I really want to start the new year off with a positive attitude but I’ve got to get some stuff off my chest. If you’re not tolerant of venting then go away now!  And since so few people will know I’ve posted this I’m not holding back.

You’ve been warned.

Vent #1 - Jared decided to go back to school and his mom helped him work out financial aid. They did it wrong and at the last minute (literally, the week before he moved in) I had to come up with $900 without any notice. Fortunately I was able to sell my sound gear quickly (for less than I wanted). The EX was on the hook for half but didn’t have it so she offered to own more of the student loans than me. Not like I had any choice if Jared was going to be able to start school.

Vent #2 - My roommate moved out with short notice. Financially this hurt, but very quickly after he moved out I found out the house was infested with bedbugs. Can’t say he brought them home but he spent a lot more time away from home than I did, and his room was pretty infested when we found out. This was the week before Thanksgiving so I cancelled all plans with family so we wouldn’t risk spreading to them. And with me going out of town I had to ask for help getting the exterminators to treat the house while I was out of town.

Vent #3 - Missed Dylan’s 3rd birthday and party because I had to leave on Black Friday for my business trip.

Vent #4 - Went on a 2 week road trip that turned into an 8 week stay. Found out on the day my team was leaving that I was required to keep members of my team on site for the next 3 months. Crappy thing to happen handed to me in a crappy way. I tried to minimize the impact to my team’s holidays but wasn’t able to prevent all of it.

Vent #5 - Spent Christmas Day alone in my hotel room. Found out on Thursday I could take Friday and Monday off. No time to make plans to visit family. Everyone already had their own plans. Tricia had to go home for some doctor appointments and wasn’t coming back right away. So she went home without me.

Vent #6 - Hotel staff left my room unlocked all day. Tricia’s Macbook was stolen! Owner refused to accept responsibility but I had to find out from the manager, he was too much of a coward to meet with me.

Vent #7 - Tricia was home in Salisbury for the holidays. She complained the house was cold and cluttered with bags that made it hard to move around. So I asked Jared to drive over and start the pellet stove and move the extra bags to the spare bedroom. He only had a key to the front door but Tricia had locked the screen/glass door. She didn’t know it was the only way for him to get in, but he was stuck waiting for her to get home. She said she was at the Lab waiting to be seen and would be leaving in a few minutes to head home. About 20 minutes later she was at Best Buy trying to get some info on my TV that was out for repair. I asked her to just leave and she said she would in 5 minutes, but I guess her phone died because I didn’t hear from her again until the next day. About 1.5 hours later I told Jared he should just go home. This is really bothering me.

Vent #8 - Today I got a notice from the IRS that I owe another $450 in 2010 taxes because I settled with a credit card company for my Ex’s account when she declared bankruptcy. This one bears more explanation.

When I got divorced my Ex got half of my retirement account. I was faced with losing my house, boat, truck, etc. and bankruptcy but I managed to work it all out. Refinanced the house and worked out payment plans with all my creditors - they verified my budget so they could take MAX payments but still allow me to scrape by.

My EX wasn’t as inclined to honor her commitments. Her student loans were the priority so even while NOT making the payments on her own accounts she was borrowing MORE in financial aid. She timed it perfectly. 90 days behind on payments didn’t prevent student loans from funding and once she had the final $$ lined up to finish her degree she filed bankruptcy - handing me back the accounts I helped her to get, each now 120 days past due. I expect her lawyer helped her work out the timing.

So the remaining half of my retirement account that she didn’t take was used to pay off ONE of her accounts, and even then I had to settle with the credit card company for less than SHE owed. I lost my entire retirement to her and I’m still making payments on one of her accounts. Salt in the wound? The $1500 her credit card company wrote off is now considered income to me and I have to pay taxes on it.

To top all of this off, now that her dad has passed she stands to inherit more than I had in my retirement account at the time we split it.  She went to great lengths to tell him that I was abusing her and the boys.  The boys didn’t believe her (and we all get along great) but her dad did.  He died thinking ill of me which I feel badly about.  Too bad he never heard that one of my biggest issues with his daughter was her constant lying - even to him (about stupid stuff).  Asking her why was pointless, she doesn’t consider it lying when reason why doesn’t matter to her.

Vent #9  - The retirement account would have covered more except it was down 45% from market devaluation.

Vent #10 - After spending 8 weeks on the road finishing up the project I drive home on Saturday so I can attend kickoff meetings for the next big project on Monday. And next Sunday I have to work in Salisbury on the annual Disaster Recovery testing.  Out of the frying pan into the fire!

That’s it! I’m done venting. Over the next few weeks I’ll be working to put this all behind me and just get on with life.

Saturday is Ethan’s 1st birthday so I’m looking forward to visiting with my family in PA.

In my last post I had estimated the boat trip over Memorial Day weekend was about 40 miles but wanted to get a more accurate distance for my own benefit.  There’s probably a better way to do this but I used Google Maps to save a picture and then cut and pasted arrows as close to the 2 arrow mark as possible.  No, it’s not perfect but a close approximation was good enough for me.  Imagine my surprize when I added up the arrows and found that we had actually traveled about 65 miles!  Wow!  Definately only possible when the water is calm, and I’m pretty grateful we had such a perfect day for this trip!

Pay careful attention to the Wye Island state park.  If you come to visit and we go for a boat ride, theres a good chance that’s where we’ll be going.  Protected waters for drag toys and lots of places to push up on bank and walk around.  Woot!

Wye Island does have accomodations for overnight camping (woot!), and I’ll be checking out the Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge too for possible overnight stays (woot!).  It’s a farther trip (north of Kent Narrows), but so nice to have options!

Easton, where I live, is in the lower right hand corner of the picture.

Here’s the map:

And for my uncle Chas, here’s the Delmarva Penninsula and west bank of the Chesapeake bay, the largest estuary in the country (possibly the world):

Memorial Day weekend was just the kind of long relaxing holiday weekend I’ve needed to recharge my batteries for a really long time!  Pics at the end of the post in case thats why you’re here now.

We were supposed to get some rain on Saturday so we had indoor plans made.  It may have rained a bit very early in the morning but we never saw any during the day.  Still, with an upcoming trip to Texas Tricia and I both needed a few things so we spent the day at the Outlet mall.  We walked and shopped and generally had a nice day not really rushing around to do anything.  Instead of heading home we decided to extend our drive a bit and headed to the mall in Annapolis.  We walked just about the entire mall and had some fun doing it.  By the end of the day Tricia’s foot was really hurting so maybe we overdid it just a bit, but the exercise is good for her leg so stretching her a bit was probably a good thing overall.  We stopped at Fuddruckers for dinner which was great.  They closed the Fudd’s in Salisbury a while back so when I’m in the area I try to take advantage.

Sunday was quite possibly the best day I’ve had on the water - ever!  The water was mostly calm, the breeze was just right and it was sunny and hot!  I’ve been wanting to put out at St. Michaels ever since I moved to Easton so I found a ramp on Google and headed out.  It was a really small marina and parking was almost a problem but fortunately a local resident directed me to a good spot about a block away.  Tara and Tricia stayed with the boat while I parked and hiked back.

There were a lot of boats out and it took a while to get to open water.  Once we got on plane I headed for Wye River which surrounds Wye Island, a state park.  The trip around the island was about 6 miles and we spotted several nice places to stop and play in shallow water near small beaches.  My intention was to find some nice places to take Adam, Megan and Dylan when they visit next month.  We pulled near shore and anchored for a while and ate lunch.  The water was a bit cold still and I wasn’t ready to take the plunge.  I really expect the water to be great by July!

We got some really good pictures of the area including the small lighthouse on the point of the North bank of the river, then headed north for Kent Narrows.  It didn’t take as long to get there as I had thought it might so we pushed on.  We continued north and circled around Kent Island coming back to the Bay Bridge from the north side.  It honestly doesn’t look very tall from a couple of miles away but the closer you get the taller it looks!  I got some really awesome pictures of the bridge before heading on along side Kent Island before turning East back towards St. Michaels.  All told, we spent about 6 hours on the water and covered around 40 miles.  It was absolutely the longest trip I’ve captained on water and has really gotten me primed for more good times this summer.

I had planned to get back out of the water again on Monday but honestly we were too worn out and more time in the sun would probably been a bad idea.  So instead Tricia and I went to see the new Robin Hood movie.  It was a good movie but not great.  I’m not a fan of taking such liberties with the storyline.  There are similarities and the names are the same but its not the same story as the literary version.  The other movie I considered was Prince of Persia and I’m sure I’ll end up seeing that sometime soon too.

And so, here are some of the pics we took this weekend.

“The worst thing you can be is a liar. . . . Okay, fine, yes, the worst thing you can be is a Nazi, but then number two is liar. Nazi one, liar two.”

-Justin Halpern’s dad

Last week was definately a whirlwind for me.  I planned to post updates a couple of times but stayed busy so now I’ll have to try and remember the highlights.

#1 - I invented the Nissan continuously variable transmission (partly true)

I had a rental car while in Georgia earlier this week, a Nissan Sentra.  It had one of those new transmissions that don’t have a fixed number of gears like most cars.  Actually I had a design in mind more than 15 years ago but didn’t know what to do with it.  I thought about designing a go-cart using the transmission concept but not being so much of an engineer the idea never really made it far.  I talked to a few people about it over the years, but I can only claim to have had the same idea before Nissan’s design came to market.

I will say this.  It worked exactly the way I envisioned.  The way the engine built up RPM’s then applied gearing ratios is exactly how I pictured it.  I’m sure the mechanicals are nothing like what I had in mind, but I always knew my concept would have to be industrialized.  It made me feel pretty good about myself and just a little disappointed that I didn’t know how to capitalize on the design before.

#2 - Chincoteague is a quaint little town

Very true.  Also very sleepy this time of year.  Trish has been cooped up in the house for weeks now and only gets out rarely.  Being on crutches is hard and she’s still sore from the surgery.  So we made plans to spend the day doing whatever she wanted as long as it was outside.  It was down to a last minute decision (O.C. or Chincoteague were still being debated as we got in the truck) but we decided to head south.

I’ve never seen Chincoteague ponies except on TV or in pictures.  They are pretty small.  We stopped at a small park where there were 5 ponies that had been well conditioned that some people put corn in their feed boxes.  As soon as we came close to the fence we had company.  I scratched some winter coat off one of the younger ponies and probably made a friend for life.  She moved just enough for me to reach a few hard to get to spots.  I swear I thought I saw a smile on her face too as she wandered off.

We walked up and down the main drag and visited most of the stores.  Some were still closed from the winter season but most were open.  I picked up a couple of things for the house including a picture of the light house with a pony in the foreground.  I’m thinking about adjusting my dining room theme a little and this could help tie together a transition.  I especially liked the painting on the feather.  It reminded me of my mom’s painting of a fox on a piece of slate (she did using her own hairs as a paint brush).

#3 - I climbed the Empire State Building  (in spirit)

Saturday was the big moving day for Justin.  He and Brian moved into a larger apartment with another friend, Chris.  I left the house at 7:00am and didn’t get back home until after 11:00pm.  After I picked up Justin, Jared, Brian and Travis in Bowie we drove to Bel Air (about 1.5 hours away) to get Chris’s stuff.  Back to Bowie and we had to wait 1.5 hours to get keys to the new place (stupid policies!).  Another couple of hours getting Chris’s stuff into the new apartment and it was about 3:00pm before we were ready to get started on Justin and Brian’s stuff.

Of course the old apartment was on the second floor and the new one was on the third floor.  I estimated making the trip up/down at the old apartment at least 30 times, and another 30 times for the new apartment.  That’s 90 flights of stairs up (carrying boxes and furniture) and 90 flights of stairs down (empty handed). 

I checked and the Empire State building has 86 flights of stairs so I had that covered easily and more (actually, we all did)!  My calves are very tight today!  I live in a split level and don’t have many stairs but believe me when I say that even just those few steps reminded me of the previous day’s activities. 

#4 - Working from home rocks!

Not having to get up and drive an hour to work is a good thing.  Especially when you have to work on Sunday, the day after climbing the Empire State building and getting home late.  Fortunately it wasn’t a long work day and I had some time to relax and do nothing (which I worked very hard to do). 

Other than unhooking the trailer I really didn’t have to do much.  I made pork chops for dinner and watched some TV.

And so ended a hectic week.  I have another business trip this week but I’ll be back in the office on Friday, in time for another out of town trip on Saturday to see Adam, Megan and Dylan.  I have to work a while Sunday but afterwards will be going to see Iron Man 2 with Justin, Jared and Kyle. 

Glad for the chance to stock up on good times!  I’ve got work stuff all the remaining weekends this month and won’t have another free weekend until Memorial day.  At this point I’m hoping for great weather so I can get the boat on the water for the first time this year!!!

Mostly the weather has been pretty great for the last few weeks.  The best weekend of the year (weather wise) was the one I spent in PA with Adam’s family.  Mostly the rain has been during the week and the weekends clear, but not quite as warm as that first teaser.

But the warmer weather is coming!  I’m so ready to spend the day out on the water with the heat surrounding me.  I may just make that first trip a canoe ride at one of the parks I spent the day in last year.  The creek made for a nice paddle and I could really use the exercize.  I haven’t really done a lot of working out lately, except for shoveling snow (which was a *lot* of work).  But it’s been a few weeks and I want to put my body to work again. 

I’m hopeful to try skiing again.  Last time I tried I pulled a hamstring (pretty badly) and just haven’t felt up to it.  Since I missed the chance to go snow skiing this winter I’m kinda thinking the water version will do (if not even preferred).  Hoping to get the boys together for a weekend together on the water soon.  J2 and J3 both have to get their boater safety certificates but they can do that online.  Maybe getting the boat going again will be enough incentive to get that crossed off their to-do lists.

Each day I pull into the drive I see the boat and canoe resting peacefully.  Neither has complained yet but I’m sure they will both be calling my name soon.  Maybe they have been already calling but I wasn’t listening (or there to hear them).  I had a really good time with both last summer and will be very happy to repeat some adventures and try a few new ones.  This may be my year to spend a weekend at Cherrystone, a park near the bay bridge at the south end of the Delmarva Penninsula.  It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while.  I know some folks that may just enjoy coming along on a camping trip too (and I’d really enjoy spending the time with them)! 

Spring was late coming this year and it seems like everything is blooming at the same time.  The pollen is so thick on everything!  I left my truck windows cracked a couple of nights last week and now my interior has a layer of green dust all over.  A friend was telling me about a test that was done, where 150 pollen parts on a small pane of glass is considered a bad day, and when this test was done recently the count was over 5,000!  Whoee! 

We had a really hard Winter and I so hope Summer will be as good as the Winter was as bad.  If Spring in any indication, we’re in for a great Summer!  If you care to join me for a BBQ and cocktails, drop me a line and we’ll set up a time.

This past week was pretty uneventful, mostly on purpose.  I spent the week at Tricia’s house catering to mostly her every need.  She had surgery on one of her legs and wasn’t able to move around, in fact she was barely able to move around on crutches.  There was a dog to clean up after (reaffirming my steadfast resolution not to provide a home to an animal again), a kid to roust each morning for school (but mostly not anything else during the week), and of course the patient herself.

Lots of pain and suffering, very little sleep.  She was on the couch while I sacked out on the loveseat with my legs hanging over the arm.  There was a bed available but it was pretty hard and after 1 night I decided I couldn’t sleep there any better than on the loveseat.  It was also easier to hear the dog from the livingroom.

Although I planned meals and a couple of activities (movies) not much of either came to any use.  I ate normal dinners but she wasn’t able to stomach more than a few crackers all week.  She’s still not really mobile but the worst was over when I went back home Saturday.  I felt bad for not staying longer because I know she could really use the help, but I have a life to attend to as well and I can only neglect my other responsibilities for so long.

Fortunately I was able to work from ‘home’ (her home) all week.  I love that I can VPN into the business network and do pretty much everything that I can do sitting at my desk in the office.  I have a company cell phone and had fowarded my desk line so all my calls arrived without anyone being inconvenienced so that worked out well.

She’s got 4+ weeks of rehab and then has to do it all over again for the other leg.  Not my favorite pastime but we all do what we need to do.  I sent a tweet that the job isn’t hard but one has to be vigilent.  This experience has taught me that full time caretakers have a much harder job than I would have thought and I’m glad it’s not my job full time!

I was sorry that I missed Justin and Jared last weekend when we were all supposed to meet at Adam’s for the first BBQ of the season.  Justin was taking a vacation to Boston this past weekend but Jared was able to come to Easton for a BBQ and game-fest on Saturday before heading home late Sunday. 

Jared fixed my xBox360 remote too.  Kind of funny.   I handed it to him and it worked.  He handed it back and it still didn’t work.  He said he knew what the problem was, and twisted my xBox towards me by about 3 degrees.  Viola!  I guess my chair was just out of range, and I almost never sit on the couch.  I bought the remote for myself at Christmas and will now begin to enjoy.  Thanks Jared!

We also tooled around in PS3 land.  Jared set up a new avatar for me and we downloaded some game demos.  Overall Jared agreed with me that the PS3 experience just isn’t as nice as xBox Live.  Doesn’t matter too much to me, I bought the PS3 on the day the movie studios banded together to support BlueRay and drop HD-DVD.  It cost about what a BlueRay player would cost and the games are a bonus!

I do sometimes stay up until 3:00am but not often!  But this was one of those occations.  My body still wanted to get up at 6:00am but I convinced it to sack out a couple of more hours so I actually slept in until 9:00.  Jared snoozed a while longer (he said he needed to catch up and it seemed like a good time). 

And, for proof of the answer that I have been trying to avoid, Jared is definately taller than me - and not just with his hair!  The nose-to-nose shot makes that pretty clear too (that one is posted on Flikr).

I’m very glad that Jared has a new GF, a new job and a new iPhone (he picked it up Saturday).  We made some plans for the summer though it might be harder on weekends because that’s mostly when he’ll be working.  But when he advances to bartender then I’ve committed to paying a visit with a designated driver to get me home.  And before that I’ll come by for dinner.

Good times, and I love that summer is coming soon too.  Many more good times headed my way!

It’s been a long time coming, Spring that is.  I’m so tired of Winter! 

We’ve been through the worst winter I can ever remember (in my nearly 50 years).  I don’t know that I’ve ever lived through this much snow before, and certainly not when I was old enough to have to do my share of shoveling (or even *all* of it).  I’ve always hated snow and made it a point to avoid even going places where I’d have to deal with it.  In the winter of 2008 I went skiing with Adam and decided that snow wasn’t really as bad as I’ve always made it out to be, and this monster winter of 2009 reinforced to me that I have really made more of an evil out of snow than it really is.  I guess slogging through 3′ of snow, clearing a 100′ drive several times gave me enough time to think about what I really hated - getting wet and cold at the same time.  And as long as I dress warm enough that really isn’t a problem.  So much for that (snow that it).

Having mostly made peace with winter I’m still so very glad that it’s warming up.  I love the sunshine on my face and the feel of warmth on my skin.  This past few days was the first weekend of Spring and what glorious weather we had!  The temperature was in the high-60’s to maybe the low 70’s.  A perfect day to be outside!

Tricia and I drove up to PA for a nice Sunday visit with Adam, Megan and Dylan.  Dylan was in a great mood and showed off some new tricks that had me amazed.  Even though I’m biased, he’s SO smart!  I really liked that he wanted to demonstrate some of his abilities.  It was really nice that he warmed right up and we didn’t have to spend part of the day for him to get used to us.  Dylan’s showing off reminded me of the time Adam taught himself how to jump with both feet.  We all had a laugh about that old story (which is also in Adam’s website archives) so then Adam and Megan tried to get Dylan to jump (by showing him how - which was kind of funny itself).  Dylan did exactly what Adam did the first few times.  I’m sure he’ll learn soon and I wish for my son and his wife that they have the same thrill I had when I saw Adam’s first time. 

GranDad bonding with Dylan

Lunch was good, we cooked chicken on the grill.  We also had potatos and other veggies.  Dylan had lots of everything but definately homed in on the carrots.  Afterwards he played on the back patio.  He does reverse pretty good in his car but hasn’t yet mastered moving forward.  Fortunately his GranDad was able to help with that and Dylan got a pretty good ride.  He definately understands cars though.  When we were getting ready to go he indicated he wanted to get in my truck.  Once sitting in the drivers seat with both hands tightly gripping the steering wheel he made it clear that he’s just counting the days until he gets his drivers license.  Good luck with that Adam!

Here’s one picture that I really liked.  The rest are being uploaded to Flickr.  Let me know if you have any trouble viewing them.  So my weekend was pretty darn good.  I really missed Justin and Jared, both of whom planned to meet us there but came down sick.  That would have made it a perfect weekend.  Hopefully soon!

Oh I am so pissed! I have been playing a really cool game on my xBox360 for months (Prey), not continuously but on and off. Today I decided to put in a quick hour before starting some yard work (great day outside). The doors and windows are open to let in some fresh air. So, just as I nail a big boss I hear someone yelling upstairs - and I can’t hit pause! I ran upstairs and tried in vain for several minutes to get rid of this guy (if ‘he’ was a hot ’she’ it might have been a different story). So finally I convinced him that I wasn’t interested and made it back downstairs to see the end of the whole cutscene. I missed the payoff for all those hours of gameplay!!. And not only that but it was the final boss (I didn’t know that before) so now the game is over…

Yes, I have a save from before meeting ‘Mother’ (the end boss) but it was fricken hard to beat her and now I have to do it again to see what I missed.

I just have too.

Stupid magazine salesman.