The CEO of the company where I work, Thrive Bioscience, often sends gift packages out for different holidays. They are amazing. We get authentic Vermont Maple Syrup and Harry and David’s pears from Southern Oregon often. I never want to take these for granted. They are great gifts and fun to share with others. The pairs arrived this morning, quite unexpectedly and we are grateful again!
November 1 is not too early to start planning for Thanksgiving. We are hoping, God willing, that this year’s Thanksgiving will be one for the ages. Our expected visitors this year include Grandma Conchita (Lorena is flying down to pick her up in Monterrey next week), Tio Rigo and his family (driving up from Austin for a couple of days), our dear friends Ralph and his beautiful and talented daughter Olivia (flying out from Atlanta), and, of course, Kelly and Christian (flying in from Washington, D.C. and Boston). Most of the crew will be here to visit some of the amazing Fort Worth offerings (The Kimbell, The Fort Worth Zoo and Botanical Gardens, etc.). I found this photo of Lauro and Conchita from almost exactly 20 years ago when we all visited Cabo San Lucas together. It would have been great to have them both here for this Thanksgiving, but having Conchita is a huge blessing on its own.
Lorena brought me this spectacular linen shirt Christian got me for my birthday. LOVE it. It looks OK now, but will look even better when I am down another ten pounds. I am going to show it off for the first time at Thanksgiving, but my main plan is to get some nice, new jeans and wear them to my graduation in December. Christian truly is a thoughtful man. I am just thankful he is my son. Can’t wait to see both Kelly, Christian, Conchita, and our old friends Ralph and Olivia from Atlanta via Sweden. Maybe Ralph will not look down on me for my lack of Euro-trash clothes!!!
With Lorena gone, I drove over to Granbury to check out the Hood County Library situated not to far from their historic town center. I LOVED it. It is a small library and probably more of community gathering place than a place to check out books, but they have an excellent little bookstore where you can buy books, very inexpensively, that people donate to support the library. When I went back there, I met three retired volunteers working there. They were very friendly and, just when I got there, they were all heading out to the parking lot to look at the eclipse with the special dark sunglasses you need to be able to do that. They asked me if I would like to see it, too, then kindly lent me a pair of glasses to take a look. That sight is ALWAYS amazing to see. On the way out of the library, I stopped by the desk to see if it was possible to get a library card even though we do not live in Hood County. They said, sure, but I could only check out 5 books at a time for three weeks and I could not use any of their online services. That was GREAT, so I got one and am quite pleased with myself.
On the way home, I picked up some gas and then bought a diet coke and a Kroger chicken breast for lunch. That was a good thing, too, because it got me out of the house. When Lorena is gone, I really get unmotivated (a bad thing) and this just taught me the lesson that I need to find an excuse, no matter how feeble, to get out of the house at least once every day. I did not have much of a plan when I first got up this morning, but now I have new good stuff to do.
Back in the late 1990’s I worked for a company named ESI on a new product. There were problems with the product and I worked many hours, often through the night to resolve them. I was in a small group and was the only one who could do the work. I am not sure my boss even knew I was doing that. But my friend Frank, who worked in a completely different department on the other side of a very big building saw. I was getting pretty down about it and was not sure I would ever resolve the problem1. Right in the middle of all that, Frank showed up with a bottle of Duck Pond Pinot Noir wine from Dundee, Oregon, just up the road from where we lived, gave it to me and said my efforts were not going unnoticed. I appreciated that beyond words. I am not sure what year was the vintage, it might have been 1995, but it was amazing. I liked it so much that I asked him about it later. He told me that Duck Pond had always made a great bottle of Pinot Noir being located in the red hills of Dundee, but for some reason, that one year was just off the charts better than anything they had done before and it had not yet been discovered by the wine snobs. That weekend, I went out and bought a case of it. It took us several years to finish the whole case and every bottle was as amazing as the one Frank gave me. Lorena and I found a bottle of the 2021 vintage so we could share it with the family. We have no idea whether it is as good as the first bottle, but the memories were worth the price of purchae.
I have been working with a couple of guys in different capacities for close to forty years. The last twenty years or so, I have used them as consultants for difficult machine vision work. I never would have imagined when I first met them that we would still be working together so many years later. They are both exceptionally talented machine vision algorithm developers. When I talk about Frank I say that he is pretty much the Mozart in our field, and he is. In addition to machine vision and among other things, Frank is a truffle hunter. He and a friend wrote a book titled “Field Guide to North American Truffles.” Mark, in a very different way, is just as talented. He got his Ph.D. in Physics from a co-author of Albert Einstein, has an Erdos number of 3, and is indispensable when it comes to the math of image processing. The synergy created when they work together is with par in the little technical world in which we live. I am amazed they still love to do this at 75 plus years of age and even more amazed that I get to do it with them. They are part of the reason I am loathe to retire anytime soon. Even more importantly, I am glad to call him my friend.
We got the good news today that Christian and Kelly are coming home for an entire week for Thanksgiving! Grandma Conchita is planning to be here the whole time, too. In addition to that, several surprise visitors are making plans to try to fly in for just the long weekend part. God willing, it will all work out. Last year, Lorena’s brother Rigo and his family were with us. With Thanksgiving, the more the merrier is always better. This could be one for the record books if the surprise visitors are able to work it out to be here. And the good part is virtually everyone loves to cook. Hope I still get to cook and carve the turkey this year!
It dawned on me several weeks ago that, on this birthday (today), I would be just a couple of years away from 70. My plan for a couple of years now, God willing, was to work until I was 70, then do some contract work to stay active and earn a little extra money. Now, though, I am considering a plan revision, God willing, to keep working my current job if it continues to stay as fun and interesting as it is now. There are lots of interesting choices to make and all of them depend on my health, both mental and physical.
I got a coffee mug (love those can’t get enough of them), slippers to replace my old worn out ones (essential tool for working from home, but they need to be durable enough to run out to the mailbox if necessary), and some measuring spoons (essential tools for the kind of diet that works for me). Lorena and I have been celebrating all weekend. We went on a full-blown date last night and then out for Chinese food after meeting (church) this afternoon. Lorena, the best of all possible wives, also bout a rib-eye steak for this evening. This time next year, we hope to celebrate my birthday and our 32 wedding anniversary which falls in early October in Mexico if the house on the hill in San Pedro is far enough along in its remodel to be liveable.
Quite a few months back, my professor from University of Nebraska went to work with one of his collaborators at University of Texas at Arlington is an hour or so away from where we live. It was great to have him and it felt like old times. I am really going to miss having an excuse to talk to him every week. I started helping him with his undergraduate research shortly after he started school at North Carolina State University. The research was successful and extended into his Ph.D. research. We had such a good time with it, we talked about how I might be able to continue to help him with it as a retirement project. I never expected to have the opportunity to do that in the way it worked out. I am grateful for the whole enterprise with my lifelong friend.
My buddy, Bryan sent me an old picture he had taken while we were young and the blood was obviously not getting to our brain yet. We had gone to some friends’ house on the top of a hill to try out Bryan’s new (to him) hang glider. I am not sure I was the first to try it out, but I do remember being way higher in the air than I felt in any way comfortable about falling. That was my first and last time hang gliding. It was a lot of fun, but the consequences of failure seemed dire, even for a guy in his mid-twenties.
Seeing this photo made me think of how grateful I am that God was merciful to me in my youth, keeping me alive long enough to start trying things that were meaningful rather than just fun or, worse, things done to make an impression on someone. To this day, I am amazed at my own narcissism sometimes. All the same, there was a lot of bonding that went on during those years. Bryan and I always talked about more consequential things than just fun, fame, and money. I am grateful for that, too.
Lorena and I drove down to Leander, Texas on Saturday to celebrate her brother, Rigoberto’s, birthday. With some of their friends from church. It has been such a long time since we had an evening to just sit around and talk with friends, we are kind of forgetting what it was like. There was another family there we had never met before who are engaged in a lot of interesting work and projects. We discussed, work, college, kids, geopolitics, American politics, health, medicine, energy technology, and just about everything else under the sun. We had no agenda other than to eat lots of red meat, sing happy birthday, and chew that fat. I need more of that.
During the geopolitics part of the evening, our new friend, Lyle, recommended a book. I ordered it and will put it up as soon as it arrives.
We are spending the evening with Lorena’s brother Rigoberto to celebrate his birthday (it was a couple of days ago) and Mexican Independence Day. We are too old to have stayed up last night until midnight for El Grito de Independencia (Grito de Dolores), but we were there in spirit. We are pretty pleased that Mexican Independence Day coincides with the birthdays of two of our favorite people (Trisha and Vanessa). They actually remember their birthdays every year!
We received a package in our mailbox yesterday with this spectacular gift–a pie server. Our friend Harvey turned the handle on his lathe, put a nice finish on it, and put it in the mail. We LOVE it! Really, really nicely done. Lorena wanted to hang it on the wall as a piece of art. I wanted to use it with as much apple pie as possible. We are probably going to compromise and do both. It was an especially nice gift because it just came out of the blue with zero
Everyone really needs a good Easter hat. Lorena found the one Tio Lauro gave to me as a gift and I think it works for the professorial look at which I am aiming. That is a hard look to accomplish for a farm/logger/mill-worker kid so I take anything I can get. We had a party of four for Easter dinner which was, of course, ham, deviled eggs and scalloped potatoes. Very nice. It would have been great to have the kids here with us, but it was not possible so we want to do something extra good next year.
Hemex Health has released their Sickle Cell Disease diagnostic product (PDF brochure here). It is a big deal because it is inexpensive and fast (10 minutes) compared to previous methods of diagnosis. This product will save lives through early diagnosis. I was fortunate to develop some of the enabling technology for this product, for a brief period as a volunteer and later on as a contractor. Congratulations Peter, Patty and the whole team for this successful product release!
We went to my cousin, Tim Mecum’s memorial service last night. It was amazing. There were 100-150 people in attendance and we got to see a lot of people we had not seen for years. It was a fitting good-bye to a very sweet spirited man who played a significant role in our family when our kids were small. I hope I am remembered as fondly as Tim when my time comes.
We had some time before the service so we drove buy the home in North Albany where we lived for five years and that we remodeled more heavily than any home we have lived in. We were kind of expecting to see something small and run down, but were surprised. We STILL love the house and all the work we did. It was nice to remember some of the goodness we experienced there.
My desk cycling was going well enough for me that I decided to talk my friend, Stan, into joining me in my efforts to maintain my weight. To that end, I upgraded my DeskCycle to a DeskCycle 2. I think it has pretty much the same hardware as the old cycle, but a little better display and more accurate measurement of calories expended. I like it a lot. I am going to give the original cycle to Stan and we are going to start tracking weight together. Lorena and I have an anniversary today and Stan is taking the Extra Class Amateur Radio license test this week, so we are going to start our joint efforts on Monday.
The GIF above demonstrates that I move around quite a bit when I am riding, but surprisingly, I can actually get quite a lot of work done when I am riding. I am doing about a couple of hours per day of light peddling and it certainly does seem to help although eating right seems to help a lot more.
The painting of the house is finally under way. Our painter, Duane, is both an excellent painter and a good friend. His son Gavin is helping him before he starts a new job for the State of Washington. We enjoy eating lunch and talking about life with them on the days they work here. They wedged us in among other work they are doing in the area so it will not all be finished until toward the end of the month. We can hardly wait.
Day 28 of 100 (10.8 of 41 pounds) 26.3%
Lorena and I ran down to the McMenamin’s beside the Columbia River in Kalama on Saturday evening. It is a beautiful facility and we enjoyed ourselves very much. We used to go to the McMenamin’s in Wilsonville once a week when we lived there and liked it a lot. The one here in Centralia is really not so good–too noisy and somehow seems to have a culture difference from the ones in Kalama and Wilsonville. It is an hour drive down to Kalama, so we do not expect we will be doing it so often. We had around 30 20-30 somethings at the house over the weekend for a birthday and going-away party for Kelly. It was wonderful.
We saw a beautiful eclipse of the moon last Sunday night like we had never seen it before. It was a spectacular sight both through the microscope our friend Bob lent us, but also with the naked eye. We tried to take pictures of it, but just did not have the equipment we needed. Luckily, our friend Scott P. (he and Gary P. are staying with us for a couple of days), passed along some shots his dad took. The thought we had was that not only did the camera and lens have to be pretty amazing, the setup of this shots took a highly skilled photographer. These shots really captured the awe of this event.
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