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Portland Pictures

Howdy from Portland, a bit late, but still cute.

We did it!

We've had so many Viola milestones since I last posted. One: we took a short road trip to Portland and stayed in a hotel. (We took the Subaru; it came back to us. For those of you who were still in suspense from my last post - don't forget to click the Read More button). Two: we rode a plane. To Illinois to see the doting grandparents and uncle and lots of family and family friends. Three: Viola turned one-half of a year old! Which also means I've accomplished six months of breastfeeding, three of them while working full time.

Dude, Where's...

This is the spot where our new-to-us car should have been on Monday morning, because this is where we parked it the night before:

And this is the Seattle Times (again, RIP Seattle P-I) lying on our sidewalk:

Sometimes it's not just the horoscopes that have predictive power.

I am a Berliner.

Its not very often I get to quote JFK. Fred, Steve, and I were on a bike ride through the German countryside to the Netherlands when a squall started so we headed into a little cafe. Fred asked if I wanted anything, I said cinnamon roll and went to find a seat. He returned with a jelly doughnut. Here are a few pictures of the pastoral landscape as well.

Finished

Here's a couple images of the finished ship shop. The first is the current shop aboard the Equinox and the second is aboard the Solstice. The Solstice shot shows a bit of context and as you could see by the last post the Equinox is still indoors without the stacks in place due to the limitation of the twenty story building its parked in. We finished in record time this round thanks to the shipyard actually having everything done they said they would so I guess it was worth the delay even though the mysterious scheduling was tough on everyone.

Guten Abend from Deutschland!

The installation of another Corning ship shop is going better than expected. We should be finishing up tomorrow. Here's a couple photos from inside the Meyer Werft Shipyard. The first is a shot down the side of the Equinox. Its hard to get a sense of scale but the building the ship is in is about 20 stories high and over 1000 feet long and as you can see by the second shot, they are building another large boat directly in front of the equinox.

On my first full day single-parenting

I paid a kid $8 to mow our lawn and he took off to "go get his mower," never to return. In his defense, it started raining. Also, who pays a kid to mow the lawn before he mows it?*

I ate a bunch of undercooked brown rice. I guess I took it out of the rice cooker too soon. It was really chewy, and I imagine it is still cooking right now, judging by the way my gut feels.

For those of you who wonder what it is I do all day

US News and World Report has declared my job a "best-kept-secret career." Curious.

Overheard on campus

It's not fun to be back at work, but I am somewhat enjoying being back on campus. Spring makes all the students lively, and I've taken to eating at the student-run eatery The Flaming Eggplant, despite their apparent motto, "raw garlic is our only seasoning!" (luckily I fully support their secondary motto, "beets in some form on every dish!") Standing in line at The Eggplant affords me some great student interaction, as does being back in the action of main campus in my new office.

Viola on Oompa

I'm proud to say that I have sold Viola's image for a few Oompa bucks.