Work Continues

Who would have thought selling a house would be so much work?! We continue to work to tidy up, pack up, clean up, etc. We also have a re-tiling effort ongoing in the master bathroom. It should turn out pretty nice. It's a wonder we didn't do it sooner so that we could enjoy it!

In other news, we had a contract (offer) accepted on a house that we would like to purchase. We actually found a house much sooner than we expected. Such is life - hopefully it won't take us long to sell this house. Here is a picture of our future (hopefully) home. Click the picture to see more pictures of it.

Z Machine Sets Unexpected Earth Temperature Record

I found this on the web and thougth it was absolutely amazing (text from APOD). The Z Machine running at Sandia National Laboratories created a plasma that was unexpectedly hot. The plasma reached a temperature in excess of two billion Kelvin, making it arguably the hottest human made thing ever in the history of the Earth and, for a brief time, hotter than the interiors of stars. The Z Machine experiment, pictured above, purposely creates high temperatures by focusing 20 million amps of electricity into a small region further confined by a magnetic field. Vertical wires give the Z Machine its name. During the unexpected powerful contained explosion, the Z machine released about 80 times the world's entire electrical power usage for a brief fraction of a second. Experiments with the Z Machine are helping to explain the physics of Solar flares, design more efficient nuclear fusion plants, test materials under extreme heat, and gather data for the computer modeling of nuclear explosions.

House For Sale

So, Molly and I are putting the house on the market. We figured it was a good starter house, but it's time for us to move on. Right now we're finishing up those projects we've let linger and generally getting the place into it's top condition. It doesn't seem like that long ago that I bought it (March, 2001), but that was 5 years ago! Hopefully we'll find something that matches all or most of our criteria. We definitely learned a lot owning this one, and we're looking forward to applying it to this time around!

Central America

My first near-real-time blog post...

At the end of February, Molly and I went on a cruise to Central America with our friends Josh and Lisa. Our port of call was LaPorte, Texas (Spanish for The Port) and we spent days in Cozumel, Mexico; Roatan, Honduras; and Belize City, Belize.

This picture is of Molly and I in front of El Castillo at the Mayan ruin of Xunantunich. El Castillo is a pyramid that stands 130 feet. Xunantunich is in Western Belize about 500 meters from Guatemala.

Josh and Lisa wrote extensively about the cruise. Read more in their blog.

Honeymoon in the Mediterranean

In May of 2004, for our Honeymoon, we took a cruise in the Mediterranean Sea. Our port of call was Rome, Italy and we visited Naples, Italy; Santorini, Greece; Mykonos, Greece; Valletta, Malta; Barcelona, Spain; and Nice, France. To the left is a random sampling of pictures. You'll see, from left: St. Peter's Basilica (outside and inside), The Pantheon at night (we were having dinner right there), Mt. Vesuvius' crater, Mike and Molly in front of Mt. Vesuvius (this link is a live webcam), Mykonos, the inside of St John’s Cathedral in Valletta, Malta, Temple of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain, and Molly in Nice, France.

Engagement Trip to Scandinavia

In April of 2003, Molly and I took a two week trip to Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. This is where I proposed to her. The image to the right is the one we used for our engagement notice. It is chocked full of pictures from our trip. All 3 of the countries are represented. One of our favorite stops was the Vasa Mueseum in Stockholm. It's centerpiece is a 17th century warship that sank on the maiden voyage. It was raised in the 1950's. Check out the Museum site to learn more; it's facinating! While in Stockholm we stayed in the Gustav Vasa Hotel, which was right across the street from the Gustav Vasa Church.

Man fears Time, yet Time fears the Pyramids (Arab proverb)

The Great Pyramid is 451 feet tall. There are approximately 2 million blocks of stone, each weighing over 2 tons. This is the only one of the seven ancient wonders to still stand. You can see Molly at the base of the pyramid. This gives a good perspective as to how big the thing really is. This is from our trip to Egypt in April of 2005.

Below is a collage of a few other pictures from the trip.