Category Archives: Marcia

Happy Birthday, Baby

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Not puttin’ you in a corner, never fear. Yeah, my lovely had a nice birthday yesterday. She enjoyed a Downton Abby marathon, and we went out to supper with two other couples, each with a birthday celebration going in this week(end?). Good meal at Four Seasons Grille in Gambrills, just up the slightly frozen road from us a double handful of miles.

Not much else to report. I should do taxes tomorrow, which is bound to be a cheerless and disappointing task. Why tomorrow? So that I can shell out some more dead Presidents to fund the current President’s predilection for non-legislative action. Sigh.

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Pfc. Joshua A. Gray, 21, of Van Lear, Kentucky, died Feb. 10, in Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, from a non-combat related incident.
  • Spc. Christopher A. Landis, 27, of Independence, Kentucky, died Feb. 10, on Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, from wounds received when the enemy attacked his dismounted patrol with a rocket propelled grenade in Kapisa Province, Afghanistan.
  • Spc. John A. Pelham, 22, of Portland, Oregon, died Feb. 12, in Kapisa Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when he was struck by enemy small arms fire.
  • Sgt. First Class Roberto C. Skelt, 41, of York, Florida, died Feb. 12, in Kapisa Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when he was struck by enemy small arms fire.

 

1400 miles later …

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Saturday last we departed for the big vacation of the summer, and spent a week in Saugatuck, Michigan, with family from Marcia’s side of the tree. Good times, picnic with grand-nieces and -nephews, etc. Oh, yeah, and three days of fishing. We did some shore fishing on Kalamazoo Lake, and managed a couple of dozen fish between us – all catch and release. Here’s one of the carp that Marcia reeled in:

Marcia's carp

Marcia’s carp

The drive was 700 miles each way, taking about 10 hours and change on each of the Saturdays. Overall, we got 34.8 MPG out of the 328i for this trip, which isn’t too shabby.

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Back due to popular request, the back yard rain gauge stands at 37.50″ fallen since just before Sandy came ashore last fall.

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Our condolences to the family, friends, and unit of Specialist Welch:

  • Spc. Nickolas S. Welch, 26, of Mill City, Oregon, died Aug. 6, in Bethesda, Md., of injuries sustained July 23, when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device in Soltan Kheyl, Wardak Province, Afghanistan.

15 years; Table done

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Those are unrelated topics, as the semicolon indicates. First (as my lovely Marcia points out), I neglected to point out to all and sundry that we celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary yesterday. We went out to Sly Horse Tavern for supper, to celebrate. It’s good to be happy, eh?

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Table done:

Table in the sun

Table in the sun

I brought the table bits halfway up, and setup on the lawn, to show how pretty this is in full light. Then I hauled it back inside and upstairs, and properly attached the top to the apron.

Table in my office

Table in my office

I’m nearly 80% done with this project. I’ve got two more base cabinets and a counter top to fabricate and install. Then the office is done. Yay!

Many Things Accomplished

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Our New Quilt of Many Colours

Our New Quilt of Many Colours

But first, look at the lovely quilt that my lovely Marcia made for our California king. The colors and design are gorgeous (and they pick up some of the colors in the painting over the bed). Awesome!

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I managed to get three coats of finish on the shelves over the two days. I patched some work systems remotely, and tested them once rebooted. I roasted coffee, went shopping, and gave myself a haircut. I walked the dog a few times.

And Congress stole an hour of sleep from me, and the rumour is that I don’t get it back for nearly 8 months … and then without interest. Bastards. And I did the taxes for 2012. Bastards. Balance our checkbook, eh? Bastards.

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Our condolences to the family and friends of  Spc. Cody D. Suggs, 22, of West Alexandria, Ohio. He died March 7 at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, as a result of a non-combat incident.

Musical … well, everything.

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I’d say “musical chairs”, but a lot more than chairs are involved. Marcia’s got some quilting work coming up that is approximately a billion times easier (using Top Gear maths, there) if she is able to use all the power of her fully operational Death Quilter. Errr, or something like that. But the only place we can do the full build out of her quilting frame is the library, because the other choices are someone’s woodshop, and the living room. So, here’s what the library looked like at 10:30 this morning.

Library before reorganization

Library before reorganization

The blue chairs, the occasional table, and the bookcase move walls, left to right. That table to the right? That’s going into the breakfast nook.  The table that’s in the breakfast nook? That’s going down the stairs, to hold up the embroidery machine, which currently lives on a corner of Marcia’s cutting table. The cutting table? That goes into the fabric room downstairs, once the quilting frame is migrated upstairs. Here’s the quilting frame in it’s original cramped quarters. Marcia and I had already brought the long arm sewing machine  upstairs.

Quilting machine frame in fabric room.

Quilting machine frame in fabric room.

The HandiQuilter frame actually has three 4′ long sections. At the time of initial install, we tried to keep everything confined to Marcia’s half of the basement, which meant only installing it as an 8′ system, and into cramped quarters at that. Marcia headed out to meet friends and I got to work. I prepared the library, then disassembled and migrated the quilting frame upstairs. I also pulled in the boxed parts that I needed to build out to full length. By two in the afternoon, I had the whole thing back together, no left over parts, in the library:

Quilting Machine in the Library

Quilting Machine in the Library

With that done, I did a bit of prep disassembly on the cutting table, and then had a late lunch while I waited for Marcia to get home. She helped me move the cutting table pieces between rooms, then I reassembled that in the fabric room. Then I disassembled the breakfast nook table, hauled it downstairs, and put it back together there. We put the embroidery machine on that. THEN I moved the previously disassembled round table bits into the breakfast nook and reassembled it there.

It was a long day of work, and a lot of stairs, too. We still have to find homes for a few displaced things, but progress on that tomorrow (I hope). Whew!

Marcia’s back (again) & Linux reloaded

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Today, I relaxed a bit. Shopping in the morning, a bit of Top Gear UK during the day, and I picked Marcia up at BWI around 1500 EST. Happy dog is happy, and so am I. The holiday bird is in the fridge, I’ve got a tray of mac-n-cheese ready, and … we’ll see how the table ends up.

Tonight, I blew out the FreeNAS installation, and installed Scientific Linux 6.3 x64 on the box still known as Serenity. I had a lot of trouble getting things working right, and there are issues with offsite backups that are much more easily solved with a Linux at the helm. Instead of returning to the Ubuntu way, I figured one of the RHEL retreads would be a good way to go – I’ve got to re-certify in the next few months, and more practice is good.

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Capt. James D. Nehl, 37, of Gardiner, Oregon, died Nov. 9, in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan, from small arms fire while on patrol during combat operations.
  • Sgt. Matthew H. Stiltz, 26, of Spokane, Washington, died Nov. 12, at Zerok, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit with indirect fire.
  • Staff Sgt. Rayvon Battle Jr., 25, of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, died Nov. 13, in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan.
  • Sgt. Channing B. Hicks, 24, of Greer, South Carolina, died Nov. 16, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, from injuries suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device and small arms fire.
  • Spc. Joseph A. Richardson, 23, of Booneville, Arkansas, died Nov. 16, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, from injuries suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device and small arms fire.

Should Be True

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A great start to ten days before I go back to the office: I was up at 0500, and driving Marcia to the airport. She’s off to Michigan for a baby shower. I declined to attend, however. I’m going to attempt NOT to rise at that hour again for a week or so!

Now, here’s a reminder that Marcia is job hunting, and would appreciate legit leads for a new gig.

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New Feature: Should-Be-True Facts.

As I was dropping off to sleep last night, I had one of my weird little non sequitur thoughts, and I managed to remember it. It clearly drops into the category of “Should-Be-True Facts,” so here’s the inaugural SBTF:

The myth: Dog saliva helps heal wounds on humans.

The SBTF: Dog saliva has enzymes in it that selectively digest human neurons. The effect is that the wound “hurts less,” which is perceived by the partially digested human as “healing.”

The long term viability of this new site feature is entirely dependent on my ability to remember and transcribe such oddities whenever they occur to me. Good luck with that, me!

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Today is dedicated to schoolwork, so I’d best get to it. Ciao!

Xerox restructures

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USA Today reported yesterday that Xerox will lay off 2,500 employees. So it was nothing personal when one of those RIF’d yesterday was Marcia. She talks about that on her own site… Just wanted to let y’all know.

She’s already got feelers out, but if you have any input for her, be sure to get in touch.

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In other news, I’m on vacation. I’m going to burn a small fraction of my available vacation hours and return to work on Monday the 26th. I’ll take another week in mid-December, just for fun. Well, to finish up school, probably, but fun, too.

Counting down…

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Twelve weeks of instruction left to my collegiate days. Sunday evening was full of final composition and review for a couple of things due … and I flat forgot my duty. But here I am!

Before I proceed, however, I’d like to point you in the direction of Marcia’s new (old) site: Marcia’s Makings. She’s been making lots of wonderful things, and just knows that you need to buy them for holiday gifts, or to keep yourself warm as Fall arrives… So visit

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jose L. Montenegro Jr., 31, of Houston, Texas, died Sept. 5, in Logar Province, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered when his aircraft crashed.
  • Chief Warrant Officer 2 Thalia S. Ramirez, 28, of San Antonio, Texas, died Sept. 5, in Logar Province, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered when his aircraft crashed.
  • Sgt. Kyle B. Osborn, 26, of Lafayette, Indiana, died Sept. 13 in Muqer, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with small arms and rocket propelled grenade fire.
  • Lt. Col. Christopher K. Raible, 40, of Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, died Sept. 15, while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Sgt. Bradley W. Atwell, 27, of Kokomo, Indiana, died Sept. 15, while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

Gladiators: second door, down the hall, third office, please.

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Yeah, apparently there’s going to be a game of feet-baal or something like that. The pregame show was on the tube when we awoke this morning apparently, and may have been on before we retired last night, for all I know.

I’m all caught up on schoolwork for the moment. I have some reading to do for Geology, and an assignment and midterm for that class this week as well. My Principles of Software Engineering class starts tomorrow. I’ve done the first week’s reading for that, but there’s an assignment there, too. This new eight-week pressure cooker format is going to suck, I can just tell.

Marcia is doing her home physical therapy right now, stuff with weights and rolled up towels and strips of fabric – all in the service of extended bending and stretching and such. She’s doing GREAT, frankly. Stairs and all! Marcia starts back to work tomorrow.

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Sgt. William C. Stacey, 23, of Redding, California, died Jan. 31 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Lance Cpl. Edward J. Dycus, 22, of Greenville, Mississippi, died Feb. 1 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province,
  • Brig. Gen. Terence J. Hildner, 49, of Fairfax, Virginia, died Feb. 3, in Kabul province, Afghanistan.