E Friday and Spring is here!

Except for the past few days, the weather has been really nice around here. It looks like the snow has melted around most of the country, so you all shouldn’t be too frozen. In honor of the arrival of Spring I present a few outdoor shots this week.

First, it appears that spagetti and meatballs goes very well with yogurt and berries.


And yes, it looks like the left hand is used more than the right – at least she can do a spoon per hand thing if really required.

And after you are done eating the table is a perfect place to sit with your animals.


(see Lisa, stripes!) This is what it looks like from a distance, talking with Grammy sitting nearby. And yes, that is Buster sitting there too. Max is wandering around somewhere, probably behind the bushes or off peeking through the side gate keeping guard.


E has become one with the boys - when Max sees something in the street and starts barking Buster usually runs over there to join in, barking along the way. After a few seconds E will also run over to the gate, barking along with the crowd. She does a very good imitation of Max's vocal stylings. I'll have to get a video of her doing that, and try to figure out how to post it.

Boy, that last shot sure makes Vegas look green, doesn’t it? This time of year it is, well, that part of the yard is green all the time – the tall cypress trees don’t loose their leaves, and the rosemary in front is green all year, the ash tree peeking in from the left does go bare in the winter but it provides nice shade in the summertime. If I took this picture in January it would look about the same, but E would have on long sleeves. In July B would have a lighter shirt on, but still long sleeves to keep off the sun.

Do you have any relatives like that?

I don't know how I bounced around to this place, but please go read Steph's account of her relative's 'Bogan' wedding. I pointed my wife to this story, and she said 'yea, I have relatives like that'. I don't know if she's referring to her sisters in east Texas or Arkansas. But I have met one cousin here in Vegas that . . .
Well, that's another story.

Arriving at two

Well, our darling E has made a transition. Even though her second birthday is not for another month she seems mentally to have made the transition to the Terrible Twos. Those of you with kids surely know what I am talking about. I don’t remember how we lived through it with ours, but last night I was very impressed with this young lady’s vocal abilities.

Yesterday evening E was starved as usual (please don’t call child protective services on us for depriving this poor individual of food) and came running to the table exclaiming ‘Eat Eat Eat!!!’ I used to work from 9 to 6 and have been missing this evening entertainment, but last week changed my hours to 7 to 4 so that I could enjoy the sunny evening hours, and so I am now there to experience dinnertime with E.

I don’t know how it happened, but evidently when she does not want to eat B has started turning on cartoons on TV to keep E at the table and hypnotized while spooning food into her mouth. The family room television is visible from her chair in the kitchen. So now after being seated there is the familiar cry of ‘Emo Emo Emo’, specifying her desire to watch Sesame Street and her favorite character Elmo. Last night I counted and we have six Elmo items, five dolls and her big red chair that wiggles and giggles, though she is frightened of the motion and we don’t turn it on anymore. This is in addition to the Elmo books. Well, Sesame Street is not on in the evening, just mornings and again at noon in our area. So she gets Spongebob Squarepants instead. This used to be quite troublesome to her, not understanding where her Emo has gone to, but now she has adapted and has grown to like that squeaky yellow square.

So Spongebob was turned on, and food placed in front of her. She soon converted to her standard television viewing hypnotized state, staring blankly in front of her and ignoring the rest of the world. However this time she refused to eat, and though she expressed her starving state before being seated she now denied her need for food. Grammy tried to press on with the eating, even leveling the threat of turning off the TV if she didn’t eat. Having a strong mouth and constitution E ignored this threat. But then the cartoon ended and the show diverted to a non cartoon commercial. E took this as meaning that Grammy had followed through on her threat and changed the channel to the news, which is often on in our house.

E immediately converted to the ‘standard’ two year old position of open mouth and expelling air as quickly as possible, along with a constriction of the vocal cords. This resulted in the loudest, most ear splitting shriek that I have ever heard in our house. Somehow at the same time she continued to say ‘nononononononono’ while screaming and crying. I don’t know how she can do those three things at the same time, must have something to do with the design of a two year old’s throat (even though she isn’t physically two yet.)

This did result in the turning off of the television, followed by about five minutes of continuous shrieks. At the same time Grammy was trying to apply the psychology advised in one of the latest books: talking calmly and trying to explain things. I don’t know if the low talking worked or if the vocal activities resulted in a lowering of blood sugar levels, but eventually a lowering of the volume occurred and some food was consumed.

B informed me that yes, our darling fair haired granddaughter has now changed from the constantly smiling sweety that she was into a ‘Terrible Two’, and I could expect similar outbursts on a fairly regular basis. There might be times of sweetness and light, but I should not expect them very often. Oh well. I was used to her arriving in the morning, turning the corner to where I was seated drinking coffee, and presenting herself like this:



(Sorry Lisa, no stripes) (and no comments on the floor covering - it was here when we moved in, we are getting around to the kitchen remodel soon)

She did come out this morning smiling, after hearing a lot of noise behind closed doors as her mom greeted her awakening. They are staying with us for a few weeks until son-in-law comes back down to finish packing up the house, then they will be driving off to Portland. B will be devastated – I can’t say anything about her losing E. We were shopping last night and I made some comment about not buying the gianormous sized package of diapers because we will not use them all before . . . and was quickly stopped by a look and a ‘how dare you remind me’ stare. Well, at least Grammy got to enjoy her during the cheerful learning days, when E was open to new things and did not totally go bonkers when she didn’t get her way.

Srping flowers

Looks like Spring is here. Last week was the beginning, yesterday it was 84 at my place when I got home. Today is cold, windy, and chance of showers. So on to what this season looks like. I’ll give them to you all at once, may not get the names right:

The warmer weather brings out the flowers – so here is what’s going on around my yard. Most of the plants are just starting to bloom, so the number of flowers on each plant will be increasing as the days (and weeks) go on. Most of the plants do not have a short bloom, but have flowers for days or weeks or even all summer long.

Some type of nicoteana. Blooms most of the summer, stays about a foot or so high.


I have no idea on this one. We moved in to find two big piles of this along side the garage. With no water supplied they are still going strong. The plants are about four feet high and six feet across, in spring just covered in yellow.


I think it’s a mallow – just starting, soon the bushes will be covered in red. About three feet high.


Nice white flower on a bush about four inches high and a foot across. Looked at it this morning on the way to work and you can hardly see the green because of all the white flowers covering it. I think it’s a bush morning glory.


Something we brought from San Diego – nice little purple flowers on what’s basically a weed, but B remembers it in her grandma’s garden.


Big yellow desert bush – about eight feet high and four wide. We’ve got several scattered around. They are just big yellow piles this time of year, and have blooms on them most of the summer. Feathery Acacia.


Society garlic in a pot by the pool, again brought from SD, don’t do well in the ground.


A Banks Rose by the pool – this was here when we moved in. We had two of them along side our front door back in Temecula, where they got to be fifteen feet high and just covered the front of the house in yellow. This one is three feet high and about six feet across. Nice because they have no thorns.


Bright blue flowers on the rosemary. (sorry you can’t see the bright color). We planted them all along the short back retaining wall, about forty bushes all with nice flowers all summer (really all year) long. And the rosemary smells nice, goes well in spaghetti and chicken dishes. These are prostrate rosemary, about a foot high and growing wide so it’s like a hundred foot long bush.


Blooms on the apple tree – I thought the peach would be all pink this year, but the quick warm weather made it green instead.


Bright golden California poppies. Planted seeds in the raised beds three years ago, now the whole yard is filled with the low bushes. They will bloom, seed, and die before the weather gets hot, then the seeds start little plants with next December’s rains. The green on this one will disappear under all of the blooms.


And the wisteria we put out on the front patio is blooming – it’s on the fence along the front patio wall, about ten feet high and the same wide, covered in blossoms. And smelling marvelous. Guess it’s about time I finished the patio cover so we can train it overhead.


The sage bushes are all green, but they bloom with high humidity when it’s really hot. We have about twenty sage bushes and a dozen of the yellow cassia and acacia bushes, each up around five feet high and three across. The yellow ones are covered in blooms in the spring, then with random splashes of yellow all summer long. The sage (three varieties, in assorted shades of purple) get covered in blooms at random times and smell beautiful. Other things are blooming, but these are the ones I walked around to.

Request for help

Just a little sample of what’s going on around town this weekend, there is something for everybody: Hugh Hefner’s 81st birthday party at the Palms (along with all of his girls); Dave Mathews Band, Blue Oyster Cult, David Copperfield, Jay Leno, Carlos Mencia, Stevie Nicks, Don Rickles, Sinbad, Al Stewart, plus all of the standards that are here permanently. Every act seems to come through Vegas. I think we even had all of Cher’s final tours, along with Barbara’s.

Request for help: I’m trying to put together a list of good places to eat around town. Since I live here we don’t usually hit the Strip, so I am unfamiliar with most restaurants in the places the tourists go to. If any of you have visited Vegas please email me with the places you have eaten – good or bad or forgettable. Joeinvegas at joetheprogrammer dot com. Thanks.

E Friday - more food

Well, on again to VG’s E Friday. Oh – start out with bad news. The house is sold, so E will soon be off to live with the folks in Portland. Eventually the photos will run out and we will have to switch to something else on Friday. Well, I do have about seven thousand E pics, having a digital camera and just clicking away, but the majority of them are not postable – you know, typical kid shots of the back of their head when they turn just as you push the camera button and stuff.

Let’s keep going with this week’s eating theme – back to the last time we went out for dinner. E’s moved up from bottle to sippy cup to straw, and is getting pretty good with the straw.


Boy, just looking at that picture makes me think of those old master's cherub paintings. Without the straw and bib of course.

Though at times it is a challenge to find your mouth, or find the straw with your mouth when you are distracted by dad talking to you.


And with the warm weather last week grandma introduced E to the joys of ice pops. These are supposedly no sugar added fruit pops, but they still taste sweet enough. And forks don’t work too well on them.


And when you are finished eating the end while grammy holds the stick you end up with a two handed sweet thing that’s better than the lipstick mommy wears.

Surprise!

Oh! Look what showed up in today's post!


Delivered by the Royal Mail from someplace in the UK with no return address - and it's not even my birthday - thanks!

Oh - it's a home made chocolate cake (with candles) from loverly Clare. She had a contest a while back with her cakes as prizes and luckily I got one!!!

Delivery trucks and local news

I came in to work this morning and found the early line up in place. This is the view from the bridge from the Team Member parking garage to the back entrances – hotel to the left, convention center to the right, new tower construction in the center. Trucks go down underneath the conference center to unload.


I never thought about what it takes behind the scenes to keep a business running. We don’t even have a big show, and yesterday and today there are at least a dozen big trucks lined up to unload downstairs at the loading docks. And the line of trucks stays this long for half the day! I guess when you have 4,000 hotel rooms, a couple of dozen restaurants and lots of bars you need lots of supplies. Most of the trucks have logos from food companies painted on the sides – one today is for a lobster and seafood place – ‘We go to great depths for you!’, but there is always a Coke and a Pepsi truck (or several of each) here every day.

The conference center is full – there are always small meetings and training sessions. There are over two hundred meeting rooms, most of which have movable walls to create larger spaces for bigger groups. The smallest hall does have a small show: the Micky D’s western regional conference, the central region finished up yesterday. Where franchise holders get a glimpse at the new products and campaigns, and suppliers show off new signs and baby changing tables and playground equipment and seating options. This group had about the fanciest buffet layout I’ve seen – no hamburgers for them.

And some bad news for Anna. There are stories around about a new group buying up the New Frontier hotel/casino. The property, next to the Fashion Show mall and across from the Wynn, is selling for $40,000,000 per acre. The 38 acre site will change hands for a little over 1.5 billion dollars ($1,500,000,000). It’s difficult for me to comprehend spending that much just to get a site that will probably be cleared for new construction. Yes, the hotel will probably be biting the dust. Which means Anna will not get to participate in the bikini mud wrestling or bikini bull riding competitions at Gilley’s next time she comes out. Sorry A. Maybe I can buy you one of those interesting bathroom setups if the fixtures are sold off.

On the local front, airport commissioners are trying to pick a new company to run all of the stores and concessions at the airport. LV airport is the sixth largest in the country (in number of takeoffs and landings). That’s pretty impressive if you consider that we are a destination airport, not a transfer point. The two largest airports are Atlanta and Chicago, where most people just fly in to change planes and fly out again. Here everybody gets off and hits the strip. The three biggest companies in competition for the franchise each have political connections, one having paid a big fine for bribing politicians at some other city. Some of the commissioners bowed out of voting because of ties to the attorneys for one group or another. LV is now rather sensitive to that, having several city officials currently in prison for accepting bribes.

The city is also getting ready for an upcoming grand prix race. Like Long Beach and Monte Carlo, Las Vegas will soon close downtown and the streets will be filled with cars trying to hit 200mph legally. In a few weeks the course will circle Fremont Street in a three mile circuit. I don’t know how many visitors are expected, but our mayor is quite pleased. We just had a round of Nascar races a few weeks ago up at the racetrack.

Out west a new Grand Canyon attraction is getting close to opening. From a story in the the Review Journal, the local Hualapai Indian reservation (no, it didn’t say ‘native American’ reservation) has a walk over the canyon partially completed.


Soon you will be able to walk out on a glass walkway (yes, the floor is glass) hanging out over the Grand Canyon. Take a look at that – for those of you with no fear of heights. The canyon is about a mile deep at this point. Straight down under the walkway.


Of course, somehow the reservation will have to get the twenty miles of dirt road up to the site paved. On our last trip to Arizona we stopped at the store that is closest to this, and the girls there say the road is so bad that somebody is towed off every day. And when it rains (ok, it does rain sometime out here) the mud is so bad that no vehicle can make it. Unfortunately a private person owns the land that a good part of the road runs across, and he doesn’t want the extra traffic and is refusing to have his part worked on. Legally he has to permit access, since the road has been there for so long, but he does not have to improve it. There are also shops and restaurants and the visitor center to be built, only the walkway is done.

On the state front, our new governor is under investigation for improperly accepting campaign contributions. He’s got a big ‘legal defense fund’ that falls outside of federal laws on the size of contributions he can accept. We’ll see what becomes of that.

Nationally, our pres is fighting congress over an investigation into the firing of federal attorneys. I don’t know what all the complaints are about, the attorneys work for him and work ‘at his pleasure’. Other presidents have had similar firings, with Clinton firing 93 of them (W only fired a dozen or so). I wish congress would stop paying attention to little stuff like this, which are great for headlines, and concentrate on getting our soldiers out of Iraq, or figuring out a good national health care plan. But I guess headlines and fighting the president are more interesting and news worthy than doing useful things.

And since we started this discussion with food, I might as well end up with it.


Bean burritos – good!

Monday, dusty weekend

A quiet weekend here, and it’s interesting to catch up on what everyone else is writing. Somehow I end up reading things here at work and don’t turn the computer on at home on the weekend very often. I spent many hours this weekend crawling around in the attic running wires for smoke detectors. When we moved in there was only one, in the front hall, and I’ve been procrastinating but we now have one in every bedroom and out in the garage as well. I realize I’m getting old, but my knees are really sore from the crawling on rafters, my arms are still full of fiberglass and I ended up wearing a big mask after coughing from thirty years of dust up there. But we are now fully wired up.

One of the bad things about growing up: no summer off to look forward to, and no spring break. Not even a week up north much less enjoying the bikinis in Cancun. I just get to look forward to hot weekends up in the dusty attic. Oh well, at least we have a pool

It is starting to get warm up there – we did have five days of record heat. Instead of our normal 69f it was up around 90f for most of the week, hitting 88 yesterday. Only supposed to get to 84 today, back down to a more normal 71 by Thursday, but back near 90 again next weekend. The pool is up to 70f, and with this weather will probably get to a swimable 80 by mid April, and our favorite temp of 93 by May. With the pool cover we do get to use the pool from April through November. It’s too big to put a heater on, so it just stays covered during the winter. (wow, lots of numbers in that paragraph).

E spent the day Sunday while mom and dad packed. A U-Haul is being filled up today, and E will be spending the night, then daughter moving in tomorrow. Son-in-law is off to their new Portland house and a new job. Mom has to stay here and keep working until this house is sold as they can’t afford the new big mortgage on one salary. So we will be E intensive for a while, then E bereft. Better take a lot of pictures now. She really is a cutie, smiling all the time. Second birthday is early May, and she has already started on the Terrible Two’s – with ‘nono’ as here favorite new phrase; the first thing out of her mouth until she realizes that maybe that does sound OK and will relent with a ‘yeayea’

She has graduated from the high chair to a booster, and sometimes gets food in plates instead of bowls. Her favorite meal is Beef-A-Roni and peas.


The fork is mostly used now, but if hunger prevails fingers will be used instead.

E Friday

We took our daughter out for a birthday dinner last weekend, along with the other grandparents out visiting from Canada. E sat across the table for me, and as I was taking pictures her dad kept saying ‘make a face for grandpa to take a picture’. (Grandpa? Oh makes me feel old). So here for VG’s E Friday is a series of E faces.



With spaghetti sauce on her face. She usually ends up with almost as much on her as in her. Nana stayed at the Orleans, and so brought some of the beads over for E.



The above one is about my favorite. I just like the look.



And see, she even knows to wave for the camera.



And of course that’s one of her ‘smile for the camera’ smiles. She doesn't always show those teeth.

No shows, warm weather

Well, no shows here this week. The temp hit 90f yesterday; normally we would be around 70f at this time of year, so we are getting a taste of Spring. I walked over to the Fashion Show Mall at lunchtime yesterday enjoying the sunshine and warmth. A large number of tourists seem to not be used to bright sunshine and warmth and are also clothing wise unprepared for this level of temperature. A large number of women were wearing their bikini tops in place of halters, which is fine with all the males walking around.

I am still learning the procedures of a large convention center. My last job was at a bank, and it took a while to learn all of the regulations there. Not many regulations here, just learning how the business is run. I didn’t realize that all this place does for a show is rent all the space to just one company, and then they rent out space for the individual booths. These companies usually have ‘exposition services’ as part of their name. They supply the carpets and booth dividers and tables and chairs and all the other things it takes to put on a big show.

It usually takes three or four days to do the initial setup for a large show. This entails marking the floors for booth locations, putting up dividers or curtains where required, laying down carpets and dropping power. Then a fleet of huge trucks come and an even larger contingent of fork lifts unload boxes and pallets and distribute them around the hall. When this is done booth personnel show up to unpack these boxes and set up the displays. Some of these displays are quite elaborate – for the floor covering show several of the big companies built houses in the convention space to show where their stuff would be used. Some of the displays are just composed of a few tables with merchandise arrayed, or lots of shelves with lots of stuff.

But I enjoy all of the fork lifts cruising around in a rather complicated ballet: avoiding each other and people walking and stuff piled in the aisles to deliver their load and then go back to the trucks for another.



This is the fleet parked outside during the show – on hand for when the show closes to put all that stuff back into the trucks. It’s hard to see but there are two rows parked side by side for a total of about fifty forklifts. If you look closely you can see the 'Hertz rent a truck' logo on the side. I think the yellow ones are from Avis. These forklifts are also supplied by the group putting on the show – they are not normally parked here. They are all delivered before show setup starts, and taken away after the show is broken down. It looks like there are two big show exposition companies, this one likes the orange forklifts, the other rents yellow ones.

For those of you that have visited Vegas in the past, yesterday the Stardust casino bit the dust. The 30+ story building was imploded at 2am on Tuesday, as the photos in this Review-Journal article show. If you stayed there in the past, you cannot ever again. It is being taken down to make way for a new 4.4 billion dollar project (yes, that’s $4,400,000,000). Not quite the seven billion being spend on City Centre two miles south, but still quite a chunk of change.

The gift show

It is interesting to work at a convention center. Each week there is something different to see. I started here just after the electronics show and adult entertainment show, so I’ll have to wait until next January for those to roll around. This week the place is empty, so I get to do my lunchtime walks around a big (really big) empty dark room – only a few lights are left on, it costs too much money to keep the expensive lights on all the time. Last week there was a show aligned towards stores: new forms of advertising (signs, lightboards, etc); shelves and displays; furniture and lights; and all sorts of ways to show off products. The week before it was a gift expo – small manufacturers showing off low cost gifts for small store owners to look at.

That show was big – over four thousand booths of stuff. Most of it was duplicated, several booths with about the same stuff, such as ball caps or stuffed animals. But it was interesting to walk around and see all of the things on display, kind of like walking around a huge mega mart. A million square feet crammed full of stuff. Here is an impression of all that was there. Not much need for words.















And finally something new. Similar to the Bratz dolls that came out as competition to Barbie, these are Goth dolls, with tattoos and piercings and lots of black.

E Friday

Another E Friday for VG.

Her dad taught her the ‘smile for the camera’ smile. Where you show your teeth and usually close your eyes. I’m not sure if this is one of those smiles or she was just caught making a comment.


Each morning when she comes in E runs over to her table and starts in on some toys. For the past few weeks she has really worked on the puzzles. These are the type cut out of wood with cut out places to put the pieces into. She is getting good at figuring out how to rotate the parts so that they slip into their shaped slots. And she recognizes most of the letters, even if she can’t say them. I think watching Sesame Street has really helped with the letter recognition.


Here she is with her animals again. And the big white bear grammy named Mr. Softy. Well, he is soft.


So, Lisa, are we leading her in the right direction with the striped wear?

Construction

Just a quick one today – last week I put up some photos of the center roof taken from our “Team Member” parking garage. When getting out of my car a few days ago I looked out and noticed all of the construction projects going on within a few blocks of our location and thought that I’d point them out.


From the left, there is the current Venetian tower. Next in the distance is the new golden Trump tower, then the new Venetian tower, off in the distance the framework of the old Stardust, which will come down soon, then the black Wynn and alongside that a crane putting up the new Wynn tower. At the right edge is the Stratosphere. So that’s six tall construction cranes in the photo.

If you count the construction that will go up to replace the Stardust, this picture contains seven billion dollars in construction projects: that’s $ 7,000,000,000 in money going into new buildings here near the north end of the Strip. In the planning process is a rebuild of Circus Circus, the Sahara, and the Stratosphere wants to do a new tower also. There is a big vacant lot across from the Sahara that will probably have a new casino placed upon it in the near future as well. Down behind us is the 6 billion dollar City Center, a reconstruction of the Tropicana hotel, new condo towers at the MGM, and who knows what else. If you are into high rise construction, steel work, or associated trades then Vegas is the place to be for the near future. And then look at all the entertainers, blackjack dealers, room cleaners, cooks and servers and all the other positions it takes to run big places. No wonder the Vegas area is growing so fast. I say the area because none of this is in the city of Las Vegas. Well, the Stratosphere is the last building at the edge of the city limits. Everything else in the photo is in the county.

The Venetian planned it out – they purchased two of their construction cranes; at five million dollars apiece. But if they leased them for the year’s building period it would have cost 4.5 million each, and now they can be resold to the next high rise project for the same price they were purchased for. I usually buy new tools when starting a big project, but would never have thought of spending $10,000,000 just to buy the cranes.

Ten songs

Ten songs? Who asks people to do things like this? Oh, right, it was Molly (thanks a lot Ms. Malone). I’ve got my new IPod Shuffle with me (cute), so no display and the songs might be wrong. I purchased the shuffle a few weeks ago – the size of a postage stamp, no moving parts, and it clips onto my badge holder. Neat. Anyway, the first ten songs that come up in shuffle mode (well, it is the Shuffle) are:

I’m a Bitch – Meredith Brooks
Half the Perfect World – Madeline Peyroux
Beat It – Michael Jackson
Clown in Your Rodeo – Kathy Matea
You Crack Me Up – Huey Lewis and the News
Breath – Anna Nalick
Change Partners – Fred Astaire
Don'tcha Wanna - Anastacia
Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under? – Shania Twain
In These Shoes? – Kirsty MacColl

So, what does this list tell you? That I don’t seem to buy any new music? Anyway, if you’re looking for suggestions on music, I would highly recommend both Madeline Peyroux and Kirsty MacColl. Those two are on the top of my list now; I’ve just ordered some more of their CDs. B really likes Kirsty, her songs are rather amusing, and E likes the Caribbean beat on the album that we have.

Monday at work

Another Monday – not a very busy weekend around our place. We want to redo our kitchen, and I’ve been trying to figure out what it should look like. I’ve got most of the design done; just have to figure out when to start. (Of course we are going to do it ourselves – why pay somebody else to have the fun?) Our house was built in the 70’s, and has one of those drop down light boxes with fluorescent fixtures in it. That is going to come down and the ceiling raised. I like the overall glow of the big lamps, so probably will put some other fluorescents in, but also will put a lot of can lights – I’ve always liked a lot of light when I’m trying to do something. So that will involve climbing into the attic and moving aside all of that blown in insulation, otherwise our kitchen will be knee deep in fiberglass when the ceiling comes down. And in Vegas you really don’t want to be in an attic in the summertime. If it’s 110f outside it’s usually a little hotter up under the roof.

We’ve got a group coming over on April 14, don’t really want to start before then in case it’s not done, so that means the middle of April for the attic work, and it’s already supposed to be around 80f by the end of this week. Oh well, as long as there is a lot of water around. Maybe I’ll go up and move the insulation around next weekend – better to start doing some of the stuff now.

I haven’t shown you my desk at the new job yet. Not much to look at – we are in the basement next to the big hall. No cubes, there are only two of us sharing space with the help desk techs.


As far as behind the scenes – this is the hallway I take each day to get to the employee entrance, near the parking garage. It should be obvious that employees don’t rate has high as customers. Also used as parking for the food carts and delivery stands.


Here’s what the hallways out front look like. A little different, no?