Travels and Other Mullings: June 2011

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Charlotte, NC

A week in Charlotte for work. Piggybackjng one project on another.

Today I went to downtown Charlotte to the office. Finally got to see the city and it is nice.

View of the Presbyterian steeple out the office window.

Taylor and Tyron Streets intersection. There is statue in each corner.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Ace's Birthday had an Aura about it.


Ace,	the birthday girl


Amy and Corky - beautiful


Corky, me and Linda


JT

A very fun time at Aura Cafe in Calhoun square. Thank you Amy for organizing and thank you Ace for being born.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Just not traveling that much these days. So you'll have to keep seeing pictures of the backyard.

The baby bunny that some of you got to see when Mom was here is still alive and growing. He/She is about twice as big already.

And here is what happens to the peonies when it rains.

The blooms get filled with water and are weighed down. This was a week ago when we got over 2 inches of rain.

They never really recover from this though most of the stems did not break.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Dutch Iris and Peonies

I love the Dutch or Siberian Iris. These are on really tall stems and are just beautiful.

My backyard has become known for the peonies. These along the garage wall are just enormous bushes. There don't seem to be as many blooms this year as there were last year. But the bushes all seem to be doing very well.

These guys get lost in the far back corner and are worth the walk to see.

Do Gooders

Since we gave up the highway clean-up volunteering, it was decided we would "do-good" things for other people. Our first Do-Gooder event was to stain Amy's neighbor's deck.

Amy's neighbor contracted a really bad case of pneumonia and was in a coma for a while. He is home now and doing much better but was not able to stain his deck.

This is the actual view you would have gotten while we were staining. None of us had stained a deck before. It was pretty easy other than having to be on your hands and knees.

Many thanks to JT for power washing the thing a few days earlier.

Dinner in Canada

Last week was a crazy one. Had a kind of last minute trip to Southfield, Michigan which is just outside of Detroit. This was a business trip. I flew out Sunday night. Had to change airlines and flights at the last minute. My American Airlines flight from Minneapolis to Chicago was very late and would cause me to miss connection to Detroit. AA switched me to Delta direct flight. It was an earlier flight (good thing) but I had arrived at the airport at expecting a 9pm flight instead I got on a 7:30pm Delta flight. I actually made it.

Anyway, Detroit is very close to Windsor, Canada. A co-worker from my previous project lives in Windsor so we agreed to have dinner in Canada.

Here are some grainy pictures from the Canadian side.

Getting into Canada was a piece of cake. Getting back to the United States was not as easy.

The border patrol asked lots of questions about what I was doing in Michigan. I had to give two forms of identification -- my passport AND driver's license.

I also answered several questions. And the same ones a few times.