Casa De Morrill

I’ve unfortunately been rather remiss in posting photos that I’ve been taking all summer. Part of the reason is that I really just finished editing all of the photos a couple of weeks ago and then didn’t get around to posting them on flickr until I got back in town from my trip to Huntsville. So, here’s a recap of the trips that Sean and I’ve been on this summer and links to the resulting photos.

San Diego
This year is Sean’s and my 5th year anniversary. As part of celebrating our anniversary, we decided to take a five day cruise out of San Diego down to Mexico and then spend a couple extra days cruising around San Diego and watching the Fourth of July fireworks on the bay. The cruise was fun, but we really enjoyed our time in San Diego even more. After getting off the cruise, we wandered up north to La Jolla and had lunch up there and wandered the beaches. Beautiful! We stayed in the Gaslamp Quarter, which is part of the old town area. It was also walking distance from the bay, so we didn’t have to deal with driving to and from the fireworks, which was a definite boon. We also wandered around parts of Balboa Park. We loved the park and there’s definitely stuff that we want to go back and visit on another trip.

High School Reunion
At the end of July was my 10 year high school reunion down at ASMS. I couldn’t pass up a chance to see some of my friends, especially the awesomest roomie I ever had. Hi Evonne! It was also the first chance that I had to show Sean my high school. It’s changed a lot since I went there, but it was still great to see the school again and all of the improvements that have been made in the past 10 years. It was also great catching up with everyone in my class and seeing how well everyone’s done.

New Orleans
In order to get to my high school reunion in Mobile, AL, Sean and I actually flew in and out of New Orleans (much cheaper than Mobile!). As a bonus to the reunion, we stayed a couple of days in New Orleans. Part of me needed to see what the town that I spent so much of my childhood in looked like in the aftermath of Katrina and this was the first time that I could get up the courage to see a town so much changed from my memory.
Sean and I also took advantage of being in New Orleans to eat at two of John Besh’s restaurants, August and Luke. Two yums up to both of them. I would go back to both of them in a heart beat. August was definitely the fancier, more upscale. It was more traditional French cuisine mixed with local ingredients and a bit of Creole cooking. Luke was a bit more casual with a tendency towards a cross between a butcher’s shop and a seafood shop style menu. I’m glad we went to both of them, though. We also found the restaurant that we had had great red beans at last time we were in New Orleans. For the record, it’s called Alpine and it’s just off of the Northwest side of Jackson Square, about a block down. Seriously good red beans. Oh yeah, and there’s no way you could drag me out of New Orleans without at least one chance to eat at Cafe du Monde.
It also gave me a chance to go down to my family’s plot in one of the cemetaries and document it. I’ve got five generations of my mom’s side of the family there and I felt it was important to document that my family was there at one point even if none of us live there anymore. The house photos are of the house my great aunt used to live in in New Orleans. It survived Katrina with no problems (note that it actually sits on a hill). The current owners have also really fixed the house up well and it looks beautiful. I’m just sad that the magnolia I used to climb as a child is gone now.

Huntsville
This was a trip that Sean didn’t take with me. He had classes to attend back in Phoenix, so I went on my own. Back in January when I was last in Huntsville, Misty asked if I wanted to come and keep her company while Stephen was at DragonCon, since neither Sean nor I were planning on going to Con this year. I was like, “Are you kidding me?! A week getting to spend time with you and your two awesome kids?! Sure!” So, there I found myself at the end of August making a hop to Huntsville for 10 days to spend time with Misty and the locals as well as a few days with my family. It was a blast. I love getting to go back and spend time with Sean’s and my friends back in Huntsville as well as all of the new friends that have been added to the group since we moved away. The best part, though, was getting to spend lots of time with Misty and her two awesome kids (as previously stated). We had a great time, playing in water fountains and going to the Huntsville Botanical Gardens and just getting a chance to hang with the locals. I was sad to leave Huntsville, but alas, my job did await me back in Phoenix and I can only avoid it for so long.

Between all of these trips, I was also spending a lot of my time in Denver for work, so I haven’t spent a lot of time in Phoenix this summer. Now, though, I’m back in Phoenix, happily installed back in my own home and I think I’ll stay here for a while, if I can help it. Hope you enjoy the pics!

I’ve been up in Denver for the past couple of weeks. I flew back up on Sunday for my third week but finished my work early and caught a flight home last night. I walked into the office this morning and had about 10 people ask me, “What are you doing here?” Seriously, people. Do I annoy my coworkers so much that they have to ask that annoying question?

The first person to ask me was my task lead. I decided to be snarky. “I’m not actually Kat. Kat finally got that clone machine working, so she’s still up in Denver. I’m Kat Prime. I’m here to get all the rest of the work done that she can’t deal with while she’s on travel.” He wasn’t amused. I was, though, so it was worth it.

Second response to the question, “You’re finished already?!” “No, actually the whole testing thing was going so badly that I just decided to ditch it and come home. It was a waste of my time.”

My responses got worse and worse as the morning drew on. I’m glad to be home, but I’m ready for the day that I come home and my coworkers don’t express shock at my return.

As most of you know, since I started my job as a test lead at my company, I’ve had a pager attached to my hip almost constantly. My pager has a clip on it and that gets clipped to my jeans/pants pocket. The clip on my pager, though, is not very good, so I’m constantly dropping it. In the about 3 1/2 years that I’ve had a pager, I’ve gone through three up to this point. Yesterday, I killed my fourth pager. As I stated in my previous post, Denver got snow on Sunday night. Monday morning, I went to clean the snow off my car and the pager apparently fell off my pocket. I didn’t realize this until I got into the office and went to look at what time it is (my pager’s also become my timekeeping device since I can’t have a cell phone in my office).

That afternoon, I went back to the hotel and made sure I hadn’t just accidentally left the pager in my room. Nope. Went down to the front desk and asked if anyone had turned in a black pager (because I’m sure tons of people carry around different colored pagers now a days). Sure enough, the attendant handed over my pager. At first glance, it looked fine. I figured that I would just have to let it dry out overnight and I would be good. Nope. I looked at the screen and realized that the screen had cracked in two places and the display was completely ruined. Great.

I got to explain this to both my manager and the administrative assistant who deals with all of our pagers. Both of them got a good laugh out of this. So, from now until I get a replacement (which could be up to two weeks), my customer has my cell phone number to reach me when I’m not in the lab at their place anyway.

It’s late. I’m sitting in my hotel room on yet another one of my journeys to Denver. It’s currently snowing outside. The snow started accumulating on the side of the roads while I was driving from the airport to my hotel. By the time I got to my hotel, there was the hint of snow on the roads. I’m still wired from driving. Road conditions like this, late at night, make me even more alert than I normally am driving. So, now, I just have to wait until the buzz wears off so that I can get at least a few hours of sleep before heading into the office up here in the morning, amidst a white landscape. Excuse me as I kick myself for not bringing my camera with me.

While watching the Super Bowl commercials (we don’t really watch the game, we fast forward through the game and just watch the commercials), I got through the backlog of photos that have been sitting on my computer since Labor Day weekend. Yes, I’m a slacker. Yes, I’ve been busy and just haven’t had the motivation until recently to start going through my photos again. So, without further ado, here are some links to the photos that I’ve finally posted.

Atlanta Aquarium - While we were in Atlanta before driving to Amy & Jack’s wedding, we decided to visit the new Atlanta Aquarium. We were really glad we did because it was beautiful.

Amy & Jack’s Wedding - Since I was a bridesmaid in the wedding and Sean was a groomsman, we didn’t get any shots of the actual wedding, but I did get a few of Amy and Stephanie getting their hair done up.

Tortilla Flats - Miata vs Corvette Drive-Out - Every once in a while Sean and I convince our friend Nathaniel to bring his Corvette Z06 out. On this particular day, there were no clouds in the sky (a pre-requisite for the car being taken out of the garage) and the weather cooperated with us for a beautiful drive out to Tortilla Flats.

Chiricahua Mountains - Sean and I needed a weekend to unplug so we drove out to the middle of nowhere (I’m not kidding, look on a map) and went camping for a weekend. All electronics were off. Just a fire, a tent and ourselves to keep each other company. It was wonderful.

Boyce Thompson Arboretum - While my parents were out here at Thanksgiving, we took a day trip out to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum. There was supposed to be fall color out there. We didn’t see very much fall color, but the grounds were still very beautiful and we all had a pleasant hike around the property.

Grand Canyon - New Year’s 2008 - Lisa asked if we could all go to the Grand Canyon this past Christmas when they came out. We wound up driving to Flagstaff and taking a day trip to the Grand Canyon. The drive was gorgeous and there was just enough snow around to make all of us happy.

Flagstaff - New Year’s 2008 - On our way back from the Grand Canyon with Sean’s parents, we drove down through Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon. Several pretty winter pictures resulted.

Huntsville Visit With Friends - Sean and I flew back to Huntsville recently to visit friends and family for a weekend. Misty & Stephen held a gathering for us while we were back so we could see everyone and the latest generation of geeks that have been born lately.

Liza’s Quilt - If you’ve asked me what project I’ve been working on for the past year and a half or so, my answer would have been this quilt. I could only work on it every once and a while and hand quilting is not fast, but it was worth every second of work once I finished it.