First test

A friend of Chris's mentioned to him the other day that I don't talk about work much. This is for a lot of reasons. One is that quite a few of my coworkers know about this blog. Another is that it's a start-up and therefore very concerned about intellectual property, so they don't really want me saying too much. Another is that I'm just kind of a person who leaves work at work, and since I blog at home I tend not to feel like writing about it.

That said, I did have a lot of fun at work last Friday. We were testing out a project that me and a bunch of other people had been working on for awhile. It was the first time that everyone had come together to get everything working at the same time. The CEO was there with some other VIPs. And of course I got to teach everyone about the phrase "demo effect." That is something commonly discussed in grad school - it means that the more people (and more important people) watching a live hardware demo, the less likely it is to work. It's why as grad students we video tape anything we want to show people - and even then it often seems like the video doesn't want to play on your computer (or whatever). So Friday was a bit of a fire drill. Lots of scrambling around, things breaking, excuse making... but in the end it seemed like almost everyone was happy. I got to feel like a real contributor and got to see the product being cool and wowing people.

I celebrated by spending the weekend doing very little. I went to the farmer's market, made some food for the week, hung out with Brandy and Amelia and Yasha, went to a Greek restaurant, slept in until 11 (which is a little unusual these days... my body has gotten on a schedule...), knitted. That's kind of it. I'm really enjoying not having much planned.

Goat Farm

Here's photos from the goat farm, as promised. My bookclub has been reading the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and I've just loved it. She talks in the book about how easy it is to make cheese, so I bought the cheesemaking kit (as I showed you earlier) from cheesemaking.com and tried that out and then I was trying to look for where I can buy milk locally. I found online the site of a goat dairy out in Pescadero, so I scheduled my mom and Chris and I for a tour out there. It was a fun tour - I'm not sure it's worth the $20 per person that it cost, but it was cool. I've always wanted to milk an animal (silly life goal, huh?) so now I've done that. Course now I kinda want to do it more so I told Chris that in addition to owning horses we're going to have to have some goats too. I am just thinking of the price of the tour as a charitable contribution to local agriculture, for which we get to meet some goats. I bought a ton of goat cheese while I was there too - it's so delicious! I managed to get some eggs from the goat farm also by telling a sad tale to the farm owners about how I was trying to make a meal out of all local food but I couldn't find any local eggs. So she gave us some of theirs. The photos show how cool the colors of the eggs are.

Anyway, the meal I had went really well and was almost exclusively locally grown and made. (I'm not sure where the sugar or flour in the bread came from, but that apparently is rather difficult to know...) Fun adventure....

Grant

Don't I have the cutest nephew? More post tomorrow when I show you pictures from my tour with Chris and my Mom of the goat farm in Pescadero.

One of those mornings...

I'm having one of those mornings. You know the ones. I woke up in the middle of being chased by zombies. I wore my glasses into the shower. I put on deodorant twice. I walked into work carrying my bike lock (instead of locking up my bike with it)... hopefully this mochachino out of the company machine will help me. What is a mochachino anyway?

Cheese!

So, because I'm disgustingly crafty these days and totally obsessed with local food (thanks to reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver), today I went to the farmer's market and bought tons of vegis and then came home and made my own cheese. Crazy, huh?! It wasn't even that hard! Here's the photos to prove it. It's mozzarella and it turned out pretty well - not amazing, but it was just my first try. And it was so fun! Everyone, come visit and we'll make cheese together!!



Chris though these were awesome - bloomed artichokes. I wouldn't have known before moving to California that they're big ol' thistles.

Pictures and stuff

So - some of you may have noticed (but probably not) that my website, tgeneva.com is down. Which means that some of the photos on my blog are down as well. After much meditation I have decided to not renew my web hosting, so I will no longer have tgeneva.com. I know probably no one else will even notice the difference, but I've pretty much had a personal webpage continuously for 10 years. I had noticed that almost the only thing I ever did online anymore was done through Google's blogger and picasaweb tools. So for awhile I'm going to try to go Google only.

Here's a few new photo albums, since I finally got the new iPhoto working with some form of picasaweb. First we have the new haircut photos, from the night my relatives and I drank and styled.

Second, I have the slideshow that we played at my father's funeral. The funeral home had a projector and while my family and I received visitors the show was playing in the background (which was good, because some of those people waited in line a long time and it was good they had something to watch).

I was looking through those photos again a day or two ago and it really struck me how sick he had gotten. I mean, he really looks old and sick in some of the most recent pictures. It happened kinda slowly so I didn't notice at the time I guess. It's sad. I mean, that hardly begins to describe it really. Just sad that he's gone and that he spent his whole last year so sick. I mean, still enjoying life, but definitely sick. I'm not being particularly eloquent here, but I don't really have words to describe the great depth and the many forms of my sadness.

I gave in

So most of you probably know that I went out and got Chris an iPhone because he had been drooling pitifully over them for ages. But then I became tempted too and when we went to the phone store to get me on the new network I was unableto resist and got one for myself. I'm laying in bed typing this entry on it. It is an awesome little gadget.

Loving life

So my mom and sister are at a second memorial service in Maryland for my dad right now but all I can think about is how I'm loving life. Starting yesterday afternoon when I got on my wonderful recumbent bike to leave work for a couple of days. We went out to a fun Moroccan restaurant (with belly dancers!) with good friends last night. This morning we slept in and then walked to downtown Sunnyvale to one of the best farmer's markets I've ever seen. We bought fruit and tofu and bread and unbelievably good cookies and tomatoes. So so yum. Later today I'm picking up Amelia to go to the art and wine festival with her for awhile and then meeting with bookclub tomorrow and generally hanging out around our cute cute little house. I'm so content.

Robert Lind

Sigh. I just returned from Tennessee and my father's funeral. I can't even believe it. I feel like I just attended a birthday party for my father that he, sadly, was out of town for. Sometimes when I ask Amelia where something is - and usually it's something complicated, like her dad is out of town or they gave away that toy, or whatever - she'll reply "It's hiding." The reality of my father's location is too complicated... in my mind he's hiding.

ROBERT (BOB) LIND - age 53 of Knoxville, TN, formerly of Silver Spring, MD and Oak Ridge, TN, died on August 29, 2007 after a courageous year-long battle with a glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor. He will be remembered as a wonderful husband, father, and friend. He was a gifted listener and conversationalist and always enjoyed talking with family and friends. He enjoyed spending time with his daughters, nieces, nephews, and grandson. Bob worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for 25 years as an Air Quality Control Specialist in the Energy Division. He was especially proud of his work on various clean coal projects. Bob enjoyed a long-standing culinary relationship with his "Lunch Bunch", Bo, Keith, Marty, Mikhail, and Stas. He graduated from Pennsylvania State University with both a B.S. and M.S. in meteorology. He chose a career in meteorology after working on the weather merit badge for his Eagle Scout award. While at Penn State, Bob was an enthusiastic member of the Theta Chi fraternity. He played trombone in the Penn State Blue Band, Washington Redskins Marching Band, and the Oak Ridge Community Band. He spent the past year fulfilling a lifelong dream of traveling to all 50 states; he also traveled to Europe, South Africa, Japan and Indonesia. Always up for an adventure, he enjoyed yearly hikes up Mt. LeConte with his wife and friends Dave and Sarah. He was also working on a personal best-time for running up and back to the summit of Mt. LeConte via his favorite trail, Alum Bluff. He canoed the Boundary Waters, went on safari in Africa, took his family on many road trips (some with surprising consequences), and geocached. Bob was a dedicated runner, rower, and skier. He volunteered with the Oak Ridge Rowing association and enjoyed participating in crew events. He was in the Knoxville Track Club and successfully ran the half marathon. He was a ten-year member of the MHUGA Rafting Association (�uno mas!). He attended First United Methodist Church in Oak Ridge for many years. Bob was preceded in death by his mother, Martha Lind, and nephew, Robert Neal Willis. He is survived by his wife of 32 years, Rose; father, Robert D. of Silver Spring, MD; daughters and sons-in-law, Teresa and Chris of Palo Alto, CA, Stephanie and Troy of Lynchburg, VA; grandson, Grant; brother and sister-in-law, Jack and Debby of Clarksville, MD; brother-in-law Mel and wife Sharon; sister-in-law Teresa and husband Robert; beloved nieces and nephews: Scott, Kary, Johnny, Casey, Matt, Kelley, Laura, Lauren; cousins Christine and David; special friends, Dave and Sarah Hetrick, Rich and Eileen Saylor, Steve and Katie Perry, and Bill and Ellen Rooney. The family will receive friends Saturday, September 1 from 2 to 3:45 p.m. followed by a Celebration of Life at 4:00 p.m. in the Click Funeral Home Farragut Chapel with Rev. Tom Baez officiating. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to The Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke University Medical Center, DUMC Box 3624, Durham, NC 27710 or Angel Flight, Inc., 1515 East 71st Street Ste. 312, Tulsa, OK 74136. Click Funeral Home Farragut Chapel 11915 Kingston Pike is serving the family.