Dateline: Phoenix AZ - Sunday, February 01, 2009

An active little hummingbird at our feeder, hanging just outside our office windows.

Hanging on the shade structure about five feet from our office back door, our hummingbird feeder provides much enjoyment to us as it provides nutriment to the tiny birds. Hummingbirds live around Phoenix all year long, so we see them a lot. We have at least one family nesting in a tree next door.

It is fun to watch them and their antics. When two hummers approach the feeder at the same time they turn to fight each other until one is driven off. And, they are not very timid with people, either. I have had hummingbirds fly right past my head and this afternoon one was feeding as I was going out the back door, and it stayed right there - about four feet away - as I watched it.

Dateline: Phoenix AZ - Friday, January 30, 2009

Our little lemon tree outdid itself this year. Usually it has only 1-2 fruit but this year it has over 20!

Late January and into February is the fruit-picking time in Arizona. Many homes have fruit trees and at this time of year we start seeing bags of fruit in office coffee rooms for anyone to take. Soon we will start to smell the new fruit blossoms as their perfume  fills the air for a few weeks.

Much of the Phoenix area was once cultivated as fruit orchards. The climate is right and water was available from irrigation projects. Most of that land has now been converted to development, of course, but the heritage remains in small ways since fruit trees are popular in yards as ornamentals as well as for the fruit.

I enjoy eating the grapefruit. I peel them and break apart the sections as you might with an orange. I will eat at least one grapefruit each evening while they last.

Dateline: Phoenix AZ - Monday, January 12, 2009

I am just finishing reading James Michener's book Space, and as I was reading in one sectionI suddenly realized both how much a product of my times I am as well as some changes in my personal standards since the 1950s. Michener has a character describe the dress standards for NASA employees of that era. They were expected to wear suits, black shoes (never brown), and were expected to wear socks that went over the calf. Now I have never worked for NASA, but somehow I adopted the standard of wearing those long socks about that same time and for years I never wore anything but to work or when "dressed up". You wouldn't catch me in white socks (heaven forbid) nor would you see any portion of white leg if I crossed my legs while sitting. And, I never (well hardly ever) wore shorts.

Dateline: Phoenix AZ - Friday, October 03, 2008

I have been extremely busy since our return from NH in late August. It is important to us that we have some added income for retirement. I had been working on a project under my company - SitePower.com - that we hoped would do the job but it fell through last spring. So, I have been working hard on continued development of the SitePower3G system I developed to easily build and maintain we site. I am close to getting it rolled out and ready to use, but it has taken many months of almost fulltime work to make it happen. More on this later.

I was approached a couple of weeks ago by an engineer I had worked with in the past and he asked if I were interested in part-time work with his current company. There is an upcoming project with the county Flood Control District that I could help them with. My experience with this client doing some major projects will be helpful in the firm getting selected for the job (we hope). So, I have also been working part time back in engineering as well. We did shortlist on the project and have an interview next Tuesday; after that we will know if we were selected. More on this later, too.