Tales From The Ocean

We arrived in Orlando after a long drive and picking up Stephanie and Ryan at the airport car rental near the Orlando airport on our way to my parents condo. Stephanie and Ryan arrived earlier and had rented a car up until we picked them up. We showed up at Bonnet Creek and my parents had the absolute best condo on the entire property. The view from the 19th floor was amazing.

We ended up going to Disney Springs with Stephanie and Ryan to shop for a swimsuit for Nikki. We ended up taking our time and enjoying the shops. Later that evening we watched fireworks from Universal Studios and Epcot from the balcony.

I was awoken at 2:00am with from a water alarm in the basement that triggers an alert to my phone. At first I thought it was an amber alert and didn’t check. Another alarm was sent to my phone around 6:00am, so I had to call Jonny to check the basement for flooding. Luckily the water barely made it out of the sump and there was no flooding damage. Jonny did send me a picture from our house that morning as we did get a couple inches of snow.

Sunday we ended up just hanging out and enjoying the weather after Nikki and I got up early to beat the crowds and grocery shop at the local Publix. The weather was very warm with a high of 85, but it was breezy and Nikki and I didn’t expose ourselves to too much sun the first day. We made steaks, mashed potatos and salad for dinner and it was delicious. Afterwards we went for some ice cream at Scoops located here on the resort property. We then had our picture taken as Ryan was leaving the next morning to go back to Cincinnati.

Jonny completed his entire senior year remotely due to the pandemic and he was able to save himself a lot of money by not living on campus. He also elected to not attend the graduation in person. He completed his degree in Environmental Studies and got a part time job with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division. He is hoping to be able to get something full time later on with ODNR. He is doing a lot of work on the water with the Division of Wildlife and enjoys being out in the field helping Ohio determine quantity and quality of different aquatic wildlife.

Nikki’s brother and family moved to Granville in October. We are looking forward to spending time with family that is also careful during this pandemic. We are excited to have family close by that we can include in our inner circle and feel safe around as they are practicing responsible actions to keep their family from getting Covid and the potential unknown long term effects that have started to show up in a large percentage of people that have gotten the virus even if they only showed mild symptoms

I had the privilege to attend the Kubernetes Conference held in San Diego, California this year. We were able to get out to San Diego the morning before the conference began and were able to explore San Diego a bit. We visited the Midway Museum, which is an aircraft carrier built in the late 1940’s and was in service for 50 years until the late 1990’s. I would recommend it and found it very interesting and giving you an idea of what living on one of these massive ships is like.

KubeCon is a conference held by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation located at the San Diego Conference Center. It’s a combination of Education and Collaboration on cloud development mostly based around Kubernetes Container Management. It was very informative and I was able to meet many vendors and attend a dozen seminars.

We were offered a deal through OSU to attend the Zoo Wildlights before they officially opened to the public.  It was Veterans day and Veterans were distinguished guests as well with free admission.  We met Stephanie and Marcus and wandered the entire zoo looking at all the amazing lights and seeing some of the animals.  Not all of the zoo was open for zoo lights.  The Africa section and Primate sections were both closed.  We did get to watch the artic foxes playing for quite a while.   That was worth the $5 admission right there.  We also saw polar bears, grizzly bear up close sleeping, mountain lion, moose, reindeer, elephants, rhinos, tigers, flying foxes, sloth bear, the aquarium, manatee, australia area and reptile house.  We ended up spending almost 3 and a half hours there.

Nikki and I were invited to my cousin, Leslie’s, wedding near Muskegon, Michigan. I made a gift for them as well from the woodshop. The wedding was a very nice outdoor wedding that started to sprinkle during the ceremony, but luckily didn’t do any more than that to spoil anything. The bride and groom looked amazing as well as the entire wedding party.

The reception was fun. There was an open bar, the meal was great and they had Plainwell Ice Cream Company for dessert. The live band was entertaining and I would have loved to stayed longer, but we were staying with Nikki’s dad, Ken, who was home alone as Diane was on vacation in Florida with her sisters. Ken’s health had not been great for several months and we were supposed to be helping out.

Ken’s health actually took a turn for the better though and he looked great while we were there.

Overall it was a fun fast weekend.

Stephanie and Marcus are sub-leasing their apartment in Cincinnati and moving back to Columbus while Marcus is job hunting.  Marcus is moving into his Mom’s apartment, but dogs are not allowed, so Stephanie and Braxton are moving back in with us.  Nikki and I drove down to Cincinnati to help them finish packing and load the truck.  I ended up driving the truck to Columbus and we met Marcus’ mom and boyfriend who helped unpack most of the truck into the apartment and basement storage.  We then drove to Granville and unpacked the rest of Stephanie and Braxton’s things into our house.

Stephanie is hoping to only be here a couple of months, but they are welcome as long as needed.

Today I flew into San Francisco to attend WSO2Con for work tomorrow through Wednesday. I am flying back Thursday morning and not getting into Columbus until 6:30 in the evening.

Sunday after flying in my co-workers and I had some time after we checked in and decided to walk around. We walked up Russian Hill and then back down to China Town and walked through China town all the way to pier 39. From there we stopped at an In-and-Out Burger for something to eat around Pier 43, then back down to Pier 39 for a Boat tour of the Bay, The Golden Gate Bridge, and around Alcatraz island. We then walked up to Ghirardelli Square and were going to take a trolley back to near the hotel. The line was really long and it was probably a 45 minute wait just to get on the trolley. We pulled up the lyft app and had a ride within a minute back to the front door of our hotel for $12 for the 3 of us vs. $21 on the trolley.

We ended up walking about 6 miles up and down hills. My new knee held up great. This trip last year was the reason I decided on a total knee replacement and the muscles in my legs were sore due to being out of shape, but my knee held up very well.

Staphanie and Marcus got back on Monday and offered to meet us half way to return Braxton.  They were going to be in town the following weekend were going to borrow our Focus while Marcus’ car was in the shop since Stephanie’s Honda is unreliable and parked and we could keep Braxton until then, so we took that option.  He has kept our girls playing almost non-stop for 11 days now. I think both our Golden Retrievers really like him, but they are going to sleep for a couple of days after he is gone while recovering.  He was constantly active and several times a day has the crazies and just tears around the house cutting back and forth.  I think he enjoys the carpeting as Stephanie and Marcus have hardwood floors throughout the apartment.  It was nice having him for so long.  I think he is going to miss having the playmates when he goes back to Stephanie and Marcus.

He was really happy to see Stephanie and Marcus and got excited and tore around for a while.  When Nikki and I returned home, both girls were looking for him.  Later that evening the girls appeared more playful with each other and I think they already missed his active lifestyle.