Are you a visual learner?

Take a look at this:
http://photosthatchangedtheworld.com/

The digs at UW-Milwaukee

Yesterday, Patrick and I went down to Milwaukee to get him settled into his new home away from home. He's very excited about going to school there. I forgot to take any pictures when I dropped him off. So you'll want to take the virtual tour, and pretend Patrick is standing in the frames... The actual beds and furniture are identical to those shown. It's kind of weird to see virtual stuff after just having seen the real thing.

An average day

I spent the mid-day yesterday welcoming new-comers to the Chippewa Valley Literacy Volunteers board of directors. I'm chair of the nominations committee and worked a long time to come up with four top-notch additions to the board. Welcomes to Jamie Paige, Mike Rhindo, Mary Heimstead, and Ann Kohanek.

Went to Hillcrest Country Club in Altoona, to visit Jim McGuire, where we attempted to debug my golf swing. Hadn't seen Jim in a couple years, it was troubling how distorted the swing had become, probably need to see him a bit more often than that.

The packing for UWM is intensifying, with Patrick now accumulating things in the piano room. On truck-load, estimated time of departure - this coming Monday morning. Patrick's a lucky kid, having been assigned to the $25M dorm opened this January... nice digs!

One last thing, some interesting quotes related to the business of programming a computer.

Sailboat racing!

Yesterday Byron and I joined about six other sailors from the Lake Wissota Yacht Club and raced around the lake. We had a great time in a very fresh wind, sunny exciting race. We had a little bump from another boat at the starting line, then begain the approximately 1.5 hour race. We tailed the leader never quite catching him (Joe), but eventually putting quite a distance between ourselves and remaining 5 boats. Apparently Joe wasn't used to being chased in his racing sloop, as he referred to us as "sandbaggers." His computer will determine which place we finished, based upon the handicap for our boat. It's a bit of a unique thing where your boat could conceivably cross the line last, and you would win the race... provided you did an exceptional job sailing a slow boat. I'm pretty sure we did a quite average job sailing a reasonably fast boat... we'll see.

This link (PC Magazine's top 100 undiscovered web sites) is interesting but pretty time-consuming... worth a look to how many of these sights are ones you are familiar with (or perhaps should be?)

Happy Birthday Carol !!!

Alison and I attended a fun Birthday party Sunday afternoon... we even had our picture taken with the Birthday girl... Later this morning, I'm going to take her to the airport so she can go home to her family in Brazil. She's been in Menomonie since August of last year, and I know her Mom and Dad are sooo excited to have her return home. For a parent, it's one of the most exciting parts of a youth exchange trip... having them arrive home safe and sound. They (youth exchange students) grow and change, and it's a truly unique experience being together with them again.

We will miss her greatly here in Menomonie and are planning to visit her again as soon as possible.

Rotary farewell

fare•well

–interjection
1. goodby; may you fare well: Farewell, and may we meet again in happier times.
–noun
2. an expression of good wishes at parting: They made their farewells and left.
3. leave-taking; departure: a fond farewell.
4. a party given to a person who is about to embark on a long journey, retire, leave an organization, etc.
–adjective
5. parting; valedictory; final: a farewell performance.

[Origin: 1325–75; ME farwel. See FARE, WELL1 ]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Today, Carol attended her final Rotary meeting of this exchange trip. Her words to the group were so moving, several were teary-eyed, including myself and herself. We will miss her greatly, but look forward to when she will come visit us again. She's such a capable young woman, I have little doubt we will see her again before too long.

Iowa City

Mabel can't quite understand what all the business of moving furniture around is about. Even so, we loaded up most all of Laurie's belongings and moved her off to Iowa City to begin her next adventure. She will do some mandatory law school activities this week, and then take off on a road trip which will include visits with several friends, ending with singing at a friends wedding in North Carolina.

Brian helped me move her in to her apartment on Monday. Sure seemed hotter only that much south of us! Drove through some sizable thunderstorms... those folks don't need any more water after the flooding etc...

We picked up some furniture in Andover and I got to see progress on the speedboat Brian is building, lookin' good!