Wedding pictures and Honeymoon

In case anyone missed it, here is the LINK to the wedding pictures.  Feel free to order any pictures on there that you like, as the prices seem very reasonable.  However, we will also be getting our own digital copies of the pictures soon.

Before I start getting too lazy however, I did want to put up some of our honeymoon pictures.  When we come down for Christmas we will make sure to bring our honeymoon picture album.

First up Auckland:

Cool tree, we had just got off our flight at this point.

Their own obelisk, theirs come with free sheep.

This was called "one tree hill" I believe.

Our very cozy bed and breakfast, the hostess was very nice, though tended to talk a lot.

Random Dragon bench.  Rachel seems oddly possessive of it.

This is Auckland in the background.

Lots of beautiful beaches, though it was too cold to swim at the time we were there.

Auckland, as you can see by the clouds is was kinda rainy and cloudy when we were there.

Matamata and Hobbiton:

I believe this was a 3/4 scale hobbit house.

Every now and again I would let Rachel take pictures.

They keep a staff of people to do the gardening and upkeep.

Bag End

At the Green Dragon, the guest book.  Though we weren't allowed to sign it ourselves.

The Green Dragon Pub had some nice fun touches on the inside.

This was a full size hobbit hole, well for the 6' hobbits at least.

The maximum height for female hobbits during casting was under 5'2", so Rachel could have been a hobbit extra!

The infamous "Party Tree" where Bilbo had his birthday in the Fellowship of the Ring.

Party area again, and you can see some chimneys from the other Hobbit holes.

Inside of the Green Dragon Pub.  They recreated the interior at Hobbiton, and this was the only building with an inside.

I don't think the fish was real...

Pictures

Here is a journey through our relationship over the past 3+ years.

The beginning

So I haven't posted since July.  To be fair nothing important has happened since then..... uh just kidding!  To pay everyone back from when I posted last I would give a glimpse into Rachel and my past.  In terms of how we met.

Many know Rachel and I met on Match.com.  I first knew her as "Shives15" a 23 year old woman in Arlington seeking a Male 22-30 (hey I still fit that range!).  Below is part of her profile description.

"The world's not perfect, but it's there for us trying the best it can. That's what makes it so damn beautiful."
Well, I've finally taken the plunge and posted a profile. I figure it can't hurt, right? All you really need to know about me is that I'm a female engineer, who isn't ashamed of being a nerd in may ways. But, I'm athletic and I enjoy the outdoors. As far as dating goes, I'm just looking for more ways to meet people.

This was the first view of the woman who would become my wife.  It is somewhat clear what first drew her to me, she was an engineer, so we would have that in common, and she was also a self proclaimed "nerd" in her ways lol.  She also came across as being very direct and confident.  So it is no surprise at all that I would send her a message initiating contact.  Of course my first message was titled "I can't hurt", hopefully you can spot the typo....  My first message was short, asking about what kind of engineer she was, indicating that I too was an engineer  and expressing interest in her caving (which was mentioned in a different part of her profile).  Generally innocent start.  She managed to look past my stupid typo in the title.

Her first response I received on Jun 15, 2010.

RE: I can't hurt
Hi!
I graduated as a mechanical engineer and I'm working on my masters in ME with a thermal/fluids concentration. I work on the fluids aspects of nuclear engineering. What type of chemical engineering field do you work in?
Yup, I love caving! It's an adventure every you go underground!
Cheers,
Shives

I would say it took about 2-3 weeks or so of communication before I worked up the guts to ask to meet her in person.  The meeting was at Oronoco Bay Park in Alexandria on July 10th 2010, the city of Alexandria was celebrating their birthday, just following the 4th of July festivities   There was going to be a symphony, birthday cake, and fireworks.  I figured it was a nice public place for us to meet and spend time together.  I had volunteered for my kempo school to help man a booth for a couple of hours to help enroll students.  We would pass out flyers and periodically give the kids a quick 5-10 minute lesson.  I suggested she arrive right as I was done with that shift.  Since I was helping out with the kempo booth I was dressed all in black.  I somehow didn't scare her away when she first saw me!  And we ended up spending the next few hours together, walking through the park, having a slice of cake, and watching the fireworks.  Personally I think it was one of my better ideas for a first date!  And it was my intention to return Rachel to that same park when I proposed.  But that is another story.

Looking back and rereading these emails is lots of fun.  It is hard to imagine, remembering the first time I saw her profile on match.com, nervously writing my first communication to her, the first time I saw her approaching that booth in Oronoco Bay Park, that this woman, this amazing and beautiful woman would end up being my wife.  I suppose if I would have known that back then, I would have double checked for typos....

So anyways that is a little more insight into the "how I met my wife" story.  I hope you enjoyed it!

China Info

Next week Thursday Rachel and I are heading to China!

Itinerary:
Day 1 : Thursday July 18 - Depart for China, Beijing
Day 2 : Friday July 19 - Arrive in Beijing, Check into hotel.
Day 3: Saturday July 20 - Forbidden City
Day 4 : Sunday July 21 - Fly to Shaolin Temple have Ceremony with Abbot at Temple and Rank testing
Day 5 : Monday July 22 - Shaolin Training
Day 6 : Tuesday July 23 - Shaolin Training
Day 7 : Wednesday July 24 - Shaolin Training
Day 8 : Thursday July 25 - Shaolin Training
Day 9 : Friday July 26 - Train to Beijing/Banquet Dinner
Day 10 : Saturday July 27 - Free day in Beijing, Shopping/Silk Ally
Day 11 : Sunday July 28 - Fly back to US


Flight information:

1 DL 189  18JUL   Departs DC at 945A  Arrives Detroit at 1119A          

2 DL 189  18JUL   Departs Detroit at 1230P  Arrives Beijing at 210P on 19Jul

3 DL 188  28JUL   Departs Beijing at 450P  Arrives Detroit at 550P                                            

4 DL 188  28JUL   Departs Detroit at 735P  Arrives DC at 901P

Hotel Information:

Beijing Capital Hotel

3 Qian Men East Street

Beijing 100006 China

Tel: (86-10) 58159988

http://www.capitalhotel.com.cn/

While in Dengfeng (Shaolin Temple)...

Tianzhong Hotel

Central Song Mountain Main Street East Section

Tel: (03-71) 67306678

http://www.tianzhonghotel.com

Wish us luck!

Working From Home

So I am working from home now.  I had a fun experience with my desk to begin with.  I decided to go out and upgrade my desk as I would need much more desk space for my work laptop, two monitors and massive printers.  So I went ahead and bought a set, and they agreed to ship the desk to me later, about a day or so into my time working at home.  And so I temporarily set up on the dining room table.




It worked, but as you can imagine not having a dinning room table was not optimal.  Also those two brand new monitros died on me, the one on the left after 1 day, the one on the right after 7 days.  But I digress.

The desk I bought, and arranged to have it delivered to me on the Tuesday that I started working from home.  Well they delivered it on the right day.  But they missed something....


Yup the legs on the left.  The desk was supposed to have a drawer set on the left side there.  Turns out that was sold separately and they didn't tell me.  Also turns out that particular piece was discontinued.  So not only did they sell me an incomplete desk, but a discontinued incomplete desk.  I was not happy.  Long story short I ended up negotiating a trade and that following Saturday I was able to go into the store and trade my two legged desk above for a different version of the desk in the same set.  The desk I ended up with technically costs more, but doesn't have the extra filling cabinet that would have been nice.  But oh well, it has four legs
.

So this is my new teleworking lay out.  The den of my apartment is all disheveled, and I am still waiting on a couple more items that will be delivered Monday.  I'll try to post a final picture of my new at home office when I get everything set up and complete!

So that's the story of my adventures in teleworking.  So far besides the desk and monitor issues, things have worked out well.  I actually find I'm more productive on average than at work.  Not sure why yet, maybe it is just the change.  Or perhaps it is the extra hour of sleep I get every day from not having to commute into work!  Yeah that's been nice.

(Not pictured, me in my pajamas working every morning).

UPDATED:

Finally got the whole thing set up.  And I think it looks a lot better!

Tournament Spring 2013

So here will be the post where I will post the videos and pictures that I have.  First up is a video of me doing a broadsword vs. spear form in the creative paired weapons division.

There are also some videos of me sparring out there that I will try to get my hands on.

In terms of trophies I managed to do pretty well!  Specifically I got 1st in Bunkai (forms with attackers) 1st in the paired weapon form above (though there were only two sets of competitors) 2nd in Kempos, 3rd in forms, and then 1st in sparring.

Rachel got 2nd in Bunkai (I beat her :-p) 1st in Forms, Katas and sparring.  So she for sure did awesome as well.  She also performed in the instructor demo doing a katana form.  Hopefully I will be able to get my hands on that one as it was pretty awesome!

Rachel doing her Katana Form.

Rachel doing her Burpees, she did 220 in 20 minutes.

2 man weapon form... see above.

Now stay down!

And sparring!  (I'm the one with blue gloves).

For all the pictures from tournament go HERE.  As usual it allows you to purchase any photos that you like!

Update on Work

So my technology area that I examine has just changed.  I will now be working on batteries and fuel cells.  I still have some printer toner cases, but from here on out, I will be doing the batteries.  It is not horribly exciting as this is the second time that I have changed technologies, and there is always a learning curve.  But alas, there were too many people examining printer toners and as a result a lot of us had to get moved.

In better news I have been accepted into the hoteling program.  Which is the program that will allow me to work from home.  I will take the training for this in June, and at about the second week of June on I will be working from home.  

The plan when Rachel and I move (looking more like it will be Newport News, think I will still be able to get people to visit me when I live down by Virginia Beach?) to just work from home down there.  The trick is I will still probably have to drive in to DC about once every couple of weeks.  But there is a program that will allow me to move down there and not have to come into the office as often, but it is a very small number of examiners that can do that, and there is a list.  So hopefully I'll be able to do that after not too long.  But in the short term I'll still be having to drive up every couple of weeks after we move down there.

An Article

We were asked to be interviewed for an article for our kempo school.

Here it is

I haven't read it.  Because.... well I don't know probably because I"m a wimp.  But I figured I'd point you guys in the right direction.

Sequester

It is possible you haven't heard about this.  But the government is talking "sequestration" which is fancy government speak for furloughing a bunch of people because they don't know how to pass a budget.  In case you have I wanted to assure you all that neither Rachel or I will be furloughed.

Rachel is in the military so she won't be furloughed, but people at her work who are civilians might, so her work load might increase.  I work at the Patent office and so we are fee funded.  That makes us an "anomoly" and so we were exempt.  Anyways, here is hoping Congress can stop it.  I read that they might have actually passed a budget last night, so lets hope that that means that we won't have to worry about "sequestration" at all!

Promotion

So the good news is that I passed my full sig program at work.  Starting next week I will be a Primary Examiner.  What this means is that I will no longer have to have any of my work reviewed, and I will be able to allow cases on my own.  Also it comes with a 15k a year promotion!  So yeah big news!

What this means in terms of my career.... Hard to say.  If I want to advance any higher I need to go into management.  I'm not sure I want to do that in the near future.  So I will probably be staying at this level for the next few years, at least 3-4 lol.

Engagement photos

Rachel and I got some engagement photos.

Here they are.

Here are just some of the photos.  Let me know if you guys want any of them.