Sweet home Chicago

So I'm back from overseas - again! Just under 3 weeks in the US, leaving Jo at home alone (well, apart from the zoo of animals that our house is), while I visited some lab sites and conducted a couple of training courses for new Leica field service engineers (FSEs).

First things first - long haul flights suck. No way around this fact; business class makes it slightly more tolerable, but 14 hours in the air is still 14 hours. More interesting was the leg from LA to Orlando, which (despite being up the back end of the plane in an economy seat) gave me a chance to see a broad sweep of the US. If it weren't for the coast-to-coast haze of smog, I'd say it was really beautiful. The west side is all mountains, deserts, wonderful erosion gullies and tectonic shifts. The south east is all lush farm land, irrigation circles and a precision grid of roads.

Florida from the air is just amazing - not for the land itself which is truly, dreadfully flat, but for the huge mushroom-cloud storm cells that our pilot weaved between to navigate a safe passage.

The first leg of the trip was 5 days in Florida, checking out some of the labs we have instruments in and seeing how they are going. Mostly hung out with an FSE , Thad, and I watched while he did any necessary repairs. Friday night we went downtown for a meal and to hang out on Wall Street, which is a bar district that gets fenced off for the night, an '80s cover band up one end and beer vendors on the street. Church Street was an eye-opener. Every pretty girl in town is dressed in a skimpy outfit, plonked on the street, and hired to spruik the wall-to-wall line of bars and clubs from which you can apparently get the cheapest drinks in town.

Thad and I spent a Saturday at Islands of Adventure, which is the ride park next to Universal Studios in Orlando. The Incredible Hulk rollercoaster is definitely a highlight, though despite the accelerations and loops, I still have a craving for more of that freefall feeling of classic coasters. There's nothing like the rattling and flat corners of the Big Dipper to truly terrify you.

After that I flew up to Chicago to commence training some new FSEs. 7 days for the new guys, and 3 days for an advanced course (it's fun being the expert when I've only been with the company for a few months...)

In between training, a few of us spent a Saturday in Milwaukee, and Sunday in Chicago. Milwaukee was good - a great, cheap brewery tour and a quirky bike show. In the home of the Harley you don't really expect to see Vespas, KTMs, BMWs and Ducatis wheel to wheel, but here they were. Naturally there was a good representation of choppers and hogs as well.





Chicago turned out to be a day of waiting. 90 minutes for the train. 1 hour to get up Sears Tower, and the view was pretty dull (dead flat). 45 minutes for a pizza. Half an hour for a tour bus... so we missed a few sites I wanted to get to - the Museum of Art to see the impressionists, Daley Plaza, and so on - so while we did see Buckingham fountain (from the Married with Children opening credits) we missed all those places you recognise from Ferris Bueller and The Blues Brothers.


Which leads me nicely into last Sunday's gathering - home again, and Nick's fiancé Sarah was in town, so the usual uni gang gathered at our house for a video afternoon of... yes, The Blues Brothers. OK, so half of us have seen it at least 30 times, but it's still great fun. Even better with good company.

Things at home are good. Jo is getting bigger, as is Usmeshka (whom, thanks to one of my trainees who has a Russian background, I can finally pronounce properly). Meshy has been at school but isn't getting much home training, lazy us. Jo and I were at school too - prenatal class this weekend (with one more class next week). I'm sure nothing can really prepare us though.

til next time, toodles all!

getting bigger!

The nursery was done a few weeks ago but I never got around to posting photos. A lick of paint around the picture rail and window frames, and some furniture starting to appear.



The belly continues growing... This is at about 5.5 months:


As does the dog. She now has a full set of adult front teeth, next to go are the canine teeth. She is off to school starting next week for a bit of discipline.
I'm off to the US for nearly 3 weeks soon, for work, leaving Jo and dog and cats all alone to fend for themselves! I will be training some new service engineers for a couple of weeks, and visiting some sites to check how they are using our machines. In anticipation of travelling, we went and bought a new camera today - a Panasonic DMC-FZ50 - which isn't the latest or greatest thing on the market, but I think it should meet my needs adequately (the temptation to get an SLR was strong but I resisted...). I should get back the GST when I go travelling. Also bought a carry-on bag for taking on the plane that should be a bit more presentable in business class than a grotty old backpack.

More baby shopping also - clothing clothing and more clothing! Guess it will all get used at some point though. And there's still lots more stuff to buy. Still waiting for the pram we ordered to come in to stock in Australia...

Dirty Dog

Meshy's trip to the farm...

Things that go bump in the night

Here are some photos from 19 weeks! All is going well, Jo has been a bit sick though - cold/flu.

12 Week scan

A couple of weeks late, but better than never.

The new arrivals!

Very exciting news. The little eating, pooping, crying machine has arrived. And we've still got another one on the way! Say hello to Usmeshka. It's a Russian word for Smile (according to Babelfish). She is otherwise known as Meshy though, which is less of a mouthful.


The other arrival also came - a bit more expensive though. After paying the import duty and GST, the BMW was released on Thursday, so one unregistered vehicle permit later, we were on the road (and Jo immediately gave it heaps onto the freeway). Still has the NZ plates on it too, so we didn't look too illegal driving out to pick up Meshy. It will be off to the workshop on Monday for compliancing.

Tassie!

We had our 12 week ultrasound last week, but I haven't scanned the images yet. Will post more when I get around to it.

I spent this weekend with Tom and my parents at Tom's fishing shack in Tasmania. It's located on Little Pine Dam on the central highlands, a venue not renowned for its weather. Or scenery. If you like fishing, it's heaven. If not... well, I described it as Jo's version of hell. She thought this was a bit harsh, so to summarise:

My flight was in a small, slow, bumpy, twin-prop 50-seater,
which was delayed by 1.5 hours...
The drive there was up a very twisty road (ending in about 10km of dirt road)
When we reached the shack it was about 6 degrees outside (not including wind chill)
The loo is outside (and the cistern doesn't work). No lights of course.
Central heating? - well, the place is small enough (2 rooms) that the pot-bellied stove does quite well actually.
The beds wouldn't rate as the comfiest I've slept in.
If you don't like fishing or brisk walks, the activities calendar is pretty sparse.

By now you're probably thinking I hated it, but that would be completely wrong. Sure, it's not my usual idea of a great place to get away, but it was the first time I've seen the whole family since our wedding (and as Anne commented, it was the first time we have all been in a car at the same time). I even had a swing of a fly rod for the first time in at least 20 years, with lessons from Tom. Fun! even though the whole tally for the weekend was just 1 fish. Apparently some call this sport.