Quick Update on Backyard work

Arriving home from my week in Stamford CT late last night, I was curious if my backyard was done.

The backyard gate and lighting on the redwood screens are done. The lights look great, nice effect. Will look even better once the vines are in place and growing up the screens.

The last piece that is needed to be finished is the fountain. It is still sitting in my garage.

My Company's New Place

Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Hyperion moved its headquarters. I am on the fourth floor of the building on the left. The complex used to be the HQ for 3Com before they pulled up and moved to the East coast.

The thing I like the most is the stairs. Going up and down four flights of stairs on a daily basis at least a few times will help with my overall general fitness.

My commute time is maybe about 3 minutes faster. The prior building is maybe 1.5 miles from the new place.

btw: I don't plan to take advantage of the $5000 program to purchase an energy efficent car.

Earthquake!

This Thursday morning at 3:30 a.m, most of us were woken up by an earthquake. I hadn't felt one in quite a while. Dale woke up and said "WHOA"! Luckily it was a small one, so nothing was damaged, just a few cupboard doors opening up and a few toys falling off an overly cluttered dresser.

Here is the USGS earthquake report. As you can see, it was only a mile from Saratoga.

At least we don't have hurricane after hurricane coming after us...

Quite a Storm

Here is an email I got from my parents. Seemed like last Friday was one heck of a storm. Power was out for basically four days as well as 6 trees were destroyed. My parents live in southwestern Michigan in a small town called Sister Lakes.

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Hi Everybody, Ya, Wahoo Yippee We have lights. They came back on about 9:00 tonight. I guess that's not too bad. Only in the dark since Friday noon. They still haven't come to take care of the trees so guess that's the next project. Sandy called tonight and they don't have lights but are getting close as some American Electric Power people were there talking to them tonight. When I saw all of the power repair trucks going by our house tonight I really felt like cheering.

P S to Tim: Hopefully you know what I am talking about. A very strong storm went through on Friday about noon and we lost the big tree in the front yard. Plus three pines (Sure didn't cry about them), the oldest crabapple tree and part of the maple tree in the back yard. Nothing hit the house or Dad's car. Two pine trees came down close to it. One in the back and one on the side of it. So since then we have been hauling water from the fire station and going to bed early.

Hope to talk to all of you soon. Love to all, Mom

Friends Questions

At the end of the last episode, when the woman gets off the plane to go back to the David Schwimmer guy, what happened to her luggage on the plane? Did she leave extra clothes in the U.S.? I need to know these sort of things for the Friends series to be complete for me.

Why?

I tried to answer the below question via various searchs on the Internet with no success. Can anybody else find the answer?

The question: Why is the color green associated with jealousy and envy?

Head Shaking Moment

On Sunday, I pulled into a gas station to fill up the Accord. A few minutes later, I am shaking my head after seeing the cost of the fill up... $30.54. I don't have the exact price per gallon, but it was roughly $2.17

Amazing... it just seems like a year ago that I had my first $20 fill up.

State Cup Results

Dale's soccer team, the De Anza Titans, did very well this past weekend in the Northern California State Cup tournament. They won their quarter-final game, 1-0, in overtime. Unfortunately, they lost the semi-final game, also 1-0, in double-overtime. We also found it amazing that the four teams in the semi-finals (including the Titans of course) are all in the same regular season league. That just goes to show how competitive their normal league games are.

The team did their best in both games, so even though they lost the semi-final game, their coaches, parents, and themselves were all proud of what they accomplished. Through the hard work of the boys and their coaches, the team went much farther in the tournament than anybody expected.

On a personal basis, the loss also ends our tour of central valley California towns. First there was Hanford. This past weekend we were in Turlock. We now know what it's like to be in a hotel room with zero soundproofing right next to a major 6 lane freeway and the Union Pacific tracks in which the train engineer finds it necessary to announce its arrival to the motel customers through a long, loud blast of the air horn. One parent had a room where the door deadbolt didn't work and when she called the front desk, the clerk said that it was ok the deadbolt didn't work as "they were in a low crime area" (a questionable assertion if you ask me). She finally convinced them to let her change rooms as long as she made the bed in her current room.

Bonus movie review: We took the team to see the movie Miracle, the story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey team. We all really enjoyed it. When they were showing game action, the movie audience applauded when the U.S. team scored goals in the Soviet Union vs. U.S. game.

Tim E. Christmas plans

I have (I hope) made my travel arrangements for heading back to MI for Christmas. The reason I say "hope" is that the American Airlines dude seemed to be not quite sure what he was doing.

I think he got confused for a couple of reasons.

The first is that I was flying in South Bend (which American Airlines doesn't fly into any more), but I knew he would be able to book the United flight for me.

The second is that I am using a voucher that I picked up last year during another flight.

If it wasn't for the voucher, I would have just booked the flight via American Airlines website, but they don't support vouchers via online booking.

I don't have an offical itinerary but here is the approximate info:

SJC to SBN: Dec 19th, leave 8:38 am arrive 6:00 pm
SBN to SJC: Dec 29th, leave 12:55 pm arrive some time later

Flight numbers and exact times will be forthcoming.