Jamaica Recap

Sarah did a little bit of 'journaling' on mom's laptop while on vacation, and she wants to put that on the blog for a recap of the vacation, so i'll leave the fun stuff up to her - coming soon. Suffice it to say it was very nice, we had a great time. Here's my favorite photo that came out of it...

Hope all of you have/had a very Merry Christmas.

The Johnsons

The Doctor is in the house!

After many long years of hard work, Kirsten successfully defended her thesis in Information Sciences and Technology today, thereby completing the program and obtaining her PhD. Whoo Hoo! She doesn't walk until next June with the rest of the college, at which time she'll get a funny hat and some colorful stripes to put on her robe. Here she is preparing her presentation.

Sarah would like to add something:

GO MOMMY!!!!

Who knew the inlaws were so talented?

Actual footage taken after spending a day with them at stoudts octoberfest....good thing we had a designated driver! Click the triangle above to view the footage...

The end is near! (I hope..)

Today I gave my official, final resignation to my most recent employer. I'd done this originally last Friday, but they really pushed back hard trying to retain me, offering lots of this and lots of that, asking me to take a couple days to reconsider. Their offers were far more than generous, going what I'd say is above and beyond. As such I agreed to give it a couple of days, but at the end of the day, it's not what I want at this point in my life. I want to simplify my life, take things away from it instead of inserting things into it. Everything they offered would have been a complication multiplier, but are things that we're 'supposed to' want. What I really want, really really want - is to make enough to support my family with a little extra left over, to come home at the end of the day and really come home, and to have some sense of job security and a lot of sense of job satisfaction. Fancy titles and bling can be a big temptation, and I believe I fell for it once. Now the thought of it rather repels me. I'm scheduled to start again with my former employer on 10/22. I won't manage people, won't manage departments, and will make far, far less than I'm making now.

And I couldn't be more excited.

The past 6 months have been incredibly draining on me. But what a beneficial time it's been, looking back on it (and I do SO hope it's over...). Upon leaving the former company, a few individuals voiced their opinion of me that was very, very negative. A result of that was I lost a great deal of self confidence - it's amazing how a few words from a few people can have such a dramatic effect on you. I need to remember that. But during the last months I've come to understand what I'm capable of, what my strengths are, what my desires are, and where I find the most satisfaction. Any self confidence I'd lost is back, plus some. I've been hugely successful in implementing things here that I was told were a lost cause elsewhere, so there's a certain sense of validation and satisfaction as a result of that.

Thanks to all for your support and prayers.

It's Crush Season!

Two posts in one day. It's like Christmas, I know...

This is crush season, that is when grapes start coming in off the vines and i start cluttering the kitchen with fermentation vessels, driving my wife nuts. I'm moving onto more advanced techniques now, such as secondary fermentation. I attended a class on winemaking from grapes that was pretty basic, didn't tell me a whole lot more than i already knew, but did glean some useful nuggets. The last one i've started is a cabernet sauv from napa - i transferred it out of it's primary fermenter last night and initiated something callled malo-lactic fermentation - which is a tricky (or can be) secondary bacterial fermentation that turns malic acid (naturally present in grapes) into lactic acid and a whole bunch of flavor compounds. Basically it makes the wine age better, taste better. We'll see how it goes. I've also got a couple cases of white zin in the final stages of aging, and a chateau-nerf de pape blend that's just started aging. Am really looking forward to seeing how that one turns out. The original red zin i did a couple of years ago is really good now. I'm quite happy with it, even though i did a horrible job on the degassing and it's carbonated (i've since bought a couple of vacuum pumps that take care of this).

"Wine is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy"
-Benjamin Franklin

So ready to close this chapter of my life....

The last year has been horribly disruptive for me. I've wrestled with job choices in which I've probably put too much emphasis on the job itself instead of the reason why we work. The good part of it has been that it's given me no shortage of opportunities to critically examine my life, what i want to do, where i want to be, and take inventory of what my skills are. The conclusion - at this point in my life I don't want to be a director. Managing people is a pain in the rear. I'm tired of traveling. To that end, yesterday I gave my resignation to the company i just joined 4 months ago. I was miserable all the time, and it's just not worth it. My old company has asked me to come back, and I'll do so in a non-managerial role, which is great, and suits where i want to be at this point in my life just fine. The only thing that makes me a wee bit nervous is that when i joined the new company, they asked me to sign a non-compete. It wasn't a condition of the employment, and was sort of a surprise to me. I didn't sign it, they never asked for it and just assumed it was signed. Two legal opinions i've sought said that there's really not much there to be concerned about. Since it wasn't a pre-employment condition and nothing was signed, nor did i verbally agree to it, risks are very low that they'd be able to take any action. However, as each of them pointed out, anyone can sue for anything at any time, and just because they don't have a valid case doesn't mean i don't risk spending lots of money in court proving it. I guess worst case scenario is if they do have a chip on their shoulder and come out swinging, i take a job at walmart for a year until the non-compete runs out.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to things settling down A LOT. I'm looking forward to being at > 50% of Sarah's practices and games, reading her stories (or her reading me stories), and tucking her into bed at night. We've started jogging together, which is nice (my feet are killing me - this never used to happen, they must've changed the shoes, yeah that's it...). I want to simplify my life, and if that means i don't get fancy titles and all that comes along with it, that's just fine with me. Einstein came up with this idea that how you interpret your world depends on (is relative to) where you're viewing it from. Change your viewing location and you gain a new perspective and understanding. The last 4 months have been a good proof of relativity as the result has been I've got a much clearer understanding of what i want to do, want to be, and want out of life - at least at this point in time.

I'm REALLY looking forward to taking a vacation this winter. Somewhere warm where I don't have to do anything but eat and sleep and brush the sand off of my feet. Am currently soliciting recommendations 8-)

Now pray that i don't get sued into oblivion for a contract that doesn't exist...

Kirstens Brazil Vaca...er, work trip

Can be found HERE. She keeps insisting it was for work, but any week long trip that involves 6.5 days of sightseeing and beachin' it officially qualifies as a vacation I do believe 8-) She said the most unusual thing was that people were always asking one another, and her, 'how much money do you have?' almost like it was their version of 'hey, how ya doing?'. As a female traveling alone in a country that has a high crime and poverty rate, probably the best answer to this question is a big ol' zero...nada...none.

Satchmo Shadow Puppet

A friend sent this to me - it's very cool. Ray's my all time favorite artist, and this is my all time favorite song. This guy is either very talented or has wayyy to much time on his hands (pun SO intended...)

Kirsten's Chinese experience

can be found HERE.

Telescopes

For Christmas, I bought Sarah a telescope because she'd expressed a great deal of interest in them. Knowing absolutely nothing about them, I ended up getting what's called a 6" dobsonian - here's what it looks like. It's supposed to be a good starter telescope, and has a gizmo that tells you where to point it to find all sorts of neat stuff. We've not used it very much, but tonight Jupiter was right out in our backyard and it wasn't at 4 am, so we broke it out and took a peek. It was pretty neat - we could see a bunch of it's moons and the bands of color across the planet. Sarah really likes it when we take it out and point it at the moon - the telescope's really not rigged to be able to take pictures with it, but on a whim I pointed my camera as best I could through the lens and tried to take a picture, and it worked out pretty well. It doesn't do any of the fancy tracking or have many bells or whistles on it, but if she enjoys it and wants to do more with it, then we can look for something else that does more. I had no idea there were so many types of telescopes out there - I had a really hard time finding the appropriate one there was so many of them. This picture is using the weakest magnification we have on it - if we dial it up to 'super duper', we can see all sorts of crazy cool things on the moon.

Today we went up to a place called the crystal caverns, which is a big cavern with, erm, crystals in it...(where DO they come up with these names??). Sarah really enjoyed it and afterwards all she could talk about was wanting to get a rock tumbler. The whole time I was down there I kept thinking 'man, what a GREAT place to put a wine cellar..."

Whole lotta shakin' going on...

I started this by saying I wasn't a believer in the whole blogging thing to begin with, but I'd give it a try. Take it easy on me if I've not been vigilant in posting frequently 8-) I've actually been out of the country more than I've been in the country for the last month, so I've not been around much. Job is going ok - I still wake up every morning wondering if I've made a good decision. As with any company, there are good things and there are things that concern me. With so many issues, it can be boiled down to simply making sure that the expectations from all parties involved are clearly understood, communicated, and agreed upon. As we're effectively rebuilding the company in the US, the main issue as I see it is that there's an organizational lack of expectation setting/communication. What does that mean for me? I'm not sure I'm doing what is expected of me 8-) I'm not sure they understand what's expected of me...

I told my wife I think I'm having my midlife crisis. I only plan to live until 72 anyway, and this year I turned 35 so I'm only a year ahead of schedule. We have a family friend whose parents run their own business in the medical field. It's routine work, but consistent and steady, and part of me thinks that boy, wouldn't it be nice to have something that's low stress, where I can stay home with my family all the time, and theres a fair level of security. Perhaps I should buy that from him - he's got no one in his family to take over the biz and is nearing that point in his life where decisions need to be made. The pay would likely be less than what I'm making now, but much of what one values isn't measured in dollar signs, and would I value such a lifestyle more than I value the current state? Perhaps - but would I get bored with it and have to deal with intellectual stagnation? My father in law owns his own pipe organ building and repair company - there are no heir apparents, so perhaps thats an option. But I hate pipe organs. Perhaps I'd grow to love them? But that's what I thought about our cat when we got it 8 years ago too...

Kirsten is still in China, and I think it's been quite an experience for her. After 3 days there I talked with her on the phone, and she said she's "hungry" 8-) We'd watched a Beijing travelogue before she left, and it focused on what it said was traditional foods - I think it was put out by someone who competes with China for tourists, because it appeared to have gone out of it's way to convince the viewer that routine Chinese food was the most bizarre, unappetizing thing you'd ever want to put in your mouth. Exibit A - a bowl of boiled snake penises. Seriously. And you thought your job was bad - how'd you like to the that butcher...better than being that snake I reckon...

Her impression thus far is that urban Chinese life is very dirty (sanitation standards are quite different from what she's experienced thus far...) and that everyone yells and pushes everywhere. As with any major city, gotta be on the lookout for scam artists and people trying to make the quick buck (or yen...). Her digicam broke after a few days, but she's taking pics with her phone now. I told her just to buy a camera there since they're all made there anyway, but she didn't want one that was in Chinese...she comes back this Saturday, and I leave this Saturday again for another week - when alls said and done we won't have seen each other for 3 weeks straight!

Sarah's at her grandparents house during this time. I stopped by after I returned from France and took them out to dinner. It was a very long day for me - we had dinner at 8 pm which felt like 2 am to me, and by the time we finished it was 3 hours later, so I was shot. Grandma say's shes "exhausted" 8-) I think Sarah's ready to come home too.

Here's a link to a movie I made this winter. I'd been talking of making a rocket sled for years, this year I made the first version. A second one will follow, it will have 2 stages and much bigger rockets on both stages. The plan had been to build in an ignition system so I could start going down the hill and then fire it once I was moving. However, since I'm not an electrical engineer, I didn't put enough batteries into the switch to fire off my igniters (i made them myself, which is probably part of the problem). Solution? Field strip the ignition box and use Josh's car (red one in background) and jumper cables to fire it off. It worked, but I didn't get going as fast as I'd hoped because I had to start from a standstill. Wait until next time 8-) A colleague said I should put it to top gun music, so here it is...i'm sure theres a way to put the movie on this page, but I don't have the time to figgure that out.. here's the link instead. You'll need apple's quicktime to view it if you don't already have it.

I'm such a winer

A couple of years ago, I decided to try my hand at making wine. I like to drink it, and I'm a reasonably intelligent fella - so I thought to myself "self" I thought "if hundreds of years ago mankind was able to make a good tasting wine having no knowledge of why or what was happening, surely I can do so too - how hard can it be?" Well, turns out it's harder than I might have thought, but I've got a few batches under my belt now and am learning more and more each time I do it. Is it any good? Well, I've not made anyone go blind yet 8-) Thus far I've got a red zinfandel, a supertuscan, and another italian blend for the dry reds, and a number of sweeter reds and a sweet white under my belt. There's something fundamentally intrigueing about the process to me - starting with the rough raw materials and refining them, changing them via living processes that continue to affect them and change them over time long after the fermentation portion of the process is complete. I'm getting pretty good at making the sweet wines - they're easy to tell if they're successful or not because they're ready very soon after bottling and they disappear quickly, so I know no one's trying to be sensitive about bruising my ever so delicate ego. The dry reds are a bit tougher to rate - they take years to mature to the point of drinkability, and only now are my first batches coming around to being ready to taste.

The label I choose for them is Chateaux la Feet - because I was worried that the finished product would taste, well, like feet 8-) Plus it sounds like it could be something real, and I like how it sounds. Here's the bottle neck label and bottle label from my last batch:

I've built a rudimentary wine cellar in the basement to house the ever growing collection of bottles (currently dozens and dozens, as each time I make a batch, I get about 30 bottles from each variety - and knowing that most of the batches I make take a couple of years to age before I want to drink them... well, I need somewhere to put lots and lots of bottles)! Someday I'd like to build a 'real' cellar, but that day's not today...

The best amazon.com item EVER

Or the strangest. Some sort of tank from star wars. The name is just fun to say. You can drive it up to 40 mph. Crazy. Badonkadonk Tank. All for the low low price of just under $20 grand! You've gotta read the reviews at the amazon.com site - they're hilarious...the other thing that strikes me as odd is that the 'other people' who bought this item also purchased 4.5 lbs of bananas, some grapes, and spicy sausages. I dunno about you, but I don't want to be confined to a bodonkadonk tank when those spicy sausages start working their way out of someone's bodonkadonk...

Writing about right...

I've spent considerable time over the last 6 months desparately wanting to make the 'right' decision. Right for me, right for my family, right for the long term, etc. I couldn't come to a point where I felt peace about any of the decisions. None of them felt right. A good friend of mine and I were discussing this over breakfast one morning, and he said something that really put it into perspective for me. I don't recall his exact words, but they were something to the effect of if you're doing something prayerfully and with God as a central figure in your decision making, it probably doesn't much matter which way you go. Huh. It's probably much like when my daughter comes to me asking if she can have an apple or a banana or an orange for a snack - she's asking because she wants to make the right decision, and is consulting me to validate those are 'right' options. But really, any of them are 'right' - they're all good options, so she can't go wrong with any of them. I wonder if that's sometimes how God feels with us when we're desparately looking to make the 'right' decision when really any of them are good options?

Still, I hope I've made the 'right' decision 8-)

Blogging, 101

So I figgure it's time I see what this blogging business is all about. Anyone who knows me well tell you that I'm a technical type of guy. If it has buttons, a screen, or takes batteries, I probably want it or already have it. So why am I so late to the blogging scene? Good question. I know what they are, I read a number of them, but have never felt the need to put my life online, or felt I had anything compelling enough to say that I felt strongly that the whole world just *had* to read it.

This is sort of me testing the waters, thinking if I experience it, then maybe I'd get it. So, here we go, the first official Johnson family blog. Now I have to think up something clever to say. Great.

Today I quit my job. I had been with a phenemenonal company for the last 12 (!) years, doing something I love. I was paid well, traveled extensively, and got all the free chocolate I could eat. I know, you're thinking what's wrong with me that I'd quit. Another company that also is in the same line of business has been talking with me off and on for almost the last year, and finally I accepted their offer. It's a great offer, and I'm very excited about it. The company is very, very strong in what they do, and I'll get to continue to eat lots and lots of chocolate (hey, round IS a shape.. I'm in shape!), travel to exotic places, and meet great new people. Great, so what's the problem? It's a very odd feeling leaving. It's normal, I suppose, to have a mixed bag of emotions during times like these. On one hand, very excited and have lots of anticipation. On t'other, feelings of betrayal to my original company and a feeling of loss of relationships - lots of the people I've worked with I've grown close to and consider friends. We've vacationed together, our kids are growing up with one another, etc. I'm not physically moving anywhere, but still, I won't get to see them every day. It's a very odd feeling for me. Did I make the right decision? Is there such a thing as a 'right' decision (more on that in the next post, if I remember to have a next post...)? The unknown is both compelling and daunting at the same time.

I make no promises that I'll keep this up to date. Will I get sucked into the world of blogging and find that I can't live w/o it now that I've experienced it? Or will I think this is for the birds, I've got enough to do (yeah right, I'm w/o a job for the time being!) and not keep it up? Time will tell....