Continuing the Retirement Celebration

We went to Austin yesterday for a day of pure fun. We went to a matinee musical, "Altar Boyz" which stars the five apostles of Pop: Matthew, Mark, Luke, Juan, and Abraham (he's Jewish). They raised our spirits with their spectacular music, irreverent humor, incredible dance moves, and fantastic 5-part harmony -- it was clever, original, entertaining, lively and thought-provoking; we thoroughly enjoyed it!

We then spent a couple of hours doing one of our favorite things; wandering through Williams-Sonoma and Central Market.

To finish out this fund, relaxing day we met friends for dinner at Flemings restaurant where we had a fabulous, celebratory dinner.

A perfect day. . .

A Technological Situation

Saturday started out to be such a wonderful day: we ate breakfast at IHOP (I need my Harvest Nut Grain pancake fix at least once a month!) and did some fun running around. We got home about 2:00 p.m. and things continued to go well for several more hours -- Carl doing some IBM work and playing with his new deck design software; me reading my book. Then a situation occurred -- a technological situation. We lost our internet connection! By using his finely-honed trouble-shooting skills, Carl determined the problem was our wireless router -- a very fixable problem.

We headed to Office Depot (a 30-minute drive) and realized when we got there that neither of us had brought any money! So 1 1/2 hours later we are back at the RV with our new wireless router. Of course, as is true with any technology, it did not install easily and Carl's patience was wearing quite thin.

This story has a very happy ending -- we have a working router and Carl is back to his very happy self; however, it is sad to me that a technology problem can cause so much stress and put a downer on such a wonderful day. What a crazy world!

Retirement Party

Well, Carl's retirement date is coming really soon!
He recently went on an IBM business trip to visit a software company IBM just acquired and several neat things happened:
1. The manager from the newly-acquired company presented Carl with a very nice bottle of champagne, along with their congratulations.
2. He met, for the first time, several people he has worked with for a long time, including his manager Robin Edstrom. (The wonders of the modern business construct of remote workers.)
3. His manager and her manager, Michelle Ginther, held a dinner in his honor for retirement. It was pretty special. He was presented a bound album of letters from IBM teammates, past and present. Included was a page of Carl's epigrams that he has at the bottom of his emails, collected over time. Example: "What's another word for thesaurus?" Last but not least, there were bowls of personalized M&Ms on the table in blue and white. They were labeled "Retiring.. Not!" and "Congrats Carl."


And it goes on and on. Carl's going to stretch this retirement for all it's worth. Although June 30th is his retirement date, he figures he can get at least another couple of months out of it.
Last night's party was just between Carl and Linda. Since he is retiring from "Big Blue" his present from Linda was wrapped just right.


An iPod Touch! How cool!

More Foundation Progress

Our visit on June 24th found more height added to the forms. In these two pictures, it may look as if we are erecting a skyscraper.

We learned that in order to have a reasonable slope driving up into the attached garage, we are going to have to lower the garage foundation about two feet. Not a big deal, but our original plan was to have everything on the same level. Oh well, it is what it is.

JJ and Grover spent a little time with the workers at lunch today, begging for scraps of tortillas.

Foundation Progress 6/20 - 6/23

Well it's been a couple of days since our last update. Here are some pictures of the progress on 6/20/ and 6/23.
It has been really hot here (95 - 100 degrees) until Friday. I talked with Sergio, the jeffe, and he was grateful for the respite from heat beginning on Friday.
They've made a lot of progress as the pics will show.
We still can't believe that the slope is so steep...

The last pic is of our two inspectors, checking out the quality of construction. They approve.

Open Mike In Sattler

Last night, Carl and I experienced another flavor of the rich culture here in the Canyon Lake area: we attending "open mike" night at our local pizza parlor (tag line "One Location Nationwide and We're Proud of It").

The musicians spanned the spectrum of age, genre, and musical ability. Our favorite was a duet (apparently normally a trio)which called itself Beaver Creek. The woman played the guitar and was the lead singer; the man sang harmony and played the harmonica; the missing person plays lead guitar and, I assume, also sings harmony.

It was a beautiful summer evening and we had a delightful time with our Tuscan pizza and some pretty good music.

Carl's thinking about taking the mike at some point. . .

The Foundation Marches On!

Sergio and crew continued their work this morning and began erecting forms for the north wall of the foundation. The lower corner is the tallest point of the foundation at about seven feet. We plan to build a covered, 12-foot deck extending down the hill from the foundation. That means the far corner of the deck will be about 10 feet off the ground.
Linda is involved in every conversation because she wants to learn everything she can about the construction process and techniques. Who knows? She may find another career here.
We have sown some bermuda grass seed in the septic spray zone and are watering everyday. We hope it takes, but the temperature is bouncing off 100 degrees and no rain in sight.

Well we have finally started building our foundation. It is going to be huge! Mainly because of the slope of the land, the rear corner will be about seven feet tall. Notice Linda next to the first structure to build the forms.
Not TOO expensive considering the increased cost of fuel, concrete and steel. Oh well, we move on.
We aren't too sure what these structures are, but we figure they will reveal themselves soon.
Seven feet???? Good grief!
On the left of the first photo is our foundation contractor, Kirk Svoboda, and to his left is his able crew, led by Sergio.

Boyles Law (Contributed by Carl)

The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid term. The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues, which is why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well:


Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct......leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+.

Planting the First Seeds of Our Dream

We went up to our property this evening to sow Bermuda grass seeds on the spray zone of our septic system. In order to pass the final inspection, there needs to be evidence of vegetation growing on the spray zone -- we're hoping that we'll get some seeds to germinate. The package says to plant them in the spring while the temperatures are between 70 and 90 degrees. Well, it's spring but the temperature is more than 10 degrees higher than the upper range. Our contractor told us that, even if the seeds don't germinate, we should be able to pass inspection just by sprinkling some seeds on top of the soil -- the idea is to demonstrate that we are attempting to grow vegetation. I hope he's right. . .

Grow grass, grow!

Campmeeting Work Week Surprise!

Well, on Wednesday we drove 430 miles to Bloys Camp Meeting in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, to prepare for our annual work week. We have a lot of damage to the kitchen area that needs repair.
As we neared the campground we observed a beautiful sunset. As we got closer, Linda said it was so pretty it almost looked like the hills were on fire. Then, we realized that they were on fire. A wildfire had burned several ranches and was heading up the hills toward the campground. We were stopped by State Troopers before we reached camp so we had to find a place to stay for the night.

A Stimulating Idea

Carl and I consider ourselves good American citizens so, when the President announced the economic stimulus package which was -- and I paraphrase -- not to be used to pay off credit card debt or to be put into savings, we agreed that we would comply.

The long-awaited stimulus package arrived electronically into our checking account and, I'm embarrassed to say, we almost missed it. We received $188.05 which we immediately agreed would not be very stimulating to the economy.

So, we developed Plan B: we put over 3000 miles on our vehicles during the month of May (this is in addition to the miles we drive in our daily lives). We were in our diesel pickup for more than 1/2 of these miles and diesel is selling for almost $5.00/gallon (in fact, we actually saw it for $5.15/gallon in Sanderson).

Just to be clear: we didn't just set out to drive these miles -- we actually had reasons:

1. round trip from New Braunfels to Fort Worth for AAUW gig;
   
2. round trip from New Braunfels to Wichita Falls for AAUW gig;
3. round trip from New Braunfels to Houston for Camp Meeting business coupled with visit with family;
4. round trip from New Braunfels to campground (west of Fort Davis) for Camp Meeting business;
5. round trip from New Braunfels to College Station for AAUW gig.
   

All in all, we are feeling quite smug that we have done our patriotic duty in helping to stimulate the economy. . .