Max the Baby!

We have Baby!   By we, I mean Nick and Chloe.   Big baby+small Mom=30 hours of labor, but the home birth otherwise went ok:

We have not met Max yet, but N&C have been keeping us supplied with cute baby photos:

In less exciting news, we spotted a monster slug on our fence railing:

Ok, ok.  Not really a slug, but rather a fun-ly disfigured green pepper that Boris found.    And then I promptly lost to the jungle on the other side of our fence, after not taking into account that green peppers do not come with gyro balancing sensors.

Lady bugs, on the other hand, can balance just fine.    I moved this one around to various backyard flowers:

Also found him a spider web to play in:

(Yes, I rescued him afterwards).

Last month’s anti-raccoon cat food feeder got a small upgrade after they ate through my duct tape and feasted.   I used screws this time.  They got so frustrated they even tried some daytime raids, to no avail:

This makes cat very happy.   He has been fat and happy after we come home from traveling:

Traveling??  Stuck in the mud hate-to-travel homebodies Bruce and Helen have been traveling?  Why and where would they do that?  That relates to some other somewhat significant news …

For various reasons, Helen has been not happy with her job in here in Salt Lake City.   We gave it 4.5 years, but some issues simply were not resolvable.   So we have decided to check out other options.  We have been on 2 job hunting trips so far, with a bunch more to come in the next 2 months.

First stop was Charlotte NC, for a possible semi academic job.    It is one of the fastest growing cities in the country, with a pretty and vibrant downtown:

I rented a bike and biked to/from downtown.   You can kind of see me in this shinny thingy:

There is a nice river walk from downtown past where Helen would work.   She found some mulberry trees with yummy ripe berries on them.  Interestingly, none of her potential coworkers have been on that trail, right past their hospital.   Not a good indicator of work/life balance.

Next stop was Shreveport, Louisiana, an academic job.   Not as vibrant as Charlotte, but they grow some amazing trees down there: 

Next stop will be Missoula Montana.   A significantly different, non-academic job, but she is considering all kinds of different paradigms.

If we do do this, I will be selling the house here.    I will probably be getting an appraisal and listing it for sale in the next month or so.  We have been deep cleaning the house (not fun) and sorting through and taking pictures (fun!) to create this real estate web site:

  http://756northcrest.com

I will initially try a ‘FSBO’  (For Sale By Owner),  then probably revert to a real estate seller after a few months.   Lemme know if anyone has any ideas on what to add/delete/change in that listing. 

Bruce 

Dead Cacti

 

Nobody stands a chance at guessing this mystery photo.   It was taken from an unusual perspective:

I made a video with some more details on the solar water tube project I wrote about a few months ago: 

   http://misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/03/passive-solar-water-wall-battery.html

The maker of the tubes featured my some of my photos on their website. 

Last week Helen was at a conference in DC, so I took a trip to Miles City.    I took doggy, but left catty, which meant we had to figure out a reliable way to feed him, without feeding the neighborhood raccoons and birds.    I made a video describing what I came up with:

  http://misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/04/anti-raccoon-cat-feeder.html

It worked!   We came back to a live and happy cat.

I had a good visit with Mom, Scott, and Mike.     Google auto-posted some of the photos for me here:

https://plus.google.com/106916156663153973757/stories/6b489bf2-0f05-3d1e-8f22-165adb5de84f14d0eefa6d1

I joined Mom on here daily hikes with flash, here at spotted eagle:

And here on the Yellowstone,  Bantik like licking Grandma:

Here we are near Signal Butte:

Doggies like the car ride almost as much as the hike:

Especially when we drive by a cattle ranch … lots of good smells there!

Our friend Scott Elder gave us a tour of his ‘EarthShip’ house, made with ramed earth in old car tires:

They have a beautiful view of the Yellowstone:

There are some articles about his house here  and here.

In between hikes and visits we got lots accomplished.     Cleaning the garage was one of the challenges.  Scott and I filled up another couple truck and car loads to the dump and good will:

Mom is popular with the local animals.   Most of these cans are full of bird and squirrel food:

Lana, Scott and Darcy’s friend, painted the hallway (and indirectly, doggy’s tail).   I retired the old security alarm control box I had put next to my old room door about 45 years ago:

This weekend I continued my cleaning spree, this time back home in Utah.    Filled up the car for a trip to hazardous waste disposal:

I filled up part of the garage with a bunch of stuff on its way to a local charity:

That mystery photo was a bit unfair.  The only people who might have guessed are those of you who overwatered a golden barrel cactus for several years and then gingerly lifted it up and took a picture from the rotted out inside, a place few cameras tread:

I’m not good with cacti.   mostly because I don’t like them (they bite).   So I retired a mostly dead bucket full of them, with some prejudice:

We’ve had some fun guests, here from a visiting neuroscientist, demoing the latest in EEG monitoring hardware/software:

This is Helen’s Princeton classmate Esther Gokhale, who was in town presenting her healthy back therapy at  the national adult Ice Skating Championship.  Esther is known as the ‘back guru of Silcon Valley’ .

The Utah Epilepsy Association held a meeting at our house.   They are a very dedicated group:

We had our last snow storm a few weeks ago.  I went hunting for ice and water in our backyard with my macro lens:

A few more photos posted here:

  https://plus.google.com/106916156663153973757/stories/72a28431-b360-3c55-a3f7-e46ade1b6aa914cc9fce09d

Closing with a cute dog photo.   We discovered the best time to give doggy a bath … right when the laundry comes out of the dryer.  He loves the warm cloths when he is wet:

Bruce