Eclipse

Fin, Nigel, and I got up at 5:45 on Saturday to watch the Lunar Eclipse. It was actually rather marvellous, we watched the moon disappear behind the earth's shadow and glow a large luminous, rusty, red.

I do think I need lessons with my new camera. This was the best photo I got: 

The moon is there at the top of our street - as you can see we had an excellent view of the eclipse.
Most of the photos I took looked more like this:

Popularity

Due to the recent posting on Kate Davis' blog Needled about the story of the hat, my blog has received a hitherto unprecedented flurry of action!


This chart shows the hits on my blog for the last 2 weeks - it just made me laugh that a load of people would visit Ferretworld because of a lost hat!

The hat: a story

Those of you who are not knitters are probably blissfully unaware of the Ravelry website. Its a huge Web 3.0 application: part database, part project/knitting diary, part facebook-for-knitters. I document most of my knitting projects on the website, with a photo or two, and links to the pattern and yarn used.

A couple of weeks ago I got a message via Ravelry from fellow knitter "Strikkelise" in Bergen in Norway asking whether I had lost a knitted tam with dolls on. My first thought was 'of course not' but then I remembered that my parents were in Norway on holiday and maybe the found hat was the tam I knitted for my mother. I called Gill who confirmed that my parents had stopped in Bergen at the beginning of their vacation - maybe they were there also at the end.

There are 40 projects on Ravelry for the Dollheid pattern, but only one with bright blue dolls. After a few more messages to Norway, and a photo, we confirmed that this was indeed the blue tam I gave to Mammie for Christmas.

Gill and I were not sure whether M&F were still in Bergen, but we obtained the hotel address and the intrepid "Strikkelise" confirmed that they had been staying in the same hotel, but checked out that morning.

She kindly took the hat back to her home in Oslo, and posted it to Mammie where it safely arrived last week. By the time M&F arrived back home the arrangements had already been made for the return of the hat before Mammie had even realized that it was lost. Thank you so much "Strikkelise" for tracking us down and returning the hat. She has documented her side of the story here (in Norwegian and English).

Some might say that this proves that no-matter-what, you can't get rid of an unwanted handknit - so let that be a lesson to all my family members who regularly receive handknit gifts!

Great race

Flushed with success after my 5K race I decided to enter the Saratoga to Los Gatos Great Race. This is a 4 mile race from Saratoga down highway 9 to Los Gatos. It's a real family event and I was delighted that the boys and Nigel wanted to participate.

Here we are at the beginning - looking fresh and raring to go!


We went with Bill and Duncan, and all started off together. Duncan decided he would rather walk so we met up with them later at the finish line. I had rather expected that we would walk at least some of the way - I had no idea whether the boys could run 4 miles or not. In the end we all ran the entire distance - some slower than others!

En route we met more friends and ran in different groups for the rest of the race. It was a timed race and we all had chips - so were able to report our official times: Nigel and Adam finished first in about 47 minutes, I ran with Belis and we came in at 52 minutes, and Fin and Nikash crossed the line at about 58 minutes*.



Here we are at the finish - tired but happy. Not only are the boys looking forward to next years race but they also want me to find another race that we can all do together.

* Fin tells me he ran the whole race, and also that they found a broken radio and a flip-flop on the road....so I suspect they had some diversions along the route.

Blast off!

Fin and I went to the Library launch event on Sunday. This is to kick-off a fundraiser for new furniture and fixtures for the town's new library that will open in 2012. The theme for the event was Lauches and space so they invited Edward Lu to speak which was our main motivation for attending the event. He talked about his 3 space missions, in particular the last one which was a 6-month stay at the International Space Station with a Russian cosmonaut after travelling in a soyuz rocket.

He was an excellent speaker - entertaining to both the adults and many children in attendance. At the end of his speech he invited questions from the audience and Fin was the first one in line.



His question was "Does travelling in a rocket make you feel sick?". The answer was that it does not, but coming back to earth after 6 months of weightlessness does!

There were also some other space-related activities; here is Fin launching his stomp rocket.


Edited to link to the Weekly Times in which Fin has a quote: http://mytown.mercurynews.com/pdfs/losgatos.pdf Page 6.

3.1 miles

Today I ran in the St Patricks day 'Go Green' 5k - my first 5K and the culmination of the Couch to 5K training that I have been doing. It was an early start as the race started at 8am in Vasona Park and of course the clocks went forward overnight. There were 1700 runners, the majority were doing the half marathon, or 10K course, but there were several hundred 5K runners. Here we are at the off... I'm in the pink shirt and black capris.


The cheering crew (Nigel and boys) cycled around the course and cheered me on at several points which was lovely - and very encouraging. I have a load of photos with me getting progressively redder in the face. This photo is taken about 2.5 miles - I'm still smiling!


Adam caught this photo of me going over the finish line. I don't have my chip time yet - but my iPod registered about 39 mins. (The Nike + also recorded the distance as 3.5 miles - so maybe it's not as well calibrated as I thought!).



Finished! The boys were delighted at the food that was available at the finish line! I was pleased that I ran the entire course, and kept a consistent pace for the whole time.

It was fun to do a race almost on the doorstep - we didn't have to worry about parking as we all cycled down to the park. It was a fun atmosphere - although the race organization was rather lacking - a load of 5K runners apparently headed down the 10K route as there was no one to direct. I didn't have a problem as I run in the park all the time so knew which way to head - but it was not well marked. We did get a cute finishers medal.

I'm most pleased with myself that I really did go from couch to 5K...! Having never run before it was a really easy progression to get to running 3 miles. I started really slowly, but once I got into the routine it was really rewarding to see the distance increase every week. Now I need to set another objective to keep up the training.

New toy and some sewing

I got a new toy last week:


I was able to go to the library to try out a number of different eReaders and without much difficulty decided on the Kindle. The only disadvantage to it is the lack of library support - I can't borrow eBooks from the library in Kindle form. The size, weight, and page clarity of the Kindle compensated for being tied into Amazon and the agency pricing scheme of the publishers. I don't plan to give up print books, and still expect to use the library extensively, but for traveling the convenience of being able to take along multiple books is terrific.

I was traveling to LA last week and decided that I needed a case for the Kindle to give it some protection. I wanted an envelope case rather than a book-like case so got out my sewing machine and my box of fabric (fabrrrrrik).



I quilted a piece of fleece onto a wool tweed remnant (office skirt circa 1996), and lined the whole with some cotton batik (summer skirt circa 1999). This was really a prototype and the flap is not cut exactly and does not really lie flat. I plan to put some velcro as a fastener.



So, not the neatest but it serves the purpose and I think I will make another one more neatly next time I get a moment. The quilting gives some protection, but the case is still pretty flat and slipped neatly into my laptop bag. I read 2 books on the Kindle while I was in LA - and already really appreciating the large amount of reading matter in a small package.

So far I have managed to get the internet interface working, but not yet experimented with putting pdfs onto the Kindle. Lots of scope for messing about with it!

Quarter Century

On October 6th 1985 I walked through the doors of IBM Richmond to start my career with IBM. At the time I was really excited to land what everyone told me was a great first job - never for a moment did I imagine that 25 years later I would still be there. What's more is that I am essentially doing a very similar job to the Systems Engineer job I started in.

IBM likes to mark this anniversary as a significant milestone, although I suspect that there are fewer of us achieving this longevity of service these days. You get to choose a nice gift (in my case a watch - liked the 25 years on the railways idea of a watch). You also get taken out for a lunch by your manager, fortunately I really like my manager so lunch with her is a pleasure.



I invited the members of my team, and former team, who are local, some of whom I have known since I came to the USA in 1997 and have been long-time colleagues. My guest of honour was Christina who came over from the UK to join in the revels (and also have a holiday).

Lunch was at the Californa Cafe and I had a lovely time. I ate at the California Cafe the first time I visited San Jose in 1992 and loved Los Gatos then. For a long time I hoped, but never expected, that I would come here to live.

Its been an interesting 25 years. I have stayed in a technical role which was something that IBM always promised; career progression on a technical track. I've been on assignment - once to Rochdale, Lancashire with Woolworths, and now to the USA (much better option), as well as travelled around the world with work. I've met a lot of interesting people and made some long-lasting friends (24 years with Christina for example!). While I'm rather shocked to realize that I'm old enough to have been working for 25 years, I've really enjoyed marking this milestone and reflecting on what has already been an interesting career - and it's not over yet!

Happy Halloween

The boys managed to spin Halloween celebrations out over several events:


First up - the school parade and party on Friday featuring Harry Potter;


and Ron Weasely;

As a reward for a great win last week Adam's soccer team played in full team colours on Saturday; This is cleat inspection before the game, Adam facing forward in front:


Adam playing here in number 9 - sadly they did not win despite their fearsome appearance.

Finally on Saturday night we got invited to 2 halloween parties, and went trick-or-treating around the neighbourhood. They were so pleased that I dressed up too (I'm supposed to be Mollie Weasely).



Adam filled his candy bucket and was reduced to saying "Trick or Treat!, but actually I don't want any candy". As usual we transacted the candy-for-lego exchange!

The weather outside is frightful..

I woke up this morning to this sort of view outside the window!

They are not expecting the snow to stick, but it will remain below freezing all day. Apparently the usual 'first snow' day is November 17th. I knew it would be colder than Californina, and I did bring warm clothes, but I have been caught rather unawares by the snow!

My beautiful laundrette*

Losing the utility room meant that I lost the space for my stacked washer/dryer. While I try not to use the dryer much I do use the washing machine almost every day and the prospect of endless trips to the laundrette was somewhat depressing.

After a casual conversation with one of the contractors who said that they had previously connected washing machines on patios temporarily, Nigel and I got to work.

After a quick trip to Ace Hardware for hoses and an 18 gallon bucket we had created our temporary laundrette in a rubbermaid shed on the deck. We also get the benefit of greywater for the garden while the sprinkler system is out of action due to construction.

Nigel and I have been congratulating ourselves on the Heath_Robinson nature of the setup. I think that in the USA, Heath Robinson is not well known and people use the reference to McGuyver to describe this sort of cobbled-together contraption.

* I was shocked when I looked up the reference for the film to discover that I saw it in 1986....makes me feel old

Where in the world: Windy City edition

I spent last week on business in Chicago - and actually it was the most fun I've had while working for a long time. I was speaking at a conference, and I enjoyed both the conference and the venue. It was fun to be in a big city for a week.

Here is a photo taken on State Street under the L (elevated railroad), it seemed a quintessentially Chicago view.

Our hotel was on South Michigan Drive which is basically the main drag north/south, near several parks and close to the lake. We were near the Millenium Park and I did go and see some of the sculptures including The Bean, otherwise known as Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate, it was actually pretty great...you can see me in the green shirt taking the photo.

One afternoon I skipped out and did an architecture river tour by the Chicago Institute of Architects as recommended on Ravelry. Chicago certainly seems overloaded with excellent buildings, both public and private. I especially loved the new Public Library. This is a view from the river of the Willis tower (formerly the Sears Tower).

On the last night I went out with my team for Chicago Deep Pan pizza, which I have to say, I was not so keen on...I prefer my pizza crispy I think. However it's the local 'thing' so I had to try it. I had a nice evening and we walked back to the hotel. I stayed at the Chicago Hilton, and had this great view from my window.

I guess a lake view would have been 'nicer' but I never get tired of looking out on the city, especially from a room with excellent soundproofing.

Where in the world:Prarie edition

Living here in Silicon Valley (the Santa Clara valley) it's easy to navigatewhen driving about: to the west are clearly visible the green tree-covered Santa Cruz mountains; to the east the brown slopes of the coastal range. It was very strange then, this week, to find myself on a drive of 160 miles where there were no visible landmarks on the horizon in any direction.




This was my first visit to the praries and I was amazed at just how big the sky seemed with nothing to interrupt that horizon. The visibility was over 10 miles, and even from the top of the local hill, all I could see was rolling grasslands in every direction.




One thing about my job that I like is that I occasionally travel, and sometimes to places that I would not otherwise visit. I usually don't get any time for sightseeing - but it's great to see some other parts of this huge country.


So where was I?



And the corn was about as high as an elephant's knee!

Heatwave!

On Saturday we measured 114 degrees in the back garden (in the shade). There is only one thing to do when it gets that hot...

...dive in!

Flying the flag

Last Friday the scouts had the honour of performing the flag ceremony at the SJ Giants game. In front of a sell-out crowd the scouts walked onto the field with their flags, and saluted while the San Jose Water singers did a very creditable rendition of the National Anthem.

Adam admitted to being very nervous - but I think I would have been too in front of over 5000 fans. He is the third in the line above, wearing shorts. As the cubs walked onto the field there was an audible "aahh" from the crowd.

We all enjoyd the game - even though the Modesto Nuts won!

I have the best boss

Last week I concluded a large project which was rather stressful for me (but fortunately successful). This morning the UPS van drew up with a large box containing this:



It's a 'spa day' kit that my boss had put together; bath goodies, body lotions, chocolate, herb tea, cookies, magazine...everything I needed for a wind-down day! She is a working mother and I think truly understands what I would appreciate.

Sign of the times

The Lamborghini dealership in town has closed down.

12 years ago today

12 years ago, on March 1st 1997, I moved to the USA. I arrived with 2 cases and moved into my rented house which at the time contained 1 bed, 1 plate, 1 mug, and a kettle!

I sat on the floor in my living room and cried, things have got a lot better since then!

Taking the air

When we were in San Francisco last week we saw this flying above the bay:

Turns out it is a real life zeppelin. It is apparently filled with helium rather than hydrogen like the Hindenburg, and is moored at Moffat Field. I was quite pleased that they were actually using those old airship hangars as at one point (and maybe still) the old hangar was in danger of demolition.

Move over Martha

Merry Christmas* one and all!

Having got back from Bear we were finally getting ready for Christmas.

Unfortunately we got back to discover that someone had stolen our illuminated reindeer from the front lawn. I assume it was kids because the reindeer were in such poor repair, and the much more expensive extension cables and timers were left, but we were all upset, Finlay, in particular. We had been planning to replace them for next year - but by Christmas eve all the shops seem to have sold out of tasteful large illuminated animals. I don't think it was the taste police as suggested by my brother-in-law!

*substitute holiday of your choice