Pohodo

I asked Karen to marry me Friday night, and she said yes . I’m not very good at stuff like this, but in the end it all turned out very nicely. We went to dinner at the Capitol Grill in Buckhead – the same place as our first date. I wasn’t sure when to do it exactly, and ended up proposing after the soup/salad course. In lieu of my poor planning, the waiter saw it all going down and showed up immediately with champagne for a toast and gave Karen a rose. They even took a picture of us and printed it out. I can definitely recommend the place as a good proposal spot!

I wanted it to be a total surprise, but she got a little suspicious because I asked her if she wanted to go to dinner more than 24 hours in advance, which apparently, is quite out of character. The flowers didn’t help with the suspicions, either. heh. But, as predictable as I appear, I’m still quite hard to figure out on some things, so there was ample doubt.

If I do say so myself, I think I did a good job on the ring. I’ve caught her holding her hand out, looking at it several times since . I’m sure she’ll be more than happy to show you.

It’s definitely the end of another chapter in my life. Many chapters have come and gone. Most of them have been great, and I’ve always had a little sadness at the end of each, resisting the inevitable change. So far, all of my life chapters have each provided more rich experiences than the previous ones. This new chapter is different than the rest in many ways, but most importantly It’s one that begins with more anticipation. I’m very excited about the future and what it holds for us, not just me anymore. I’m a much better person with Karen than I could possibly be on my own. Of course, we all know I have a long way to go, but I’m looking forward to the journey.

On my way to work yesterday, I got a speeding ticket. I could rant about how, if my company didn’t move me to a new location 15 miles further away (in Atlanta traffic!), I wouldn’t have been in a position to soil my driving record. Or how I really don’t think it was possible for the cop to actually get a clear shot at me and just made up a number, and how there’s almost no way to even challenge something like that given the “due process” of the wonderful legal system surrounding traffic court. But I’ll save you any further pain in that regard. After all, I’ve gotten away with a lot of stuff on the road over the years so I figure I was due.

I haven’t received a speeding ticket in well over a decade, and the experience brought back memories of my rather insane youth. Not that I was driving crazy, because I’ve come a long way in my driving since the old, renegade days. But because the entire process of getting a ticket is EXACTLY the same. Okay, so the police cars are more menacing looking, with their all-black, dark-windowed, low-profile lights and stuff. But other than that, I was shocked at how ancient everything seemed.

As far as I can tell, the entire world has been evolving pretty quickly in the technology boom of the past decade or so. When you get your drivers license in Georgia, you even have to give up a finger print that is embedded as data in your license, along with a bunch of other personal info (just like a credit card stripe). Every police car I’ve seen for a long time has a laptop attached to the dashboard. And yet, the ticketing system appears to be literally unchanged.

When the officer returned with my license, it was accompanied by the same carbon copy paper ticket I was well-accustomed to back in the 80s. After I signed my guilty plea, he tore off my copy and gave it to me. So the cop took my license back to his car, probably ran it through their ellaborate computer systems trying to see if I was an enemy of the state, had insurance, registration, etc. And then proceeded to chicken scratch out a hand-written ticket (okay, his handwriting was pretty good, but you get the point), copying my information letter by letter onto some carbon copy ticket. What, they can’t put a little tiny printer in their cars and save everybody a lot of time and effort? Unbelievable in this day and age.

When I finally arrived at my office, I was quite curious about the cost of this event, so I picked up the phone and called the number on the ticket. The lady asked for my citation number, which I gave her. Yep, you guessed it, no information about the ticket, because the cop’s carbon copy of the ticket won’t trickle down through the paper trail for days. I really hope that my tax dollars aren’t paying somebody to type all of the hand-copied data about me into some other system.

Anyway, I just thought it was odd that police all over the country are still wasting valuable time hand-writing stuff out in 2006.

BTW, according to Wikipedia…
Carbon copying: This practice declined with the advent of photocopying and other electronic means.

Yes, that’s a big hole in the side of the house! heh. We added another window on that wall so whoever is the grillmaster can be a part of all the fun. The great big hole to the left of the window used to be an outside load-bearing wall. The whole place is so much more open now. And a lot brighter, too. Once it’s all done, I’ll have to put up before and after pics so you can see just how different the place has become. Oh, and have a BBQ!

Karen and I went down to the Miami Strictly Sail boat show back in February. We went down there to look around at some of the boats and dream about sailing away. We figure that new boats this year could possibly be good used boats in coming years.

I’ve always been pretty partial to monohulls, mostly because that’s pretty much all I’ve been exposed to. Yeah, yeah, I did a lot of sailing on Hobie Cats back in the day, but never on any kind of cruising boat. At any rate, we decided to check a couple of them out just to see what they’re all about. I think I’ve been converted!

We ran across the Manta 42 MKII and it’s just plain incredible. It’s truly amazing how much living space this thing has. Manta is one of the few manufacturers that builds a boat to be more or less cruising ready at delivery. It comes fully rigged with dingy davits and all. Of course, you need to upgrade some of the electronics and decide about A/C, water makers, etc., which can add quite a bit of expense.

So here’s what I’m thinking 0:-)… All I need is for some kind-hearted megamillionaire to take pity on me and help me out . The Manta has a base price of only $359,950! heh. Add on a few extras and I’m only asking for a mere $400,000 – just daily interest earnings for some. For such a small amount of money for the extremely wealthy, I could disappear off into the sunset and live a dream.

It’d be great, I could put together a Web site about our travels and allow some rich and famous person an opportunity to live vicariously through the average, non-famous life I offer. Heck, stop on by at some of the exotic destinations and hang out with us – at least for a little while!

Is this too much to ask? I guess that question is all relative. heh.

Wow, it’s been an awfully long time since I’ve done anything with this. I’ve been busy busy! Between all of the travel and work and relationship stuff, 2005 flew on by. I started dating Karen back in May, and I’ve been on a whirlwind tour ever since. I only get 3 weeks of vacation, but somehow I managed to make it to Key West for my friend Scott’s wedding, a week sailing in the “out islands” of the Bahamas getting my Bareboat Charter Certification, a trip to Las Vegas to finally meet some of my online gaming buddies, a trip to Connecticut to meet the parents, a week in Boston for a conference which was a lot of fun, a couple of trips to the beach in Florida, a week sailing on a chartered yacht in the British Virgin Islands with a night in Puerto Rico on the way back, and a very long weekend in Jamaica. All in all, I’d have to say this was a great year!

Work got a lot more interesting, too. I got to do some engaging work with AJAX this year on several projects, as well as some much more interesting DHTML interactive user interfaces. It looks as if future projects will also be much more interesting to work on, assuming all goes well with the next release of jazzy interface stuff.

My roommate and I (okay, mostly my roommate – I have NO skill) have been adding another room onto the house, which will eventually consume a totally renovated kitchen and dining room. New hardwoods and all! We’ll be removing two load-bearing walls to open up the space a lot more, which will be great for hosting even more grill nights. The outside is more or less complete so the exciting inside part will begin very soon. Now I have to climb around the ladder to caulk the siding and paint (the lesser skilled tasks, of course). Hopefully we’ll have some warmer weekends soon!

So that’s more or less it. I’ll try to be a little more verbose in coming months