http://www.jameswashere.net "The internet is a place where absolutely nothing happens. You need to take advantage of that." ~Strong Bad http://www.jameswashere.net/index.php?id=385 http://www.jameswashere.net/index.php?id=385 James was...glad he didn't lose his $30 state park pass...when he wrote this With the weather warming up, that means the lawn is growing fiercely again. If last year is any indication, with the way water flows our direction from the neighboring properties, our lawn will stay wet enough to grow 4-6" per week until late August. We need to get a riding mower to keep up, although the ground is rough enough that a riding mower can't handle much of it. To make things more fun, the moles love our lawn. I'd honestly estimate that before the first mowing of the year, I leveled off well over 100 hills. Since there's now less pressure to get work done on the house, I finally had time two weeks ago to use my Christmas present from Kerry: an "Astronaut" level membership to the Museum of Flight. Aside from unlimited entry to the museum that I intend to make good use of, it also came with several guest passes, so if anyone is in the area and wants to visit, let me know and I should be able to share some tickets. One of the lesser highlights since I last wrote is buying a new microwave. That shouldn't be exciting, but after spending two years with a microwave too small to even fit a bag of popcorn or our plates properly (and becoming a boring married couple?), sometimes little things become exciting. Last weekend was the county Republican caucus. I was expecting it to be a little longer than the precinct caucus, which was finished before lunch time. A couple days before it, they finally released a schedule that suggested we'd finish in time to be home for dinner. With all the interest this year's election is generating, attendance was far higher than in the past, and there was a huge number of candidates for state delegates to choose from. When I left at 11 PM, after 15 hours in a school gymnasium and not having eaten since lunch, we had only finished electing delegates and did not have time to vote on the party platform for the year. The caucus was a worthwhile and interesting experience, however, starting with the chance to hear some of the candidates for local offices speak, and lots of time to talk to other residents about various topics. It was also interesting to find out that support for Ron Paul is far higher than the media seems interested in admitting, as precinct votes for our district were reported as being 33% for Paul, 32% for Romney, and the rest split between Santorum and Gingrich. Unfortunately, with the way delegates for each candidate were coordinating votes to hold back the biggest perceived threats, only a couple Paul supporters were chosen as state delegates. However, nearly all of the alternate delegates selected were Paul supporters. We have two more weeks before Kerry and I fly down to Arizona to meet up with Joe and Susan plus Dan and Sarah to visit our parents at their new home and go camping on the Havasupai Reservation. Since the weather was great today, we spent our Easter afternoon hiking at Wallace Falls to get in shape for that trip. Hopefully, there are no conflicts with work. I'm expecting to go back to Ireland some time soon to help finish the installation work there. The last schedule I saw had me leaving this weekend. I had specifically asked my project manager whether my planned dates for visiting Arizona were acceptable, and was told that since the project's schedule was too ambiguous to ask people to try to fit their lives in around it, I should make my plans and not worry about it. So in theory, unless some major emergency comes up, there should be no complications with the Arizona trip. http://www.jameswashere.net/gallery/ Clicking on the link will take you to the photo gallery. A new page showing all photos sorted by date is in the works