I spent a bunch of time in the front yard today. I borrowed my dads trailer, hitched it up to the van, and brought it over for some yard duty. I ripped up the side of the house, and a chunk of the from easement, and loaded the grass and dirt into the trailer. It was a lot of work, over 3 hours worth. Now I need to take the traler of refuse, and find a good home for it somewhere on the side of a road or even better some place in a nearby woods.

I'm estimating that it'll take 6 trailer fulls to clear the land of grass and dirt, and about 3 days per trailer full to load and unload. That's a goodly amount of work ahead of me. Maybe Randy can help a little when he gets here. hmmmmm.

Classes are over, and I'll summarize my week now.

Sunday
Denise and I arrived at our hotel, the Sheraton Suites, around 2pm. The hotel was wonderfully decorated inside. A river running through the large atrium lobby, water fall, restaurant, coy pond, turtles, cafe tables, lots of flora and fauna. It was a great place to sit and study. I found myself down each morning reviewing the previous day to the sound of falling water. Very peaceful. Excellent white noise.

We did a bit of shopping at the local Super Walmart (I hate Walmart)

Eric and Sharon arrived a few hours later, and we went to dinner next door at the Starlight Diner. Good food, but it left Denise and Eric feeling a little less than happy about themselves, tummy-wise. Not food poisoning per-se, but a less than pleasant sensation in the stomach. We give this a 2/5

Monday
Class began promptly at 8am, and ran through to 5pm. We broke for lunch, and at out our only day this week. Lunch was a safe meal at Chili's, although the quality was much less than we are used to at other Chili's restaurants. We give it a 3/5.

Denise went to a butterfly garden, and had a wonderful time with Mike. They returned and went swimming. Mike has really taken to the water. He sits on the step, splashing and laughing. We got a few pictures with an underwater camera. Development later.

Tuesday
More classes. We gave up eating out, and instead bought food from a newly found Publix to feed us for breakfast and lunch. Much cheaper this way.

Denise went shopping at a scary flea market. They didn't get in very far. A scary fortune teller type woman approached Denise, telling her that she was getting some very disturbing vibes and that Denise needed to have her palm read. Denise was justly freaked out, and declined, then left the premises. They did some shopping at a local party store for Mikes 1st birthday party next month, then came back and went swimming again.

Dinner we went to P.F. Changs in Boca Raton, and wandered around a rather nice shopping center. Barnes and Nobles for desert and reading, browsing at a kids furniture mart, a quick review of nostalgia looking at the old TV shows now available on DVD, and then we went to the Whole Foods Market.

Note to everybody. Avoid the Whole Foods Market. The idea is a nice one, sell natural foods and supplements. They offer a great selection of healthier foods, prepared without less desirable elements like Corn Syrup, Trans fats, processed flours, and other such food stuffs. Unfortunately, the store is a pigsty. One look by the local health department should be suficient to shut them down(we hope). We could smell the fish market from halfwalf across the store. Actually approaching the fish counter revelaed warm fish with flies buzzing around. The meat was a suspicious purple shade. The ground turkey, which normally should have some definition and look like firm brain, was instead a congealed mass of flesh, melted from the poor handling. The open trays of prepared food had a healthy crust of scum floating on the top. It was really terrifying. We wisely limited ourselved to packaged foods that were clearly still sealed, and were well within their expiration date. Eric tells us that he's been to a few other Whole Foods, and while not quite as bad as this one, were still pretty undesirable places to shop. Avoid Whole Foods and instead shop at Fresh Market.

Wednesday
More classes, and more lunch at the room.

Denise went to Walmart, then swimming.

Dinner was at a shopping district similar to Sentral Ybor called Los Olas. We ended up eating at Dan Marino's tavern. I had a very nice piece of Tuna, seared medium, while Denise had some chicken.

One happy surprise about the area was its proximity to the Ft Lauderdale Science Museum. Even better, in the open air lobby, was a giant rolling ball structure. Large bowling balls rolling all around the lobby, following 2 of three possible tracks on their way to the bottom. Unfortunately, the most interesting track, a ball clock, was not operational now. In all, the track was nice to look at, but a bit run down with age. Too bad.

Thursday
More Classes, and more lunch at the room.

Denise skipped today, and just went swimming. For dinner, we went down to the beach, and a place in Ft Lauderdale called Beach Place. It was a nice shopping place, across the street (A1A) from the beach. We arrived near sunset, and was treated to a nice rainbow over the ocean.

Dinner was had at Lulu's Bait Shack, an overly warm, open air restaurant that served pretty decent food. Eric still managed to feel ill for the eating. Dinner ended with a trip across the street to the beach. I took some nice sunset pictures of Mike on the beach, and the nice waves rolling in. Mike got his first taste of beach sand, which he didn't appreciate very much. Cleaning him in the public shower was a fun chore to boot. Walking back to the Beach Place, we were treated to a nice acoustic guitar player, and we supped some coffee and tea while we listened. It was a very nice way to spend our last night on the east coast.

Friday
More classes, and lunch at the room. We finished classes around 11am, and Eric and I parted ways to find our way back to Tampa. We'll meet up again on Monday in the office.

The drive back to Tampa was rather uneventful, if not long. 5 hours is a lot to drive. We celebrated our homecomming by eating at Estelles, our favorite mexican place in Brandon.

On the whole, I'd consider the week a success. The class was a bit long, spending a day too much in some areas, and not enough in others. I have a hunch that the course could be shortened to 4 days with no ill effects. We learned a bunch, and are much more comfortable with our environment back home. Hurray for formal training. Hurray for having a wonderful wife and son to share the week with.

Denise, Mike, and I are headed off to the east coast for some sun and education courtesy of my work. I'm going to take a class on Sun Cluster administration, where I'll learn how to take 2 or more machines, install some special clustering software, and make the machines continue to do useful work even when one of the machines breaks for whatever reasons. It's a really neat idea, and we've been using the software for over a year in production at work. I'm finally aboe to get out and take the classes so I officially know what I'm doing.

The classes themselves are over in Ft Lauderdale. After spending a weekend in Orlando with Denises family, we are ready for some more alone time. One Friday just wasn't enough. Denise will be busy with Mike and Eric's fiance finding things to do each day, while Eric and I learn about clustering. Dinners we will find together, looking for safe places to eat(Ft Lauderdale has a reputation for not having safe places to eat)

Speaking of education, I've been doing some serious slacking on the Oracle training. I think Eric and other projects at work have really distracted me, plus I'm having trouble staying focused on single tasks for long stretches of time. I've not been able to do this for a while, but it's recently become more annoying as I've attempted to take on projects that require long streches of concentration. I hesitate to say ADHD, but the symptoms I can feel are similar. I should probably talk to my doctor about this.

Friday and Saturday were Denise and Glen time. Denise arranged for her sister to watch Michael over night Friday night, while we rented a room at the Pop Century result in Disney World. Friday night, we went to dinner at Wolfgang Pucks in Downtown Disney, wandered around a bit, then drove over to Jellyrolls on the Disney Boardwalk. Jellyrolls is one of Denises favorite places to visit at Disney. Dualing Piano bar, fairly clean entertainment, and they do a good job of keeping the drunks entertained without letting them get too out of hand. I like the place too, but I find I need to bring earplugs to blot out the excessive noise. I find it rather amazing how comfortable places like this are with earplugs in. I can hear the music perfectly well, but without all the painful high frequency shrill that usually acompanies loud noise. I'm comfortable, Denise is entertained, and we are both happy together.

Finally we cooled off the night by getting some snacks from the commisary at the resort, and walking around the campus along a path next to the lake. I really like this resort, and it's quite affordable at $70/night.

Saturday, we enjoyed sleeping in late, and then ate breakfast down at the commisary. Another walk around the lake, and we headed back to watch Stephanies kids. Payback for Michael the night prior. We ended up going to the Florida mall, which was 45 minutes away from Stephanies place (ouch, long drive, 4 kids, yikes). The mall is a nice place to visit. My main goal was to find a power charger for my cell phone, else my phone wouldn't last the week in Ft Lauderdale. I did find one, and now am the proud owner of a new cell phone charger. Hurray.

I've slept on the wedding video idea, and will continue to persue a second income with this line of work. I'll probably give away 2-3 more videos to make sure I'm comfortable with the technique, and so I can experiment a little without fear of having to take and/or refund someones money. I still haven't looked at the footage I shot yesterday, but am less worried about the end result, as I'll just make the best of whatever I got. It's a learning experience, nothing more. Vince managed to take some wonderful shots(300 of them in fact, with Toivo shooting another 300), which I'll try to incorporate into the final video.

At the very least, I got out and tried something different. Now I have no regrets about never trying it at least once, and I'm going to keep plugging until I get better. Hurray for optimism.