Flowers, Beer and Flying

Yes, folks, Mike has finally been to Europe! (And it only took 33 years)

Corinne's AIAA technical committee meeting was in Amsterdam during the last week in April, so of course I went along and we took a few extra days on either side to explore. And as it so happens, April is the PERFECT time to visit The Netherlands.


Keukenhof! 32 hectares (that's about 80 acres) of perfectly groomed flower beds, full of the most amazing bulb flowers you've ever seen.


More Keukenhof. Some ridiculous percentage of the world's flowers come from Holland. Keukenhof may be the centerpiece of the "tourist" flower industry, but the rest of the country is filled with fields and fields (and fields and fields) of flowers. I guess it helps that most of the land is below sea-level - certainly helps irrigation!


More beds at Keukenhof. The park is only open from late-March to late-May, so we were there at exactly the right time.


Motion platform. Wed through Fri we toured various facilities involved with motion simulation technology in The Netherlands. (We were here for "work" after all...) The actuators on the bottom are arranged such that the platform on top can be moved as smoothly and freely as possible.


Me, inside a simulated cockpit sitting atop a motion platform. (Unfortunately they didn't turn the motion on for that particular flight, though, so it was just a very expensive video game.)


In Delft, enjoying the local flavors. Yum... raw herring! (It actually was good!)


Sitting outside a cafe in Leidesplein, Amsterdam. Drinking Heineken and cappuccino (not at the same time).


Flowers, flowers everywhere. This was in an outdoor flower stand in downtown Amsterdam. I wish we had flower shops like this at home!


Koninginnedag. Aside from the flowers being in full bloom, the other reason this was the perfect time to visit is that April 30th is "Queen's Day", aka Koninginnedag. 36 hours of a giant street party in the whole country. The orange you see everyone wearing is the color of the royal house of The Netherlands, The House of Orange and Nassau. We were forewarned about bringing something orange to wear (Thanks Greg!), so we fit right in. Sorta.

- Mike (& Corinne)

Happy Birthday to us

Since we were in Tulsa near my birthday, they decided to have a "surprise" birthday party for me and Taryn, who also has a March birthday. The surprise was spoiled shortly before the party, but it's the thought that counts, right?


Blowing out the candles on our "cakes". And yes, we did have our own - Taryn didn't get to blow out my candles.

- Mike (& Corinne)

Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain

Tulsa wedding - Mid-March


The first of Corinne's cousins is married! Tor and Clare were married March 11 in Tulsa, OK. It was a fun wedding; we had a great time with all the relatives (as always), hanging out in Tor's coffeeshop, Nordaggio's, meeting many of Tor and Loren's friends, playing basketball, ultimate frisbee, etc.


Kransekake, a traditional Norwegian dessert made from almond paste, was served at the reception. (These came with "some assembly required".)


Loren & Corinne, relaxing outdoors after the ceremony. Loren went on to do a fabulous job keeping the party hopping at the evening reception.


Two proud dads. :)


A "behind the scenes" shot

I have lots more photos from the wedding, of course, but the Internet is a small place. I wouldn't want to clutter it up.

- Mike (& Corinne)

Ma & Pa Daly visit "The West"

Early March
The first weekend in March, my parents came to visit! It was great to finally be able to show them first-hand where and how we live. We went to brunch at Skamania Lodge and toured the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center, but I think the most enjoyable and interesting part of their trip, at least for us, was when we took a drive towards Mt Adams. We followed the map for a while through the remote town of Glenwood ("Where to these kids go to school way out here?", asks Dad.) It wasn't until about 5 minutes after we left the area covered by our maps that we realized that we had entered the Yakama Indian Reservation. We drove for another half-hour or so until it was clear that the road we were on wasn't going to end anytime soon. And once we lost sight of Mt Adams - a pretty obvious landmark - we decided it was time to turn around. Maybe getting lost in an Indian reservation wasn't the best way to welcome my parents to our new home. :)


Mother and son. (All of the good "family photos" were on Mom & Dad's camera, and I haven't gotten a copy of those yet...)



Remnants of "the old West". This cabin is over 100 years old, and was recently relocated to its current location, for preservation.



Oops... after enjoying a fried meal at "The Logs", a local restaurant, we discovered a flat on the rental car.

- Mike (& Corinne)

That's Entertainment

It seems strange to be posting winter pictures when it's 70 degrees outside, but I guess that's what I get for being 3 months behind.

January snowfall
Here's a picture our neighbor Jeff took after the snowfall we got in early January. Our house is just out of the frame to the right of those incredible walnut trees. The majority of the snow was gone within a week, unlike the storms our former home, Boston, got this winter. Looks like we picked a good time to move!

Train to Seattle
In early February we took the train from Portland to Seattle, and then took Donna and friends to a Christine Lavin concert in Olympia for her birthday. Very funny humorist, folk singer, and just generally entertaining performer. Definitely more geared towards the "fairer sex" (Leif and I stuck out a bit), but very funny.
BTW: We're big proponents of Amtrak, and mass transit in general. We need to be spending more money on our trains and less on widening highways.

Piano
We returned to Husum in a rental truck filled with items from a long-term storage unit in Seattle, including Corinne's great aunt's piano! So after convincing several guys from work to help me unload it, we now have both digital and analog entertainment in our entertainment room. :)

Leif Time
Towards the end of February, we were able to spend some "quality time" with Leif. We work in the same office, yet we rarely see him. (He spends most weekends in Seattle visiting with his S/O). So we took him on one of our favorite walks, Condit Dam. I figure we should get in all the walks we can before the dam is demolished. Here are some of my faves from that walk:




- Mike (& Corinne)

Corinne gets a haircut

This is something she's been contemplating for some time, and since her hair has been long for such a long time. This December, she finally did it!


before...


...and after!

Too bad it was an inch too short to donate (10" minimum). Maybe next time.

- Mike (& Corinne)

West Coast New Years

(the holidays continued...)
Soon it was time to return west and spend a week visiting the other half in Seattle. Although the West Coast is known for its slower pace, at least compared to the East, things tend to move pretty fast in this family.


Mmm, our favorite. Food.


Cousins (no, not that kind.)


A night at the IMAX for "Polar Express 3D". This was just before we discovered that our car stereo had been stolen. (Merry Christmas!)

Our New Year's Eve plans involved relaxing in Lake Washington in Reidar's new boat. ("The deck is teak, you know.") Unfortunately those plans were aborted earlier that day by a sudden loss of rudder control... so instead of Lake Washington, we took to the Washington State Ferry system. Hey, we were still on a boat, right?

She looks perfectly relaxed, doesn't she?


Hey, where's Leif?

- Mike (& Corinne)

East Coast Christmas

Boy, it's hard to believe that we're more than a month into 2005 already. It seems that the holidays get busier every year! With the number of trips and visitors we've had these last couple months, it's no wonder this is our first post since early December! As our neighbor Jeff Lemley recently told us, "I think you guys are secretly running a B&B over there." For now, I'll try to catch us up to New Years.

Let's see... ah yes, Christmas. We're still doing the "split coast holidays" thing, so we spent the week of Christmas in NJ visiting my family.


We helped Drew & Michelle move into their new house. It's a small house - smaller than the apartment they moved from - but hey, they own a house! More than we can say...


Cooked (and ate) a 7-lb Northwest Salmon ordered by Drew from Pike St. Market. (Dad sometimes gets a little carried away...)


Saw an opera at Lincoln Center. The opera, Les Contes d'Hoffman, involved a guy who fell in love with a robot. Seriously.


Visited with some extended family and their enormous pets. Mindy's cat is one of the largest I've ever seen. (BTW: She is an amazing artist.)


And just generally had a good, relaxing time.

Stay tuned for "West Coast New Years"...

- Mike (& Corinne)

Ships passing in the night

Why do the holidays always get so crazy? Since Thanksgiving, we've had lots of long hours and two business trips between the two of us. And of course, the end of my trip overlapped just enough with the beginning of hers - 6 hours - that we missed each other at the airport. Ah well.

Corinne was in Orlando for an AIAA conference and committee meeting, while I was sent to Slidell, Louisiana for a flight exercise. Not as an operator, but just to ensure that the results of those late night coding sessions didn't do bad things to the aircraft. :)

Thought you might enjoy a few photos from my trip.


Inside the Winnebago that acted as our ground control station. Pretty sweet setup.


The outside of "the Winnie". We spent some long hours here. (Luckily, nobody slept here)


The plane, ~1 second before capture. (That's the Skyhook it's about to fly into)

- Mike (& Corinne)

Thanksgiving in the West

So here it is 3 weeks after Thanksgiving, and no updates? What gives?

No, we didn't die during our long weekend in our small house with guests. In fact, the house didn't seem so small at all; I think that says more about what we think of the other 6 people who stayed with us than it does about the house. :)


My favorite photo from the weekend. :)

Thanksgiving went off without a hitch. The food was all "yummy" (as Corinne would say), and the number of desserts rivaled the number of dishes in the meal, as it should be. Even our kitchen proved to be up to the task, despite its diminutive stature. And in true Northwest fashion, we consumed buckets of coffee throughout the weekend. Huzzah!


Three cooks in the kitchen? Don't worry - the "pot" turned out just fine.


AJ & UP, clearly excited for the meal.


On your mark, get set... Eat!

Carol and Mark brought their two Westies, Fannie and Chloe, with them on the trip. 6 extra people + 2 dogs = no Max. He spent virtually the entire weekend under our bed. He really is a fun, energetic cat. Really he is! By the end of the weekend, I think he was starting to get desperate for attention. He finally started to venture out, but it was too little, too late - if only he had come out earlier, he could have had 8 pairs of hands petting him! He hasn't quite figured that out yet.


Carol & Chloe

We packed quite a bit into a short time - Uncle Pete of course was very excited to get in some fishing, bringing us to his favorite local fishing hole: Drano Lake. No kidding. While we didn't catch anything in our attempts, we had a relaxing time on the beach watching the water (and avoiding stepping on the dead salmon washed up on the shore.) And I learned what a "backlash" was, to Uncle Pete's chagrin. Oops.










I don't think I've mentioned DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) in my posts yet, but it became a big part of the weekend. With a little coaxing, we managed to get everybody up and dancing, even the "adults". By the end of the weekend, everybody was hooked and feeling the groove. It's a pretty good workout, but I still don't think we quite burned off as many calories as we consumed. I guess that's what New Year's resolutions are for, right?




Quite a bit has happened since Thanksgiving, and Christmas is just 2 weeks away! But that's another post...

- Mike (& Corinne)

Cast Iron Warmth

It's been a while since our last post - we've been pretty busy with visitors, preparations for visitors, and extended "crunch" hours at work. (Before work Wednesday morning, I had already been in the office 30 hours this week.) Hopefully things will slow down a bit in the next few weeks - work should, now that the deadline is met. But time always seems to compress around the holidays...

After much anticipation (and cold evenings), our new propane stove has finally been installed! Now that the early mornings hover around 20F, the stove is a welcome addition and much preferable to the electric baseboard heaters that we relied on before. The stove is from Vermont Castings; even way out here, people stil recognize that New Englanders know how to deal with cold best.

Max is obsessed with the stove. He is smart enough to realize that it is really hot (and therefore shouldn't touch it), but that doesn't stop him from getting as close to it as he can while it is on. On several occasions, he has disappeared only to be discovered underneath the stove. Crazy cat.


Max, enjoying the view (and warmth)!

A few years back we decided to stay home by ourselves for Thanksgiving; it was the first time for either of us. Now it's time to take the next step and host it ourselves. We're hosting 6 family members for Thanksgiving weekend this year, for a total of 8 for dinner. Let's hope we still all like each other after spending a weekend together in the same house!

Happy Thanksgiving!

- Mike (& Corinne)

Burn, Baby, Burn!

As one of our astute blog readers recently pointed out (we have readers!), there are some definite benefits to having all of the leaves fall off of the trees at the same time: you only have to rake once! We spent Sunday working outside, raking leaves and planting bulbs for spring.

But with that many leaves, what to do with them? The following exchange is entirely fictional:

City boy:  So where do people around here take their yard waste?
Local:  Yard waste? You mean them there leaves and sticks and stuff?
CB:  Yeah - does the county take them to convert them to mulch or something like that?
L:  The county? Why would you give it to them? Are you some kinda big-government Democrat or somethin'? If ya want, I can bring over my wood-chipper and we can shred 'em; or throw 'em out back with the voles; but if you really wanna have fun, just burn it!

When we first moved to the area, I was a bit confused by all of the "Burn Ban" signs we saw. They were everywhere, and that's all they said. People in a city wouldn't dream of burning their yard waste; and if they did, their neighbors would call 911. But out here in the country, that seems to be one of the primary modes of disposal for yard waste out here. You don't even need a permit of any sort. As long as a "burn ban" isn't in effect - primarily enacted during the dry summer months - just burn away!

So after the raking was done (or almost done), I built my first burn pile. It took a bit to get the hang of it, but once I did, we were smokin'. Literally.


Burn, Baby, Burn! These burned for about 7-8 hours; in the end, two had to be put out before they had run out of fuel. And there are still three large piles of leaves on the other end of the yard, just waiting for a match.

On a related note: Betsy and Lane, aka "the landlords" (who are really great), stopped by on Saturday to drop off our new propane heating stove. This stove replaces the old wood-burning stove that they removed shortly after we moved in. The propane stove will, as they put it, "keep out the bugs and snakes that came in with the wood." It will be another week or so before it is installed, and we can't wait! It's getting cold!

- Mike (& Corinne)

The Day the Leaves Fell Off

After living in New England for many years, it's hard to imagine a fall without brilliant colors. Since the Pacific Northwest is not known for its fall color, we were preparing for a boring fall. So we were pleasantly surprised to discover that the Columbia Gorge has quite a few deciduous trees mixed in with the evergreens. The autumn colors are not quite as impressive as some areas in NE; but on the other hand, we didn't see too much color living in Somerville, while we pass countless forests every day on our drive to work here. Less brilliant, but more often.

One of the nice things about our house is that there are three 100+ year old walnut trees right in front, providing shade from the sun in summer and blocking the house from the road (which is about 75yds away or so.) But now that fall is here, the trees were slowly losing their leaves, leaving the house a bit naked. The leaves have been falling slowly for the last two weeks or so, but the trees were still mostly full. That is, until Thursday...

It has been getting gradually colder; 30F would not be an unusual overnight temp, though it still gets up to 50F during the day. When we awoke Thursday morning, I checked the outdoor thermometer to discover that it had reached its coldest overnight temperature yet - 22F, plenty cold for a hard frost. Looking out the window, you would almost think that it was raining, only the "flakes" were orange and shaped like leaves. When we left the house at 8am for work, Corinne stopped to take a few photos.


Thursday, 8am. The trees are still pretty well populated. (You can see the frost on the field in the background.)

We came home at lunch that day (since we left our packed lunch on the floor next to the door), and were shocked - SHOCKED - at the sight.


Thursday, Noon. Hey - where did all the leaves go?

In approximately 4 hours, all of the leaves fell off. I guess that means winter is around the corner...

- Mike (& Corinne)