Retirement PhD candidate in Natural Resources at University of Nebraska Lincoln. Married Christian man with two children, homeschool graduates working as (hard) scientists at national labs of renown. Oregonian (family arrived in 1846 along the Applegate Trail). Living and working from home in Washington state. Lived in North Carolina for seven years, Texas several times and South Florida among other places--kids graduated from NCSU, LOVE North Carolina and NCSU, Texas and South Florida). Judo Shodan. Graduate of Oregon State University (B.S. Business Administration, Marketing), Oregon Institute of Technology (A.E. Computer Systems Engineering Technology), University of Texas at El Paso (M.S. Industrial Engineering). Computer Vision Research Consultant. Bilingual English/Spanish.
Kelly just signed up for another 18 months at her apartment in Washington, D.C. I often reserve a workspace where I can get out of the apartment and sit in a nice environment to get some work done. All this is within walking distance of lots of restaurants, a couple of nice grocery stores, coffee shops, a book store, and just a block away from the Metro train station that can take you anywhere in the area including the airport. We are glad she decided not to switch apartments to another area.
Lorena and I flew up from Mexico and are in Washington, D.C. for Christmas for the second year in a row. Kelly has to work today and tomorrow, so Lorena and I are enjoying just hanging out in this crazy town. It amazes me that we enjoy it so much. There are so many things to do and see with history, art, food, and shopping opportunities everywhere one looks. The weather has been clear and crisp since we got where which is what one wants and expects for this time of year in D.C. Hopefully the Texas and/or Mexico houses will be completed by next year so the kids can come to see us over the holidays.
Tío Lauro took this panorama which is about a 210 degree view from the second floor balcony of the house up the hill. The apartments only require a few finishing touches now, so Tío Lynn has moved his workers up there to get the first floor ready for us to move in within a couple of months. We are amazed how quickly it is taking shape now. For a long time, it did not look like much was happening, but there was a bunch of hard structural work and tons of infrastructure that needed to be put into place before the more cosmetic, but less labor intensive cosmetic work could start. For us to move in, the first floor has to be complete along with the open stairway to the azotea and some work in the basement so we have more than just one bedroom for visitors. We are looking forward to seeing the progress after we return from a week away to see Christian and Kelly for Christmas.
Troy sneaked away from the AGU conference long enough to get coffee with Kelly. He absolutely qualifies as an uncle in the best sense of the word. I cannot wait to see how it went with them. I am sure it was great.
Troy and John from University of Nebraska-Lincoln along with Chris from University of Nebraska-Kearney are presenting three different posters at the American Geophysical Union Conference in Washington, D.C. It sounds like it is going really well. The really good part is that, God willing, they are going to get together with Kelly for dinner on Tuesday night. I have my name as a co-author on all three of the posters.
Lorena has bugging me about cutting off my beard for quite awhile. I finally broke down and did it. As a reward she let me get an Indio mini-beer (6.42 fl. oz.). This is me sitting at my desk in the apartment living the high life and feeling like a Xoloitzcuintle (Mexican hairless dog).
I am not sure how this happened, but if everything goes according to plan I will be a co-author on nothing short of four posters: three at the annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in Washington, D.C. and one at the annual American Society for Cell Biology conference in San Diego, CA. We are all pretty excited to see the reception received by the posters. A lot of research went into virtually all of the posters.
The point of Thanksgiving is thankfulness to God. I am profoundly thankful to God for the family He gave Lorena and I. We had a beautiful time together.
We were very grateful to have Christian and Kelly here with us for Thanksgiving this year. We went to a wedding, an art museum, Barrio Antiguo de Monterrey (amazing), ate lots of good food, made plans for the layout of the new house up on the hill, and had some deep, but sometimes not so easy talks. We love our kids and looking forward to seeing them in a couple of weeks in Washington, D.C.
Kelly arrived here Sunday afternoon and then Christian arrived last night. There amazing Tío Lauro ran to the airport both times (and hour each way, plus and hour to get from his house in Santiago to here). Both times we went to Rincon Sonorense in El Centrito de San Pedro to eat tacos. That is turning into somewhat of a tradition. Afterward, everyone, including Tío Lynn, slept at the apartments. It is just an amazing gift to have everyone here in one place. Today, we are going to head out to do some shopping and to show some parts of San Pedro to the kids.
Grandma Conchita has been in the hospital for the last three days. She is OK. Lots of tests were performed and the prognosis is good, but the doctors said she needs to exercise more and eat both less and better. I am so impressed with the support she received from her children. Tío Lauro dropped everything he was doing and ran to take her to the hospital when her fever rose and she was feeling bad. Lorena and Lynn dropped everything and ran to the hospital to provide moral support. They are good children. What a gift.
I finished C.S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy a couple of days ago. I liked it by it was different than I expected it to be. I do not know why, but after Mere Christianity, I had expected more of a mystical, deeply spiritual and emotional finale, but got what seemed to be a the idea that C.S. Lewis’s conversion was a dispassionate and coldly logical affair. I have no sense that I have the right take on that, but that WAS my take. That being said, there was one specific concept in the book that had to do with prayer and the concept of God–I think it was addressed in two different places, that were hugely impactful and worth the whole read. It was the idea that trying to analyze the nature of one’s conception of God gets in the way of praying to God as a person and focusing on the communication rather an analysis of the conception was what lead to a more fruitful relationship with God and a better prayer life.
I know I put up an image like this yesterday, but I went out onto the deck and decided to take another that was zoomed in a little more. We are VERY much looking forward to moving up there. We just got notice from the kids about when they will arrive for Thanksgiving and we are very excited to both see them and show them the improvements to our new places!
You can see the house we are remodeling up on the hill from our apartments in San Pedro, but just barely. Tío Lauro took this picture this afternoon. We have such a great view from where the picture was taken, we are excited to get move up there to an even better view. Tío Lynn is, little-by-little transitioning from the work here on the apartments to work on the the house on the hill. Lorena and I have not been up there for a few weeks, but hope to run up there to see the progress.
The last couple of weeks has been nothing but programming around the clock. We are getting ready for a product release and a trade show at work so I have been going through the weekends at my computer, but in addition to that, I decided to do some major upgrades to the GRIME2 software I did before and during my doctoral research. The game plan is to write one more serious journal article, then move on to start working on the use of the GRIME-AI software package being developed by my friend and fellow PhD student, John Stranzl. I probably won’t get to start doing that until January or February of 2025, God willing, but that is the plan.
I hurt myself lifting weights about six weeks ago so I was out from getting any kind of real exercise from then until yesterday. I have decided I will start back at a low level and slowly increase the weight I lift. I am a little sore today, but it really does feel good to be back working out again. Lorena has been extremely consistent since we got to Mexico. She was doing mostly weights until a couple of weeks ago, but really missed the cardio so she has increased the time she spends on the elliptical at the gym to close to what she had done previously in all the other places we have lived.
Grandma Conchita brought me a brilliant new Caterpillar coffee/travel mug tonight as a surprise. I was really night expecting it. She is the best mother-in-law in the world. I will use it DAILY! After she got here, Tío Lynn grilled us up some milanesa (thinly sliced steak) to make sandwiches. Loren had previously purchased bolillos from the drive-by bread truck that were perfect for that application. Now we are waiting for the elote cart to drive by so we can by some fresh corn-on-the-cob for desert. It does not get much better than this.
There are interesting things happening in my avocational, post-doctoral academic pursuits. We did a couple of projects with an important AI/ML research professor at ITESM Guadalajara during my PhD at UNL. When we ran into a Biology professor at Gannon University in my work at Thrive Bioscience who had a need for our instruments, but not a lot of resources, we were able to work together to produce results for all three parties: Thrive ran images for an experiment at Gannon which were sent to ITESM for analysis with AI. Gannon and ITESM received academic benefits in terms of research suitable for publication and student projects while Thrive was able to demonstrate that third parties were uniquely able to produce meaningful results from the outputs of the Thrive instrument used in the experiment. We are hoping we can do more projects like this with these and other institutions in the near future.
Lynn contracted with our neighbors, Richie and Chuy to install the doors on the cabinets below the kitchen counters in our apartment. They did a great job. Richie introduced himself to me as “Richie” and now everyone in the neighborhood calls him “Richie the gringo” and laughs. Before that, they called him Ricardo and think that Richie sounds extremely pretentious. Actually, it is kind of not Richie’s fault because he spends a lot of time building houses up in the States and that is what they call him there. I LOVE this neighborhood.
Election time and Thanksgiving are two of the times my now passed on friend Warren Bone and I talked. Maybe it is the time of year or maybe I am just getting old and nostalgic, but I have been thinking about him a lot the last few weeks. This picture was taken on a sloop in a bay on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. I hope to see him again someday.
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