCats and laughing like a loon!

For anyone, like me, who has obviously been living under a rock lately and has missed this site, do go check it out. But don't try to drink/eat anything while you do.  You're likely to have whatever you're consuming come out unintended orifices.  How do I know this? Read the subject line.

Nothing like celebrating your 48th birthday by playing eight years old with 40 years experience.  I had my birthday dinner at Cinderella's Gala Feast in the 1900 Park Fair restaurant at the Grand Floridian Resort in Walt Disney World.  See?


Got to meet the Prince and even got a crown (which will definitely be going to my three year old niece very, very soon; it says "It's My Birthday!" in purple and emerald and when she wears it on her fourth birthday in February it will fit her far better than it ever did her auld auntie, I'm thinking).

Had buckets of fun.  Hung out with the Wicked Stepmother and traded notes...


Walked the Walk on the Keys to the Kingdom five hour tour where we learned lots of Disney arcana and lore.  Browsed through EPCOT's International Food & Wine Festival where we bounced around the whole World...Showcase. Trick-or-Treated between the raindrops at Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party.  Breakfasted on Tonga Toast at the Polynesian Resort.  Bought more trading pins then we've places to pin 'em onto.   Observed cutting edge agricultural experiments in progress at the Living Land pavilion in Future World. Even strolled a replica of an Eastern Seaboard Boardwalk on the final evening of our stay.

But mostly...



Just enjoyed celebrating with my very own prince charming,
ultrageek 

I'm going to be in the DC area for a very short trip, Thursday, October 18th and Friday, October 19th before flying out that Saturday on the 20th.

I've got an engagement Friday night and Saturday morning, but am otherwise free (particularly for anyone who is off during the day either Thursday or Friday and would like to come play tourist with me -- I'm thinking maybe DC Ducks and the Smithsonians -- whichever strikes me as "that's it!" when I get there.

So here's what I propose for everyone who works for a living...

Let's pick a restaurant that's central to as many as possible.  Some of you are in DC, some Maryland, and some in NoVA., I know.

We'll all meet there for dinner on Thursday, October 18th at a reasonable hour...6:30? 7:00? And that way not only can I visit with as many of you as possible, but you may even have the chance to catch up with one another if that hasn't happened in a while.

So whaddayah say, Folks? Is it a PARTY?!!!???  Can't wait to see everyone! Whoo hoo!!! I'm baaaaack!!

For anyone else who had read and loves the Mary Russell series by Laurie R. King, do you know if anyone has optioned any of the stories for film?

If so, my fantasy ideal casting would be Alan Rickman as the inimitable bee keeper and former resident of 221B  Baker Street, Holmes and  Kiera Knightly as the incomperable Ms. Russell. (With the always entertaining James Broadbent as "Uncle John" Watson, MD for pure fun!)

Anyone else want to take a swack at fantasy casting?

What is one food that you refuse to try? Why?

Fugu.  I appear to lack the requisite sub(nor not)conscious death wish.

I've had several phone calls this week alone (and it does appear to have started occuring only in the past couple of weeks) where people are calling our phone number for other people who have lived at this address (long before we did) but have never had our phone number.

Is there anything I can do about it? I've repeatedly asked them to remove our number from their databases -- that person has nothing to do with us.  They tell me "we've removed this number" yet they keep calling back (caller ID tells me it's the same companies over and over).

I also got a phone call looking for our tenants on our house in Colorado, again, not for any phone number they've ever possessed.

This feels like it has the potential to really aid & abet identity theft somehow, or at the very least has the potential for you to get harrassed for someone else's bad debts or other problems just because you (at some point in time) had the same address as the deadbeat.

Just got back from spending our summer vacation at Disney World at the various theme parks. Lessons learned:

1. When it is 100°F and 98% humidity is not the best time to visit Disney's Animal Kingdom.  The animals have better sense than you at this point and will be hiding out somewhere else where it's cool.
2. If you want to truly enjoy your trip, do not leave your wallet with your DL and all your credit cards at the restaurant back home you visited before hopping on the interstate for 7.5 hours then discovering this small but salient point when you arrive at the hotel at 2:00 A.M.
3. If you want your husband to enjoy his trip, do leave your wallet as described above.
4. All the Disney theme parks are crowded, period.  Do not delude yourself that going on a week day during the summer will make a difference (worth noting: It is summer in southern hemispheres Dec - March and people will travel from there to visit Orlando's #1 attraction on their summer vacations as well.)

All that being said, we still had a wonderful time.   So much so that we're already making plans for going back in October and again in November with "the kids"*.

Sidebar: I did, however, manage to contract some form of bronchial bug that finally made itself known on the drive back -- however, I suspect that was the result of a close encounter with a sick four-year-old, the granddaughter of some friends of ours with whom we spent the 4th, rather than via our time at any of the theme parks.

Hope everyone on our LJ FLs likewise had a marvelous Independence Day holiday!! (Ahhhh-choo!!)


* (See previous posting "We're parents -- sort of")

It was 97 degrees today and it's not even the HOT part of summer yet.   Whooboy! <whimper!>

Now that our grill and the other stuff from our storage unit in CA has finally arrived, I need to find patio furniture.

Hmm...

Maybe in September.

Having moved to Atlanta, we've now had the chance to spend some time with our oldest nephew, Donny, and his bride-to-be, Carla, both of whom live in nearby Dacula (pronounced Da-KYOO-luh).  Upshot?

The four of us are amazed at how much alike both couples are.  It's downright scary.

The first week I was in Atlanta (ultrageek was still in San Diego), they offered to come over and get me out of the hotel for a while.  When they asked me what I'd like to do, I told them "oh, just do whatever you do when you're hanging out and I'll just hang with you."

We spent three hours browsing a bookstore then went to a sushi place.  It was exactly how ultrageek and I might have chosen to spend a leisurely day ourselves.

Even scarier is the fact that over the past two months ultrageek and I have fallen into the habit of referring to them as "the kids", as in:

"The kids called.  They're coming over tonight."

"Let's call the kids and ask them if they want to see [name of movie] with us this weekend."

"Have you heard from the kids this week?"

You get the idea.  We've become ersatz parents of adult children.  All I can say is if you're going to have kids, it's not a bad way to go.

As an old friend of mine once remarked of her own son and daughter, "Adult children with jobs are wonderful people!"

I received an email from Carla this morning that told me they had reached the same conclusion independently.

Does this mean that when they have kids we'll get to spoil our ersatz "grand kids"?!!  

%D

For those of you who may not be aware, Iris is my 95 Neon Sport sedan.  I've had her since 1996.  In 1999 the compressor seized on her and I got what amounted to a waterfall cascading out of my AC vents and into my stereo system on a long drive back from my folks' place in Bagdad, FL to Denver, CO.

I found a garage in Denver when I got back and they told me it would be over a thousand dollars to fix the AC.  Denver being Denver, I decided that I could live without AC for the 30-40 day period each year when it might actually be desirable.  I had them disconnect it for $50 (and was recently told that even then I'd gotten ripped off).

In SoCal, it was apparent that I would have to do something about the AC situation, but that it could wait until Summer.

In Atlanta, it's a necessary tool for survival! No longer optional.

A friend who is currently living with my parents is an AC guy and a crack mechanic.  He told me to bring Iris to him and he'd see what was going on and tell me if he could fix the AC.  He was the one who determined that the old compressor had seized.  It also turned out that Iris had a couple of brittle O rings that had allowed the refrigerant to leak out during that long-ago drive as well.  He replaced those too.

Due to a series of mishaps not involving myself or Iris, it has taken me nine days of hotel living to reach the point where Iris has working AC, but it's all worth it now.  Her AC on low cool and medium fan is enough to frost the windows.  Now THAT'S some serious AC!! Excellent!!! And the O rings appear to be holding now.

So what's next?  ON TO DISNEY WORLD!!! 

ultrageekand I are on our way to Disney World for Memorial Day weekend.  We've got reservations at a gorgeous resort & spa and park hopper passes and we're actually going to try to see all FOUR of the theme parks.  Call us crazy.

I'm especially looking forward to the Animal Kingdom park.  We saw a show about it's building about two months ago on the Discovery Channel and have been fascinated since.  But of course I also want to know what they've done to the Pirates of the Caribbean in light of the movies' phenomenal success.  We saw the Disneyland version last January and Jack Sparrow was in at least three places that we saw.  And there were a number of other movie tie-ins, but Mr. Depp has given Disney the one thing that attraction lacked up to now -- a single focal character that has captured and fired the public's imagination.

Better go finish packing...

Well, here we are after our first week in our new home in Stone Mountain, Georgia.

ultrageek has already killed a large wood roach and I've evicted a not-so-small colony of ants from the family room.  That would be our official "Welcome back to the South -- Please keep all unsealed foodstuffs in the icebox or you'll be sorry!" warning. <g>

There is a very well-used train track that runs directly behind our house.  Everyone was aghast.  "Aren't you going to be up every night when a train goes by? Isn't that going to drive you nuts every day?"  In a word, "Nope."  I grew up on Marine Corps Air Stations on two coasts.  I was used to sonic booms on daily basis.  A train rumbling through with a lonesome whistle is atmosphere to me.

But, oh! How we are enjoying having SPACE again!!! 2840 sq ft, to be exact.  A far and welcome cry from 918 sq(ueezed) feet in Sandy Eggo.  And my beloved has a den now as a fitting lair for his monster HDTV -- this means the living room is, at long last, a TV-FREE ZONE!! A lovely quite pool of serenity in which to curl up with an excellent work of pure, frivolous, fiction! FUN!!!

And I have a lovely veranda on which to sit and enjoy the (for the moment) cool evening breezes.  I understand how ephemeral that pleasure is since we're already slated for a high of 86 later this week.  However, while I've got it, I'm gonna enjoy the heck out of it!

As expected, we will be hosting the family for our nephew's upcoming nuptials and the place will be bursting at the seams soon.  But for now, I'm enjoying living in a neighborhood with something I never thought I'd see anywhere I lived..."mature landscaping" is the term the realtors use.  The neighborhood appears to have been developed in the early 1970s.  I'll have to remember to ask my next door neighbor, Roxanne.  She's 76 years old, and I bet she's lived here since it was first built.  What a concept! <sigh>  Must be nice.

I'm contemplating my educational options as I unpack all the boxes and try to find out where each of my things will live in its new home.  Not as cut and dried for me as it may be for others.  There has to be a feeling of rightness to it, and that takes a bit of time and occasionally moving things around a few times.

 One thing I've noticed is the incredible welcome I've gotten from Georgians since I arrived.  Not just a "c'mon in and set a spell" welcome, but a "come on in here and gimme a BIG ole hug!" welcome.  It's been quite an experience.

My first weekend in town I attended an intensive seminar that left me feeling like I had 84 new "best friends".  Even the folks at the front desk of our hotel were very personable and enjoyed chatting each day as I came and went.

The property manger who showed us the home we rented even went so far as to not only show it on a Sunday, but to also meet us back at her office later that evening to let us apply for it and then called us later on that same night to let us know that we'd been approved and the place was ours as soon as we could stop by and sign the lease.  We were able to start moving in on Monday! Amazing!

I think I'm going to grow just fine here.

They finally faxed the offer letter this morning with a hard copy to follow tomorrow via FredEx.  Offer confirmed and accepted. We're moving to Atlanta.  Albert starts work on 4/16.

Me? I'm getting there a few days earlier. I've registered for my Landmark Forum Advanced Course which runs 4/13 - 17.  After that, I will house hunt.

We will be staying at the Atlanta - Clairmont Extend Stay America for at least 10 days, probably longer.  Depends on how long it takes us to find a place to live.

We're hoping to find a 4 br  (or 3 br and den), 2-2.5 bath house or townhome somewhere in the vicinity of Briarcliff, the neighborhood nearest Albert's new offices at the intersection of the NE Expressway and Clairmont Road.

But at least now we can move forward and do things like reserve a moving truck, make plane reservations, turn in our intent to vacate.  FORWARD MOTION...YAY!!!

Now we're waiting on someone named Jami (I have to wonder if the plural is "jammies") to a) call Albert and b) send overnight a package containing relocation and housing information. We are assuming that the official offer letter will also be in said package.  The aforementioned Jami was to have done this yesterday, however, there was no phone call. Hmm....

Meanwhile, here's an unusual and fun meme a friend sent me today. Yeah, it's yet another personality profiler, but the method for answering is what makes it unusual.

So where do we want to live? What's near the CDC that's a good place to live? Anyone know of any houses renting for around $1200 a month in that area?

Today we should know if Albert has gotten the EA (enterprise architect) job for which he has recently been interviewing.  It's with the same company, but in Atlanta.  San Diego is okay, but the job here has been driving my poor darling crazy, and we really have nothing tying us to the area.  Would have preferred to return to our much beloved Denver, but it does not yet appear to be in the cards. <grumble.grouse.kvetch.whine>

For anyone who was aware that I was going in for sugery earlier this month, my apologies for not posting the results of that earlier...the healing process has taken bit longer than we'd expected.  Principally because the surgery was more involved than originally anticipated.  Because the hernia being repaired had occurred along the incision of my gastric bypass (Oct 2000), which was then followed by a repair to said bypass (Feb 2001), and hernia repair #1 (May 2001), there were a lot of adhesions and much scar tissue to be removed before the hernia could be repaired.  My surgeon also told me later that she'd also discovered another weakness in the muscle wall developing (would have become hernia #3), which she also shored up.  The surgery lasted twice as long as they'd estimated and I ended up in the hospital for two days, rather than it being the outpatient procedure we'd prepared for.  Poor!!  I'm afraid I scared him rather badly again.  We've been through a total of four surgeries together now and it's always harder for the one in the waiting room than for the one on the table.  Especially when things don't go as the doctor's originally plan.


Because the procedure was laparoscopic, I ended up with a total of 13 incisions.  It looked a lot worse than anything since the GB, since I had dressings all over my abdomen.  Looked like I'd taken a load of buckshot spang! in the middle of the chest!! But it's now three weeks later and only one of the incisions has yet to completely heal.  All in all, that's a pretty great ratio.  Still feeling the pinch of the herniated muscle wall healing closed, but that's to be expected.

I quit my job two days prior to going out for the surgery, and it was just as well since we may be moving to Altanta soon anyway. Don't know much about it (Atlanta) other than it's a LOT less expensive than San Diego.

With my background in Pharma IT, I think I'll have better job opportunities in Atlanta. If not with the CDC, then perhaps with peripheral contractors.

Albert and I celebrated our fifth anniversary (2/1/07) by taking a half-day whale and dolphin watch cruise around the waters off Tijuana and San Diego earlier this month.  It was a lovely day to be out on the water and though I wasn't fast enough with the camera to capture leaping dolphins or breaching whales, I did get some cute sea lion shots as they lounged on the docks.  It was something fun and different to do to commemorate our anniversary, and something we will always remember.  My only trepidations prior to boarding were four little words on the lovely full-color brochure advertising the cruise...<cue.Gilligan's.Island.theme>A three hour tour</theme> :-)
And while the weather did cloud up for a bit while we were sitting about two miles off Tijuana (just outside Mexican waters), the Adventure did not suffer the fate of the SS Minnow in any way.

As for Atlanta, fingers are crossed!!

After 1.5 years out of circulation, I'm once again employed in the IT industry! I'm currently working (as of 11/27) on a temp assigment (with perm potential after 60 days) as a database analyst with a telecom services management company.

It was a fun break, I worked on my long deferred series of historical novels a bit; spent some really important time with my mother (who has alzheimer's sad to say), and did a lot of puttering and thinking. I don't regret a minute of it, but I am equally glad to be getting back to my career.

So now we're getting settled into our new apartment in Lakeside, CA (East San Diego County) and I'm getting settled back into my preferred form of work -- playing with data! As No. 5 said in "Short Circuit" -- "IIIIINNNNPUT!! MOOOORE INPUT!!!"

Well let's see now...

The sixth month stint in San Diego didn't quite work out like we figured.

The corporate apartment we were supposed to get was just for him and an assigned roommate...another guy working on the same project.



My friends from Lost Wages who moved in with me in May are just now starting to move out. This should be complete by the end of the weekend.

We're moving to San Diego permanently. This is being accomplished in stages.

Stage One: ultrageek accepted an offer of a permanent slot in San Diego June 9th. We were notified we'd be receiving a relocation package and would be working with a relocation company and that they would soon be contacting us.

Stage Two: Mid-August, we're FINALLY contacted by the relocation company. It quickly becomes apparent that most of their focus is on selling our house and helping us buy another out there. Uh huh. Well, the market here in Denver is not merely flat...it's troughed. And the market in San Diego just peaked. Neither the time to sell here, nor buy there. So we've decided to rent out our house and hire a property manager. The relocation company doesn't cover this. Funny how not surprised I find myself.

Stage Three: Labor Day Weekend. ultrageek flew home and we took his Toyota Prius out to San Diego via the scenic route. Day one, we discovered the amazing Dillon Pinnacles on Blue Mesa Lake, just Southwest of Denver...we'd never known they existed. (Pictures of this trip are posted to our online album. Saw a lot of bikers on the road most of the weekend, but when we arrived at our hotel in Cortez, CO, the first night, we discovered the reason for at least 8K of them.  "Rally in the Rockies" had been slated for Cortez that weekend, but at the last minute, it was moved.   The courtyard of our hotel was full of motorcycles.  Harleys, Honda Goldwings, Aspencades, and lost of big big bikes!  We had a very nice dinner at a restaurant in Cortez out on the multilevel flagstone patio beside a water feature with lots of koi.  </font>ultrageekhad a steak and I had tritips. Very relaxing and enjoyable. A great break after six hours of drving twisty mountain roads.
Shortly before arriving on Cortez, we took a side trip of US 145 and drove into Telluride.  We'd been told it was one of the prettiest mountain villages in Colorado.  Having spent our share of time in Snowmass and Aspen, we were up for "pretty mountain village".  And so we very s-l-o-w-l-y drove (the posted speed limit down the main drag being 15 mph!)...straight into the heart of the Telluride Film Festival! People everywhere, parking nowhere, and the road was closed going into the main part of town.  So we about-faced it and drove slowly back out.  Yup. Pretty town. Would have liked to see more of it. Not on Labor Day weekend ever again.

We made a stop at the southern rim of the Grand Canyon the next day, after spending most of the day driving across what we were told was the largest Native American reservation, the Navajo Nation rez, in the country.  There were some very wild rock formations, and those are also up on our online album.  During a stop at a KFC in Tuba City, AZ, I met a gentleman who was sitting in his very old, very beat-up Cadillac, selling "turqoise" (read plastic) earrings and pocket knives from the hood.  He gave us some sight-seeing tips on our route to the Grand Canyon, and I chipped in $6 worth of goodwill and bought a pair of earrings. It was 104 F in the shade, and no one else was buying a thing. Okay, so I'm a soft touch.

About 50 miles out from the Grand Canyon, we hit a stretch of road that had a jaunty sign proclaiming it to be "Bushmaster Highway" with a cartooned eponymous ophidian wrapped around a stick displayed prominently on the sign.  Zoiks!! Me and Indiana Jones! "Snakes! Why did it have to be snakes?!!"  I vowed nomatter how bad nature called, I was not setting foot outside of Merlin (our Prius, so named because of his Sorcerer's Apprentice antenna decoration that I purchased while on our 2004 Honeymoon swing through Disneyland on our way back from Hawaii). It was a near thing, too! 

We arrived at the Grand Canyon around 4:30 p.m. and got to take in some of the views from the various pull-outs along the 26 mile drive through the park on our way to the highway leading to our hotel in Tusayan, AZ, about 7 miles South of the park.  On our way out of the park, we marveled at the long line of cars waiting to gain entry to the park (sunsets in the Grand Canyon are spectacular, I'm told, but we were dog tired).  We discovered the delights of the sauna and whirlpool room in our hotel, the Holiday Inn Express Grand Canyon before going across the street and down the block for an overpriced dinner of what was (we strongly suspected) institutional-sized Stouffer's lasagna.

The next morning we rose early and hit the park around 6:45 am.  I'd been dreading the lines we saw the previous evening, but we were the only ones at the gate as we breezed through the "prepaid" lane and on into the park.  The only place we'd been the day before but couldn't  find a parking space was Grandview Point, so we went there first.

We easily found parking that time and even managed to go about a quarter mile or so down Grandview Trail. I'm assuming it was Grandview Trail because its trailhead was Grandview Point.  We also drove over to the Visitor Center and toured the bookstore before deciding that things were getting way too crowded and it was time to hit the road.

On exiting the park, this time the line to get in was about 4 miles of the 7 back to our hotel!! Man! Talk about making a well-timed entrance!! I was never so glad to have gotten up at 5:30 am in my life!

Once we left Tusayan, we headed out I-40 before cutting over to US 89A that does through mountains and forests and, ultimately, Oak Creek Canyon and Sedona.  Sedona was hypercrowded (like Georgetown in DC on a Summer's weekend), so we decided not to stop (except for one memorable adventure trying to gas up the car at a station cornering two extremely busy streets!)...so that's pretty much what we saw of Red Rocks Country...what could been seen from the car as we drove through.

We'd planned to stop for lunch in Sedona, but with the volume of crowds, decided service, should we find a place, would be much longer than we could afford to wait and still get where we were going by nightfall, so we figured we'd just continue on to Jerome, a little ghost town that was recommended to us not too far southwest of Sedona.

We figured wrong.

You know, I would never have guessed that there would be too many folks interested in spending their Labor Day weekend in an Arizona Ghost Town.  Jerome rises up the side of a mountain, and the road through snakes in and out and hairpins back and forth through the heart of Jerome.  Every shoulder, every nook, every cranny and niche that could possibly hold a vehicle held one. OR two. Or three. There was simply not a single place to park in all of Jerome that we could find. Not in paid parking, not anywhere along the roadside.

So we ended up having no lunch and a very early dinner when we arrived in Prescott, where we had reservations at the local Hampton Inn. Ah well. No whirlpool this time. At least, none that we noticed.  The next morning, we hit the road again for the last leg of the trip.  Starting in the Prescott Forest, it afterward became desert, and stayed that way down the western shore of the Salton Sea, through the Anaz-Borrega Desert (naturally enough) -- by the way, several people have said that his is where many of the "planet side" scenes in the original Star Trek series were filmed, and I can certainly believe it!  Once we passed through that area, we started ascending again through twisty roads up into the hills and on to Julian, a little spot quite well known for its apples -- about an hour out from San Diego.  The rest of the drive was hilly and shady and quite pretty and we finally found our way to the Scripps-Poway Parkway and on into San Diego  around 7:30 p.m. on Labor Day.

Stage Four: Find a place to live in San Diego.

I spent most of the week following Labor Day driving around San Diego looking at apartments.  The upshot was that we went with one we looked at back in May out in Lakeside, CA in East San Diego County. It's just North of El Cajon, where my grandparents lived and where my father grew up.  I even accidentally landed in the parking lot of his former high school, having gotten myself turned around and needing a place to stop and check my map. 

So as of 10/14, </font>ultrageek  will be able to move into the apartment, a 2 br/2 bath upstairs unit in a community that is constructed so that all of its units are corner units (octiplexes -- 2 up/2 down, back and front).  He'll have about a 20 minute commute to work once he moves in.  Of course, we won't know what my commute is until I get a job.

Stage Five: Move our stuff out to San Diego and rent out our house

To that end, I'm currently researching the various property management companies around the Denver market.  I've got an appointment with one of them to come out next week and tell me what she feels needs to be done before the place can be rented out and what she thinks we can get in way of rent.

Stage Six: FIND A JOB

I'm checking the web sites and sending out resumes, but since I'm not local, it's a little trickier than it will be once I get out there.  Or at least that's the story I'm telling myself to keep my spirits up.  But it does look like there are a lot more job opportunities out there for me than Denver holds at the moment. So I'm going to stay hopeful.

At that point, we should be completely relocated, up and running in our new environment.

Wish us luck. I probably won't have time to post again until I complete Stage Six.

Well my goodness! It has been a while since I last posted, hasn't it?

Since then, ultrageek and I have gone to the Washington DC area and returned (he went back again in February to take his certification exam). Sadly, while we were there, we received word that his beloved and ailing grandfather had passed away.  We diverted to Florida to attend the funeral and spend a couple of days adjusting before returning to Dulles the day we were scheduled to fly home to Denver.

That was a terribly hard trip, in more ways than one! Besides Pop's passing away, which was very, very hard on ultrageek since Pop and Grandma raised him and his two younger siblings, he also contracted an extremely virulent strain of influenza the day before we were due to leave for Florida. Some quick thinking on the part of brkyle saved us when she suggested I call his doctor back in Denver and have a Tamiflu rx faxed to a local pharmacy near the hotel. By the time we flew out the next night, he was practically symptom free. However, the day after the funeral, we were both exposed to three individuals recovering from bronchitis (two of whom were small children, who always seem to be more potent carriers for viruses, poor little mites!).  By the time we flew back to Dulles, we had to get wheel chair assistance for Albert.  His asthma was so bad he couldn't make it from the plane to the gate area without nearly collapsing from lack of oxygen.  We were both extremely sick when we returned until almost a month later. Yuck!

The next month, as I mentioned, he returned to Tyson's Corner to take his Federal Enterprise Architect Certification exam (everyone in his class passed, and there was much celebration that evening).

At that point, we still didn't know where his employer (Northrop Grumman IT Division) was going to relocate us. We'd heard various rumors. DC Metro Area for either of two Federal contracts (one with Treasury, the other with DoD). Richmond for a VA State contract. Denver for a US Parks contract. Or even an internal project that might have been located in New York City, Washington DC, or shuttling back and forth between them.

I spent most of March in Pensacola, visiting my family and trying to simplify the lives of my parents by unraveling insurance red tape regarding what Tricare for Life would pay of in-home care for my mother (she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in December of 2000), and what's covered if she needs to be moved into a resident facility. We also got some simple improvements around the house done, like taller commodes in both bathrooms (easier for both of them) and dejunking the kitchen cabinets. I was also able to reinstall my father's favorite radio-controlled model airplane simulator game on his computer. It had...well...crashed some time back and he hadn't been able to successfully reinstall it since. Attempting to get my brother some treatment for a temper so bad that my parents live in fear of him (and he still lives in their house and has all his expenses paid by them at the tender age of THIRTY EIGHT!) was not nearly as successful and has resulted in a break. He refuses to be in the same room with me now and sent me a scathing email breaking off our relationship (I think I've been divorced as a sister -- hmmm...can I sue for "s-alimony" and give the money back to my father and mother?)

And the shoe finally dropped where Northrop is concerned. We ARE finally being relocated. For six months (with possibility of extension for the full 7 years of the contract) to San Diego, California! Yes, "none-of-the-above" listed rumor-mill generated locales. For ultrageek,  this is effective nearly immediately. I will be following along a bit later, as someone has to be here to deal with the house, as we're not selling it, nor renting it out at this time. We have a couple of options for keeping it from lying empty, and therefor attractive to B&E artists, but we have yet to decide which of those options we'll exercise.

Speaking of exercise, I have a friend who is a personal trainer who has made a barter deal to work with me in exchange for the experience of working with someone who has more than 30 pounds to lose. That sort of got put on the back burner while I was in Pensacola. Not sure what we'll be able to accomplish in our remaining time together, but I'm sure that at least we can work up a routine for me to continue alone once I'm in San Diego.

I've been steadily losing weight (without major dietary changes, I have to admit) since early December. From that time to now, I've lost about 30 pounds. If I can keep up that pace, I'll be back to my lowest post-op weight by the end of this six month stint in San Diego.

On the job front, I've shelved the job search in favor of dusting off my old dream of taking back up my trilogy of historical novels that I had to set aside in 1995 (after starting the project in 1993) and not going back to until now. I've spent the past two months reacquainting myself with the historical facts and timelines of the period, the plotlines I'd developed up to this point, and, of course, my characters.  Making inroads on re-establishing that "internal universe" necessary for writing this type of project.

All in all, life is pretty good these days, I have to say.

The holidays are officially over, and I made it without gaining any weight. Whoohoo! Managed to actually lose a few pounds, though I certainly wasn't trying. In fact, I spent a good two weeks baking cookies and gingerbread cakes so I'm not really sure how the weight loss occurred, but I'll take it!

My new year's resolution is not to make any unrealistic promises to myself for the next twelve months. So there! :-P Hee hee!

Didn't do much for Christmas Day, though ultrageek and I did go out on New Year's Eve. We got tickets for a dinner theater with a prime rib buffet prior to the show, then a musical review called "I'll Be Home for Christmas" featuring holiday songs from World War II and the Korean War, followed by a midnight buffet with champagne and dancing until 2:00 a.m. We even booked a hotel room so that we wouldn't have to dodge drunk drivers across the greater metro Denver area in the wee hours. So we were all set for our first New Year's Eve "out" since we've been married. At least, that was the plan. We actually pooped out after the prime rib buffet and went back to our hotel room. Neither of us could keep our eyes open! What a couple of fogies! :-D When we got in the car to leave, ultrageek looked at the clock on the dash and said "I can't believe it's 7:30 and I'm ready to go to sleep!" Ah well. Ain't none of us as young as we used to was.

The next morning we made up for it a bit by starting the New Year off right...with an hour in the hotel's jacuzzi after breakfast. We were the only ones in the indoor pool area, so it was very nice and cozy. We idled the time away by talking about places in the world we'd like to visit and where we might like to retire eventually. We currently have three plans that shift position back and forth on the "current most favored" list: 1) slowly accumulate rental properties in places we'd like to visit at least once every couple of years, then travel between them doing maintenance between tenants; 2) find a "fixer upper" on one of the Hawaiian islands and retire there, and 3) retire to a nice place outside the US where our fixed income in US dollars would go farther and our quality of life to cost of living ration would be optimized -- some place where we could snorkel every day if we wanted to. We've been toying with some areas of Mexico, some of the lesser known Pacific islands, or other Central American countries like Belize. All in all, there are worse ways to start a new year.

I'm looking forward to our trip to the DC area later this month. Ultrageek has training in Virginia for a week, after which time we will stay over the weekend and he'll meet with his project team the following couple of weekdays. Since I have a number of friends in the area from the eight years I lived in Virginia and Maryland, I opted to tag along so I could spend the nine days catching up with as many of those friends as I can. I was in the area VERY briefly in August for a job interview (I didn't get the job), but I didn't get to see most of the folks I know -- though I was able to squeeze in some very short visits with a few of them. Far too short! Far too few of my friends! This time I will have a good long time to visit, and no other purpose for the trip. Whee!

Wishing all my LJ pals much good fortune, good health, and lots of love and laughter in this bright shiny new year!

Dear Jack Frost:

We, the denizens of the Greater Metro Denver Area, hereby cry "Uncle!" Enough with "Previews of Coming Ice Ages" a'ready!

The official low at Denver International Airport for last night -7° Fahrenheit. It wasn't a heckuva lot warmer than that when ultrageek and I were there around midnight. He was flying home from 10 days in Virginia, where he was on business for his new job. I'd insisted on dropping him off at DIA 10 days previously so that a) we wouldn't be paying for parking all that time, and b) I could have the gas economy (okay, and fun, I admit it) of driving his 2005 Toyota Prius while he was out of town. So of COURSE the night he comes home, it's snowing and the temps are in the low-single-digits-on-either-side-of-zero. Eek! I became quite familiar with the anti-skid control system light on the dashboard as I drove the 32 miles to the airport in about an hour and fifteen minutes (you do the math).

Today's projected HIGH for our area (just outside of Parker, CO) is 4° F. While the hubby had to go to work today, I found a reason to appreciate my current unemployed condition (no, the folks in Detroit have not come through with a written offer, and it's starting to look as though they won't) and venerating the names individual or group of individuals who invented the gas-fueled fireplace, and the furnace with forced air heating -- may they be blessed unto the 7th generation! ;-> And enjoying "Tales of Hilltop Cottage", a new novel by Susan Wittig Albert (Beatrix Potter as amateur sleuth in Lake Country England -- with the able assistance of a number of equally keen and intrepid animal companions, of course!) Reminds me a good bit of Rita Mae & Sneaky Pie Brown's murder mysteries. And I've already read most of Albert's China Bayles mysteries and enjoyed those immensely, too!

And our monthly shipment of freshly roasted Kona coffee arrived yesterday from the Big Island, so all in all, I'm pretty happy with where I am in the Multiverse at this particular moment in this particular time stream and dimension. However, I am, quite naturally, concerned about my husband's safe commute home this evening. Once he is home, all will be extremely well.

However, in closing, Jack, may I invite you to TAKE YOUR ARCTIC AIR MASS AND SHUFFLE OFF TO BUFFALO, where they EXPECT this kind of thing and folks there have learned how to drive in it. (In Denver, drivers haven't even learned how to merge successfully yet!)

Respectfully yours,

Old Folkie At Home (and staying there until things get warmer!)