Category: General Page 21 of 116

Day 407 of 1000

I spend about one-fourth of my time on the road these days.  The rest of the time, I spend at home, working up in the bonus room.  It used to be that I went off to work every morning while the rest of the family stayed home.  Now it is often the other way around.  Today, Lorena will be in school until about five so I will pick up the kids at NCSU when they get out a little after mid-day.

All this has me thinking about what will happen to the kids when they leave home in a little over a year and a half.  It might move out to a little more than that if the kids stay home for the summer, but it will be soon.  One of the big topics in our household over the years has been that the purpose of school is to learn something that will make you employable, get out as quickly as possible, and if you have a little fun a long that is OK, but not essential.

Having done the homeschool thing, one of our pet peeves is the idea that the experience of traditional school has any intrinsic value other than the preparation of the students to contribute to society.  We have given this a good deal of thought and discussion over the last several months because the kids are really not to far from the transition from college into either grad school and/or work when they will have to take even more responsibility for their finances, household, and all the things that have to do with living on their own.  Some of the topics include internships, leisure time (or, more importantly, the lack thereof when it comes to meeting responsibilities), and resumes.

Day 406 of 1000

When we decided to stop in at Cook-Out for lunch after meeting today, it was a nice enough day that we decided to eat outside at one of the picnic tables.

Kelly said, “Hey, this is our camp out for the year!”

The joyful truth of that statement is that it is exactly true.  That is about as close as we ever get to camping out–something for which I am quite grateful.  Lorena and I are of the same sentiment on the matter.

She says, “People in Mexico work hard their whole lives so they don’t have to do that.”

Day 404 of 1000

Life has been crazy eventful over the last four days.  I had a great birthday with my family on Monday, then ran off to a work in Charlotte and go to a seminar in Greenville, SC on Tuesday through Thursday.  The big fun event was when we went to dinner after the seminar with a bunch of other vendors in Greenville.  The name of the place we at was Saskatoon Restaurant.  I split an Elk steak plate and a Kangaroo steak plate with the guy next to me and we also had a sampler with Ostrich, Antelope, and Venison.  It was really very good and I glad I had that, but have decided that the noble Cow is STILL my animal of choice when it comes to steak.

The funny deal about the restaurant was they had this blurb in their menu, “Saskatoon blends the rich, beautiful scenery of the Northwest with foods rich in flavor and tradition”.  Saskatoon, home of the Blades hockey team is nowhere near the Northwest where I grew up.  Maybe they meant Northwest in the same sense that Chicago was in the Northwest of the U.S. at one time in our country’s history–hence Northwestern Unviersity is in Chicago.  Who knows.  At any rate the food was good and the services was absolutely stellar.  I recommend it highly.

Day 403 of 1000

Christian gets his own biography page on the OSL web site at NCSU.

Day 399 of 1000

Shortly before I made the previous post about my train trip from Raleigh to Charlotte on Friday, the train stopped.  Later, I found that we were only about fifteen minutes from our final stop at the Charlotte Amtrak station.  We sat there for about a half an hour then one of the conductors came into our car to explain what was going on.  He said there had been a rules violation and that they were sending a whole new crew to man the train during the rest of the trip.  Since it was only fifteen minutes to Charlotte, the crew that started the tripped asked if they could man the train long enough to get us to the Charlotte station.  The answer was no.  He said we were a half an hour away from the new crew arriving.

Well, we were all pretty frustrated, but what could we do?  We were out in the middle of some woods.  We sat there for about fifteen minutes.  Then, out of the blue, the lady sitting in the seat behind me began to quietly sing.  My first thought was, Oh, no.  This is going to be a long and agonizing wait.  Then it dawned on me that the woman could really sing.  She was an attractive African-American woman in her mid thirties with a beautiful contralto voice.  I had heard her talking with her seatmate about church so it was not surprising that she sang gospel music.  She never did sing too loud, but pretty soon everyone else in the car clued in to the fact that she was an amazing singer.  Everyone but our singer got quiet.  The next twenty minutes were pretty amazing and made for a VERY nice wait.

I am ABSOLUTELY going to take the train again.  I doubt I will be fortunate to get such a wonderful serenade a second time, but I can always hope.  I worked for a day and went to our church convention this weekend.  We never know when we are being entertained by angels.

Day 397 of 1000

I am having a very enjoyable train ride to work this morning.  This is much better than driving–I can use my computer as well as get up and walk around.  Great stuff.

Salisbury, NC

Day 394 of 1000

Stuck in Lodi Wilmington again.  I was positive, when I headed out from Raleigh to Wilmington that I was going to be able to finish everything I was doing by the end of the day.  The sad part is that I WAS able to finish everything, but my partner (rightly) felt like we should stick around for another day to watch how the stuff runs.  The upshot is that I am in a Hampton Inn in Wilmington with no change of clothes and complimentry toiletries.  And it is raining hard.  That is OK, because my company just had their biggest sales day in the history of the company and I get to ride the train to Charlotte on Friday–$25 on the express train one way and if it goes well, then we might be able to work out a way for me to take the train on a regular basis.  It even has wireless so I can work and blog.

Day 392 of 1000

Everyone in our household except me had to study today.  Even I ended up studying some statistical stuff for my work, but Lorena, Kelly, and Christian all had a lot more than me, so I decided to head down to the YMCA to get in a workout.  Before I left, I noticed Rubix the fat cat of our tortoise shell twin cat sisters was relaxing on the south tower of the twin cat tower Christian and I constructed for exactly that purpose.  We called it the twin cat tower, not because there are twin towers (as you can see from the photograph), but because we have twin cats.

The amazing part is that I was gone for two hours and when I got back Rubix was still there.  The last time we took the cats to the vet (another story onto itself), we were told Rubix, the fat cat, was too fat, but Kiwi is OK.  She recommended we start feeding them canned food at least part of the time and to meter their food.  Well we found out why Rubix is fat and Kiwi is thin.  Kiwi has never really liked the dry food we gave her so she did not eat very much, so that is why she is thin.  Rubix, on the other hand loves virtually everything so she gets fat whether she is on dry food or canned food.

Now, Kiwi starts meowing about 5:30 every morning because she loves the canned food so much.  We are trying to give her dry food in the morning so she does not bug us to death, but it has not worked so far.  I do not know whether we will ever get the whole cat thing figured out.  It is to bad, though, because now we are all pretty much addicted to our cats.

Day 391 of 1000

Tonight at midnight, Mexico will celebrate El Grito de Dolores sometimes known as El Grito de la Independencia.  You can read about it here.  It is a great thing to be in Mexico and see a celebration of this event.  Tomorrow is Mexican Independence Day.  It is also important because Lorena calls Vanesa, the dear friend she made in Florida when we lived there right after we got married.  We speak of our time in Florida often, remember it fondly, and always remember our friendship with Vanesa and her husband Carlos.  We have never met their kids, but have hope we will do that sometime soon–they now live in Texas. 

Day 386 of 1000

The whole family spent the whole weekend at a wonderful church convention where we heard about the historical reality of the resurrection of Jesus, physically from the dead.  The statement was made that “Jesus is alive.”   We heard about the divinity of Christ, the Father and the Holy Ghost, our desperate need to die to our selves, and many other facts of spiritual reality.  I am always encouraged when I hear this kinds of foundation truths.  It was an especially gratifying weekend because Christian was baptized.  A seminal event in the life of our little family.

Day 381 of 1000

I drove up to Charlotte last night and worked there today.  Right when I wanted to go home, Obama arrived in Charlotte to attend the Democrat National Convention.  I had to drive 40 miles out of my way because of his motorcades.  I am going to vote for Romney.

Day 380 of 1000

I have to work in Charlotte tomorrow.  The closest hotel I could find for less than $250 per night is more than an hour away.  I am sure the traffic will be a non-problem tomorrow morning.

Day 379 of 1000

Kelly asked us all a bunch of questions after breakfast this morning to figure out our Myers-Briggs personality type. We probably got it completely wrong.  Everything except the part where it says Kelly likes to play before she works–she spent the next hour or so reading about all the different personality types before she jumpec back into her studying.  The kids have mostly studied this weekend.

I am proud of them.  It pained them that all their buddies were either at college in faraway places or, even worse, together at our annual church convention in the Portland area.  Just because of the way the school year works out, they have not been to that convention for a long time.  Instead, they spent the weekend studying.  We did not spend the whole time studying, but a lot of it.

For her part, Kelly stayed at our neighbor’s home to take care of their dogs.  She had a quiet place to study while she was there.  Christian joined her a couple of times.  Both of them are now convinced they are not dog people.  They heavily favor cats.  When Kelly came back this morning, she told us she is definitely not a “live by myself” kind of a person.  She loves to have people around.  I thought that was nice.

I went downstairs and took their pictures while they studied this morning.  These are pretty typical study locations.  Both of them are exactly right.  Kelly lays on the couch to read, then lays her paperwork out on the coffee table.  Christian sets up and spreads out on the kitchen island and I bet his cat (Rubix) is in his lap at least half of the time.  Christian sets up there, even when it is a mess.  Both of them work at the kitchen table every now and then, but the prefer the couch and the island.

Day 378 of 1000

Kelly is taking care of the neighbor, Jennifer’s dogs while they are away on vacation.  She did not think she needed a key because they have a keyless way to get into the house.  The problem is that you have to get past two barriers and Kelly armed the second barrier.  We had half the neighbohood out trying to figure out how to get in the house.  We checked all the windows, upstairs and down to see if one was open.  It was locked up tight.  Christian tried to pick the lock with some allen wrenches, but it was one of those really good locks so he didn’t have any luck.

We called the neighbor and she said they did not have a hidden key anywhere and none of the other neighbors had a key either.  We were all hot, sweaty (87 degree weather with 64% humidty), and frustrated because our only option appeared to be to call for a very expensive Labor Day weekend locksmith visit.  Our other neighbor, Michelle said we should try to pick the lock with a credit card, but I said that was not possible because these kinds of good locks have great protection against that sort of thing.  While we were discussing it, Lorena grabbed a credit card and opened the door in less than three minutes.  I do not know if I should be proud or scared.

Christian just sent me a chat message telling me his Electrical Engineering professor’s wife taught the class today.  I have never heard of that, but it is WAY cool!!!  He has experienced something I have never experienced.  The closest I ever got to that was when my second grade teacher at Harrison Elementary in Cottage Grove, Oregon (Miss Rohr from North Carolina of all things–I was in love with her) had her boyfriend come to class.  He was very cool.  Still it is not the same as having a wife who can take over and teach your national research university level electrical engineering class.  Just WOW!  The even cooler part is that her name was Mrs. Molner–not Ms. Molner or some other hyphenated, politically correct nonsense.

Day 375 of 1000

For some reason Kelly’s CLEP tests did not make it into the system at NCSU, so we had to resend them.  Kelly made passing scores on 39 credits worth of material.  Many schools accept all of those credits, only 15 and maybe 18 of those credits are eligible at NCSU.  She receive four additional credits for a class that was not eligible (English Composition) because of a high ACT English score.  The courses they did not accept were Spanish (12 credits–but she has already satisfied her foreign language requirement by other means), precalculus (3 credits–she is way beyond that so it did not matter so much), and Psychology (3 credits–but they accepted Sociology which satisfied the social science credits for which Psychology would have applied).  The one that is up in the air is Biology for 3 credits–it has to be approved by the Biology department so that is in process.

We are excited because Kelly now has 82 credits and could have 85 if they give here Biology.  That means she will be an 18 year old college senior next semester.  If she would have gotten just a few more credits, she could have entered NCSU as a senior, but all of that is made kind of irrelevant because she is taking a difficult degree in Statistics that has some required classes that will keep her here this year and next.  It is really exciting to see this progress toward something on which she has worked very hard for over ten years.

Day 374 of 1000

Even with all its warts, godlessness, and liberal ways, Oregon State University is a profoundly better school than Duck U (Univ. of Oregon).  Their campus is pretty, they have engineering programs, etc., etc. We were talking about that this morning as the kids got ready for school.  They mentioned that even though it is true that NCSU is a profoundly better school than NCSU than UNC in the same way OSU is better than Duck U, NCSU has a little bit of an inferiority complex because UNC has been identified as the “flagship” university of the North Carolina system and is the oldest public university in the country.

Thinking about that made me want to check out which Oregon school was established first.  I saw that OSU (1868) was second so I assumed that Duck U was first.  But I was wrong.  Duck U was a weak THIRD (1876).  What is now called Western Oregon University was established as Monmouth University Christian College in 1856.  My Finnish grandmother studied there when it was called Oregon Normal School.  How cool is that?  A lot of my cousins went to school there and our buddy, Miles Nelson is studying there now.

Day 371 of 1000

At the last minute on Monday afternoon, my company asked me to go to Charlotte and then on to a place called Campobello, North Carolina.  It was a great week, but it involved a ton of driving and some long hours.  It is a good thing I love my job.  I met some great new people.  One of them was one of those guys with whom you hope you can stay in touch for a long time.  He got married to his bride when they were both 16 and has made a ton of excellent choices since then.  An amazing thoughtful and intelligent man.  I hope I get to meet his family someday.

In the meantime, Christian is hard at work trying to find some undergraduate research.  It looks like his has at least one great option, but has another interview tomorrow, so he will wait until he talks to the second guy to make a decision.

Day 365 of 1000

For the last several months I have been being told it will be impossible to get a room in Charlotte anytime after mid-August because of the Democrat National Convention.  My company wanted me to go to Charlotte this week, but I told them it was not possible.  They told me that another guy from the company had gotten a job earlier today.  They called and got me a room, too, so here I am.  I guess the turn out is going to be WAY less than expected.  I was even able to add a day at the last minute.  This does not seem to bode well for the convention or the party.

Christian just asked me that question in frustration with his politically correct in the most sophomoric way possible writing class at NCSU.  This is the last one he will have to take.  To bad Kelly is not there to draw caricatures of another smug English major pontificating about the importance of embracing immoral behavior.  I feel for him.