M@ Around The World

It's been a little while since I've updated this guy, but here's what's been going on the past few months... April: 4/14 - 4/16: One of my best friends, Craig , came down to visit me in the 404 (well, actually the 770 but close enough ;-).  He, Maneesh , and I had an awesome time.  The highlight of that weekend was when the three of us, Megan , and Jme went to the Jungle for the Babylon Tour party where Tony Moran was DJing and got in for free.  We got there early before they opened and hung out with Adam , Andrew , and Becca :-) 4/21 - 4/23: Flew to NYC for the 4th Annual Tarot Reader's Studio and met my A. Sue and the rest of the gang from the Tarot Community that I only get to see once a year!  Debbie Lake, Gail Wood , James Wells , Johanna Gargiulo-Sherman , Rachel Pollack , Mary Greer , Elizabeth Genco , Wald and Ruth Ann Amberstone (who run the Tarot School and this event), and many more were all there.  I had a great time seeing familiar old fa...

Gulf Coast Family Fun My younger brother, David , moved to Sarasota, FL back in Feb (2006) for an FMP rotation with GE (yes we all work for GE... :).  Although he found it challenging to get people to come visit him when he lived in Louisville, KY , the family jumped at the chance to come down to Florida ...I wonder why... ;-)  Before he even moved, Mom, Bill, and I all planned to meet up down there the weekend before Easter for our now annual spring family vacation.  Ready for the warmth, ocean vista, and change of scenery for a few days, I hopped in the car on Wed (4/5/06) afternoon and away I went! 4/5 :: A Long Drive Well Worth It Having lived right off of one of the exits for I-75 for the past two years, I've come to appreciate how many places this interstate highway is connected to!  I can drive just over 400 miles to the north and end up at a friend's apartment in Cincinnati, OH , or I can drive just over 500 miles to the south and end up at David's fr...

A Weekend in Sunny California... My good friend Logan moved out to Redondo Beach, CA (outside of Los Angeles ) in June 2005.  Since then we've been talking about when I could take my first real trip to California (for more than a couple hours over night) :-)  The opportunity surfaced at the last minute one night in the middle of March so I thought to myself, "Why not!  Let's do it!" and to the Internet I went to acquire passage on one of Delta's finest airborne transports to the West Coast .  3/31 :: Welcome to LA! I took off at 10:30a on Friday for the ~five hour flight to LA and through the miracles of time zones , arrived only two hours later in LAX .  Logan swung by in a Toyota Yaris that he was borrowing from work to pick me up.  Now, not to take a small segway or anything, but let me tell you about this little bugger!  It can zip in and out of traffic like a humming bird ; it can turn on a dime; and it's also great when flying ...

Return to the Nasti... I rolled up into the Nasti after a 6.25 hour car ride from Atlanta on the afternoon of March 3.  Once again work had brought me back for a "work out" in Evil...I mean Evendale for the coming Mon - Wed.  What better time, then, to come up a few days early and visit with the infamous Clifton and all his friends up north!  It had been 5 months since my last trip up there and we didn't get a chance that time to even go out to the bars/clubs actually in Cincinnati, so I was looking forward to seeing more what a regular Clifton weekend was like.  A Night on the Town in the CVG... After hanging around and relaxing for a little while, we started to get ready to meet Clifton's friend Greg to go get something to eat and possibly meet up with a bunch of work friends at a bar called "Mulligans".  "Mulligans" was a mad house!  We couldn't find a place to park the car let alone were we about to wait in the line that...

Come Sail Away... November 13 my family on my Dad's side went on our first vacation together aboard the Star Princess cruise ship. We actually had three generations of us together (Grandma McKnight, Dad, Sharon, Collins, Frank , myself, Dave , and Frank's fiance Erin ).  The cruise was through the Caribbean stopping at Cozumel, Mexico ; Grand Cayman Island ; Montego Bay, Jamaica ; Princess Cays Island, Bahamas .  We left out of Ft. Lauderdale, FL on Sunday (which unfortunately still had not recovered fully from the latest hurricane that had passed though, hurricane Wilma) and returned the following Sunday.  A Good Omen As We Set Sail... At 5p EST on Sunday we started to push off from port in Ft. Lauderdale.  Our group had four rooms on the Dolphin Deck of the ship that we had the cabin steward, Bernie, conjoin by opening the doors between our balconies.  We all went out on to them and watched as our journey began.  Up in the sky (as you can see in the pi...

Virtually in Vegas... When last we left our traveler he was just getting back from Cincinnati, OH in anticipation of his next grand adventure out west to Las Vegas .  Hehe :-)  This trip was also related to work as it was the location of the 2005 VMWorld Conference (sponsored by VMWare ®).  The conference was a symposium of classroom lectures, interactive sessions, and labs centered around the VMWare products and their partners' products.  We were in sessions for 9-10 hours a day learning about all the possibilities and directions we could take these products in.  It was very exciting! (in a somewhat geeky way :-) A slight detour on the way... A couple weeks before I left on my trip, I found out that a friend of mine, Nick , was going to be in Los Angeles, CA for Mercedes Benz Fashion Week .  Since this particular friend hails from sunny London , I figured this was an opportune time to go see him while we were only a couple hundred miles away.  Du...

The Nasti... Ever since my department in GE Energy merged with one based in Cincinnati, OH in the GE Aircraft Engines (now called GE Aviation) division, I've had to take several trips up there for various meetings and Work Outs (W/O!) (multi-day focused meetings driven to come up with a solution to a problem).  I never liked (nor minded really) going there only because I didn't relate to the city or to the state (especially after last year's presidential election!).  This trip, however, was a little more exciting because I got to stay the weekend after and hang out with my friend Clifton that just graduated from the IMLP program out of Aircraft Engines and bought a condo not too far from the office.  Clifton so affectionately refers to "Cincinnati" as "The Nasti" which I found amusing because those of us in Atlanta usually refer to " Evendale, OH " (where the Aircraft Engines office is) as "Evildale"...so this played into our ...