Alabama, First Post!

Howdy from Alabama!

Our trip from Utah went relatively smoothly.   We packed the as with as many plants as we could and headed out about 3 weeks ago:

The car fuel line got plugged up in the middle of Nebraska, but cleared up after some slow driving:

After 3 days of driving, we arrived and closed on the new house, blew up an inflatable mattress, then crashed:

We spent 5 days sitting on pillows:

The kitchen counter made for a great standing desk:

The empty living room would have made for a great blimp hanger:

Doggy spent a lot of time watching/smelling the backyard forest from the deck:

Our stuff arrived without too much trauma ... only 4 things broke.  That storage room in the back was stuffed full of packing paper:

The piano was the biggest challenge, but they got it done without loss of life or limb:

I've re-worked a bunch of lighting, adding and switching to brighter LED lighting:

The ladder has been touring the house.   We setup our computers where the dinning table usually goes:

The spot lights and multi-colored 'water light' projector we brought from Utah work great on the wall where the 20' pipe organ pipes used to be:

One of my IBM co-workers sent me a link from a Wall Street Journal article he recently read that talked about the original owner of our house.   Dr. Blackstone had built this house in the '70s around an impressive  68 rank, 4 console pipe organ.    

They packed it up when they moved from Birmingham to Ohio 18 years ago to head a cardiac research group at the Cleveland Clinic.   Only just recently have they finished a new house on Lake Erie, again built specifically for the the pipe organ ... actually this time they have TWO pipe organs!    You can see pictures of our house back when it had the organ, as well as pictures of their impressive new house here:   

              http://www.blackstoneorgan.org

Our house is really well built (e.g. wood encased steel beams), but the crawl space was a mess.   I cleaned it up, excavating many buckets of dirt and bags full of other garbage.  The downstairs air unit was original, so I had that replaced.   This is the old one:

We were a little worried after the previous owner told us he had never opened the windows, but we discovered, after some jiggling, they still work fine:

The creek in the backyard normally flows with just a trickle, but last week, for about an hour, it gushed with water  ... under clear blue skies.    Still haven't figured out how that happened:

Boris and Irena just finished a 4 day visit with us:

We succeeded in our goal of finding them a home they both liked, not too far from ours (9 minutes):

Unlike the home they renovated in Utah, this one is in great shape already, and the backyard is lovely:

They have a fun porch to the backyard from their bedroom:

They will close in November and likely move in December.

Last picture is from some sort of Alabama Yeti Monster we found lounging in our kitchen:

Bruce

Meet Max

Last pictures from the Utah house:

We are driving to Alabama this weekend, hoping to land in the new house with stuff by end of next week.

My last 2 geek videos from Utah:

• A voice controled solar heated pool
• A new voice control interface from Amazon

We finally got down to San Francisco for a visit with Max:

Nick and Chloe happened to be there also:

They had fun with a real time photo distortion program ... Max wasn't sure what to think:




Nick did a fun post about their first 4 months with Max;

   http://blog.nickwinter.net/surprises-from-maxs-first-four-months


They rent a really nice loft apartment right across the street from the Giants baseball stadium:

Nick's office.   Max often wakes up around 4 am ... Nick gets lots of work done in the early hours:

We went on a number of hikes, using these really cool baby wrap carriers:

We had a nice lunch at the SF Samovar Tea Lounge next to the Yerba Buena park: 

We helped Nick with one of his side hobby projects, seeing if any useful info can come from a baby EEG brain wave monitor:  

Attaching wet electrodes is the trickiest part ... electrician's tape is not ideal:

Helen helped out here, contacting a company that has a new, easy/quick to put on electrode 'hat'.  We just hosted the founder/CTO of that company on a visit to Salt Lake City (our last house guest) where we each tested it out:

This is from our last pool/tub party, with doggy at his usually guard dog station (you can't get in the tub without him demanding to be lifted to his spot ... its pretty cute):

Speaking of pets ... we found a solution for the cat.   The buyer of our UT house loves cats, so we are going to try leave the cat here.  All he has to do is get along with 3 bulldogs ... should be better than flying 5000 miles to Germany:

Next post from Alabama!

Bruce

Moving houses

We picked our next hometown!   Many of you already know where, as does this all seeing, all knowing eye guy does:

The rest of you will have to scroll to the end of this post to find out.

But first, we bring you adventures with lots of recent guests.   First up, our artists friends from Moscow:

Helen entertained us for about 10 seconds as she, for the first and last time, pushed a lawn mower:

We are going to miss the night-time cityscapes from the hot-tub:

The cat is not coming with us.  A truly bizarre plan has been hatched for him ... as you can see here, he is not sold on this idea yet.   More on that later:

Our 2nd visiting family was from Germany, she a literary scholar and he a 'quant' (smart guy who uses math in clever ways to optimize real world problems):

Their daughter, Clair, had a great time:

We were not sure who would run out of energy first, Claire or Doggy ... it was close:

Helen taught her lots of things, like how to arrange flowers:

How to do water color painting:

This levitation trick she learned on her own:

We did some hiking:

And some bike race watching:

During which doggy co-existing with some other dogs that could eat 10 of him without burping:

Doggy had lots of attention:

As did the Cat:

I had a sensible plan for the Cat.  We just discovered he was chipped, and I found the original owner and arranged for a reunion.   But after 2 days, Cat found his way back here from 4 blocks away.  Helen is not convinced the original owner is a responsible owner, so she has hatched the crazy plan ... ship him to Germany to live with Clair and family.   4 blocks -vs- 5,000 miles to Germany, will be interesting to see which plan the Cat picks.

The all knowing eye guy says I should give you a clue as to where we are going:

Your challenge is to read my penmanship.   With these title contracts and a little luck, we hope to sell our UT house and then buy our next house just before or while we move:

These guys are coming with us ... if we can pry them away from their beautiful Wasatch mountain views.   Also not sure if their somewhat questionable activities will be approved of where we are going:

 Last weekend we took a 3 day vacation in La Jolla, CA, near San Diego.     Doggy took his first plane ride:

Beautiful beaches with great swimming with Seals and Seagulls:  

The trick is to go swimming early or late in the day, otherwise there are a billion people on the beach, when the temperature is swim-able.   The cold didn't stop Helen though:

Swimming was also tricky due to Doggy, who freaks out whenever he gets left behind.  Especially if he sees us drowning in the water:

 There were some cool caves:

And other scenic stuff:




This bird was debating joining us for dinner:

Ok, done with vacation photos.   This praying mantis is here to announce our new hometown:

Birmingham, Alabama!   Probably not our first pick from a it-might-be-a-little-hot point of view, but looks like a great job for Helen.    

We took a house hunting trip there a few weeks ago and found a fun house in a woodsy suburb:

It was built in '76 around a large and expensive pipe organ!   An entire wall was floor to ceiling 20'+ pipes.   This view looks from where those pipes were towards the kitchen at the other end of the house, which also had some pipes installed:

The other fun part of this house is the backyard, which is a very private woods with a small creek:

Lots more pictures, along with some 360 views, at a website the owner created here:

  http://www.1364starcrossdrive.com/

If everything works out just right, we will sell the UT house end of September, and get moved into the AL house by the time Helen starts work Oct 1st.  Should be an interesting adventure!

Bruce