Flu Ridden Christmas

After flying home last Friday everything was going great. Jen, Hayley and I were hanging out at home and taking care of some house hold chores. I got my annual checkup and the doctor proclaimed me healthy. The next day we planned a long day of shopping. When we were about to head out Jen started feeling under the weather so she slept most of the day away. Although we ended up getting most of our shopping done that night.

Christmas Eve we drove to Willmar and Jen was feeling better. We arrived at my brothers for the annual x-mas party and about a half hour into it I started feeling sick. So I tried taking a short nap. It didn't help much at all. Later on I threw up and it all went down hill from there. I spent most of the night on the crapper. It was pretty miserable. And to make matters worse at least half of my family got the bug later in the week. My gut hasn't felt the same since. Sorry to all that I got sick. Hopefully you have a better recovery then I did.

Merry Christmas Everyone

I just started and finished shopping today. I waited so long because I was bitter over CA having a higher sales tax then MN so why buy stuff there. Plus it's way over priced.

And I should mention that I have the coolest wife ever.

Tremers

While I'm out here in Cali I wouldn't mind experiencing an earthquake, albeit not a big one. It was semi disconcerning to get earthquake emergency kits at work. The kits have first aid stuff and a self charging flashlight (which is kind of cool) and other odds and end things to get one by if the building tumbles. I'm sure our cubes will keep us safe. At least I feel pretty secure since I'm next to a support railing, which supposedly is the safest spot in an earthquake.

Anyway, I was posing the question as to the frequency of quakes out here and someone showed me this site. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/ It has a record of all earthquakes that happen in our region. Digging deeper I found that we had an earthquake last Sunday about 10 miles from our apartment and I didn't have a clue. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Quakes/nc51176897.php I'm wonder what does one have to register to feel it. 2.2 didn't quite cut it.

mp3 players

I keep thinking of what kind of mp3 player I want. I keep going back and forth between the Zune and the Video iPod. Although the Zune has more of the features I like, it doesn't quite cover everything. I'm thinking I'd really like something that I can just download stuff to the device bypassing the computer. It would be nice if I could just download the latest PodCasts when they become available. I'm missing the daily morning shows in MN. I wonder if the "rumored" iPhone from Apple with have some kind of feature built into download podcasts. Hopefully it will be released soon. I may have something waiting for me under the tree. Maybe I could exchange it.

Hayley and Jen Heading Home

I just dropped Jen and Hayley off at the airport. We had originally planned on them staying in MN until after Christmas. I'm glad they came out. Our stuff would probably still be in boxes if it weren't for Jen. Now we have a nice clean apartment to live in. We both commented on how we wished this apartment was the floor plan of our house. It's pretty nice. Now if the weather would warm up a bit.

Flight Mixup

When I booked Jens ticket here I thought I had her flying back on Monday night. It didn't dawn on me that I really booked her flight for early Monday morning at 12:30 am. Good thing she brought it up today cuz I would've drove her to the airport on Monday night and she would've missed her flight.

Cool Work

Since I moved to Sunnyvale I'm learning about brand new technologies. It's totally different then anything I've ever worked on in Eagan. I'm amazed at the technology here. Space Systems and Satillites are so interesting. Today I went to a presentation on the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) which is going ot replace the shuttle. The sub systems that go into that are amazing. I'm amazed at the things people think up to make it functional and safe. I certainly would not mind working on that project after I'm done with my current rotation.

Move in activities

I would've never expected the process of moving to be this expensive. When I moved to FL we rented a furnished apartment and drove down there in our truck. This allowed us to bring virtually everything we needed. I don't recall spending that much money up front there. Since we got to Sunnyvale we've spent close to a thousand dollars on getting this apartment settled. Everyday it seems like we're running to Target, Costco, or IKEA for something. A table here a bed in a bag there throw in some cleaning supplies a new vaccum and all our TDY money is going down the drain. Hopefully the bleeding stops this week. We finally got our funiture yesterday. Which was an event in itself. The guy calls in the morning to inform us his help didn't show so wants to wait until Monday. I'm like "yeah, no!!" I'm sick of living on the floor and if I have to help move so be it. The guy showed up 10 minutes later and it took about 3 hours to unload everything. At the end of the day Jen had everything situated except for the kitchen. I was pretty much relageted to keeping Hayley out of everything along with discarding of boxes and assembling the new kitchen table. The apartment looks nice now though. I wish our house was as big as our apartment.

Counting Down

Jen and Hayley will be here in 2 days. Man am I happy they're coming now instead of waiting until after New Years. The $250 plane ticket was well worth it. I'd be going crazy if they weren't going to be here this week.

Weekend Highlights

This weekend I set out to purchase a bike. After doing some shopping on Friday I settled for a bike from Sports Authority. It was only a two our extravaganza. Working with minimum wage workers can be brutal sometimes. I went through two cancellations of my bill because the lady couldn't figure out how to ring up a bike. So that kind of put a damper on riding most of the afternoon. But I managed to ride to work and it took about 25 minutes. Although carrying a laptop may take longer.

Sunday morning I hung out with some Packer fans and we found a sports bar to watch both the Vikings and Packers. The bar was pretty run down and the pop tasted like water with a touch of brown food coloring. We did manage some free food though. BBQ ribs and potato salad so it wasn't all bad. (The Vikings were terrible though).

After the game Chad and I went mountain biking around the bay area. We found some trails and I was floored to see a dude hunting. The dude drove his truck to the entrance of the trails and rode a bike to his spot. It was incredible. Hunting here would be awesome. Just a light jacket and you're ready to go. The swamps were full of ducks too. The guy had three and shot one while we were standing there talking to him. I'm thinking I should've brought my gun out here to hunt some. You can't ask for better weather to hunt in. There's no getting cold here.

The weather here has been amazing. It hasn't been cloudy at all since I got here. It's a little chilly at night but it's fine with a sweatshirt. Some people are still using the pool during the afternoons.