Sunday Golf Session

I went golfing today with some friends from work and it was pretty awesome.  We did Deep Cliff which is a really easy 18 hole golf course, and I won't brag about breaking 100 since I think you would have to be hitting it in the wrong direction not to break it.  I got 5 pars today and started out really well.  Our group of three was joined on the back 9 by this older fellow who was pretty much a pro.  He gave me some advice which I tried to follow, and it totally threw off my game, though I still think that it was good advice.  I'll try to get as good as he is, but he does have years and years of practice on me. 

Home Depot Is My New Friend

So, I have never been inside of Home Depot for more than a light bulb, a trash can, or perhaps a new hummingbird feeder for my outdoor pets, but now I can go inside Home Depot and see the massive amount of stuff that I will probably want at some point in the future. It's like a new window has opened into home repairs and accessories. I don't know how far I am going to go down this tunnel, but I am going to try to "do it myself". Perhaps this will finally prove wrong my mother's incessant mantra that I am not handy.

Unpacking: A Neverending Story

Unpacking from the big move is still going on. It's been only a week and a half and we have made quite a dent, but there is crap all over the garage. I think that there are 2 camps in the world, one that I fall into who likes to park its cars in the garage, and the other which likes to use the garage for storage of boxes. I don't know if this is directly correlated with age though, since the older you get, the more stuff you have.

Moving Miracle

So, the weekend before last, I moved to my new place in Redwood City, and it was quite a day. I think that this is the last time that I ever pack everything and move myself in a UHaul. I am going to go ahead and blame my girlfriend right now for the masses of stuff that we had to move. And I am going to thank her family, friend Shane, and these 4 guys I know from Google without whom I would have never made it to the new place. Rob, one of these guys, performed a moving miracle with a can do attitude and a little I don't know what. He was able to get everything in to the 14' UHaul so that we could only make one trip to the new place. Folks now call him One Trip Rob. I guess his 4 times of moving this last year made him quite the expert.

Okay, I'll start up again

I looked at my last blog entry and it seems as if I am still in Brazil.  The truth is that I got back a long time ago, sometime in early April.  I was supposed to stay a bit longer, but apparently work in Mountain View needed me.  I loved Brazil though and am vowing right here and now to go back.   Meanwhile, I will have to explore other places.  I think that one of the next places on the list is Africa, although I did have a trip to Oahu in June and am going to Cancun in September for my friend's wedding.  

So, there probably has been a lot to write about in the last few months, and it may come out in writing over the next few.  

The Brazil Blog

I am going to keep track of my Brazil trip on a separate blog.

Sail Plane

I went for an exciting ride in a sail plane the other day. It was in Warner Springs, which is about 20 miles from Temecula. We started at the airport at 2900 ft and were towed up to almost 7000 ft before I released the tow rope. Then I got to fly most of the way down. Compared to a small airplane, a glider is a lot different.... more rudder, it's nice and quiet, and it maneuvers very well. I only took one picture on my ride unfortunately. As we got a littled lower, the pilot took me on a couple of aerobatic maneuvers. We did some loops and a couple of hammer turns, which means that the plane gets to the top of an arch and has wings that point directly up and down. There is a moment of weighlessness, before the stall and the recovery. It's fun, but stomach wrenching. It took me about an hour to feel normal again.