California Monsoon Season

The rains come down. And down. And down. The garden likes it, the cats hate it!

Strata started a new job on January 2nd, a fulltime employee position at a company with offices in San Francisco and Mountain View. She's up in SF most Thursdays for meetings, and in downtown Mt View the rest of the time. The cats also hate the new job, as it means they only get to go to "the O-U-T" on weekends.

Hmm, maybe the subtheme of this post should be "what cats hate", because they certainly hated it when we painted the living room over the holiday break. Then again, I didn't like the process much myself. Something about having everything under a dropcloth in the center of the room just isn't "homey", ya know? Mike, of course, being grandson of a professional painter and son of a paint & hardware store owner, was right in his element.

My domain is allegedly coming back the end of January, I hope. We'll see. The cats have no opinion on that, as far as I can tell.

Mike is going scuba diving tomorrow-- Monterey Bay is supposed to be flat, despite the bad weather. If it rains, well, his gear will get a free freshwater rinse right on the deck. Though you'd be surprised how many people think you can't scuba dive in the rain. Why? Will you get wet? Oh, right.

To end on a positive note, here is something that the cats like: the cat castle, strategically placed for looking out the window at yummy birdies our avian brethren.

PS- Please to ignore the wrinkly curtain-- we had them up temporarily while the thermal blinds were being cleaned. Brrrrrr. We didn't know just how good a job the blinds were doing until we took them down for a week!

Temporary Email Change

Our email has been disrupted due to someone trying to hijack the virtual.net domain.

Strata can be reached at SRChalup using Gmail (gmail.com). Mike can be reached via his work email, mike.chalup, at his work address, moldev.com.

Sorry for any problems folks have had contacting us. We're trying to get this straightened out but it could take a couple of weeks.

best regards,
Strata

2007 Holiday Newsletter

Happy holidays to all! I haven't gotten it together to do a holiday newsletter since we went on sabbatical, so it's time to catch up.

We're painting the livingroom today, and Mike has gone off to get a few things we may need tomorrow. On the way, he's going to drop by the Post Office and mail our first batch of cards. They arrived about a week late, but came out beautifully. Later this afternoon we're going hot-tubbing at Watercourse Way, renting my favorite tub room: One Pine, which has a skylight and a huge wooden tub. Then we'll be going to Chopshticks- An Evening of Comedy and Chinese Food at Ming's in Palo Alto. I've always meant to go to Kung-Pao Comedy in SF, but never quite got up there for it. This should be great! (And it was!)

So. Anything happen this year? Not much, a lot, yeah, kinda. :-)

Family

Everybody's doing more or less fine, subject to the usual kvetching. We had a couple of scares with Mike's folks this year, but by and large all is well. Strata's mom came out to visit in the early part of the year, and we did some touristy things and generally had a great time.

We have a new niece, Emma, and a new nephew, Thomas, on the Rose side of the family. This coming fall is our nephew Zac's bar mitzvah in NY, so there will be a general rallying of the Chalup clan. We'll try to keep enough vacation days free to be able to spend an extra couple of days and make it off to PA to Rose territory as well.

We hosted our usual tiny Passover seder this spring. It's been a few years since we've done a really big one. If you look hard, you can see the lovely green cymbidium orchids on the table, courtesy of our back-fence neighbor Jack, who raises dozens of them in pots.



The kitties are mostly fine. Mostly. Boo has been losing a lot of weight lately. Her x-ray and blood work were normal, though, so we think it's just old age and picky eating. Both cats like "helping" me with gardening, and generally making sure they're well-rested in the unlikely event of an emergency.



Oh, and Snark caught a mouse. Our first mouse ever (and, I hope, the last). Boo pretended that mouses are nasty, and that she didn't care that SHE didn't catch one. I gave her some puff treats to make up for no mousie.



Professional This-n-That

Mike's job remains pretty much the same, despite the acquisition of the company: MDC is now MDS, everybody had to put in a new signature in their email, and that's mostly it. We had to choose new benefits this fall, which will start in January, but it's all pretty standard. Mike's been getting great feedback from coworkers and customers, and recently got tapped to attend field technician training on a new product line that's being rolled out.

Strata went from having 5 employees at Virtual.Net Inc back down to only 1 after finishing a couple of big contracts early in the year. She also finished co-authoring one book and contributing a chapter to another, both of which came into print in 2007. Another book, this one on project management for IT, is on the way.

Of course, now that the corporation is well-established, and the books are out, something completely different comes along that looks like just too much fun to pass up. Strata will be starting as an employee at Linden Labs in early January, as a Product/Project Manager. Score another local commute for the Green Chalup Household, as Linden Labs has an office in downtown Mountain View easily reachable by light rail a block from home. Mike's company is 1.3 miles from home. Yay, no-commute happiness.

Stuff We Do for Fun

Mike hadn't entered the Monterey Beach Dive Photo Competition in a few years. For a while, it was an annual ritual for us. A friendly fish obliged him in the Portrait category, and Mike walked away with a Second Place in the "Open" division, i.e., up against the pro photographers.



Strata entered a flower close-up in the American Community Gardening Association photo competition, her first-ever entry. Nothing happened, which is usually the case with first-time photo contest entries. Try again!

Over the early part of the year, Mike completed his portable 2-meter and GMRS/FRS radio station for our emergency response group. Both Mike and Strata went to SNAP training (Sunnyvale Neighborhoods Actively Prepare), and demo'd the portable station at National Night Out in August. We got to put the comm gear and the training to the test with a minor quake this fall. It was mostly a non-event, but showed we could deploy the station and talk to Sunnyvale EOC in the event of a real emergency.



Travel n Trains

Last year was the Year of Car Barn Three, the new huge metal building at Rio Vista Junction. Mike and his fellow track crew volunteers worked like crazy to get the storage tracks built inside the car barn, and all the intricate switching laid out leading to the new building. This year saw mostly track repair, more track repair, and oh yes, track repair.

While Mike worked on track this summer, Strata was riding trains. Having done the Book Thing and the Deadline Thing way too much from about January 2006 through the spring of 2007, Strata took time off this summer and did some footloose wandering around the Pacific Northwest via the Coast Starlight train up to Seattle. The Coast certainly lived up (down?) to its reputation of being late. That's why sleeper cars rock: from the comfy couch of one's own private, if tiny, room, with big windows, electrical outlet, books, laptop, and iPod, who really cares?



After a pleasant few days in Seattle visiting an old friend (who was having some Life Changing Events), Strata made it down to the Oregon Country Fair for the first time. Ah. So THAT'S what all the fuss was about. Definitely planning on going again in 2008.



Jardin

Strata has continued her involvement with Sunnyvale's nonprofit Charles Street Gardens, helping to lay out a cut flower bed that will come fully to life this spring, and joining a group managing some shared winter gardening space for folks on the waiting list.



Meanwhile, our backyard garden has not gone neglected. We're starting to whittle down the veggies in the freezer, ranging from green and yellow beans to summer squash to tomatoes of red, green, and yellow. There's a small cart decorated with winter squash in our living room which has already furnished Thanksgiving goodies. The winter garden of lettuces, leaf mustards, chard, and brassicas is planted, and spring and summer garlic is starting to come up in green shoots.



One of Strata's long-term dreams was to grow most of the cooking and decorative herbs and flowers that she uses routinely. We're pretty close to that goal now, drying and saving our own sage, rosemary, oregano, thyme, and marjoram, as well as growing two kinds of paprika peppers for drying.



This is also the first year that the perennials we put in over the last couple years have really taken hold. We got a couple of cuttings of lavender this year, plus roses, gladiolas, and dahlias for bouquets.