Where Are You?

I loved Geography class when I was a young lad at St. Leo's elementary school. I didn't travel outside of the state of New Jersey until I was a teenager, so reading about the rest of the country, and the world, fascinated me. Even today, I look forward to reading my National Geographic magazine each month (I've got every hardcopy since 1977, and the CD going back 115 years!). At this point you're probably saying: "Gee, get a life!". Oh, well.
Anyway, another quirk is that I wait for the postlady to bring my copy of Conde Nast Traveler magazine each month. The travel articles are great, but the highlight is their "Where Are You?" contest. You get several paragraphs of very vague clues, along with a picture of a site somewhere in the world. At that point, you then have to get very creative with your Googling skills. There is a monthly prize for one correct entrant, but the annual grand prize is the kicker. The winner gets an expense paid trip for two to one of the destinations from the previous year's contests. Destinations so far in Y2008 include Egypt, Madagascar, France, Austria, China, Finland, Chile, Shanghai, Finland, Reunion Island, and Spain (which I hope is November's answer!). I've been entering the contest since 1996, so maybe my time is coming! About 6,000 entries are received each month, so the odds aren't too outragious.

The website for the contest is: http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/contestsquizzes/whereareyou .

Pictured here (photo courtesy Conde Nast Traveler, used without permission) is the December 2008 destination. Can you guess "Where Are You?" ?

Basilica of St. Lawrence

We love to visit big, beautiful churches. While in Asheville recently, we toured the Basilica of St. Lawrence. Completed in 1909, it has the largest freestanding elliptical dome in the country. The dome measures 58' by 82'. The main altar was very beautiful, along with the chapels on either side of the main altar. The stained glass windows were made in Munich, Germany, and they were impressive.

Fall Festival, with a Spanish Flavor

Kellie's school (where she teaches) had their fall festival recently. Each grade devised games for the children to participate in. Kellie developed the infamous 'toss the pingpong ball into the glass globe, and win a goldfish' game. It was the hit of the festival! She purchased 60 goldfish, and gave away 59 (one didn't make it). The children enjoyed all of the games at the festival. As the school is predominantly Hispanic, the parents were cooking and serving many Spanish foods and treats. As they say: a good time was had by all!

Visit to the Biltmore House

We had been to the Biltmore House in Asheville NC a couple times already, but we have always talked about touring the house during the holiday season. We took a 3-day trip for our anniversary (27th) in November, and spent the weekend in Asheville. The house was beautifully decorated for the Christmas season. We took the candlelight tour on Friday evening, and went back on Saturday, too. The 35' Christmas tree in the main dining room was spectacular. The entire first floor was filled with smaller Christmas trees, garland, poinsetias, and other decorations. We also visited the winery, and even coaxed Jamie (a lifelong teetotaler) into tasting some of the wines!

New Teacher!

Kellie graduated from Kennesaw State University this past May, with her BS degree in Elementary Education. She teaches 3rd grade Math, Science, and Social Studies in Cobb County, at the same school where she did her student teaching. She enjoys it very much, although some days are more challenging than others!

Sign of the (old) times!

We came across this motel while driving in the outskirts of San Antonio. Take a look at the features that this ritzy place has to offer! Swimming pool! Refrigerated air (is that AC?)! Television (no mention of HBO)! Telephones! All for only $25.95 (per day or hour?). What is a tejas?

Picnic at St. Matthew

St. Matthews had their annual picnic recently. The weather was perfect, everyone brought a dish (or two or three) to share, the Knights cooked hot dogs, burgers, and chicken, the kids had several 'jumpy' contraptions to play in, all commissions had info booths set-up, and there was even a pie eating contest. Everyone had a good time!

Kellie's Graduation

Kellie graduated from Kennesaw State University on May 14, 2008, with a BS in Elementary Education. She will be teaching 3rd grade at Green Acres Elementary School in Smyrna, starting this July. We are so happy for her, and very proud of her. She graduated with honors, also. She had a few cheering sections at the ceremony, including ten folks in our row, her sorority sisters across the hall, and other friends and classmates scattered around. We celebrated afterwards at Taco Mac, where everyone had a good time. Next adventure wiil be setting up her new apartment in the Kennesaw area.

Spring Break 2008 Follow-up

A little late, but here's a wrap-up on our trip to Texas. Everything went well, from flights to rental car to hotels to food, etc. We had a great time. Spent the first two days in Austin (to avoid the NCAA Final Four mess in San Antonio). Kellie is a big University of Texas sports fan, so we visited the campus a few times. Went to the top of the UT Tower (great views). The LBJ presidential library is on the campus, so we visited it. Went to Lady Bird's wildflower park one morning (a very hot day to walk around and look at flowers!). Austin has some great, quirky restaurants, and we were able to visit a few. Leaving town, we drove to the LBJ Ranch and took the tour. Very interesting, and a lot of history in the area.
Finally made it down to San Antonio! Our hotel was right on the RiverWalk, so we rode the river taxis the rest of the week. Visited the Alamo downtown, and also two Spanish missions south of town. Of course we hit the trinket shops, and Kellie bought something for each of her 3rd grade students in her student-teaching class. Again, we found some great restaurants (mainly Tex-Mex). It was fun to sit along the RiverWalk and sip a cool beverage (even Mom had a couple Margaritas!). We drove out to the west of town, and visited some sights, too.
Overall, it was a great vacation. It may have been the first vacation ever that didn't involve being near an ocean!

Spring Breakin' in Texas!

It's spring break time, and this year we're heading to the Lone Star State, Texas! I didn't realize that the NCAA Final Four was going to be in San Antonio until after I booked the airline tickets (oops!). Anyway, we fly into San Antonio, but then head north about 70 miles to the capital, Austin, for a couple days. Kellie is a big University of Texas fan, so we'll enjoy the campus. We have reservations to tour the infamous UT Tower (remember the shootings of a few decades ago). On Tuesday (after the bball crowd has left), we'll head down to San Antonio. Weather should be about 88F every day, so a few cold longneck Lone Star brews will be in order. We'll have a full slide show (if I can ever figure out this blog setup) when we return.

Blood Drive

Both Kellie and Ken regularly donate blood. Ken usually participates at work, with the Red Cross drives. Kellie usually donates at KSU or at local churches near K'saw. We had our blood drive at St. Matthew's last week, so we joined fellow parishioners after mass at the Life South bloodmobile. It's an hour of your time, which makes you feel great because you know a part of you will go to help others.

Laurel and Hardy

If you like to visit things off the beaten path during your wanderings around Georgia, try the Laurel and Hardy Museum in Harlem (yes Georgia, not NYC!). It's just off of I-20, about 15 miles from Augusta. I've seen their sign on the interstate for a few years, and decided to visit during one of my business trips to the Carolina's. The museum is packed with memorabilia, and they show videos of L&H movies. I arrived at the museum five minutes before they were to close, but the very kind woman turned the lights back on and proceeded to give me a 20-minute tour. How wonderful of her!.

Harlem is a typical small, old southern town, with a few very nice old homes. The railroad runs right through the center of town.

Oliver Hardy was born in Harlem, Georgia. His father died when he was an infant, and his mom and siblings moved to Milledgeville. He became active in local theater, and actually attended UGA for a while. He hooked up with Stan Laurel, as a team, in the 1920's, and remained good friends until Hardy passed away.

Blog Drought

As you have noticed, I haven't written anything for a while. No, I don't live in a cave! But it seems I spend more time reading everyone else's blogs than I do on building mine. More to come, I promise.

The fun part of work

I've been working, as an engineer, with plastics for over 30 years. When you work a job associated with manufacturing, the hours are usually long and you don't always get every weekend off. But the rewarding part of the job is seeing products, that you helped develop or produce, out in the marketplace or used in various industries. Over the years, I've worked with a variety of plastics (polymers, to the technical types) in a variety of shapes and enduses.

Our largest customer is Carestream Health (formerly Kodak Health Imaging), and we produce the base film for their x-rays. The next time you break an ankle, we probably made the x-ray.

My last company made plastic mesh products. I worked on the team that developed the orange safety fence that you see everywhere.

The next time you are in a coal mine, look up at the ceiling. The plastic mesh supporting the rock above you was patented by yours truly. (the longest day of my life was spent a half mile under Bessemer, Alabama, in a coal mine!).

Our team just won an award for the new packaging for the Oreo and Chips Ahoy cookie line. You grab the tab on the top, pull the package open, grab 5 or 6 cookies, and then quickly reseal the package. Amazing!

A few large companies are trying to go 'green' with their packaging products. We are working with a large snack company to convert their snack bags over to a corn-based film to replace the multi-layer packaging currently used. This will reduce the decomposition period of the packaging in a landfill from 40 years to 6 months. Go Frito Lay!

Yes, people still use microfilm (believe it or not)! Thanks to the U.S. government and the Mormon Church for keeping this product line alive.

Your new LCD tv probably has 7 layers of our film inside.

Your bottle of Bud Light or juice drink has our shrink wrap label around it.

A thousand and one uses for plastic!

But the thrill of the above is quickly evaporated when you have to visit customers who aren't fully satisfied with your product. This may be why I don't like to fly anymore, or to make 5-hour drives, after dark, through the storms, like my trip back from Charlotte tonight! Oh well, it's not fun all the time.

Now we are even!

Okay, so Dale Earnhardt, J., won the Bud Shootout at Daytona on Saturday night. Kellie is overjoyed, and has been strutting ever since. Maybe it was his new teammates Jimmie Johnson (who is my favorite) and Jeff Gordon (who is Kellie's least favorite) that motivated him to cross the finish line first.
I took a lot of ribbing when my Jersey Giants won the Super Bowl.
So Kellie and I are even at this point in time!
I have a feeling that both Johnson and Gordon will win more races than Junior this year, but we'll see!

Nascar is back!

The wait is over! Nascar Sprint Cup racing starts tonight, with the 'preseason' tuneup races at Daytona. I had a chance to visit the Martinsville Speedway when I was up in south Virginia this week. It was a ghost town, but I had never been at a short track before (except for Senoia and Seven Flags). The gate was open, and we were tempted to take our Chrysler 300 rental car around for a few laps! Kellie is getting psyched for Junior's new 88 car ride. I'll stick with Jimmie Johnson (can't give up on a winner!).

More to follow.

Diversity at Work (Literally!)

I work for a South Korean company, at our facility in Covington. This past Friday, our Process/Quality team got together for a combination welcome/farewell lunch at RL's Off The Square in downtown Covington. As I was making our lunch-ending speech about our boss returning to Korea and our new engineer joining us from India (via Canada), it hit me that we probably had one of the most diverse groups that you could assemble at one table.
Our group included: Caucasian American male (me), African-American female, three Koreans, one Indian (down from Canada and in the USA for the first time), a Welshman, white male from Winnipeg Canada, African male (with stops in England and Jamaica), and my right-hand man Huy Phan from Vietnam.
Once I pointed this out, everyone had a good laugh (including the senior citizen, local church group at the next table!).
Needless to say, the conversation soon drifted to foods-around-the-world (a topic for another blog)!
If your boss says that you need some diversity training, join us for lunch one Friday!

Disc Golf

My golf game is not very good, and I never could toss a frisbee very well, so it seemed logical that I would start playing DISC GOLF.
During my attempts at exercise over at McCurry Park over the summer, I noticed that they had installed the metal/chain stands for disc golf. Also noticed that more and more people were starting to play.
So for Christmas, Kellie gave me a starter set of discs (a driver, a fairway disc, and an approach/putter disc). I never realized it, but this has been a growing sport for several years now.
Before we even started to play the first time, I just had to go out and get more stuff. Play It Again Sports in F'ville has a good selection of discs and accessories. Each type of disc is designed for speed, loft, turn, and a few other aerodynamic parameters. A bag was purchased, along with a few spare discs (like golf balls, I was sure the discs would find their way into the creeks, trees, and snake-dens!).
Kellie and I played our first round last Sunday, and had a blast! Most of the holes at McCurry involve a lot of trees, so we had some funny ricochets and a lot of flying pine bark. Kellie plays a lot of frisbee at KSU, so she had an advantage over me. I was concentrating on tossing straight, so my drives were only going about 40 yards. (Most of the other groups were tossing discs about 70-80 yards, or more).
Had a funny episode on one fairway, where a young lady walking her dog picked up my errant disc and tossed it back to me (quite well, too!).
Anyway, we made it through about 13 holes before the wind through the trees (and a blister on my finger) ended our round.
We were going to play again this weekend, but the snow put an end to that!
There's also a 9-hole course in PTC, so we'll have to check it out one of these weekends.

Cheap Brew

I don't really drink beer anymore, but I did enjoy a Stella Artois (Belgian brew) a couple weeks ago.
Anyway, we got into a conversation at work last week, when I was covering a product test one night (the guys on graveyard shift will do anything to stay awake!). The topic was cheap beer (not necessarily bad beer, but ...).
I was raised about a mile from the old Pabst brewery in Newark NJ (the building along the Garden State Parkway, with the 'big bottle' on the roof; the plant was recently leveled) . A friend's uncle worked at the Pabst plant, so the fridge in the basement was always full of PBR. I'll leave the rest to your imagination. (Also had an uncle who worked at the A-B plant near Newark airport).
Any way, cheap beer. Several brands were mentioned, including Carling Black Label, Schaefer, Schmidt's (not Schlitz), Rolling Rock, Weideman's, Little Kings, Red-White&Blue (a cheap brand from PBR, believe it or not), Ballantine, Piel's, Colt 45 malt, Iron City (the worst!), and a few others. Stroh's seemed to be a popular brew with the locals, when I lived in Richmond. I could add any Bud brand, but I'd get into a few arguments, there. Everyone had a good laugh (and some bad memories).
I now like to sip a little wine now and then. Cabs, Merlot, Reisling, etc. Perhaps memories of cheap wines may be a topic for another blog! Or maybe not!

Bible Study

Question to ask at your next bible study session : "Did the Corinthians ever write back?"