About Me...

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I'm an Engineer by day and crafter by night (or whenever there is free time). I love to travel and would love to visit all seven continents in my lifetime.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Bad Blogger...

I know I have kept you waiting on the edge of your seats and screens (LOL) so you could hear about my crazy stories. But it will have to wait. I knew April would be crazy. Really crazy. But really I didn't think it would be this crazy.

I leave tomorrow to Nashville, TN for Scrap ETC event. I can't wait to spend time on my own no worries about work (although, I'm still on-call, I'm always on call) or anything else. I get to scrap. Take classes with my friends Erin, Laurie and Veronica. I also get to meet and hang out with Deb from Scraptalk. This should be so much fun. On top of all this, we get to take classes and learn from eachother. Plus we get to go shopping on Wednesday at LSS in the area.

On Sunday, I will also take a class from Debbie Schuh. I'm really excited about this. I have been a stalker of her blog since I learned about her work in CKU-A San Jose '06. I love that her work always has neat ways to do altered stuff.

Then Monday and Tuesday of next week, I'll be in Memphis, TN visiting the king. And next Wednesday I'll fly back. And I promise, I will try to give you all an update when I return. I'm not taking a laptop this time. But I will have my cellphone with me. If anyone wants to chat, give me a ring.

TTYL

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

I'm back...

I'm really tired, I have been up since 2am and couldn't go back to sleep. Work has been crazy. I only have 4 days before I leave again for another week and some days. So I got tons of catching up. I swear, I'll try to update with all my stories from my trip. But for now, I'm trying to get back to my old self and not being so much jet lagged.

TTYL

P.S. Patty and Lisa, I waited until everyone would be out of the picture so I could take the photos. I really like the postcard look of photos. But got tons of photos with people in them.

Monday, April 7, 2008

Carcassonne...



What a beautiful city! I really enjoyed this little medieval town. I'm really tired and need to get to bed early as I have flight early very early tomorrow.

But here are some pics to keep you all up to date.








I have some stories about today but will leave those for another time.

I'll see you all soon.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Catching up...

Well I have been very busy. My business meetings went well and all was done on Friday. But I really didn't have any time to sightsee. On Saturday, I was lucky enough to visit Lourdes. Being Catholic it was a very moving experience, it brought me to tears for no reason. Lourdes is where the Virgin Mary made an apparition to Bernadette back in 1858.

The journey begins with me waking up at 430am to get ready to catch a taxi at 530am so I can catch the 609am train to Lourdes. I arrive at the train station with enough time but the machine will not accept my credit card (not a single one, even though it said it would accept VISA). I went to almost every single machine (about 15) and tried it. It kept saying "CARTE NON GEREE" which I didn't know what it meant. I figured it meant that the card was not good. Check for my self, I need a french pocket dictionary along with my phrase book. I looked it up now that I'm online and it means card not managed. I'm guessing that it means they can't accept cards that aren't French banks or something like that. I had used it the previous day, so I know it works in France. I miss my train and I know not to get on it without a ticket or I would be fined. I was about to go and ask the information desk when I see that that the ticket agent booth lights turn on, they open at 7am and the next train is at 715am, so I wait by the door so I can be sure to get my ticket before the train leaves. With my little French I manage to get a ticket and I'm on my way. I get to sit with three guys but they all speak French so they little I can understand is are on their bikes and they are riding around but I wasn't sure where, they had maps of the area. One of the guys reminded me of the actor who plays Harry Potter. They get off 2 exits before Lourdes. More on them later.

Here are some pics from Lourdes. It is a beatiful town, rich in history and also very picturesque.







After an all day of walking around the sights, I returned and who do I see at the train station. Yeah, the three French guys and they start talking to me and asking me for my ticket as they are now the new "conductors" They are pretty funny and we end up on the same car, but this time we get to each have our own seats so that we can take a nap. I was exhausted by this time and finally slept. When I got back to my hotel, I slept for 12 hours. Something I had not done in over 3 weeks. I met up for lunch with one of my coworkers who works here in Toulouse, actually is 45 minutes away. Travis, his wife Stacy and their son Liam went with me to see around a little of the town and got to go to this beautiful church.



We then went on to see the gateway that is where Travis works and we get telemetry for our satellites. After dropping his family off he took me to the Space Museum in Toulouse, I had tons of fun and got to walk around different things, including the mock up of the MIR station and also the new module that was just shipped to the international space station a couple of weeks ago, it's name is Colombus.





They also have information on Globalstar, which was pretty cool to come all this way and find information on it. Turns out that in that space museum, anything that has been made here in Toulouse and it's related to space it will be shown. The payload of our satellites were made, and that's why it's shown here.



Tomorrow I will go to this town nearby it's called Carcassonne. It's a small medival town that has castles and such. I will try and update tomorrow, but if I can't I will show pics after. Here is a link to some more info on Carcassonne

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcassonne

It's 1am and I'm off to bed, I have to wake up early to make my 750am train.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

I have arrived...



Wow that was something, 10.5 hours flying to Paris, man does my behind hurt. I was lucky enough that there wasn't anyone sitting in the middle seat, but I would have been more luckier if no one was sitting in the aisle so I could have spread like people where doing in the back of the plane. I had to wait 2 hours in Paris for my connecting flight to Toulouse and I didn't sit down one bit. I was walking or standing around the terminal. 1.5 hours later I arrived in Toulouse (sorry picture is not a clear but it's all I got for now)



18 hours later I arrived at the hotel and unpacked. Took a little nap and off to dinner. Then back to the hotel and crashed (not really), I haven't been able to sleep as much as I wanted. I'm sure tonight will be a hard crash. It's 710am and I have to get ready to go to work. I will update later.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Off I go...

-Packed, Check
-Entertainment, Check
-Passport, Check
-Tickets, Check

I'm sure I'm forgetting something. But I'm all packed and ready to go to France. I'll miss everyone. I will send updates from Toulouse.

See you all later.

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