Christmas Eve

Doreen is off at Christ Church Cathedral, singing and praying (I hope) for my soul.

Today, though, we spent some time getting ready for the big day tomorrow.

We always cook goose, and you have to blanch it and let it sit for a day to get the skin nice an crispy. Like goose cracklin's.



Of course, we had to go shopping for more stuff, so here I am, girding myself for the trip
 

The stuffing (dressing, I suppose) will have pears. Lots of pears. We will also have mashed potatoes. We have figured out that with all the other things we are eating, we only need 2 pounds of spuds for 9 people.
 

Some of the stuff we bought. We are making a beet recipe that calls for a beet vinaigrette. You make a beet reduction and add white balsamic vinegar. Who knew? You also steep caraway seeds in the vinegar, and steep raspberries in the reduced beet juice. This recipe also calls for a goat cheese foam. We made this last year and it was a huge disaster. Delicious, but it exploded all over the kitchen. We are trying it again tomorrow.


Apple juice for the red cabbage.


you can see that our refrigerator is stuffed. It will be thus until late tomorrow when it will be stuffed with leftovers.


Let's not forget why we celebrate! Baby Jesus, Dante, and Camels.
 

This will be a great Christmas. The first for our sweet grand-niece Renee, and we will have Quinn and Roxy to take care of her, as well as Trouta, our dear friends Charles and Eddie, and Ree and Jon - so Jon gets to see how the Texas Piettes celebrate. He may never move back to Wisconsin.

Seismic Vessels in Freeport

PGS is starting a big multi-client seismic acquisition in the Gulf of Mexico, and is outfitting and provisioning several of the vessels involved in Freeport, TX

I had the pleasure of visiting the port and getting on two of the boats, the PGS Apollo:
 

and the Ramform Valiant (below).

Freeport is about 65 miles from Houston, and I drove down this morning before I came to work. I arrived in Freeport about 8:30, and met up with a couple of the PGS folks there.

We boarded the Apollo first. This is the bridge:
 

The Captain of the Apollo was there while we were on the bridge. I can tell you that he LOVES that boat! He could not say enough good things about it. He made it clear that he would be happy if he never commanded another vessel other than this one. He liked the way it handled, the layout of the control panels, the double rudder, and everything else about it.

It is nice to hear someone who really loves their job.

Here is the business end of the vessel - these are GeoStreamer™ cables - a PGS innovation and a real differentiator in the the quality of our data. Both this boat and the Valiant are outfitted with these new and innovative cables.

You have to look are to see in this photo, but these are called "birds". They have little fins that keep the cables steady at a programmed depth.
 

And here are the reels where the cables are stored:


They were in the process of loading some new cables on one of the boats:
 

Seismic data is really measuring sound waves. So you may well ask "What is the source of the noise?"

The answer is air-guns. Here is a pair of airguns, which are towed behind the vessel as well:
 

This is the control center for the Apollo. Navigation on the left, data quality control on the right:
 

This is the logo for the Apollo. I think it is a great logo!
 

The Apollo is not a Ramform, but as you can see below, the Valiant is:
 

Here I am about to get on board:
 

The back deck of the Valiant. It has all of the reels in a row, as the back deck is so wide. (The Apollo has the reels staggered)
 

Looking the other direction:
 

A FRB (Fast Rescue Bessel)
 

That is the bridge of the Valiant.
 

A swimming pool. No kidding - it is filled with salt water, and refreshed every other day.
 

The bridge. That is me in the Captain's chair. Steady as she goes!
 

And then, on the drive to my office, I was able to see Big Steve! An enormous statue of Stephen F. Austin in Angleton. Nice!
 

It was a morning well spent, and I need to say thanks to the PGS folks who put this together for me.

Another preview post

I am not used to posting on Blogger, as I haven not done it in a while. So I am testing it out, in combination with Picasa to see how I can get back into it.


You can see the Little Gallo and Blaze are helping us get ready


wide angle type shot of the house. I like this camera (Lumix DMC-ZS25) as it is easy to use, has this cool stitching function, and has a 20x optical zoom. Crazy!

 
Blaze looking for cats

 
I don't like to leave because I have to leave my coffee maker. Rumor has it that Japan has very good coffee. I am eager to try some.

 

New computer. This is a Sony Vaio Pro-11. Windows 8, and it weighs under two pounds (1 lb 14.5 oz by my calculations) without the power supply (which is also tiny). It weighs less than my Samsung pad with its keyboard. We'll see how it goes!

Now, just call me Shogun.

Starting this puppy up again

We will be heading to Japan next week for about 10 days. I have work for three of those days (Doreen will be touristing) and then we will be goofing off.

I will use this site for photos and stories.

I will be putting things on Facebook as well, just because it is ubiquitous. 

Dolce far niente, part three

Sunday morning comes with a welcome call from my Sweet Ever Lovin' at about 6:15. She was taking a train from New Haven to New York City, while I was waking up and getting ready to walk Blaze.

I think we all have our morning routines, and I don't think any of us like it when they are upset. Not me, not the dog, not the cats. Thank goodness I am not traveling that much these days, and neither is Doreen. so the new chores don't become routine. And that is a good thing.

After the walk, feeding the pets, I was able to make a nice cup of coffee and a good piece of toast.

I took both outside to relax on the front porch with the newspaper. Well, both of them.

Sunday morning is the time when I get ready for the rest of the week, victuals wise. I roast coffee and bake bread. Today was no different. I roasted coffee and baked bread.

Reading, baking, roasting are all a good Sunday. Dolce far niente indeed.

I have beans soaking for dinner, planted some hot peppers and basil in the beds I prepared yesterday and am now drinking a glass of wine.

I really hate it when Doreen is out of town, but when she is I take advantage of the time to do next to nothing.

I think I will call it "Dolce far Piette"

Dolce far niente, part duo.

Walking Blaze in the dark is nice, even if I was feeling a little slow. Since it was so early, I decided to do some Nordic Walking (walking with sticks) to get my blood pumping.

I walked only about 1.5 miles, and was slow - over 13 minutes per mile. But I figured that was fair because I was up so late the night before.

I thought about washing the car, riding my bike, writing a little, or thinking great thoughts. For most of the day, I did none of that. I worked a little in the garden, I tried (unsuccessfully) to take a nap, I finished the book I was reading (Hunger, by Knut Hamsun) and did a little gardening.

But later in the day, I went to pick up Trouta and meet family at The Yard House out in the west side of town.

We met my sister Jeannette, my niece Josienne, her husband Jared, their two kids Julius and J Noel, my nephew (Jeannette's son) Quinn and his Novia Roxy and their daughter, my cousin Beth, Roxy's cousin Cecilia (who works for a friend of mine) and her boyfriend Jason.

We had a great time there, and when we were finished with our (very long and fun) late lunch we ambled over to the City Center city center. We had some cupcakes and watched the kids play, with many, many other kids. I swear you could have opened the United Nations there. I am not sure how many native languages were represented, but it was more that two. Or three. or four,. or Five...

I finally made it home and read some more (I just started a George Orwell book called Burmese Days) and went to bed

Dolce far niente

My sweet ever-lovin' is out of town for the long weekend. As my brother Matthew said, those college reunion people in New Haven have a sense of humor.

She had a hard time getting to the Northeast - her plane was essentially 14 hours late (flight cancelled, waitlisted until the next morning, last person loaded before the flight took off) but that is her story, not mine.

My story is more prosaic. I worked on Friday, and then came home and had a relaxing hour or so before I met an old friend for dinner at our local Indian Fusion restaurant (Indika). We had a good dinner, talking smart and enjoying the food. We started at the bar with a martini (Bombay Sapphire, Dry, Up, Olives) and switched to a New Zealand Sauv Blanc. Can't go wrong there.

The food, as usual, was very good, and the waiter was very patient. For some reason, I have friends who like to try the patience of waiters. I always have to tip extra because of that. But they were very good to us. 

We had two appetizers, and the split on order of their tasting menu. Clever! we didn't eat too much, but it did give us a chance to finish two bottle of wine. The food spanned the range from goat brain marsala (I feel smarter already) to beet soup.

After the dinner we walked across the street to the Avant Garden. You really do have to love the name of that bar. I have walked by this bar many, many times. It is an old house with a courtyard in the back. We stumbled into a Pirate Party, where you had to pay something ($10? I don't know) to get into the house. The weather was nice, so we stayed outside.

The courtyard was nice, the beer was cheap (well, Robin paid, so it was really cheap for me) and we were having a nice conversation with the Detering Family Side Show set up. This was a small, probably unrelated, four member busking troop.

And they were really quite entertaining. Were they the best jugglers in the world? No! Were they the best fire eaters in the world? No! Were they the best knife throwers in the world? NO!!!

But when you combine them all together, it was quite entertaining.

It all added up to a late night.

And as fate would have it, an early morning. I was dragged out of bed early by a strange constitution and a dog ready to walk.

Dolce far niente, indeed.

Brazos Bend

Brazos Bend State Park is one of our favorite day trips in the Houston area.

We had a good excuse to go this trip, because our friends Rick and Tony were here from Seattle:

From Brazos Bend with Rick and Toni

It is a fairly short drove down from the city, but it feels worlds away when you get there:

From Brazos Bend with Rick and Toni

It is probably best know as a place near Houston where you can always see alligators in the wild:

From Brazos Bend with Rick and Toni

but there is also a large population of interesting birds:

From Brazos Bend with Rick and Toni

From Brazos Bend with Rick and Toni

From Brazos Bend with Rick and Toni

From Brazos Bend with Rick and Toni

We also saw turtles:

From Brazos Bend with Rick and Toni

From Brazos Bend with Rick and Toni

and baby alligators:

From Brazos Bend with Rick and Toni

and a Water Moccasin:

From Brazos Bend with Rick and Toni

From Brazos Bend with Rick and Toni

It was a good trip.