Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.
Nala and Simba want to wish everybody a happy 2013.
Today we went to Folly Beach for our traditional New Year’s Day beach walk. A bit warmer today than the past couple of days and mostly cloudy. It appears that good portions of the dunes along the Washout area were washed away by whatever storm breezed by recently.
I only took the little camera out, but managed to find some interesting shots to take with it.
And so goes another year. And here comes another “year in review” post.
This past one was pretty busy as far as work goes, with at close to 130 x-ray machines and workstations units that I have to lay my hands on for annual testing. This is probably twice the number that there were when I first started.
Diabetes management has gone pretty well in 2012, with HbA1C staying steady at 5.6%. Trying to stick to a mostly low-carb diet, which I think is helping, although I do occasionally fall off the wagon. Weight has been pretty stable at around 77kg (170lb).
My running fell off quite a bit once the summer heat hit. Then there was much busy-ness and I got lazy about getting up for early morning runs once the weather cooled down again. It’s something I need to get back to again. I’ve been missing it lately.
On the school front, there wasn’t a whole lot of progress in 2012. Going to have to change that for the coming year because I really need to get this over and done with.
2012 was a year for taking up new hobbies for me it seems, with amateur radio and electronics becoming the latest time sinks. I’ve been enjoying learning new things and putting into practice all the electronics that I learned so many years ago. Lots of new gadgets to play with, and there was also much fun had disassembling and dissecting various dead electronic things.
There’s this new and awesome girl that I met in 2012 who’s making life pretty fun and fantastic these days. 2013 together looks like it’s going to be a whole lot of fun.
There’s a lot to look forward to in 2013. Work will stay busy, and I don’t see it getting any less busy anytime soon. Soon I’ll have the ham shack up and running. There will be radios all over the place once that happens plus a beacon or two.
2013 should be a pretty good year.
The gadget panel is back on the desk with the components rearranged slightly to make things work better for the desk’s new location
Ended up having to take the power squid off the panel because the cord wasn’t long enough to reach the wall, so now everything is plugged into the UPS. Except for the computer and monitors, I think most everything else is a relatively low current load so I don’t think I’ll be overloading the UPS (I hope).
Now to clean up the space where the shack will go and start preparing to set up the radio.
After visiting Kennedy Space Center, it was off to spend a day in the historic part of St. Augustine, FL, the “oldest continuously occupied settlement of European and African-American origin in the United States“.
We spent most of our time wandering along St. George St, a pedestrian only area with lots of neat touristy little shops and restaurants.
At the St Photios Greek Orthodox Shrine you can find out about the first colony of Greeks that came over in the late 1700s
At the end of the street we stopped in to visit the Cathedral Basilica of St Augustine
There’s a sundial on the cathedral tower, but the indicated time was about an hour ahead of what my watch said. Not sure what the proper correction is for it. The website for the cathedral doesn’t mention the sundial at all.
After that we walked over to the Castillo de San Marcos. It’s a pretty cool stone fort used by the Spanish, British and Americans. Lots of history and well worth the visit to learn about the history of the area, the fort and for the views.
On the way back from the cruise, the first stop we made was at Kennedy Space Center. At the last visit there back in August, we upgraded to the annual pass (which you can do for an extra $5 or something like that with your regular admission). I’ve visited KSC before, but it’s always a fun place to go back to. This time we got to use our annual pass, which also includes free parking (apparently they started charging for parking not long after our last visit). Totally worth the price of the upgrade.
The main entrance has changed quite a bit since the August visit, and there looked to be a lot of progress made on the new exhibit building for the Space Shuttle Atlantis (which I was told is supposed to be opening in July now). There’s a new building for purchasing tickets, and some automated ticketing kiosks. With our annual pass card, we just walked up to the turnstile, scanned our cards and walked right in. Easy peasy.
Inside was mostly the same, although there were a few new things. We only planned to spend a couple hours there so we skipped the bus tour this time. The rocket garden is one of my favourite places to wander around.
Spent some time at the Astronaut Memorial. I love how quiet it is there.
New this visit were these ST:TNG LCARS panels decorating the side of one of the buildings. A neat and fun surprise.
We’ll probably go back again in February either on the way to or coming back from the Orlando Hamcation.