Apollo is fully
grown, spoiled and considers himself a lapdog.....he weighs 92
lbs and spends
most of the time indoors. We've been thinking about getting him a
playmate..... maybe a Siberian Husky. Vooruka, our Siamese cat no
longer interests him and he thinks she's a bore. His training
continues and Marsha is a far better trainer than I but I can
now keep him from dragging me across the ground when he sees a "bunny"
or
another dog. The
elbow abrasions are starting to heal. I walk him twice a day for
a
total of 2.75 mles which is good for
me and gives him exercise. He sheds year around so
we find fur most everywhere you can think of.....
Carter and Emilie had their 3rd birthday in early 2010.
Marsha gets down to see them several times a year and Ryan and Jenn came up this past summer. Its hard to travel with two small ones plus a dog. We're hoping to get them up this way again this coming summer.
They're all doing great and enjoyed a nice snowfall over the holidays.
Our oldest granddaughter is growing like a weed. She and Tyler were able to come up to see us this past year and always enjoy going to the beach. This has been a trying year for Tyler with the banking industry the way its been, but he's doing well.
Early in 2009 we
found a sea going relocation voyage that ran half the price of
what I normally
target so we couldn't resist. It started in Rome, Italy and ended
in Ft.
Lauderdale. We jumped on board in Civitavecchia after
spending several days in Rome. We ended
up a
total of
30 days and it was very nice to get away from the cold PNW during
early
December which had temperatures down to 17° during our
absence. We spent time in the Mediterranean, then the Atlantic
south across the equator to Brazil and back up through the
Carribean.
You can read more about it here.
I've been working on a trip for about 2 years that covers many
of the lesser known islands of the South Pacific. Aitutaki, at
right, is one of them. I finally found a trip leaving late
November 2010 for 30 days. One of the stops will be Aitutaki as
well as the Marquesas and Society Islands. This has to be an
answer to a trip I always dreamed about.
I always include ham radio wherever we sail and have figured out what works and what doesn't.
In 1992, Neil left TEKTRONIX after 22 years for a more progressive company. He developed telecommunications products and high speed signal digitizers and was once known as "Mr. Digitizer". They were used to record high energy nuclear research events, including weapons testing. When the cold war came to an end, no one wanted to set off anymore nukes! In any case, he wanted to do something different with a better future. Telecom and wireless communications were showing signs of life and caught his attention. TEKTRONIX never had much vision in that area at the time so my future belonged elsewhere. It turned out to be a super move.
During this period, Marsha was helping raise our two sons and working in the Special Education department at Newberg H.S., Newberg, Oregon.
He joined ATLAS TELECOM as an Engineering Manager & Project Manager to support the development of enhanced services for the Japanese PHS Handyphone. This really got me into wireless communications.
In 1995, I got a chance to do some serious work with radio product and system design. After 26 years in the Portland area and living in the same house for 22, Marsha and I were ready for a change. We moved to Seattle as I accepted a position with McCaw Cellular to form a new product engineering group. McCaw had recently been purchased by AT&T and saw an opportunity in Wireless Local Loop (WLL) technology. AT&T wanted to develop WLL which would compete with the local telephone company. The design was to be within AT&T rather than farming it out. The decision was to set up shop in Seattle. I was employee number 14 and offered the position of Subscriber System Development Manager. I was promoted to Director of Subscriber Systems Development in 1996. We finished our frist trials in Chicago, on time, and had the product deployed in six selected cities in the U.S. when I retired in Feb. 2001. I originally wanted to retire in the year 2000 (turn of the century) but decided to extend it one more year to optimize the financial considerations.
AT&T Wireless was later sold to
Cingular and then AT&T itself being purchased
by
SBC which included Cingular. In short, AT&T was pulled back
together again after being rescued by one of the "baby bells".
By
retiring early and using cashed out stock options to build our new
home, we
avoided all the
downfall the company went through. Hindsight has shown that
our timing couldn't have been better. The ownership of all these
companies is complex but over the past years, they've stabilized.
Marsha went back to work at a RITZ camera store in Redmond, Washington in the mid 1990's and realized she had talent in sales. Something many of us told her for years. (Yes, she probably could sell an ice box to an Eskimo). She was promoted to open and manage the new Woodinville store in 1998. She took Neil to the Bahamas free of charge in October 1999 as part of her sales awards.
We started to look for a place to build our retirement home in 1998. All options were open but we knew we wanted to be around a marine environment. After narrowing it to the PNW, we found 2 1/2 acres of waterfront West of Port Angeles (PA) and knew the moment we saw it that it was what we were looking for. We built our new home in 2000. Marsha left her management position in January 2001 to promote our PA move and prepare our Woodinville house for sale. I left AT&T Wireless in February 2001, taught wireless communications for TRA clients for about a year and then decided to just bum around doing things I've always wanted to do but never had the time. I still consult on a limited basis. We've now lived in PA for 9 years and I've been retired during this time. its turned out the way we had planned.
Updated: May 2010