Spring has Sprung!

As I mentioned a while back, I've been on the road almost constantly for about the last 2 1/2 weeks. This included 2 weekends in a row out of town, though both were our choices. We spent a weekend in Brighton Beach, here in the UK, then spent last weekend in Stockholm, Sweden. Look for blogs about those adventures soon, we're still sorting through notes and photos.

So this is my first weekend at home in about 3 weeks, and today, Saturday, is the kind of day you live for over here. Sunny, warm, we spent the entire day out in the sunshine with the doggies. Have a few pics to post. As usual, double click on the picture below to look at the entire album.

Saturday April 26

We're way behind on the blog, and hoping to catch up here very soon. Things are going great, and we've got some exciting things coming up, including a visit by Cassidy, her prior roommate, a sister, and Cassidy's boyfriend. Diana stays busier taking care of the house than I thought possible, but the house is always ship shape.

Anyway, we'll try to catch up here soon and will update you when we do. As usual, thanks for your comments and thoughts.

Goodbye to a Great lady

my Aunt Mabel died last night. She's been in the hospital for a few weeks, apparently suffering a series of strokes.

Aunt Mabel was 95, and had lived alone and on her own since 1976 when her husband passed away. She learned to drive in her 60s, and drove into her early 90s. She was a primary caretaker for my grandmother for many years, was active in the church and garden club. And she spent all that time living alone with no signs of Alzheimers.

Most of all, as Toni pointed out, she was a link to our childhood. It seems like she was always involved in our lives, and now she's gone. I know it's part of growing up, but it's a bit painful as we continue to loose those links.

Anyway, I'll miss her. RIP.

More bad news from the US

Well it looks as if my Aunt Mabel is not doing well. Toni says she's back in the hospital, non-responsive and not eating. She has a no feeding tube order on file. Not good.

Also, I just spoke with Cassidy and her boyfriend, Brian, just lost his grandfather. Our condolences to Brian and his family.

Jethro Tull

Tull are on their 40th anniversary tour this year, playing lots of shows around the UK. They have a couple of US dates, but are obviously focusing their tour on the UK. As I looked at their web page, many of the cities were complete mysteries to me.

However, I bought a pair of tickets to see them in Brighton, which is a beach town about an hour or so SE of London. I've learned through experience not to buy tix too early, as business travel has forced me to sell more than 1 set. But I took a chance on a Friday show and grabbed best available tickets.

Come to find out, we were stage right, close enough you could throw the program and hit Ian Anderson on stage. Great, great venue. Small, very nice, wonderful acoustics and a great crowd.

I'd never seen Tull, and Diana had barely heard of them, but she's pretty game about things like this. All I can say is they were great! They focused a lot on their early stuff, with a lot of jazzy tunes, etc. Gradually going through time to end the show with Aqualung, and a Locomotive Breath encore. Ian Anderson is into his 60s but still scampers around the stage with lots of energy, and tells some hilarious stories in the process.

All in all, well worth the money. Besides we had a great weekend in Brighton, but that's a story for a different blog entry.

On The Road Again

So I haven't been doing much traveling for a while. This is for 2 reasons. One is that, as a company, we've tried to reduce travel. On the other hand, I've really been focusing on trying to build relationships here in the UK.

However, all that's changing. Today in Hawaii at our Partner Summit, we're making some major product announcements, and Monday we start a big roadshow. The roadshow is a rolling seminar the will cover all of western Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. In the middle of all this, I'm going to the US for about 10 days in May (most of which will be in San Jose). Suffice it to say, I'll be on the road until about the second week of June.

One advantage to this tour is that I only have to present in the afternoons, so that keeps me from having to fly in the night before in most cases. I am tying some customer meetings to the trip so I may stay an extra day sometimes.

If you look at the Google Calendar I have pinned at the top of the blog, it's pretty much show you where I'll be. Diana is going to join me for a weekend or two in the process, and that's represented by the locations shown across the weekends. When you see us out for a weekend, look for a blog update soon afterwards.

Again, for those of you looking at the calendar thinking I'm gong to lots of cool places, remember that most of the places distinctly resemble airports, hotels and meeting room. Only the restaurants are different. Many of these places I'll spend a total of 6 hours in.

Another Result of Global Warming

We were told it never snows in southern England. It gets cold and rainy, sometimes windy, but rarely freezes. So I blame this on that moron AlGore and his stupid global warming campaign. It's been snowing all day in London! And, in case no one noticed the date of this post, it's APRIL! Pics below from our yard (double click on any of them to see them larger).



If you can see in these photos, the flowers blooming in the snow.



OK, so our friends the Riders left this weekend. It was a bit emotional because, as I mentioned earlier, they are kind of our only friends here. On the up side, we loaded up with their stuff! I posted earlier that I've been here the whole time without TV, now we have TV. It was an interesting experience hooking the parts up, only to eventually find we didn't have the right cables. Diana took the lead and we finally got it together. We need to get a TV stand for everything, but now we have TV.



Of course, the biggest downside to this is we now have 4 remote controls. I'm just waiting for the business trip when I get the call that none of them work :)



So now we have the BBC (which I payed 135 GBP, or about $270, for a TV license to support). We have a digital box that gets us about 25 or 30 channels via an antenna (an aerial here), but we have news, some weather, and some shows. I'm starting to miss the music playing all the time already.....

Almost one week in-country

Hello Everyone, I have now been in the United Kingdom one week. And what a week it has been. James had a list of things that I needed to do when I got here because he hasn't the time. Getting established with a local vet so we can get the boys their very own passports.They will need them if we travel outside the UK/Ireland.We have already ran into a problem with that.They were micro- chipped in the USA and all the scanners have been able to read their chips until day when the local vet couldn't read it we even tried another vet and they also couldn't read them. I had to contact (e-mail)the chip company the Cary vet and the pet moving company regarding our problem.

The next item was getting established with a doctors office here they are called surgery's even the vet was called a surgery. I was able to get the paperwork and fill out the forms now I just need to take them back and then they will set up us with an appt. to see a physician for a meet and greet.I also need to get James his own National Health service number which means calling a government agency and then they will then give me another number to call which will be a local area number so we can make an appt.to speak with a local representative.

The next item was to get the correct recycling containers. One for plastic/glass /cardboard(toilet paper rolls and paper towels rolls and cereal box's) one for food scrapes which they pick up and add to area compost piles.(they are very very green here). Garden rubbish (trash) is also recycled.

I have gone out and shopped for house hold items and groceries several times in this week.

Also a couple loads of laundry We only have a washer so drying clothes on a cloudy day is a challenge. We have lots of radiators(our heating source) and an AGA see attached pix. (large gas cast iron oven). One day this week was partly cloudy and windy I could hang the clothes out ona line to dry, like the old days (the clothes smell clean and fresh). Jeans are a little stiff and don't shrink.
Now to the fun activities the boys and I have gone for several long walks. Monday we went for a 4 hr walk down by the Thames river called a towpath. it was very muddy and hard on the feet and toes lots of rocks and pebbles and did I say mud puddles. I was able to let the boys off their leads most of the time they had a great time running off energy. We passed an estate that was being filmed for a movie or TV program about young Victoria. We saw some beautiful black horses and a large carriage being loaded up. I found this out by meeting a elder women and her dog Henry.

My intention was to go to Teddington Locks along the tow path.A gentlemen and his dog (did not get the dog's name) we meet on the path informed us that Teddington was the place that the D-Day boats left from and that Glen Miller(big band music) once played here. We did not make it to the locks a quarter mile short. Elijah started to limp and so we turned around and I carried him for about 15 Min's 13 pounds is a lot to carry. I think he was foot(Paws) sore and the mud was cold. and then Darkstar not to be left out wanted to be carried. What we do for our pets luckily I had a large scarf to make in a holding pouch. The scenery was great and the river was moving fast.

Tuesday we rested for our next big outing. Wednesday we went for a 3 hr walk to a local park called Richmond Park is was a Kings hunting area in it's day. In the park you can drive your car though (gates close at sun set) walk, ride bikes and horse back ride in the park. The park is on 2500 acres . One of the things that it's famous for is the two kinds of deer in the park that run and roam freely in the park. see the attached pix.



You can pretty much get very close. the boys wanted to play. the deer just kept eating or moving away. We even have seen some wild green parrots, here is the proof look at the last two pictures closely.

Lastly we have made some friends at a local pub and one of them will be available to pet sit and walk the boys for us. That was another thing that was on the list.

Well that's all folks I'll try to made the next entries shorter and more pictures. When I leave the house I always need hat, scarf, gloves, key, money(for the bus or a drink) and umbrella and a camera.

It's Not all Peaches and Cream

We continue to enjoy living in the UK. Frankly, since the early 1990s, I'd forgotten how much I really like the European lifestyle. I really dig the walking culture of people always on the streets. I like the village culture, of every town being different and every shop and square is local and has local flavor. The US has become so homogenized, to the point the only difference between 2 towns or 2 cities is the weather.

The doggies and Diana are adjusting and we're all doing lots of walking, usually an hour or more per day. Believe it or not I've actually lost a few pounds!

But being this far away from friends and family is not easy. Last week I had a cousin pass away in Ohio. And one of my favorite aunts has now had a stroke and is in a nursing home. And it's almost impossible to stay on top of things. All of our hopes and prayers for Aunt Mabel.


We also miss our friends and family. With the doggies here, we're starting to meet a few people, but really don't have any friends. We've had Brian and Andrea here, and they've gone out of their way to make us welcome. However, this is coming to an end as they return to the US this weekend. We had lunch with them Sunday for the last time.




We're not real big on fooling ourselves, so we expected to be fairly insular here. And we knew it would be remote, but it was something we definitely wanted to do.

What I didn't expect was how much I'd miss Cassidy. I've spent most of her life making sure I could be close to her. When she was small, I saw her every other weekend, making sure I blocked the weekend out to spend with her, even if it meant working 80 hours during the other 5 days. As she's gotten older, we've both made an effort to block time out for each other. I really enjoyed it when she came over to the house to spend the entire afternoon with me the day I left to come to the UK.

Now it's much, much harder to stay in touch. We have Skype, and email, and IM, and I have a VOIP phone to use, but with the time zone difference and everyone's busy schedules it's really hard. And I miss it. with her busy schedule, it's tough to catch her when she can talk much, and it's expensive for her to call here from her cell.

I'm very proud of how mature and independent Cassidy is, but sometimes I probably take that for granted. We've always been able to communicate very frankly with each other and have to make ways to continue doing that.

I also realize that, aside from this blog, I haven't done very well at keeping in touch with other friends and family. So, it's time to change that. I'll make a more concerted effort to do so. Will also send out mine and Diana's Skype IDs in an email to everyone. Skype really works well and is a great, and cheap, way to stay in touch. Nothing I can do about time zone differences and people's schedules.

So, to all our friends and family, remember we love you and miss you. We're always thinking of you and please make that extra effort to stay in touch as well.