AShapiro.net

With about the usual amount of warning, I found out yesterday I’m needed in California tomorrow for a meeting on Thursday. So it’s back out to Pt. Mugu this week. I haven’t been out there since late last year, so I can’t complain too much. At least I got into the Embassy Suites Mandalay Bay. I do love oceanfront rooms.

Monica’s grandmother passed away last night at the age of 84. She was airlifted to SLU hospital Saturday morning with bleeding in her brain from a fall.

I don’t even know what to say about her. She was cranky, crabby and outspoken. Even before I met her, I was told I’d know exactly where I stood with her because she’d tell me. But she was a wonderful person that loved her family and meant a lot to them.

The first time I met her, I remember her giving Mica crap, then shutting her hearing aid off so she couldn’t hear what Mica would retort with. At our wedding, when she met my parents, the first thing she said was my mom looked younger than Monica’s older sister. You never knew what to expect from her, but you knew she’d tell you whatever it was she was thinking.

Even after the took her off life-support, she struggled on for over a day. She was one tough old lady, never one to give up. I guess that’s one thing that will live on in both Mica and her dad.

I’m exhausted tonight. It’s been a particularly long week, and tonight was my green belt test. It was, by far, the nastiest karate test I’ve had to do. And my instructor didn’t put things in his original order, so I ended up having to do 50 some-odd jump kicks after about 45 minutes of heavy cardio stuff. Then I had to fight 3 times at the end. But I survived, I’m not as badly bruised as my last belt test, and I did pass the test. So that makes me happy.

Tomorrow, we’re going downtown for the first Cardinals/Cubs game at the new Busch Stadium. It’s going to be a very, very exciting night. It’s been sold out for ages, I don’t even think there were ever individual tickets to be sold for the game. All the seats had been pre-purchased with the 5,10 and 15-game packs. Mica actually used some of her award points at work to get us onto our pre-order list. So that will be a blast. We’ve got seats high above home plate so the view of the new stadium should be breathtaking.

That’s about it for now. No news on the move yet. Should be stuff starting to happen next month.

I leave you with pictures of the St. Louis Zoo from last week.

But this just takes the cake.

Just a little post Easter link, about Easter Island

I’m off for my in-laws today. Hope everyone has a great Easter.

Wow, things have been busy, so it’s nice to have a nice, fairly relaxing birthday.

So let’s see, Nashville was fun. Had some great food, got to see Opry Mills and the Nashville Zoo (not very impressive, sorry). Did a lot of fun shopping, got Mica some cool clothes, hung out and read a lot. Overall, a nice trip. Not too bad a drive either, although there were some major storms coming back.

The installation of photo gallery software on this site hasn’t gone well. Seems like it’s an issue with NFS and PHP on my host. He’s working on solving it, but he had surgery a few weeks ago so it’s not been a big priority.

For my birthday tonight, we’re going out to Joe’s Crab Shack. Mmmm, blackened salmon. Earlier today, we took the dogs on a nice walk around the Busch Wildlife Preserve. They do love to go for walks in the woods.

The past 3 weeks have been incredibly busy at work. Had a few major deadlines for big documents that I wasn’t too familiar with. I’ve also been working to start training my replacement. He started 2 weeks ago and he’s taking up a lot of my time. Hopefully, he’ll be up to speed sometime next month so I can start working on my new job. I’ve been hinting here for a bit, but now it’s official. This fall, we’ll be moving to NAS (Naval Air Station) Patuxent River, MD where I’ll be supporting the EA-18G flight test for the next year. Then it’s on to NAS China Lake, CA for another year of flight test before we’ll be coming back to St. Louis.

So that’s where things stand. As the new guy starts taking over more of my work, I hope I’ll have more time to write here. And sooner or later, one way or another, I want to start a photo gallery for my stuff on this site. Keep watching for it, it’ll happen sooner or later.

I really haven’t been good at keeping this upated lately. It’s been a crazy, crazy year. Work has been incredibly busy, Mica and I have been sick on and off all year and I spent the first month of the year travelling.

Work has been keeping me insanely busy. Since I took over the leadership of an additional team back in December, I haven’t had time to think. On the bright side, I haven’t been bored. Thankfully, tomorrow, they’re bringing in another engineer to take one of my teams off my hands. In a few weeks, things should start slowing down a bit. There are some opportunities coming up at work that I need to write about, but I’m saving that for just a bit longer.

Next week, Mica and I are heading to Nashville for half the week. My parents will be out there and they’re providing us a suite at the resort their staying at as an early birthday present. It’ll be nice to see them and we’ve never been to Nashville so it should be a great trip.

For now though, it’s back to updating this site. More to come very, very soon.

Ok, time to start changing the layout.  Things are going to be under construction for just a bit - haven’t completely had a chance to get all of the pages here updated to the new motif.  I’m doing this in preparation for adding an image gallery to the site.  Maybe this weekend, if things go well. 

Yeah, sick again.  Ugh.  This has been a rough year.  I’m certain the exceptionally warm weather has had a hand in that.  I’ll sure be glad when this winter is over. 

I’ve got to call the dive shop in Pax River tomorrow to book our dive trip this Memorial Day.  Looks like we’re going out to Morehead City, NC for the weekend.  It’ll be great fun.  I’m very excited. 

Work’s still busy as ever.  Nothing new there yet.  Still keeping my fingers crossed for some upcoming changes.