Museum Visit

More from Zuni:

Here we are in the Life and Science museum. They had a cloud bowl where you could touch a cloud–the top was cool, but the farther down you put your hand the warmer it got. Very interesting. Then they had a tornado of cloud to show how a tornado begins and what it looks like. MD held on to the pole because she was scared that the tornado was real. No matter how I explained that it would not suck her up into it…she still held on. And lastly, MD was inspecting insects with a huge magnifier. She’d make a perfect Inspector don’t you think?

More to come.

Cloud Bowl

Tornado Simulator

Inspector

Travel to Raleigh

We got back from a business trip yesterday and today Zuni sent out some pictures from their outings:

[jModule] had a conference in Raleigh earlier this week and the girls and I took field trips to the Morehead Planetarium, Pullen Park, Museum of Life and Science, and NC Natural Science Museum.

These pictures are from Morehead Planetarium and Pullen Park. As you can tell, the last picture the geese came up to where the girls were and typical CE fashion, she had to tell MD what was going on!

More to come.

Planetarium

Pullen Park

At the Lake

Pullen Park Lake has Ducks

Surprise Vacation

Sunday Zuni surprised me with plans to go on a mini-vacation to Southern Pines. I think what surprised me the most was that she had arranged for me to have two days off work without me knowing anything about it.

We had a wonderful time. It was too cold to go hiking like she had planned — the weather forecast was revised from low 70’s to freezing temperatures, maybe snow! But we were able to go around the historic sections and visit little shops. We had lunch Monday at a deli that served a lot of German and Irish influenced sandwiches. I got a “Best Wurst” sandwich that was delicious… or would have been except for too much mustard. Zuni had a ham and cheese sandwich that was reminiscent of a roast beef sandwich. All that to say we had a good lunch.

A railroad goes through the area, but none of the museum sites were open and since it was too cold to get out and walk around, we only got to see it driving by. It looks like it would be a nice place to come back in the spring or summer and poke around more.

Myrtle Beach

This past week I took the family down to North Myrtle Beach when I went to the SEDUG conference. For me, there were just a couple of conference sessions that looked interesting, but Zuni was looking forward to shopping! The Hilton that hosts the conference is just up the road from a Tanger outlet and another shopping center, so the girls always looking forward to coming with me.

A weather front moved in while we were at the beach. A couple of mornings the fog was so thick we couldn’t see the breakers when looking out the window at the beach. But by the afternoon the weather was nice enough for a walk on the beach. The girls ran around on the sand and tried to pick up the foam that was washing up with the breakers.

I went to a couple of sessions on Business Continuity, High Availability, Disaster Recovery, etc., and got some interesting perspectives, but for the most part, we’ve already implemented most of what they talked about, so it wasn’t anything new. The last session was about the direction Datatel is taking in their software development. The company is really pushing Microsoft as the platform to run their application, but they offer some consolation by pointing out that the new development kit is written as a plugin for Eclipse.

Singletary Lake

For CE’s birthday we had planned on going to the beach. But with a storm churning off the coast, the water was too rough to get in. Instead we decided to go to a lake where we could get in the water. One such lake not too far away was Singletary Lake State Park. We had never visited it, but it looked interesting.

We missed the entrance on the way their — actually passed it by because it said “Group Camping,” but it turns out the park is dedicated to camping and they only allow visitors when the park hasn’t been reserved. But we found the office and they gave us the key to get in the main gate. Once in we had the entire park to ourselves.

We walked a little on the main trail, but the girls really just wanted to go to the lake, so we turned back and headed to the pier.

The weather was just right for wading in the water, so we all left our shoes on the pier and got in the shallow water. The lake bottom was sandy around the shore and stayed shallow for a long way out. CE was not happy with the texture under her feet, but got used to it after a while. MD was ready to explore right away.

Later I went back for the picnic bag and the girls went out the pavilion at the end of the pier. We sat on the benches there and ate our sandwiches. At the end CE gave us a scare by running up to the edge of the dock and almost falling in (the water was over 6 feet deep there).

We had a great time and during lunch were scheming on how to get enough people to reserve the park for a weekend.

Visiting Bear Island Again

Yesterday we took a trip to Hammocks Beach State Park, or better known as just Bear Island. It was the first time I’ve been there since 1999. A lot has changed with the park buildings (especially since the hurricanes), but the beach is still the same.

The “Long” Walk

We rode the 10:30 ferry over to the island and arrived on the beach during low tide. The girls really enjoyed playing in the tidal pools (except for when the over abundant seaweed got caught around CE’s leg). The sea was calm and we all had a good time swimming just out past the first breakers.

Lunch in the New Pavilion

We ate lunch at one of the new pavilions in the dunes. After that the girls returned to the beach to play and dance in the sand a little longer before we had to head home.

Dancing on the Beach

We made it back for the 3:00 ferry. We were actually got back to the sound a few minutes early and sat on the boat for a while before it left.

Waiting on the Ferry

The girls played around with hats as we waited.

Wearing Wavy’s Hat