Hovercraft - The Beginning

Note - This was originally published on my other site "The Geology P.A.G.E." but due to the content I have moved it here and backdated the post.

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After years of talking about it I am finally doing it. I am building a hovercraft. I purchased the plans about 2 years ago and now I am finally starting it. Today is day 1 where I go get the wood for the frame. I am so excited.

Life Update - Honeymoon Pictures

Note - This was originally published on my other site "The Geology P.A.G.E." but due to the content I have moved it here and backdated the post.

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 Pictures from our Honeymoon

View from our room.

Us hanging out in the pool after a romantic dinner.

View of the sample bar at the Bacardi factory. We could have any samples we wanted. They didn't let us take pictures of the factory itself however.

After collecting some sand samples for my Texas paleontologist friend.

Life Update - Honeymoon Recap

Note - This was originally published on my other site "The Geology P.A.G.E." but due to the content I have moved it here and backdated the post.

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Ok I know I have been negligent lately but I am going to catch up slowly. First off is the honeymoon. It was fantastic. I highly recommend going to an all-inclusive resort. We went down to a Sandals in Nassau, Bahama. The food was all terrific, even if we did get sick one night. Drinks were all top shelf (helps when there is a Bacardi factory on the island). And the rooms were super comfortable. Let's start this off in order. We arrived on Saturday and were extremely confused at first. Just leaving the airport was an experiment in cross cultures. They had random signs around with conveyor belts and people and we did not know whether to talk to them or keep walking. Then check in was just confusing because they held onto our bags and our room wasn't ready. But eventually everything turned out wonderful.

Overall, our days consisted of trying each of the 8 different restaurants, laying in the sun, swimming in the pool, relaxing in the numerous hot tubs, reading my book, and drinking. We met a couple of super nice people the first night there at the Japanese restaurant. Dan and Julie are from Wisconsin and we spent most of the week drinking with them and Joe and Nicole are from Chicago and were around our age.

The first day after we met Dan and Julie we saw them while we were relaxing around the pool when we start hanging out. Eventually Dan walks to the bar and comes back with 4 plastic cups and a cup full of what looked like a Corona. Well after one sniff I could tell I was not going to like this. So it eventually ended up where we had about 7 shots of tequila before the afternoon was over.

One day we went shopping in downtown Nassau, which is where all the cruise ships stop. We bartered and we spent lots of money but it was cool, we got lots of cool stuff, like pearls for my newlywed.

So the one downside to the trip started Wednesday morning when we got breakfast in bed. After we ate I started to have an upset stomach, then suddenly it turned into excruciating pain (37 on 10 point scale as I explained it). I eventually got taken to the hospital where we spent the day. It seemed like I had some sort of liver problem so no more drinking for Jimmy (N.B. I actually had passed a gallstone but I wouldn't know that until a few months later.).

And now to the really sad no drinking part, we then went to the Bacardi factory the next day. That was really cool, they had one storage room where all the rum was aged that they said you can get drunk just by walking into the room. I walked in anyway. :-). After that we ended up going home, but all in all a great trip. We want to go to Saint Lucia next.

Life Update - Birthday Trip

Note - This was originally published on my other site "The Geology P.A.G.E." but due to the content I have moved it here and backdated the post.

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It the single best day of the year. That's right, it's my birthday! I know you are all jealous. And I got the spend it with the most wonderful wife in the world.

We started out going to the neighboring county where the annual Maple Weekend was being held. I ate at a pancake breakfast (Veronica didn't eat due to a diet that was soon thrown by the wayside).

Then we traveled off to see some of the farms. The first place was pretty cool, after we drove by a place we couldn't find. It was a nice little three room shop that sold some candies and had stainless steel equipment. Overall very clean. Then we went back to the shop we drove by and it was a shanty to say the least. Very small but the people were very nice. We went into the room they were boiling the sap and it was so foggy in there we could barely see. We would have purchased some syrup from them but the guy we were talking to said the sap just started running and that it was the bad stuff. It's the kind of stuff they send to Aunt Jemima. Apparently, the big companies only need 1% maple syrup to be considered 100% pure maple syrup.

The next place we went to was an Audubon Museum, it was not a real maple syrup ranch but they had a bunch of activities. But since it was not a real farm we left to go somewhere we could get some syrup. We randomly drove down this one road towards a town we knew had a farm. We ended up seeing massive amounts of smoke/steam so we stopped there. That ended up being the best one, they had a good tour, lots of free samples and a snowball gun. Also they had hot dogs cooked in maple sap, which were also very good.

Then we came home to a decorated house. Veronica apparently had her mom and sister decorate the house for me. I then went popping all the balloons looking for prizes and notes in all them. This also came with a giant cookie cake, my first. Like a wonderful wife that she is, we ended up watching a geology movie, Volcano. Ending the evening off we went to Olive Garden for some wonderful food.

All in all, a good birthday. :-D

The 306 Greatest Books #43 - The Aeneid

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Aeneid by Virgil. This book can be found on the Sybervision, and the Norwegian Book Lists. 

We head back to the ancient classics with this Roman telling of the travels of Aeneas, a Trojan who ultimately became the ancestor of the Romans. The Aeneid feels like it was written to fulfill the Roman need to copy all of the Greek mythology, and unfortunately that is how this book reads. The first half follows The Odyssey almost to the point of going to the exact same places as Odysseus. The second half is much better and kind of reads as its own story, although it is still reminiscent of The Iliad. The one thing that The Aeneid did do that Homer skipped over was to establish the use of the Trojan Horse as a means for the Greeks to enter the city of Troy during the Trojan War. Overall, I feel that despite this being considered one of the major works of fiction from the ancient times, it feels too much like a rehash of Homer's much better duology. I would personally say you can skip this remake and stick to the original.