We are grateful for them to be here!
Author: Dad Page 1 of 206
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.
The bed frame we ordered from Walmart arrive this morning, so Lorena and I put it together in Christian’s room. Neither of the guest bedrooms are complete, but they are in pretty good shape for our first visitors–the kids. They are coming for Easter! There is a TON of stuff to do to get the house in shape and we have decided to not stress about it too much, but take it at a slow pace and enjoy the house instead of killing ourselves physically or financially. I think that is a wise decision.
The kids are coming home for Easter weekend, so Lorena has been working frantically to get the guest bedrooms ready in the new house. One bedroom (Kelly’s) is done, but we are waiting for the bed frame to arrive from Walmart before she can finish setting up Christian’s room. We have enough stuff for another guest room, but we are using it for a storage place until we finish the bonus room of the garage and can move the stuff over there. We are really looking forward to this weekend.
We love our new house, but our yard, all the way around the house, is a mess. It is all dirt, but not so much topsoil. There is erosion from surface water runoff in some places. And biggest of all, we have to start from scratch on a two acre yard.
Today, a group of Master Gardeners came out to the place to give us some advice. It was amazing how much information and helpful tips they were able to pass on to us. We were very grateful and Lorena hopes to join their program this coming January. Also, it seems like a whole lot more tractable problem that it did before the visit.
John S., my Raleigh buddy and fellow, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, non-traditional PhD student partner bought an amazing computer to do some of the heavy lifting required for his research that involves lots of image segmentation and classification with AI. He has only had the thing for a little over a year and his backslash key broke. I had that problem with my, two-computers-ago work laptop and it was a wildly big hassle to get it fixed. Shortly after getting my one-computer-ago work laptop, Christian gifted me a mechanical laptop that I can hardly live without anymore. It works so well that I now travel with a similar, but shorter mechanical keyboard to avoid using the laptop keyboard. I highly recommend that approach, but it quickly wrecks you for lesser keyboards.
This is one of those Grandma Jenkins style reports. News about nothing, but fun to write. Yesterday, Lorena notified me that our box springs were too tall, so I got on line and ordered a 5″ tall queen box springs from Walmart. Amazingly, it arrived today, we put it together, and installed it. I have to admit it was quite a nice experience all the way around. There were virtually ZERO bolts or fasteners to install. We unfolded it, installed some friction fit cross braces, added the cloth covering and replaced our current tall box springs with this much shorter one. It is much more functional. A big win.
The image to the right is the view from our temporary exercise room/volunteer research office until we have time and resources to finish out the bonus room over the garage. It is nice now, but it should be a lot better when we get the lawn and garden a little more under control. To that end, we have a Master Gardner class from the Virginia Tech extension service to come and give us some tips to get us started. Lorena is hoping to start their Master Gardner program. We set up the room
The house is getting to be more functional every day. This afternoon I set up my old work computer and the new Brother laser printer and a 27″ screen I will use until we get my office downstairs up and going and the bonus room finished out. Then, we hope to put this office in the bonus room with the much bigger screen we currently use for watching videos until the projection screen is installed in the bonus room. The reason for all this organizing is that Lorena and I are deciding what we will do next. There are lots of things on the “possibles” list. For Lorena, they mostly have to do with throwing pottery and studying to be a Master Gardener. For me, it has to do with work for the GRIME Lab and possible second Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees that move the GRIME Lab forward. More about all this later.
Slowly, but surely, the house is coming together. We purchased a BUNCH of blinds that were efficiently and professionally installed today. It finally feels like we are no longer living in a fishbowl.
Yesterday, I decided I need to turn on my motorized desk so I could spend more time standing up to go along with my weight loss program. We somehow lost the power cable to the desk, so I ordered one from Walmart online. It arrived about four hours later. And this was on a Sunday… in rural Virginia. I am amazed and grateful. My new Garmin smart watch now reminds me when I have been sitting too long, so I am going to add standing up for as much as I can stand (aiming for half the time, but we will see) to my Concept 2 rowing machine schedule. I will start reporting on this a little more as soon as my brother, Uncle Doug, joins me in keeping track.
Lorena and I took a Thai cooking class to learn how to cook Pad Thai and Coconut shrimp on my last birthday in San Pedro. Honestly, Lorena did most of the cooking and learning while I kibitzed with the chef/instructor and the other students. It was a ton of fun and I am thinking we ought to look for some place to do this here in Virginia.
NOTE: It just dawned on me that this is the 21st anniversary of when I started this blog. I am glad I kept going.
I am at an interesting stage of life. At other times and places than that in which I find myself, the aged are/were held in high regard–even reverence. In this day, age, and place it is only true under rare circumstances. The exception is at my work where where I am valued because of my specialty and the specificity of my skill set that allows me the luxury to continue working, God willing, into my 70’s. Once disappearance to much of society due to age is really something that does not bother me too much, but that it exists is undeniable. I seek out the old guys at McDonald’s drinking coffee in the corner on Saturday mornings. When looking for someone to help me find something at Home Depot, I look for the oldest guy I can find to give me a hand. In some ways, it is a blessing because the older folks really do want to engage. Maybe because much of society does not even see them.
I said all that to make the following point. When people find out how old I am and that I still work a full-time job, the most frequent response is to ask why I am not retired. When they find out I earned my PhD at age 67, they congratulate me, but follow up asking why I would do that. I do not view these as bad things, just societal norms. The thing is, I actually do want to retire, sooner rather than later, but I do not want to retire without some worthy thing to do or goal to achieve, worthy being the pertinent word–and I do not want that thing-to-do or that goal-to-achieve to be an easy thing. For what were we put on this earth? The hardest things are the most rewarding ones. I have not figured out yet what that next thing is. It might be a degree, it might be a volunteer project, and it might even be the starting of a business or something else, but I know that is what I want to do. Something hard where I have to learn new things.
Lorena was very skeptical about the idea of composting when she first heard about. It involved table scraps, egg shells, used coffee grounds, and all other kinds of nasty stuff. She slowly bought into the whole process after I browbeat her into trying it. I think her Monterrey “thriftiness” guided her thinking–all that STUFF that went into the compost pile could reduce her gardening costs by replacing some of the fertilizer and high grade soil she bought for her raised beds. Now, after putting the first batch of organic refuse into the compost bin, she can hardly wait until she has put in enough that soil conversion starts taking place and we can buy a couple boxes of earthworms to throw in there to help the process along. Incidentally, this is the biggest composting container we have ever had and you can see she is quite happy with it.
Tío Lauro put up a camera so Lorena can see and talk to Grandma Conchita whenever she wants. What actually happens is that Lorena pulls up the camera on her phone, yells at her Mom, and then her mom calls her on the phone because it is still just to inconvenient to do it all with the camera because there are too many buttons to press.
I have not written a blog status update for a long time. On April 5, it will be this blogs 21st birthday. It is hard to image I have been staying with it for such a long time. I do not really think I am writing about much that is very serious these days, but I hope to get back to that some day soon. Just as a marker, I have compiled a few statistics on my posting. My goal, these days, is to write at least twenty posts per month and I have not been doing too bad except for about four years when I was studying for my PhD. We are going through interesting times right now–Lorena and I are just trying to get our feet back under us, but I plan to at least keep writing “how is the weather” kinds of post for the next bit until I can catch my breath and get back to the next big thing. There is always a next big thing, especially if you count dying as the last one. God willing, that is some years off for me, but in the meantime, I am going to look for one or two more big projects to keep myself out from under Lorena’s feet. Here are the stats:
| 4259 | total posts |
| 199.7 | average posts per year |
| 241 | median posts per year |
Our business partner and Lorena’s brother, Tío Lynn, had a birthday a few days back. We are very grateful to work with him. It is a little surreal for a gringo embedded in American high tech business culture to watch how things operate in Mexico. And it is not just Mexico, it is working class Mexico. Lynn has a law degree and is a practicing lawyer, but he grew up in a middle class neighborhood that bordered on a very much lower class neighborhood. He is burdened by an incredible work ethic and a soft heart coupled with intimate knowledge of how things operate in those rough neighborhoods. He has to deal with people not showing up, paying late, prevaricating, pilfering, and a plethora of other challenges both in his legal work and the construction work he does for our company. I honestly do not know how he does it, especially because in many, if not most, cases he is the last line of defense. He avoids one disaster after another, but with great joy and, I have to admit, style. I really miss being able to discuss the state of the world with him after work every night. It seems like I am operating in the dark a lot more when he is not around.
…but at least it is a start on my exercise program. I still have a legitimate shot at getting down to a reasonable weight and improving my health before I head into retirement–who knows how long that will be. God willing, I would at least like to go until the end of September and at least a couple of years after that before I throw in the towel. For the record, I did five minutes, forty calories, and 809 meters. I remember the first time I rowed on a Concept 2 rower in College Station, Texas when I was 35 years old–I did five minutes, then, too. I honestly wondered how anyone could get past that first-time awkward motion and out-of-gas feeling to actually get some exercise on that infernal machine. But I stuck with it and actually got pretty good. I hope to do that gain at double the age.
We are in the process of setting up and office for Lorena. We ordered the printer from Walmart (cheaper than the same model at Ebay and Amazon) and it arrived today–on a Sunday nonetheless, right after we returned from after-church lunch in town. The most amazing part it that it was ready to print out of the box over wireless without anything other than connecting to the network. I installed the Linux (Xubuntu 24.04) drivers that I downloaded from the internet in about five minutes and then the scanner was up and running. I am very pleased with our new monochrome laser printing, color scanning, wireless Brother HL-L2465DW printer. I hope this is the last printer I ever have to buy.
I think Lorena is actually going to be kind of sad when the house is all organized. Right now she is playing Mrs. Fixit. First, she wanted to water the lawn, but the hose ends were loose and leaky so we ran down to Home Depot and bought a couple of repair kits to fix that. Then, she wanted to set up her computer desk in the master bedroom so we pulled the beautiful walnut desk we are keeping for Christian and is not, quite happily, putting that together–I get to set up the computer when that is done, but she will not let me touch anything that has to do with screw drivers, wrenches, pliers, and hammers. She is just amazing. Who knew I was marrying a plumber these many years ago.
Christian helped me pick out a new printer/scanner today. I found a Brother wireless monochrome laser printer/color scanner with Linux drivers on Walmart for $4 less than the cheapest thing on eBay. It comes with a 700 pages toner which means there is some very good chance we will never have to buy another one.
With our new plan for Lorena to start taking over a bunch of the financial management stuff, we have decided to set her up with her own office/desk/computer in the bedroom. To that end, I got the little i3 Windows laptop running that I use for those few things I cannot do on Linux (do Windows builds of the GRIME2 Open Source software package and update the firmware on our Garmin watches). Hopefully I will be able to get our file server and a Linux computer running so we can implement the plan. With our Starlink setup I am still pretty sad with the upload speeds, but very happy overall with the service.
We are getting close to having a somewhat cluttered but operational house.