It's a Quigley's Clayhouse day

View from Angelina's patio

It's just a casual lunch spot but the weather is perfect today.

Sunil in the shark tunnel

Wonderful day

Jazmine, Farhana, Sheela, Sunil and Sid

Three-toed Sloth

Halloween Ready already

Open House

We had 800 friends and family come tour the new facility this morning.
It was very low key: self-guided tours, some PR videos, a few surgical
trays out to let the kids and adults see the tools and lunch by The
Hamburger Man. Perfect.

Sent from my iPhone

Bio-skills Lab Open House

Cozy Thai's Chicken Satay

One of my favorite lunches near the new office.

1st day of 4th grade

Sheela making meat muffins

That's right folks meatloaf gone wild.

Shrimp boil Saturday

Sid, Mike and Sunil are boiling up shrimp, corn and potatos with Cajun
spices. Yummy!

The Massive Clean Up Begins

Sid has finally reached the “living in squalor” breaking point.  Every room in our home has become a holding area for crap with no purpose.  To save his sanity we allowed him to brow beat us in to de-cluttering a few rooms at a time.  This weekend we started with the dining room and the living room.  These are the first two rooms you see when entering the house from the front.  We spent approximately half an hour pulling everything that didn’t belong in either of these rooms in to a pile in the foyer and then spent another hour and a half either finding it a home or throwing it away.  Those rooms feel so much better it is actually motivating me to tackle the next room or two.

 

At the same time we are doing this we have two dishwashers sitting out in the middle of the kitchen floor.  The old one has been recalled by Maytag as a potential fire hazard and the second is it’s replacement.  We had so much going on this weekend we only got them halfway switched out Friday night and they both sat there until Sunday night.  The new one has been installed and the old one removed to the computer room to await the service repairman to replace the defective components so that we can resell it.  It’ll take them two weeks to come out from the time we first were notified that there was an issue. 

Full size

Sheela has grown enough to play my full-sized viola. It has just
returned from reconditioning - all new strings, new bridge, cleaning,
waxing and new hair on the bow. It is 64 years old and still has a
great tone

My favorite boy

White chocolate mousse

No pics of the white fish or the salad

The fish was baked whole then filleted before serving. The salad was
lettuce with basalmic vinegar.
Sent from my iPhone

Rissotto

Clams

Small scallops

Grilled scallop

Sardines

Associated squids

Spidercrab for the small course

Appetizer - when asked for the traslayion we were told "just eat"

Ristorante Ai Beito

Dinner over looking Lake Garda, fabulous food and beautiful
surroundings.

Mocajetta

Our favorite Mexican specialty at our favorite Mexican restaurant.

Server move

Alison, Ryan and Brian tear out the rats nest to free the servers to
move.

New warehouse

This was taken during the move. Three hours earlier these parts were
on the shelf in the old building.

We've Moved

I worked half as much as I thought I would but still worked way too much.  I did manage to sleep at home every night even if it was only for a few hours at a time.  I had three main goals for the first Monday: be able to receive orders by fax or phone, be able to ship product as requested, and be able to bill for product as sales orders were received.  All three of these were completed successfully.  Other nice to haves included having everyone find all of their belongings, getting the telephones working on all of the desks, and all of the IT support functions, um, functional.  We did pretty well there but a few of these items took a little bit longer.  I planned to throw in some photos of both our exodus and our invasion but computer issues prevent me from having access as a plus though my new laptop is being built up tomorrow in time to take it to Italy with me next week.

3rd Cousins

To be identified later

1st Cousins

Buddy, Wanda, Nicky and Tommy

The 2nd cousins

Ronni, Suzi, Cheri, Karin and Leslie in the front.  Cliff, Paul and Mat in the back.

Additional Reunion Info

I initially intended to do daily updates with some pictures thrown in but we had very spotty coverage for emails, cell phones and blogging related endeavors.  So I put away my iPhone and just forgot about the whole deal.  Today is the first day I’ve even gone back to look.  Over all the reunion was a smashing success with tons of pictures taken.  I posted more than 100 on Facebook last night and will try to bring over my favorites here.  But in a nutshell: we played volleyball in the yard and in the pool, we went kayaking alone and in pairs, we boiled crabs, grilled scallops and shrimp, we walked on the beach and toured the winery, we sat around talking and laughing and promised to do it all again in another year or two.

 

Nichols Family Reunion - Day 1

So far we've been swimming in the pool, kayaking and wading in the bay
and playing volleyball in the yard. We've eaten like kings.

For the 1st cousins
Uncle Tommy and Aunt Nancy are hosting. Dad and Eileen are here.
Uncle Nicky joined us last night. Aunt Wanda will be over in the
morning.

For the second cousins
Sid and I arrived first and spent the day hanging with Ronni. Keith is
working but will join us eith tonight or tomorrow. Leslie and Frankie
made it. At the last minute Cliff and Jenny were able to join Cheri
and John. Paul and Susie will be over in the morning.

For the third cousins
More or less in order of age we have: Luke 14, Sheela 12, Shay 10,
Joey 10, Katie 9, Lindsay 9, Sunil 9, Tommy 7, Lana 7 with more to
arrive today. The kids hit it off instantly.

Today the plan is more of the same with a winery tour and a World Cup
soccer game on the TV to change it up.

Cat nap

First photo with new glasses

I swear they are different.

Last photo with old glasses

Gypsy takes a swim

Zoo day

TAKS 2010

Sunil's first TAKS scores came home today. 3rd graders test in Math
and Reading. He scored 100% in both putting him in the 99th percentile
for his age.

Allen Philharmonic Orchestra

Mom, John, Sid and I ventured out last night to the outdoor amphitheater near the rec center for a Memorial Day concert.  They do live music most Monday nights thru-out the summer but we’ve never gone.  In fact I’ve been up to, and around the rec center dozens of times and I’ve never seen an amphitheater.  But we took our folding chairs a jug of wine and a sense of adventure and set out in search of music.  The amphitheater, as it turns out, is the back porch of the center which faces a nice steep hill.  The music was pleasant, and the evening perfect.  They even threw in some fireworks.  Very enjoyable all the way around.  While walking towards the crowd we came across a very large Memorial right in the middle of the park that I’ve never seen before.  I don’t feel so bad now though because after the concert when we went to check it out we discovered that it had been dedicated just that morning.

Wax job

Putting Grammylyn to work.

Hotel gym

Sheela checks out the treadmill while Sunil swims in the pool.

Free shirt

Bday ball night

Just hanging out

Sid and his trophy

 

Monkey skeleton

Zoo service

Sheela's volunteer stint is over. She received credit for 56 hours of
service; the combined total for all of the JZs and JCs was 7000
hours. She plans to return next Spring.

Customer Service Quarterly Award

Sid had the highest customer service rating of any of the claims
adjusters in the first quarter. The rating is based on client surveys.
He vets to keep the trophy at his desk until the next winner is
announced. He promised me a picture.

Concert

Superior Award 2010

Sandy Lake Orchestra Festival (Funfest). Sheela's orchestra scored a
pretty nice trophy. It's on display at their year end concert tonight.

20 years later

Virginia and Ed have been married 20 years; that means we graduated from college 20 years ago.  To celebrate their anniversary they returned to NOLA for a visit.  This is Virginia standing in front of our Zimple St. apartment.  We lived on the first floor with Jackie and Maria, or with Jackie and Wendy, depending on the year.  It was not much more attractive than this 20 years ago but the location was prime.

Tree

Sunil and Siera have built a home in a tree in the park.

Car repair

Sid continues to work on his Vette

Sheela at work

Today her job is to get Scout used to carrying bigger kids.

New car

Sid replaced his Sentra with an XR7. It wasn't really a choice the
Sentra was crumpled last week and had to go.

The year of the "I"s

I have two major trips planned for this year.  The first is a work related excursion to Italy near the end of May.  I’ll be away from home five days and four nights but will have only 2 ½ days in Verona.  This is a trip I’ve been told to expect 3 or 4 different times over the last 12 years but this time I really think I’ll get to go.  This is intended to be a collaborative effort with the Operations team in our sister company.

 

The second, and bigger deal, trip is to India at the end of the year.  We’ve already secured tickets to fly to Mumbai Dec 17 and return on Jan 2.  All four of us will get to go on this one (which is why Sid isn’t joining me in Italy).  We will also be travelling with Sushama, Seema and Nita.  As an aside both Sunil and Nita were able to fly for discounted rates but Seema and Sheela had to pay the adult price.  This has made them slightly obnoxious.  This is the trip that we started planning before we had kids and couldn’t get done.  Then we had to wait until the kids were old enough not to be whiners (and to remember it when we are done).   What we’ll do and where we go changes every few minutes so I’m not even going to speculate right now – but I’m sure it will an experience.

Golf Tourney

With my new shoes which are mighty comfy and just Sheela's size.