The really cool part is I am here in time to meet up with a bunch of my church buddies for breakfast in Tigard. My buddy Curt had set it up a long time ago, not for me, that is just the way the roll in Oregon.
Betty Blonde #252 – 07/07/2009
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We drove twenty hours straight to be able to spend a day with Christian in Tempe. What an absolutely gorgeous place this time of year. It is 75 degrees here and we get to go to Bible study with him tonight and see a bunch of the people who have been so good to him.
Betty Blonde #251 – 07/06/2009
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Lorena and I have had lots of time to reflect about our return to Oregon. We thought about moves to Arizona and Texas before we settled on Oregon. Now it just feels right. There was really no good reason to stay in North Carolina even though we loved our time here. Things just did not work out in any place but Oregon. Now that we are settled, it just feels great to be going home. There is no place on earth we think is more beautiful (of course that is a religious discussion), we understand the culture, we know our way around and we will be much closer to the kids. It is funny how, when you get away from a place you have lived and understand, it is hard to hear what other people think about the place. It is not so much that others do not have valid opinions, it is that most of them only know part of the story and the parts they do know are often wrong. Outside of the obviously backward political thinking in the state, there is no better place of with which we are acquainted (with the exception of Monterrey) on just about every level. We know that is just for us and we understand why other people like other places better, but we are Oregonians.
Betty Blonde #250 – 07/03/2009
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I wrote about why we love North Carolina in my last post. I thought I would write about why it was a good move for me professional in this post and maybe add another one on why it was a good academic move for our kids in the next one. Again, I am reserving the right to add to this if I think of more stuff after this post gets published:
I would put my current job at BHVD in here, too, but really I worked in Prescott, Arizona for the last two years, so I guess that does not count.
Betty Blonde #249 – 06/30/2009
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We went to our last Wednesday night bible study before out move last night. It is in Spanish and we will be leaving some dear friends behind when we move. Lorena and I look forward to our return to Oregon, but have talked about our time in North Carolina a lot over the last few weeks. We have been here for seven years and are leaving for work, proximity to family and for fellowship, but will always love North Carolina in general and Raleigh in particular very, very much.
We have made many, many good, life-long friends here. They, by themselves are reason to love North Carolina forever. There are just so many other things we love, they are too numerous to list, but I thought I would list just a few:
I have missed a lot because I am on the run, so I reserve the right to come back and add to this list.
Betty Blonde #248 – 06/29/2009
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Yesterday, I accepted a job in Wilsonville, Oregon. Lorena and I will leave to drive from North Carolina next week. North Carolina is great, but it will be good to be home.
Betty Blonde #247 – 06/26/2009
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Christian waited a long time to be able to afford to finish furnishing his apartment. The three new tables are the end table on the left side of the sofa, the coffee table where he is doing the typing and the monitor stand in front of him. He paid less than $50 for the lot of them at Ikea. What a deal. In addition, he was able to get the monitor, the desk lamp you can see to his left above the office chair, and a floor lamp that is out of view. I have to say he is quite a fashion designer. I would like to say I enjoyed it as much as he did, but he derived great satisfaction from the whole process and loved the result, so that probably is not true. Lorena will be proud.
Betty Blonde #246 – 06/25/2009
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I drove down from Prescott to Phoenix last night to spend the weekend with Christian at his apartment in Tempe. We have been out shopping all day. He spent less than $50 to buy a coffee table, a side table for the sofa and a computer monitor table. Then today, we went out and he bought a guitar stand, a desk lamp, a floor lamp and a hand vacuum. We had a great time. He is now heading out to a game not at his friends house while I hold down the fort in is apartment and get some work done. Tomorrow we get to go to meeting and hang out together again.
We went to Jack-in-the-Box today for dinner. We had a teriyaki rice bowl and a taco. What other fast food place in the world serves rice bowls and tacos. And the tacos are not just any tacos. The are the really greasy, tasty ones you can only get at Jack-in-the-Box. Christian was kind of sad I had not introduced him to haute cuisine of fast food earlier. The reality is, we ate it all the time when we were in Albany, he just liked the sourdough burgers back in those days so he never learned. Now he knows.
Betty Blonde #245 – 06/24/2009
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We have no illusions about our own intelligence, but we think our cats are pretty brilliant. Kiwi comes into our bedroom to harass us every morning around seven so we will get up and feed them. They upped their game this morning though. Rubix (Kelly’s cat) brought the lid to yesterday’s cat food can to Lorena to give her a hint that she was running late.
Update: Today the twin cat sisters get their new travel cage for the driving trip across the country. I will put a snapsot up when I get one.
Betty Blonde #244 – 06/23/2009
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Mark is already gone. I leave in a little less than two weeks. Now it will only be John and Forrest. Every week when Mark and I were in town, we all got together to eat rubbed chicken wings. The hamburger to the left is the one Lorena ate the one time she went there with us. It was a great hamburger and today is Lorena’s birthday, so that is a good enough reason to put it up here. I am feeling a little nostalgic about the job because the “Software Thursday” crowd went through the wars together and I will miss them and our nights out, too.
Betty Blonde #243 – 06/22/2009
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I resigned my job today. I will no longer be flying back and forth between Raleigh, North Carolina and Prescott, Arizona for work. I will have one more big (Well, big for me and is it not all about me?) announcement to make about what I will be doing. I have a pretty good idea that it will be one of two things and it could allow us to move west.
Betty Blonde #242 – 06/19/2009
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The world is changing, but this looks like a LOT of fun.
Betty Blonde #241 – 06/18/2009
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I fly to Portland tomorrow–hope to spend a bit of time with the folks. Then I fly to Phoenix on Monday night and drive to Prescott on Tuesday morning. After that it is a weekend with Christian in Tempe starting on Friday evening and a flight to Houston on Sunday after meeting. Monday evening I hope to be back in Raleigh with big changes to announce. Most of it has to do with moving west. The only issue is how far.
Betty Blonde #240 – 06/17/2009
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For those of you who know Larry C. and or Karl O., I thought it would be good to put up a link to their blogs. Both of them have signed up for stints on faraway islands to be a help. Both of them have blogs with pictures. Larry is just starting so he does not have much yet, but Karl has been at it for awhile and has some very interesting posts along with some great pictures. Here are the links to the two blogs:
Betty Blonde #239 – 06/16/2009
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I think a lot of people were surprised when I decided on a career in engineering. Everyone pretty much expected me to work as a swimming wear supermodel. I really am glad I decided to follow my heart and take the glamor route as a machine vision guy. I have a modicum of success in that, so I was pretty surprised when they started to drag me back in based on a Mexico vacation picture. Click on the picture to see what happened. There is more.
The latest is that CNN’s Headline News wants to do a segment and has requested permission to use my photo. I think I am being objectified.
Betty Blonde #238 – 06/15/2009
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It does not seem to get any easier to see him go.
Betty Blonde #237 – 06/12/2009
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Somehow, I have not received one of these for many, many years, possibly decades. I am grateful to have received one from old college buddy, travel buddy, indoor nerf-hoops and life-long friend Curt N. A wave of nostalgia hit the instant I saw it. Dying to give it a listen. I am envious of those who own the whole set. Thanks Curt.
Betty Blonde #236 – 06/11/2009
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Previously I wrote about the problem of consciousness. I was reminded of that post when I read this article in Scientific America where John Horgan interviews physicist Lee Smolin. Here is an interchange I found interesting:
Horgan: Roger Penrose has suggested that a unified theory might also help solve the problem of consciousness. Do you agree?
Smolin: Roger is a deep and original thinker, who stands head and shoulders above almost everyone now living in the lasting importance of his thought and insights. Nonetheless, in this one regard I suspect he is overstepping the limits of present science. He is absolutely right that consciousness is real and that its role in nature is a physics problem. But I suspect physics needs to progress a lot more before we will have the vocabulary to frame useful hypotheses about consciousness.
Horgan: Does neuroscience offer a better future than physics for bright would-be scientists?
Smolin: Neurosciences are a fabulous area to work in, ripe for great discoveries. I’ve always felt this and indeed the only alternative to a career in physics that ever attracted me was a brief flirtation in college with neuroscience. But that is a field which is as bedeviled by outdated metaphysical baggage as physics is. In particular, the antiquated idea that any physical system that responds to and processes information is isomorphic to a digital programmable computer is holding back progress.
Physics is also ripe for great discoveries. The best advice I would give to would be scientists is to do what you most love, make sure you master the tools and technicalities and then try to get to that hot zone where you are in equal parts a rebel and a conservative.
In the middle of a quite interesting article, Smolin suggests that physics has something to say about the hard problem of consciousness that is, at its core and by its nature, subjective. And I truly believe that the neurosciences are going to have to purge themselves of those who tell just so stories (Here is one example, but there are many more. Google it.) before serious people will take them, well, seriously.
Betty Blonde #235 – 06/10/2009
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Everyone is leaving us this week. Kelly back to Seattle, Christian to Tempe and Grandma Conchita to Monterrey. We are very sad to see them go. It has been a time of joy, melancholy and nostalgia. An era is at its end. It is time to move to the next thing. That is a good thing, but it is hard.
Betty Blonde #234 – 06/09/2009
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A cousin shared this quote from Mother Teresa on Facebook. There is really nothing to add. It is just a great quote for the start of a new year.
People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.
Betty Blonde #233 – 06/08/2009
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