Back in Portland
Back in Portland, sitting in a downtown Coffee People, nursing an iced mocha and partaking of the free wifi. Life is good. The weather is warm, I've got my sunscreen (this time) in case the overcast burns off, and some solo time. Came down from Juneau on Sunday for what I thought would be a quick day-and-a-half trip, but turned into an additional two-days to spend some time with my kids. A very pleasant surprise...
Julie is mildly pissed 'cause I left her after a couple of wonderful days in Juneau, and came down to Oregon just in time to miss a very rainy change in the weather. She says it rained harder yesterday than it has all summer. Sorry, dear...
The kids are getting so big. They've always been on the tall side, but I don't know whose genetics they got, or maybe they just got nutri-ated too well... But they got the intelligence genes, very smart kids: Lars was drawing RNA strands with crayons on his placemat at lunch, go figure. I'll never be able to save enough for his med school myself, so I will be passing around a cup soon, your assistance is gratefully appreciated...
We had a big lunch at the one mexican chain in Oregon that I will eat at (Mazatlan's, but that's a whole other story about getting the worst GI poisoning from the carne asada at the Muchas Gracias in Florence), then poked around in a hobby shop that catered to RC planes and boats, then saw "Cars" on the big screen and then had blizzards for dinner at the world's slowest Dairy Queen. It was some good time to re-connect without all the professionals involved.
Today is the first of August. Time flies when you're having fun and busy. I have to ink dates to some work travel still, closing out the FY books. My budget for D17 is 10 times the amount I handled in Portland, so I am trying hard to make it all come down to zero-zero for the middle of the month, and keep the bean-counters happy. The whole money-thing at District can get a little touchy, because the finance folks think it all belongs to them, but they are begrudgingly willing to let the programs borrow some of it. I am funding my Anchorage folks to head out to Cold Bay, Sand Point, and Nome to try to expand into some fisheries that we previously didn't have much contact with, mostly as a result of these so-called CDQ's, which are fisheries that sprang up as a result of coastal community (ie Native) development quota shares from dividing up the groundfish pie. This put a bunch of bucks into the Native corporations to put into their fisheries, and there hasn't been any historical safety culture there, so we have our work cut out for us. I am trying to tag along on the trip to Nome, if I can get the dates to work.
Wow, it occurs to me that I have worked the rigs in the Straits of Magellan (a previous life on active duty at MSO New Orleans, yet another story), so if I get to Nome then I will have just about spanned the entire Western hemisphere north to south. Isn't the Coast Guard great?!
Have a wonderful day.
KML
Julie is mildly pissed 'cause I left her after a couple of wonderful days in Juneau, and came down to Oregon just in time to miss a very rainy change in the weather. She says it rained harder yesterday than it has all summer. Sorry, dear...
The kids are getting so big. They've always been on the tall side, but I don't know whose genetics they got, or maybe they just got nutri-ated too well... But they got the intelligence genes, very smart kids: Lars was drawing RNA strands with crayons on his placemat at lunch, go figure. I'll never be able to save enough for his med school myself, so I will be passing around a cup soon, your assistance is gratefully appreciated...
We had a big lunch at the one mexican chain in Oregon that I will eat at (Mazatlan's, but that's a whole other story about getting the worst GI poisoning from the carne asada at the Muchas Gracias in Florence), then poked around in a hobby shop that catered to RC planes and boats, then saw "Cars" on the big screen and then had blizzards for dinner at the world's slowest Dairy Queen. It was some good time to re-connect without all the professionals involved.
Today is the first of August. Time flies when you're having fun and busy. I have to ink dates to some work travel still, closing out the FY books. My budget for D17 is 10 times the amount I handled in Portland, so I am trying hard to make it all come down to zero-zero for the middle of the month, and keep the bean-counters happy. The whole money-thing at District can get a little touchy, because the finance folks think it all belongs to them, but they are begrudgingly willing to let the programs borrow some of it. I am funding my Anchorage folks to head out to Cold Bay, Sand Point, and Nome to try to expand into some fisheries that we previously didn't have much contact with, mostly as a result of these so-called CDQ's, which are fisheries that sprang up as a result of coastal community (ie Native) development quota shares from dividing up the groundfish pie. This put a bunch of bucks into the Native corporations to put into their fisheries, and there hasn't been any historical safety culture there, so we have our work cut out for us. I am trying to tag along on the trip to Nome, if I can get the dates to work.
Wow, it occurs to me that I have worked the rigs in the Straits of Magellan (a previous life on active duty at MSO New Orleans, yet another story), so if I get to Nome then I will have just about spanned the entire Western hemisphere north to south. Isn't the Coast Guard great?!
Have a wonderful day.
KML
posted by Ken at 8:31 AM
2 Comments:
Sweetie,
I'm so proud of you, with all of your patients and tolerance it just adds to why I love you so much. I'm so glad that you get to spend some time with your kids, its about time. I wish everyone could just get along, life is just to short for all these games. I know you will hang in there to the end. Your kids deserve to know what a great person you are, they need you in their lives.
Oh and the weather sucks here. I love Alaska but not to fond of the rain.
I love you so much, can't wait to see you. BooBoo
I re-iterate the principle of four:
Have Fun.
Work Hard.
Take the Best Care of the Folks You Love.
Put Good Into the Universe.
And not necessarily in that order.
Love you, too, BooBoo.
KML
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