Home For a Short Time

Well, just to pick up in the sequence that I left off, it is now time for a summary of my first home leave. I had a wonderful time going home. I looked forward to getting home for a little relaxation but I must say I was going to miss all the smoking, traffic, people and of course the all encompassing AAAWWWWK ptuuuuu (spitting). The sound of that is in the air in all places from walking the street to shopping in the grocery store. You always have to watch where you are walking. The lovely sounds and smells of China. Then of course there is the bathrooms. Not seeing that short toilet so close to the ground is going to break my heart.

I started off leaving China on the 20th of Nov. I wasn't looking forward to the long flight but then I remembered that I actually got to fly business class and knew it was not going to be so bad. I flew from Dalian and then over to Seoul. That flight was short and pleasant. Once in Seoul I had a layover of about 3 hours. I thought what the heck am I going to do for 3 hours and then I remembered that I got to use the Business Lounge and get a bunch of free food and drinks. I went to the lounge and enjoyed a relaxing time. I got on line and was able to finish up some work that I didn't get done that day. I was leaving work at a bad time. We were right in the middle of a lot of tools showing up and so much work I felt bad leaving. I wasn't concerned that the work wouldn't get done as I knew Danny and Brian had it all under control. I just felt bad dumping all my work on them. Well, come to find out over the next 2 weeks I still stayed in touch and stayed in touch by email. You just can't get away from it you know.

After leaving Seoul I settled into a really nice chair in Business class. This was wonderful, it actually laid all the way down so I knew sleeping was not going to be a problem. I didn't have anyone sitting next to me either so it was quiet as well. Soon after take off they came around taking our dinner orders. I ended up eating a steak which was really good for airplane food. I ate it and decided to watch a movie. Once the movie was over I slept for about 4 hours. It was very comfortable. This went on for the duration of the 13 hour flight. Next stop, LA.

There was not much of a layover in LA. I got off the flight and walked over to the other terminal I needed to fly out of. It was about a 8 minute walk. It felt good to walk after such a long flight. I got on the next flight for Phoenix. I would be home in just another hour. I arrived in Phoenix on the same day I left. I left Dalian China on Nov 20th at 1:30 in the afternoon and arrived in Phoenix on Nov 20th at 6:30pm. Sounds like a pretty short flight huh? Trust me, it is not.

Kathy was waiting in the parking lot for me. I called her and she pulled around to pick me up. The first thing I did?? (besides kissing Kathy) was to get behind the wheel. I had not driven for almost 4 months now. I couldn't wait. Well, we headed home. I asked Kathy if she had eaten yet and she said no. I said, we are going to Red Robin on the way home. I wanted a good hamburger with those wonderful bottomless steak fries. After 4 months anything other than rice was going to taste good. During dinner Kathy was explaining to me all the things that had gone wrong at home while I was gone. It sounded as though I was going to be pretty busy for a few days fixing all those little things. So, after being gone for so long and now home, on the way home from Red Robin I past the Home Depot and mentioned that I should stop there and pick some stuff up. Now that was one real smart move on my part right? Don't worry, I didn't stop.

Sunday Kevin wanted to go to the Suns game. They had been playing really well and were tied for the best record in the NBA at the time. I got some good tickets. They were center court, and I mean center, and 19 rows up. They were playing the Detroit Pistons. It was a fun game. It was really good to spend some time with Kevin.

Here we go, tip off

Nash with the ball

Amare taking a free through

And of course, we cannot forget the Suns Dancers. That was worth the price of the ticket alone!!!!

The suns won the game. We went home and the next day was Monday. This was the day of Kevin's swim banquet. He had a great season. He was one of the captains of the team. He was able to make it to state again this year. Unfortunately I was not able to see any of his meets. The night of the banquet was really fun. Kathy was in charge of putting it all together and she did a wonderful job. There was good food in a great hall with some very good prizes that were being raffled off. There was also a silent auction too. We actually won one of those. A number of night out on the town in restaurants.

The cake for the swim team

The senior swim boys

The next few days I spent catching up around the house. Fixed many things. Had lunch with a good friend and did some shopping. Now came Thanksgiving. Since it had been so cold in China I was looking forward to going to our condo in Rocky Point (Puerto Penasco) Mexico. I knew it was going to be nice and warm down there. It was a beautiful 4 days down there.

What a beautiful day from the balcony

We didn't have turkey for thanksgiving but we had a very good steak. Brian met us down there so all four of us were together again. It had been a while since we were all together for any length of time. We just enjoyed each other. Relaxed and played games. We pulled out the Bocci Ball set and went down to the lawn and played a mean game of ball.

This is the life, just relaxing in the sun.

Kathy and Kevin in deep conversation
What a wonderful family.

We spent a total of 4 days in RP. The only bad part was when we left on Sunday we ended up waiting in line at the boarder for 3 hours. That was painful. Never again will I do that. I will come back on Monday morning from now on while down there on a holiday weekend. Brian left for Tucson on Monday and he only waited 15 minutes at the boarder.

I had a week left at home in warm weather before I had to go back to the cold China. I made the most of it. I spent as much time outside as possible. It was a really good 2 weeks at home. When I left for China it was still a very nice day. After my long flight back to Dalian when I was landing in China, there was actually snow on the ground. It was very cold. I can't wait until my next trip home again. Kathy and the boys are heading out here to China for the holidays. They will be leaving on the 22nd of Dec and get here on the 24th. I am looking forward to them being here and they are looking forward to coming. I will write more later.

It has been a while

In case you have forgotten what I look like. The beard is to keep my face warm

Well, it has been awhile since I have taken the time to sit down and catch up on the stories from here in China. I have been so very busy and it has been difficult to get time when I haven't been too tired to sit and write a new entry. I am not sure where to start. As usual I have the disaster of work and the fun of dinners out with the gang and celebrations for milestones we have reached. I am going to have to break this blog down a little. I know you will get bored reading it if it ends up being too long. I will break this done into 3 parts. I will close out this blog and start another one for the last of the three parts. It will be put together like this. A night out after a very difficult week of work, a night of celebration after reaching our first safety level 1 and 2 milestones for our first tool installation and last but not least, my home leave.

I am currently sitting in the Seoul airport writing this waiting for my next flight to go back to China. If some of the writing or sentence structure doesn't look quite right it is because I just got off a 13 hour flight from LA. I just finished my first home leave and had a good couple of weeks home relaxing. More on that later. For now, I want to start off with the first part of this blog, the night out after a very long and difficult week of work.

I think it started out as a normal week but by the end, Danny, Brian and I had really had a troublesome week. It was not easy. All three of us were all going off in different directions trying to get things going. Our general contractor was still struggling with getting materials and parts onto the site and into China. Yet, we were still being held to our original schedule. We were trying to understand the true impact of the lateness of the parts and materials and the missing of the first milestones by the contractor. This was not easy. Suddenly, everyone wants to be involved in how to fix the problems and misses. No one is short of opinions. We could see that our contractor was not moving very quickly in procuring the stuff for us so we (Intel) offered up our assistance. We began to find we could actually get things moving quicker then they could. What this means is that we had to do the job we are normally accustom to doing but do not own in this project. We as an IQ organization and the experience Rami, Danny, Brian and myself have on installation of tools is so vast that we just know what has to happen and can get it done. What we were seeing is there were many organizations that just didn't have their part done and ready so we had to step in and do their jobs as well. We then had to fend off every one's thoughts and opinions as well as just try to do our jobs. Danny, Brian and I virtually didn't see each other all week long as we were going in all directions. We all worked until late in the evenings, at least till after 7:00pm, sometimes later. This after starting at 6:30 to 7:00am each day. So, by the time Friday came around, we were ready for some relaxation.

We started off on that Friday at one of the local hangouts for drinks. Danny, Brian and I met to get a drink. Brian had called Barb to meet us there but of course they were busy because she, Wendy and Pam had a very difficult day too. After all, they had shopping to do during the day, had to then stop for lunch (with wine of course), get their nails done and squeeze in a massage before they could meet us. That is fine, we started without them. It was buy two and get one free. After Barb, Wendy and Pam joined us, we got Mike there as well as Rami eventually. After we finished up there we went across the street to Flares for a bite to eat. This is when we started having some real fun. We ordered beer and wine. We attempted to order food but it seemed as though everything we ordered they did not have that night. There was Chicken Curry without the curry or rice. There was no spaghetti or lasagna, and no rice by itself. Some of the folks ordered the chicken curry without the curry and replaced the rice with french fries. I ordered the pizza. We all started to get our dinners but it was at different times. Pam and I were the last ones to get our food. Everyone else was done by the time we got ours.

The gang just waiting to eat

In the meantime, there was a bunch of Japanese folks across the room getting very drunk and toasting all the time. Every so often there would be a loud 'Ganbei" This is Chinese for cheers! After a while it became more and more frequent. So, not wanting to be left out of the party, our team began to join in. They would yell "Ganbei" and we would too. Soon, before we knew it, they were over on our side of the room and toasting again and again. When I finally got my pizza, I could not eat all of it so I offered the Japanese folks a piece. One accepted and another came to get a piece and I pointed to my wine glass first. He then went off and purchased a whole bottle of wine for me. I was not expecting this. Well, this went on for a few hours. More and more wine, more and more cheers or Ganbei. At one point we were and they were toasting everything. Also there was a time when Danny reached over and grabbed my head and kiss my round bald head. This seemed to really get the Japanese excited. They pointed over to one of their colleges and he jumped up and ran over. I was not sure what to think of that but the rest of the night Brian was toasting to the tune of not Ganbei bur DonGay. It was time to close shop at that point. The Japanese folks left and our team also left and went across the street to the Obsidian. We drank for a few more hours and then headed home. Jackie and Nicholas hung out all night waiting for us so they made sure we made it home safely.

Celebration and cheers start rising up across the room

What the heck is all the noise and ruckus?
As you can see, Pam wasn't so sure about what was going on either

By the end of the night we were toasting with the Japanese.Ganbei!
Jackie was waiting for Brian and Barb

Nicholas was kind enough to hang out to make sure I was safe

Well, we finished up that week with a bang. We were tired by the end but sure had a fun and relaxing time at the end. It is a real pleasure working with these guys. We are able to support each other and help each other get through the difficult times. It will continue to get busy and I know we are going to have very difficult times ahead. But, just look at the fun in a wonderful country we are having. It is all good.

Now, to go into the next week and what we did as a team. Again, the week started out being very busy and still behind schedule. We had not made much progress once again. This week we had a goal set and the schedule milestone set for a safety level one and two sign off for our first metrology tools. This was going to be a major accomplishment if in fact we could achieve it. At the beginning of the week it did not look possible. The whole team worked very hard and very close with our contractor to pull out all the stops to keep the tool on track and meet the schedule. Well, by late Friday afternoon, Bill was able to achieve the SL1 but not he SL2. That is fine as the SL2 usually happens a couple days later anyway. It just would have been good to hit both of them. Either way, this was a major accomplishment. It was our first safety level sign off and worth a celebration. Of course, we look for any reason to have a celebration.

For this celebration, Rami bought the drinks for the team until the women showed up and people beside our IQ team where there. That is fine, we got a lot of drinking in before everyone else showed up. We started out at Friends bar in Dalian on Saturday night.

A little blurry but it could be us!

We held our own until the better halves got to the party. Once the lady's showed up, all bets were off. They had spent a few hours in a social hour (or two) drinking wine. That started sometime in the afternoon. We had a good time just talking, drinking, having fun for the rest of the evening. Once again, when there is alcohol involved, Danny seems to like the top of my bald head. He kissed me once again and you know what, it started a chain reaction with everyone. They all began to pick on me again. We were toasting to DonGay and it just kept going. We obviously are a very loving group. Seems like everyone was kissing someone. All legit though.

Ahh yes, something about a bald head.

Rami loves Wendy.......

Brian loves Barb.......

Rami loves Danny.......
Everyone loves Don???????????????????????

I guess it is just that it is so cold here right now. We do have a good time. Once we finish up at Friends this night, most people were pretty well wasted. Luckily I was not as first, I don't drink a whole lot and second, someone has to stay sober to record all these events otherwise they would never remember the next day. Well, after this bar the gang decided to go to Alice Club. This is a local dance and Karaoke bar. A local hang out with very expensive drinks. We all went over there for a few hours and then from there people pretty much dispersed. I did find out from most of the attendees the next day, that they did not remember what they said or did the night before. I guess that is good for the most part because if all of them don't remember, then they don't know to be embarrassed or not. Also, the next day, most of them swore off drinking again. Yea right, I have heard that from them before and actually they do. At least until the next weekend.

Here is the female tribe.

Here's to you Danny Boy.

Here I am and.............

here are my Homies!

Well, I am going to close this now. I know it is long but as you can see, I am still having a good time here. Now that it is getting cold here, I will not be going out and about too much. I will be staying home and staying indoors where it is warm. It actually snowed here last week. Now that is cold for an Arizona boy. I will write another blog in the next couple of days to let you know how my home leave went. It was a good time to be home. I will also capture my endeavors of moving into my new apartment this next week. So much to talk about. Bye for now.

I think I am losing it

Another week and a half in China and things continue to mosey along. Nothing really exciting has been happening. With the start of real hands on work of moving equipment into the factory the hours in the day fly by quickly. It is not that there hasn't been anything to do but with work being so busy I have been so tired that I have not wanted to go out and do anything in the evenings. Even with a Halloween celebration that happened last week, I didn't have any costume to wear so I just stayed home that night.

This past week I was lucky enough to be invited over to Barb and Brian's apartment for dinner a few times. It was very kind of them to invite me. Both of them are good cooks and they take great care of me. They are always looking out for me. One night last week our normal group went out for a good Japanese dinner. We had a great time with a lot of food. As you can see we also had a good cook at our table preparing the food. At one point he flamed the shrimp. It was delicious.

You can see that we are about to enjoy our dinner. Brian, Barb, Danny and Alex are sitting here relaxing.

Here is Brian and I enjoying a glass of beer before the meal

Our Chef

Our shrimp

On Halloween Barb and Brian had Danny and I over for dinner. This was after we had worked all day in a task force mode. Unfortunately this was Saturday. If I had know we were going to have to work Saturdays here I would have never accepted the job! I thought this would just be a fun time and cheap way to see China. I am going to have to talk this over with my boss. Anyway, we had a wonderful chicken dinner that Barb made. Afterward we played a game called Mexican Train. This is a domino type of a game. It was a good game but Barb lost. We didn't rub it in too much because after all, she did cook dinner for us. She wanted a rematch after that so we decided to return on Sunday afternoon for a rematch. The next day, Danny and I met to go buy some more DVD's. I was able to purchase about 15 recent release DVD's for 95RMB. This is about $10 US dollars. Before Danny and I went back to Barb and Brian's we stopped and got a couple of pizza's from Pizza Hut. We brought it back to their place and had a good pizza dinner. After that we played the rematch of Mexican Train. Barb didn't lose this time but she didn't win either. Guess who came in last this time? It is a stupid game.

Now the beginning of this week started where last week left off with work. We are still behind, missing materials to install tools and began docking tools for move in to the factory. Monday morning we had our first process tool show up. This happened to be a tool I am responsible for. Well we started moving it into the factory and I got my first taste of what the winter is going to be like here. It was so cold and very, very windy. The temperature was 0 degree's C. That is 32 degrees F. Now, that with the wind, it was absolutely freezing. I had to walk to the dock and by the time I got from our office building to our dock on the fab, my ears were about to fall off. If anyone would have hit them they would have just crumbled. We did eventually get the tool moved into the factory and in place. A good accomplishment and just one of over 800 we have to move in. It is a start.

The next couple of days it was even colder out. We hit -5 degrees C. I have been told that in the middle of winter it will get close to -20 degrees C. I don't even know what that is in Fahrenheit. I just know it will be cold and the wind is going to kill me.

Now, tonight you may wonder why I am up so late? Right now it is 1:20 am. Well, I actually have not been up all night. I actually went to bed at 10:00 tonight. I fell right to sleep as I was exhausted. I was sound asleep and I thought I heard my alarm go off. I reached over and turned it off. I then finally got up, stumbled into the bathroom and took my shower. I shaved, brushed my teeth, got dressed went in the kitchen and made a smoothie to drink. I sat down and drank my smoothie. I turned the TV on to catch some news and at the top of the hour I was ready to catch my ride to work. I turned my phone on and noticed it said 11:58. I thought something happened to my phone. I turned it off and turned it on again. It still said 11:59. I went and got my other phone and it had the same time on it. I thought......oh no.....I then went to my room and looked at the clock......it was midnight. I was still not believing it. I went to the window and looked out. Other apartments had their lights on. Finally, for final verification, I turned my computer on. It verified that I was a complete idiot. I usually don't admit that because it confirms what my friend Don has always said about me, but none the less I am because here I am, at 1:30 in the morning and sitting fully clothed typing on my blog. If that is not an idiot what is? Well, I am now done and I am going back to bed. I can actually now sleep an extra half hour in the morning because I don't have to shave or shower.

Slow Week outside of Intel

Well, it was a very quiet week outside of Intel. It seems as though all I did was work. Way too many hours put in. We continue to struggle getting started on the move in and installation of the process tools. Our general contractor now appears to be about 4 weeks behind the original schedule. We continue to work through the issues both with our own team as well as the general contractors team. I seems like we are spinning our wheels. I feel like I worked so many hours, did so many things, did so much planning but didn't accomplish anything. That is very frustrating. I told Rami today and I feel so out of control because I have no control. That may seem hard to understand but with the way we have our contract set up with our GC, we as Intel folks are not allowed to do much execution without putting Intel in a liable position and open to claims latter in the project. I see so many inefficiencies with the way our GC is setting up and executing the project that I want to just get in there and get it done. I have to be careful not to give specific direction or tell the sub contractors what to do. I can see so many ways we can get this moving and pick up steam. We will continue to give our thoughts and suggestions at this point, but it looks as though we are starting to take more control of some things. That is fine since our GC asked us for some help.

I watched some of our sub contractors install a pedestal yesterday in the fab. This was a comic relief. It looks as though nothing happens for so long and then all of a sudden it looks like when you step on an ant hill and all the ants come out of the ground at once and attacks. That is what this looked like. A bunch of ants on a sugar cube. The people were all over it and every where. They did finally get the ped in place but it took them well over an hour. Now they just have to set it, level it, shim it and grout it before the tool can actually be placed on it for final set and the start of safety sign offs.

I have no new pictures to share this week. I did not do anything fun. The most I did was play badminton on Wednesday night. That was as usual, very fun. The rest of the nights I just came home, relaxed and tried to get to bed a little earlier. I guess I will have to figure out something fun to do this coming weekend. Tomorrow is Friday and the weekend will be upon us. I will not think about work and see what is happening around Dalian.

The best part of the week really has been learning more and more Chinese. Nicholas has really improved on his English. It is getting easier to communicate with him each day. We have a goal to learn 2 to 3 new words each day. I have learned so many words and now he is starting to teach me sentences. This is a lot harder but the challenge is good. I think Nicholas gets excited and then he starts to talk really fast in Chinese. Then I cannot understand a thing.

Well, that was my exciting week. I hope to have more to share later.

Busy week, fun downtime

This has been a week of a lot of frustrating work. We continue to be behind in the work that has to get done. Our general contractor is now about 2 weeks behind in their commitments. They do not have many of the materials on hand or ordered for us to get started on tool installations. Because of this fact, they have asked us to step in and help them. The bottom line here is that we need to make them successful so that we are successful and Intel is successful. This has caused us to have to pull out all the stops and work some pretty grueling hours to help plan and execute the plan to get things going. Well, we started pulling out all the stops and use our Intel brain power to see what we need to do. I think we ended up working 3 out of the 5 days this week late. The team put in at least 13 to 14 hours each of those days. We were working together to figure out how to get materials in the plant, how to re commit the schedule milestone dates, search for long lead items all over the world with any supplier or vendor we could find. We are still behind schedule and it could be as much as 4 to 5 weeks. We have some good plans together right now to get some of he installations started. We will be able to move in pedestals, set datums in both the fab and subfab, move in a few tools and set them. We can get the electrical conduits, cables and power distributions run. At least we can say that we have started the installs. Waiting for the other facility material for piping and mechanical work will just have to start later as we get the stuff delivered. We have slipped the start of prefac but have not changed the delivery dates of tools or safety level sign offs. We will progress forward with perseverance and fortitude. We are Intel. We will meet schedule in the long run. It is not how you start the race but how you finish.

When the weekend finally arrived I was ready for some relaxation. My driver started it out with a new solar dancing bobble head type of dash toy. This is very popular here in China. All of the drivers have them in their cars. I think that we Americans like them for some reason. Here is the one that Nicholas got for me. He has it facing me on my side of the car.

On Friday night, Danny, Brian, Barb and I went out for dinner at Flares. This is a nice little restaurant. We all relaxed a little and then walked down the street to return to the scene of last weeks infamous pajama party. This night the place was empty and we were the only 4 folks in there. What a difference. We had a couple of drinks and suddenly there was about 5 more Intel people that showed up. One of them was my manager, Rami. I had another drink and then left for home. Got home about 10:30 and called Kathy and then fell asleep.

Today was a good day. We decided to go and visit a Chinese village. Jackie, who is Brian's driver, has an uncle who lives out in a village in the country about an hour from here. He is a farmer and has been all of his life. We thought this would be a great opportunity to see how over a billion people of China actually live.

We got out to his house. He has a nice one room place that is surrounded by his small parcel of land which he farms and has an orchard on. Now, understand, when I say farm it is really farming that sustains his needs. He does not grow the fruits and vegetables for anything other then what he needs to live off of. He has a very nice garden, apple trees, pear trees, peach trees and an assortment of radishes, lettuce, cabbage, peppers and pumpkins. He also has 2 dogs, one cat, ducks, chickens, a rooster and 3 very large pigs. His house was completely built by himself.

We walked up to his place and he met us with a bowl full of pears and apples which he had just picked. We ate one and it was one of the best pears I have ever tasted. We then walked around the village and met some of the residence. They were really interested in seeing us. There about 100 people that live in this small village. They all came out of their houses to look at us. They don't normally see people like us in their village. They were very curious. They also really wanted to have their pictures taken too. They would laugh and talk while we walked around and met them.

I am telling you, in many ways, they live a wonderful life. No worries, no problems and they just enjoy their families and neighbors. We actually could learn a lot from them and how they are completely satisfied with what they have.

All in all, it was refreshing to meet them and spend some time with them. They are wonderful people and as friendly as can be. I have been honored to have met them. I hope to get out their again to visit with them before I leave next year.

Tomorrow, I am just going to relax around the apartment and maybe walk around the city a little bit. Hopefully it will be another nice day. Right now you do not know what type of day it is going to be. It changes so drastically from day to day and even hour to hour. It is getting cold and windy here now.

Wild Weekend

Ok, picture this, a number of middle aged Americans, Irishmen, Israel, Scottish, English, Chinese and someone I am not sure about, all in a bar in pajamas for a wild night of celebrating a friends birthday. Well, believe it or not that is what we had Friday night. We were having a good time enjoying our international friendships and celebrating Barbara's birthday. The theme was pajamas. We all had to wear them. Well, at least some of us did. Here are a few pictures. You can see Rami, Wendy, Brian and Barb. They had their pajamas hand made here in China.

Brian did a great job in setting this party up. We had good food, drinks, a birthday cake, good music, fireworks and a wonderful crowd. The fireworks were set off a couple of hours into the party. We did this right outside the bar. This is not a problem in China as these type of fireworks are legal. Brian had 4 pick boxes of fireworks. We shot them off. The first set was pretty good. They exploded a little lower and had whistles and sparkles when they went off. When the explosions were done we had notice the building across from where we were having the party had a little flame on the top of the building. Suddenly, we realized that it was on fire. Yes, we started a fire with the fireworks. Luckily Fireman Rami grabbed a fire extinguisher, ran into the burning building, went upstairs, stuck his head out a window and sprayed the fire. What a hero. All he needed was a damsel in distress. I never thought we had to come all the way to China to burn down a building. Anyway, all was safe and we continued with the fireworks. Why not, lighting never strikes twice in the same place right?

We finished the night off with more drinking, more eating, more music, and the eating of cake. Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too? The cake was wonderful. The friendships superb and the atmosphere unforgettable. We even had our own godfather looking over us and keeping us safe. You can see him here.

We also had Barb cut the cake so we could all get a piece. She looked great behind here cake and blew all the candles out. The evening still continued and most people left sometime after midnight. It was a long evening. You can see that it was so long that I actually needed a haircut after it was over.

And the next party is who's??????????

The next day Brian and I went and played a couple hours of badminton. We had a good time and worked up a real sweat. James joined us. After badminton we decided to go to....what else, but an Oktoberfest in China. Yes, beer and brauts. Barb wasn't feeling up to going out again so we made it a guys night out. We found the place and James, Danny and Alex joined us. The food was good, the beer was outstanding and the band was fun. Who would have thought of an Oktoberfest in China. Well, you only live once right? We stayed and ate for a while. That is a way to wrap up the weekend. On Sunday, I was tired so we didn't do anything except to do a little grocery shopping.

I guess it is time to get back to the real world and start work again tomorrow. I finished off the weekend with a fantastic home made steak dinner at Brian and Barbara's apartment. It was the first steak I had since getting here.