House Update

Paul's gone to see our house this week and took some more pictures so I thought I'd better post the pictures that we took two weeks ago before I post the most recent changes! Things are moving along pretty quickly despite some setbacks with the wrong brick being used.

Back yard view of house

Front view from the street

Also, some good news is that Paul accepted a new position as program manager at an aerospace company and will be starting a week from Monday. He's now in busy mode ironing shirts, getting his car serviced and other last mid-day chores. It'll be sad seeing my house-husband going back to work because it has been so nice having him home over the last three months and he's been doing really great at keeping up with the chores. He has definitely earned his allowance!

I'm still in Virginia working this week and look forward to coming home sometime tomorrow. I am pretty tired and ready for a day off, but Sunday I leave again for the next project so I'm not going to get too relaxed.. it is easier to stay somewhat busy.

Vagabonding in Virginia

I'm not on vacation, but my spinning wheel is! We made the trip together up here to Richmond, Virginia so that I could do more field work for a different site, and have some relaxation when I got back to the hotel. I chose to drive instead of fly this time and loved every minute of the 5 hours of greenery, slight color changes in the trees and lack of traffic. My Majacraft wheel rode shotgun.

I was so excited to find this comfy armchair in the hotel room. I'm staying in a very country-style decorated place and so I'm sure they thought nothing of it when I walked in with my spinning wheel and wool. Fun thing is the wool that I'm spinning right now for Trish matches the bedspread in the hotel room and has colors of the armchair in it too. When the wool's on the bed, you hardly see it. This picture was taken on my cell phone so the colors don't show up too good, but you get the idea.

I'll be here through Friday so brought plenty of spinning to do as my hours on this project won't be as long as a normal sampling week. I'm acting as a site contact for a contractor who is using fancy instrumentation such as elaborate metal detectors to search for buried treasure. Ok, more like buried waste that was buried half a century ago by folks that didn't know any better back then. But it's still interesting all the same. I never thought I'd get to work on so many interesting projects!

The Biltmore Estate

Although I arrived home late on Friday night, I was really excited to keep with our plans to go with Tracy (from work) and her mom the next morning to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC. We had heard a lot about it and Tracy and Elizabeth had annual passes there last year, so off we went! Tracy and her mom packes us all a wonderful picnic lunch to eat once we got there so long as we brought the blanket-- what fun people they are.

The Biltmore Estate was built in the late 1800's by George Vanderbilt, and is supposed to be one of the largest private estates in America. Even though the place was packed, once you walk away from the house itself, the grounds swallow you up and not a soul can be seen. Here is our secluded picnic spot:

The more manicured garden section has several greenhouses and specialty areas


Paul surveying the backyard

The Biltmore House itself

(we could not take pictures inside)

On the drive home we ended up finishing our lunch by way of a tailgate party/picnic.

We were in the parking lot of Bi-Lo, which let to one or two comments about ourselves as being a bit "red-neck" as the saying goes. Not that anything's wrong with that.... :-)

We ran low on buns so had our sandwiches open-faced, like a halfway In-N-Out Burger's Protein Burger: each person got a bottom or top bun and a lettuce leaf to act as the top bun to hold everything in. It was pretty dang chilly, but note that the Englishman still doesn't need a jacket.

Tentatively in Tennessee

I know, it has been quiet from this front, but with good reason: I'm traveling in Tennessee for work. Yes, I can still write my blog but 1) our client does not allow cameras on site (and I feel a picture says a thousand words) and 2) I'm working most of my waking hours. Without pictures or time, I feel I'll bore you. But here's a synopsis just in case you're still interested:

We are groundwater monitoring and having an interesting time of it. Our sample containers arrived two days late, half of our equipment never turned up, the rental car company did not give us the four wheel drive vehicle we needed (initially, but they fixed the problem) and things just have not been in our favor this week in general. On the upside, we are working hard to make up for it, and we have been very inventive to make due with what we have.

The weather was gorgeous today and I kept thinking to myself: "If only I had a camera." Because even though we are on a "site" it is still pretty with lots of wildlife all around. I've seen lizards, butterflies, great blue herons, red-tailed hawks, wild turkeys and bugs, bugs, bugs. It's been in the 80's with moderate humidity, but tomorrow it is supposed to be a high of in the 60's - Yikes! My California blood is still thin, and anyways, it's been so warm here, too, that we haven't had to dip into fall/winter clothes.

Have a good evening-- I'm heading to bed!

Painting Nancy's Ceiling

Nancy Edwards from Prudential is our real estate agent, and a wonderful lady. She and her assistant, Ana Smith, have seen us through our first visit to Charlotte, Ana taking a whole Saturday to show us the area, homes and the scenery, packing us a picnic lunch. We didn't even know if we were going to be able to move to the area at that time. Since then, in May, we had our heart set on Charlotte, and Nancy helped us locate recruiters for work, sent us info on new aerospace companies moving to the area and of course, found our dream home. We were blessed to be able to move here upon me getting a job with URS and now we are getting ready to move into our home in January!

We have had a lot of fun working with Nancy and talking with her on a personal basis. After many visits with us to the model home of the floorplan we have chosen, Nancy decided that she wanted to have her ceiling painted like the dining room in the show home. I said, "I can do that for you," and a few weeks later the three of us were back at the model home and down to Home Depot to get the paint.

Yesterday we began work! Although we haven't finished the ceiling, we have a good start and will return in a few weeks when we all have a Saturday free to finish up. Paul and I did the painting and Nancy kept us comfortable. Paul and I decided we were definitely the Dynamic Duo with our teamwork. It's going to look great! I'll show more pictures when it's finished.

The Splendor of Niagara Falls

Believe it or not, but I was sent to Niagara Falls for my annual Hazwoper refresher course (Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response)! Normally this is an eight hour class reviewing when we would need to wear certain gear such as a full respirator, tyvek suits, and stuff like that. Also we cover how to read hazardous waste labels, how to respond to specific conditions and general safety on a job site, not necessarily pertaining to hazardous waste. It's a lot of common-sense stuff, but you'd be surprised how much of it goes unpracticed until people are more informed and aware.

Anyway, the class was cut down to 4 hours with 4 hours of online training prior to the class meeting date. Which means that I had the morning to explore before attending the class at noon. I didn't waste much time. I arrived on Wednesday night and found to my excitement that my hotel, The Comfort Inn was literally 100 feet from the park entrance to see the American side of the falls. So after I ate dinner I walked down to the river (a two minute walk) and found loads of people milling around taking pictures. And then the falls themselves were all lit up with lights that kept changing colors-- it was really spectacular. I got pretty drenched but since it was like 80 degrees out, it didn't matter.

American Falls by Light

Then next morning I woke up at 6:30. Ok, I'll be honest. I initially woke up at 6:30 but got up at 7:00 and got ready as fast as I could, did some boring work emails and then grabbed breakfast, my passport, my camera and my purse and headed out along the park to figure out if I could walk over to Canada. The bridge leading across wasn't far, but I didn't enjoy driving around the area the night before, getting lost, so figured I would have better luck walking.

It was really easy. A sign at the bridge said, "Pedestrians to Canada," you walk across, answer a million questions, show your passport and then you're there! I made it to the other side in about 15 minutes and then let my camera fly. I had such a good time and although the lighting wasn't the best for pictures with the sun shining towards us, it was still great picture-taking time. It was almost magical walking along the perfectly manicured park with mist falling constantly in the sunshine. The plantlife growing there never lacks for water!

American Falls view from Canada

American Falls and Horeshoe Falls in the distance

Dressing for work is not the best attire for closeup falls viewing-- oh well.

Horeshoe Falls up close

And closer still!!

I got back in time for training and the rest isn't really worth mentioning other than I had a nice flight back reading, "The Time Traveler's Wife." I bought this at the airport because our plane was delayed and I had loads of time on my hands having finished my Spin-Off magazine on the flight over. I'm only a few chapters in since I read slow, but it is great so far!

Cheese and Bread Alfresco

Yesterday was a perfect day for outdoor dining, but our dining room table doesn't maneuver to the patio as well as it did in our California apartment. We used to fit our table half in/half out the balcony door, light the candles, bring out the fine china and sit on the part of the table that was on the balcony. We had many a fine dinner out there. Since our apartment faced the front gate, though, we mainly overlooked the traffic coming in and out, the horn-honking, etc. It was entertaining though.

Our outdoor dining in Chatsworth, CA

Well, here the way the apartment is set up, it just wouldn't work without rearranging everything. So instead, we had an afternoon fancy-snack of Ciabatta bread fresh from Trader Joe's with English coastal chedder, English onion cheddar, New York cheddar and pepper-jack cheeses on our patio, served on our china platter, on a stool. It was pretty good, the view is much better here, and much more peaceful. My only recommendation for change is that personally I think that crackers tend to complement the cheese flavor more than the bread. Although that ciabatta bread was out of this world.

Alfresco snack- Charlotte, NC

In case you were wondering why I look patchy, I was experimenting with the Paint program. It looked great in large view but kinda not so great here. Plus, please excuse the PJ's.