July 27, 2009

I'm a little late this week as we had a very busy weekend and by the time Sunday evening rolled around and I had some free time the thought of pounding away on the keyboard just didn't seem like what I wanted to do. Last week at work was pretty calm without too much drama. Jo did a bit of traveling to her favorite destination - New York - and I made sure that the house felt loved and cherished by staying here. We continue to march ever closer to the Pfizer merger with Wyeth especially now that both the European Union and the Wyeth shareholders have given their blessing. Next big step is for the US to say it's ok - stay tuned. Friday afternoon we tackled the dismal garden as we continue to have torrential rain and cool weather which are combining to give us a bumper crop of slugs - but since we were actually trying to grow vegetables we aren't have a successful year. However, we did harvest our first crop of yellow and green beans which will figure prominently in the photos next week.

From a weekend standpoint our big event was a visit by the daughter of my college roommate. Alyssa is a chemical engineering student on a co-op program and was doing a semester at Air Products in Allentown, PA. To reinforce the "It's a small world" theorem, she is living in Kutztown, PA where my grandparents were from. Alyssa joined us Saturday morning for a whirlwind tour of southeastern CT as we attempted to show all the sites to her in about 36 hours. Remember, this isn't New York city so cramming all the sites into 36 hours isn't really as difficult as it sounds. We started with a stop at our favorite local lobster shack to enjoy a lobster roll and a photo op. This is mostly to torment those in the Midwest and West that can't stop and grab a lobster roll at the drop of a hat (but then we can't get a thick crust pizza or sopapillas - so there is some balance to the universe). Next up was a visit to the Submarine Museum associated with the submarine naval base in Groton. Then onto the Mystic seaport to see what it was like when whaling ships sailed the high seas. Learned a lot and got to see everything from the only remaining wooden whaling ship out of water being refurbished, how rope is made, and how they made ships watertight before fiberglass and steel (that is us practicing the fine art of stuffing hemp into cracks - just in case you didn't want to come all the way to CT to find out the secret watertight recipe). Then it was off to Westerly, RI to enjoy Shakespeare in the park (Two Gentlemen from Verona in case you are keeping a list of the culture we have been exposed to over the years). It was a great production, but lets be honest, Shakespearean prose leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to understanding what the heck is going on. Really felt sub-titles would have helped in modern English (American?). We figured out the plot although it is clear that Proteus gets off way too easy in the end (don't know what I'm talking about? Get out your Shakespeare and do some reading it will be good for you - oh yeah, no fair Googling it). We enjoyed pizza and homemade chocolate chip cookies for our dinner while sitting in the park waiting for the play to start. We then traipsed home thoroughly tired but feeling content on the amount of the area we had crammed in. One fun fact, we did point out to Alyssa was that she covered 5 states in 12 hours - not too many other places in the country that you can achieve that.

Sunday we woke to rainy weather - there's a leap this year - which worked fine as we enjoyed homemade blueberry pancakes (no the blueberries didn't come from the garden, we only managed three blueberries at all this year and we ate them right in the garden after picking). Alyssa had brought shoo fly pie from PA and while we considered cutting in we saved it since we had enough other tasty treats. Then we loaded into the car for day 2 of our tour. First up was walking the beach in New London and snapping a shot of Alyssa wading into the Long Island Sound. Then it was off to tour New London's Revolutionary war fort - Fort Trumbull. After a quick bite to eat, Alyssa had to pack up and head back to PA. We really enjoyed seeing Alyssa and it was nice to pick up information on what was happening with her family as we hadn't had a chance to visit them in a few years.

Afterwards, besides collapsing and catching our breath - we are getting a wee bit old to be running all over town like that - we got the laundry done, dinner made, bills paid, and ourselves ready for another work week. Jo is off to Delaware this week to work with the HR leadership team at a house her boss owns in Delaware. Me - you guessed it - keeping the home fires burning.

July 19, 2009

A fairly quiet week with little too write about. Our gooseneck flowers are blooming so they make up the photo montage this week. It is great to see all their necks pointing towards the sun. We spent the weekend weeding the garden and harvesting some fresh herbs and a few new potatoes. This coupled with the usual chores of mowing and tending the front flower bed made up the outdoor chores. We had Sheri over for dinner on Friday with the intention of going to Ocean Beach for fireworks, but about 30 minutes before we were going to leave it started to rain. Not an unexpected event for us this year, but it did wash out our evening plans. Saturday dawned overcast, in the 70's and very humid. We headed out for a long run to keep our training for the Philadelphia Distance run on track and struggled through the 8 mile course we had planned. It was the first hot/humid weather we have had and it usually takes about 2 weeks to get your body used to running in it (just a geriatric point - it used to only take 3-4 days). We followed that up with massages which always is relaxing way to deal with sore legs. Today, we are thinking of going to the beach after our yoga session and then home to prepare for the week ahead.

Work was also quiet since many people are out on their summer holiday - which is great since it allowed me to get caught up a bit with email and a few tasks that needed to be completed. Jo was in New York for two days working with the HR leadership team. In the evening, I got caught up with our budget which was behind due to vacation and business travel and paying off the Morocco trip. Throw in our usual exercise mix and that's our week. This coming week is more of the same for both of us. Jo is off to New York for three days and I'll hold down the fort at home.

July 12, 2009

We were pleasantly surprised to receive our Moroccan rugs this week. As you can see in the photos for the week we have found locations for all three. Unfortunately, neither Joann nor I were lucky enough to get a interior decorating gene so we are left wondering whether these are a good addition to the decor or not. But with what these cost us to purchase, we figured we should be using them. The one upside is the one under the kitchen table feels nice on the feet in the morning. With the arrival of the rugs our trip is now pretty much complete except for the bills that should be coming via Visa in a week or two.

Work wise this week, Jo was home all week long and had her usual mix of meetings and teleconferences to keep her busy. When your team is scattered across the entire globe many of those meetings need to happen in the evening hours on the East coast so she had a late night or two this week. I was in the southeastern portion of England at Pfizer's Sandwich research center. The travel there and back went as smoothly as it ever has and I was barely settling on my flight before they were announcing the landing. I caught up on some movies during the flight there and back although nothing that I would recommend - that is what Jo and I love about travel with movies, you can watch all the lame ones that you wouldn't want to pay money for. I ran each day I was there and managed on one day to run to the English Channel (ever wonder why it isn't called the French Channel?) and put my hand in it. Another day I ran past an old Roman fort (first fort the Roman's built when they landed in England in something like 43 AD), I couldn't get in but saw a bit of the ruins and a nice site map. My trip was about interfacing with the Sandwich team that does the same work as my team here in the states. It was very productive so I'm declaring my trip a whopping success. The only downer was I struggled to sleep each night as the hotel was a bit hot with no air conditioning which combined with the time zone differences made sleep a bit hard to get.

Came home on Friday and we promptly headed off to the North Stonington Agricultural fair (the link takes you to all the fair has to offer) to enjoy the tractor pull, dog show, and reviewing the cows and chickens (just to note, Jo gets unusually happy when she gets the chance to pet the cows - don't ask me why, I think it is a flashback to her childhood thing). We enjoyed the fair food and the wonderful weather so besides me struggling to stay awake it was a lot of fun. On Saturday, after getting our chimney inspected and cleaned and a few chores, I got caught up on my missing sleep for the week with a 3 hour nap - yes, you read right, 3 hours, I was really behind. Then, last night we headed into Westerly, RI to enjoy a nice dinner with Sheri and Bruno (it is their blog to the right, check it out) and then on to the Granite Theater for an excellent performance - for the Granite Theater - of "The Love List" by Norman Foster (I'm into links this week - no real clear reason why, just am). Today we have yoga after our morning run and then the vegetable garden needs a bit of weeding and I must spray the flowers to encourage the deer to eat elsewhere. Then it is getting mentally prepped for heading to work.

July 5, 2009

First off - Happy Fourth of July. It has been a while since the last update, primarily due to our trip to Morocco. We had a fantastic time and have too many stories to probably tell them all. We visited Fes (that is Fes in the background behind us), Essaouira (picture below artfully framed by Jo), Marrakech, and the Atlas mountains during our trip and enjoyed each place we were at. From the medina's and souks of Fes and Marrakech, to the beautiful beach and seashore at Essaouira, and the hiking among the Berber villages in the Atlas mountains, Morocco is an interesting country. We found the food fantastic and enjoyed our fair share of tangines, couscous, and pastillas (a phyllo pastry stuffed with cinnamon, chicken, and vegetables). We had a personal guide in Fes and Marrakech who did a great job and really helped us understand the sites and culture. We were glad we were able to take advantage of Jo's business trip to Casablanca to have a week's visit.

So our best story has be our carpet buying experience. We had decided before we went that we might want to purchase a new carpet - probably for the front foyer. So we dutifully informed our guide, who took us to a carpet store (one at which I'm sure he receives a commission). At which point, reality was suspended. The store sales person begins to haul out literally 30-40 carpets to show us the wide range of choices. We start to winnow down the choices at which point he quotes a price for 6 carpets - yep that's right, 6. We wanted one! We, as all the tourists I'm sure do, informed him we were only interested in one (the one we wanted is shown in the picture). He asks us to just give him our best price for 6, since we can just keep the one and sell the other 5 back in the states to cover the cost of the trip. He knows lots of tourists who have done that - yeah right. We then launch into 30 minutes of haggling trying to get the price for the one carpet we like and him trying to get our best price for 6. Eventually we wear him down, or so we thought, and he now starts trying to get our price for only 3. He quotes a price where he says he is giving us one of the 3 for free. We still try to haggle just on one. Another 20 minutes of haggling - if you do the math we have now been shopping/haggling for a carpet for an hour, you know how much I love to shop - we are about ready to leave. He says one last time what is our best price for 3 carpets, we put in the value we would probably have been willing to spend for the one we wanted and he suddenly agrees to it. And voila, we own 3 carpets. Now since he started out at 125,000 dirhams for the 3 and we are now at 48,000 dirhams we are thinking not a bad deal. Naturally, after we get back to our hotel later that day we find that a typical carpet goes for 14,000-16,000 dirhams, so all we did is get him to sell 3 carpets for roughly typical price - and remember, we only wanted 1! In looking back on the experience we can now laugh, but at the time, we were a bit shell shocked. So if anyone is looking for a really nice, brand new authentic Moroccan carpet - give us a call. We are thinking about putting two of them on eBay to see if we can sell them. The one bright spot in our carpet experience - we had the best mint tea of the entire trip at the store.

Needless to say, we had many other interesting shopping experiences in Morocco since there never is a price listed on anything. But all in all, we had a wonderful time and some great memories to reminisce on in the future. Back home, email had piled up at work that we both spent the week digging out from under. The garden is a disaster since we have continued to have torrential downpours since April. Only the beans and potatoes are looking likely as crops this year. Just to calibrate for those thinking 3/4 of inch of rain is a lot - we had 6 inches alone on Wednesday and a similar amount on Tuesday. This doesn't count the 2 inches or so we have had about every other day. Now you know why we don't have flat roofs in the east. This coming week, I'm off to Pfizer's UK research site and Joann (of course) will be home the entire week.

Hope everyone enjoyed their fourth of July break.