May 31, 2023

Fairfax Antique Car Show

The City of Fairfax, the town we live in, is an interesting community. Once upon a time it was small out of the way hamlet isolated from the hubbub of the WMA. Nowadays, urban sprawl has encompassed Fairfax and it acts a thoroughfare through which people travel getting back and forth to work. Saying that, it’s been a pleasant place to live the 2+ years we have been here. Fairfax still is operated as a small town and presents a large number of annual events, many of which we have taken part in. The subject of today’s post is the annual Fairfax Antique Car Show held on May 20th. We…

May 21, 2023

Phase II

Well, May 5 was my last official day at work. I’ve got a bunch of leave to burn, but at the end of May, I’ll officially say farewell to the company that was the driving force behind our migration to Northern Virginia in 2007. The CEO of my company threw a nice retirement (oh oh, there’s that word) dinner for us at a restaurant in Falls Church not far from where my career with this company began some 16 years ago. My daughter Meghan and son and daughter-in-law, Jourdan and Stefani, joined us in the gala event. There were about a dozen other folks that worked closely with me over…

May 18, 2023

Seattle Part Dieu…

So, after a takeout dinner of excellent Lamb Biryani from Kanak Indian Quisine, I fell into bed and slept the good sleep. Only I was still on East Coast time, so my eyes opened automatically at 5:00 a.m. local (8:00 a.m. EDT). That’s about as long as I’m going to sleep nowadays. Years of getting up at 5:30 a.m. have left their mark. After taking a shower, I dressed and headed out toward our meeting. Stopping in at Cafe Madeline for breakfast, it’s early and I’m the only one in the place, thank goodness. Service is, as they say, sub-optimal. Luckily, there was plenty of time, so it wasn’t a…

May 7, 2023

Seattle Part Un….

Back in early April, I was voluntold to travel to Seattle to attend a meeting with a potential business partner to the company I’m contracted to. They needed someone technical in the discussions as the primary members were business types with little to no technical expertise. I’ve not typically done this in the past, but all of the others who had were, for various reasons, not available. So, lucky me I got to spend 10 hours of plane time for 2 hours of meeting. Yay! The benefit was there was going to be ample downtime to go out and exercise the new to me Fuji XF16-80 lens I bought with…

April 30, 2023

Escape from Hungary

My family and I were at a lovely retirement dinner on Thursday, which is a tale for another day, and we were talking about some of the interesting experiences that Melanie and I have had as a result of my travelling for the company. One of the most interesting experiences is what we affectionally call our “Escape from Hungary”. I had had some work scheduled for the Mediterranean in late August of 2015. So Melanie and I decided that she would meet me in Vienna, and we would have a short tour around Eastern Europe. Our plan was to start in Vienna, spend a couple of days, catch a train…