My second sabbatical ran from the end of September through beginning of December 2009, during which my then-fiancé and I prepared for and had our wedding, went on our honeymoon in Hawai`i, and recovered from all the wedding preparation.

We got married on Halloween, and the entire wedding--ceremony and reception--were themed, so there was a huge amount of preparation. The theme was "an enchanted fairy woodland, inspired by Shakespeare's 'A Mid-Summer Night's Dream'", so everything was 16th century Italian. Sabrina and the bridesmaids all had fairy wings, and the groomsmen and I all were dressed in 16th century Italian formal wear (doublets).

• I enjoyed the first week being out and about in the beautiful weather, finding the fabric for Sabrina's dress, and helping Leslie get some of the dress cut out. I wasn't allowed to see the full pattern, so I just worked on the skirt.


• The next four weeks I drafted the patterns for the doublets and pants for me and the groomsmen, and made all those outfits plus one more fighting doublet.


• After the wedding and before we left for the honeymoon, I competed in a yearly rapier tournament and came close to winning it.


• We spent more than a week as our honeymoon enjoying Hawai`i:
  
• swimming in the ocean a couple blocks from our hotel,


• swimming with dolphins at Sea Life Park,


• attending the Polynesian Cultural Center on the north shore and the luau and firedancing show,


• hiking up to Manoa Falls, and


• shopping at Ala Moana Center: the largest open-air shopping mall in the world.


• The project work for the wedding outfits left our house, well, substantially less than clean and organized. The last part of sabbatical was a lot of recovery from all the fabric work.

New Lighting

The lighting in the main part of the house has been an eclectic mix of stuff, ranging from some lamps that were given to me by a friend to fixtures selected by the ex-wife. All of it has been insufficient for this house. Let's see--I've been in the house for what...fifteen years now!?

Since she moved in, Sabrina has been wanting to replace the lighting. Her apartment had a south-south-west facing view, and so she was very used to the sunlight. The main living area of my house, quite differently, faces north, and there are many fewer windows, those are smaller, and I put up floor to ceiling drapes. The relative darkness has been bugging her for just over a year.

Well, we fixed that this last weekend. New fixtures. New lamps. Even the kids got new ones for their rooms. Okay, so it was more money than I wanted to spend on Father's Day, but it sure does make the day memorable!

I broke my own guideline. Since wrapping up so many projects outside work, I told myself I wasn't going to do anything else that got in the way of me sewing my outfit for the wedding. Well, at least I didn't give myself a project that would last; I got everything installed (except the one we had to order) installed yesterday.

Okay, so there is one small thing. The law of unintended consequences came into play. The light switch now has 570 Watts running through it--I need a more robust one. But, that's a quick fix!

Here are some of the things we got:

• http://www.lampsplus.com/products/Apollo-Collection-Eight-Light-Chandelier__72587.html
• http://www.lampsplus.com/products/Bronze-Tortoise-Shell-Font-Floor-Lamp__98142.html
• http://www.lampsplus.com/products/Bronze-Tortoise-Shell-Font-Floor-Lamp__98142.html
• http://www.lampsplus.com/products/Casa-Sorrento-19-1-8-inch-High-Bronze-Wall-Mount__45219.html
• http://www.lampsplus.com/products/Apollo-Collection-Four-Light-Pendant-Chandelier__07324.html
• http://www.lampsplus.com/products/Fairy-Dreamer-Statue__56213.html

Performance...but with issues

When your hobby is in an organization where the political structure is very top down, like the military is, and by design, the folks at the top can do things very right, and very wrong. In the past, I've seen some very good things happen, but this last weekend was one of those times when it left...well...a lot to be desired.

I guess a good idea is to fully understand the consequences of your scheduling choices when lots of people are depending on you. The ones at the top didn't do that, and so our performance got nuked. Well, okay, shut down instantly. (But that is the same as nuked, isn't it!?)

When things happen in sequence, and they all must be done by a certain time, the delay of an earlier one affects the later one. They delayed their start by two hours, to take advantage of the view of the stars in the mountains. They ran three hours, instead of two. So our originally scheduled three hour performance stopped 45 minutes into it. And I'm the one running the performance.

With about fifteen (maybe even twenty) drummers, even more dancers, and perhaps hundreds of folks in attendance, you can imagine that the total frustration has been insanely high. As the music leader, it's my responsibility to coordinate things. Here it is Wednesday, and I've been dealing with my personal frustration and the feedback from other folks since Saturday. It took until yesterday to totally come to grips with it.

How I do it

Some friends of mine commented, asking "how I do it" (referring to all the activities and this blog). Work hard, play hard. And my journal and my lists.

Work hard--no posts here from April until the holidays. But, I do keep that journal--a very simple one, it only takes a couple minutes a day. During the holidays, I looked over it and started writing. Play hard--take some dedicated time to do these blog posts.

The cool thing about reading over my journal, by remembering what was happening, is that it reminds me of the feelings during all those activities. And looking over the journal (looking at the past) allows me to recap and then get to thinking about my goals and project lists (the future). By taking just a couple minutes to review those lists once or twice a week, it reminds me of the things I have in mind. By reviewing them frequently and making little adjustments to the priorities, it helps me "tune" my priorities to focus on the important ones that important over time (as opposed to those that seem important one day, but aren't really in the long run).

Three weeks of vacation

I'm back to work for the first time this week for three weeks. My fiancé is a night owl, and I naturally slipped into her schedule during that long, relaxing break. Wow, it was pretty darned difficult to get up to make it to work on time for the first couple of days this week!

It was a stay-cation. Didn't go anywhere. But we did get one of the major projects done!

Getting my fiancé moved in started at the beginning of April for the move at the end of May. During the week of Thanksgiving, when I was on a week of vacation, I got my paperwork caught up (yeah, more than six month's worth that had been piling up) and got all the garage sale stuff together. But the location of that stuff was the den--which, right off the main room, broke up the continuity of the main part of the house. During this vacation, all the garage sale stuff actually got moved to the garage. (And yes, I can still park two cars in my two-car garage!)

All the kitchen cabinets have been completely emptied and reorganized. All the closet shelves and cabinets in the house have been cleared and organized. All the clothes that don't get worn have been pulled from the closet racks. All the book shelves are installed and organized. All the rooms are decoarated. And the top shelf around the den (wait...excuse me...the "Captain's Quarters") now has the pirate ship and tall sail ship collection, pirate chests, and pirate booty!

The whole house--for the very first time since the idea of moving in together--is now completely organized and decorated. Now *that's* a Christmas present!!

Firearm

Years ago now, and for months, my intensely Republican friend Owain and I were discussing the Second Amendment, mostly late into the night after drum and dance practice.

You see, even though I'm a Democrat, I am also an intensely strong supporter of the First Amendment. I will fight to support other's peoples' right to completely disagree with me. Anyone who doesn't support my right to disagree with them hasn't taken the time to truly understand what the meaning of the Bill of Rights really is. Only when people are truly free to express themselves can constructive progress be made about any topic.

Well, in April 2007 I decided to put my money where my mouth was about the First Amendment, by supporting his right to own guns--even if I didn't--by joining the National Rifle Association (NRA).

The NRA monthly magainze, of course, covered the case of the Washington D.C. gun ban vs. Heller. That law was written in a way that actually made it illegal to move a firearm from one room of your house to another.

For those who really know me, you know that I'm very interested in law. (My mom told me since I was a kid that I'd make a good lawyer.) I started following the case pretty intently. When the arguments were presented to the Supreme Court, I downloaded and read the entire script of the arguments.

In doing that reading and other research, I discovered what the Founding Fathers had really meant. I've subsequently talked with a lawyer/author who has written extensively about the legal issues related to the use of deadly force in my state. He stated in our conversation that the supplies that the British soldiers were sent to confiscate were the colonists guns. Yes, the very reason that we a free country was because of the "government" of the time trying to confiscate our guns. (See the Battle of Lexington and Concord Wikipedia article for more details.)

Fast forward to Thanksgiving 2008. The day after a few of us went out shooting (for my first time since I was a very young kid, and only once at that). I got to shoot quite the range of firearms, from small to (relatively) large: .22 semi-auto pistol, .22 rifle, .32 semi-auto pistol, 9mm semi-auto pistol, .38 revolver, .40 semi-auto pistol, .44 semi-auto pistol, .45 semi-auto pistol, a 30-06 rifle, and a pistol-grip 12-gauge shotgun.

December 7th. We go up to the range to shoot, but the lanes are full, and we get there too late to wait for one to open. We go back to the new gun counter, and there are four salesmen showing guns to twice as many customers, something like a dozen (probably many more) handguns are shown during the hour. I picked up just about everyone of them, to see how they felt. Nothing special. I can't really understand how anyone can fell comfortable with any of them: handle is too thick, or the balance is way off (being a sword fighter, I understand a weapon's balance and being "tip heavy"), or something.

Just for giggles, I ask the salesman to pull out a specific one, because I'm curious. That ended up being a pricey decision that evening!

Well, I'm still a Democrat. But I am now also the owner of a very nice sidearm, the name of which many people are familiar. Well, anyone who has seen a James Bond flick, anyway! Yes, the one, the only, the Walther PPK. When I picked it up, the balance was truly, amazingly perfect for me--"the clouds opened up and the angels sang!". It is an elegant design, and exactly the caliber I want to carry (.380 ACP). The .380 is a less powerfull version (slightly shorter, less gunpowder) of the 9mm. There are many reports of 9mm rounds overpentrating (once they hit the intended target, they continue through to other unintended targets).

To go with the firearm, a year-long membership at the range. And the CCW (carry concealed weapon) class. And the cleaning kit. Oh yes, a holster, too.

It's been a month now, and I've been to the range nine times with that amazing piece. If I'm going to own it, I'm going to know how to use it, safely, properly, and skillfully.

Still found time for safety work

Somehow, during all that, I found a way to keep doing the safety work. So much so, that I got an award, and not just any award...

During the original market crash years ago, we planned to sell the building in which I was sitting, so they moved everyone down to empty space in the fab support building at the fab site. (Every fab manufacturing plant has an office building next to it where the planners, buyers, and other fab support folks sit.) Then, a couple years, later, they built another fab on the site, but this time without a fab support building. So, they booted everyone that didn't support the fab (that includes us) back to the office campus.

Right after we got moved (spring 2007), they ran the yearly evacuation drill. Having been on the evac team previously, I helped, and then subsequently joined the evac team. About the same time, our group within IT needed a safety rep; my manager and I agreed I could do it.
Fast forward spring 2008, and the guy running the safety team (of which I'm a member) goes on his sabbatical. My manager agreed again I could step up to the job, I covered for him, and got to co-chair the team when he returned.

The safety team has done some amazing things on the safety front, including creating a new, high-level recognition award specifically for safety, given only once per quarter per continent (Asia, Europe, and North America). The premier award in the North America--me!