Quidditch, anyone??

Okay, I'm officially hooked on Harry Potter. I've seen a couple of the movies, but the books are so much more fun! This past weekend, I began the first book; and today I started the second one. The third is, of course, on reserve at the library. (John Mark, I'll be done in no time, and we can have our literary discussion on the deeper themes in this series.)

I'm beginning to feel like a real Roanoker (as we are called) now, due to my daily exploration of the area of downtown near our new office. No longer do I get lost on the third floor of my parking garage (it is, actually, quite tricky). On my lunch break, I sat on a bench in the park and read a little HP (while I casually ignored the bum three benches down). And I'm considering getting a pedicure one day at this little salon I pass daily. What a city girl I am!

Up until now, I've been a little apprehensive to mention anyone except Sam and myself in this blog for fear that one of my subjects might read about him or herself and take offense. But this encounter is really worth the risk.....

At church on Sunday, Sam and I sat next to a friendly-looking lady whom we had never seen before. During that weekly (and painfully awkward) meet-and-greet time (which I have always secretly dreaded), we learned that she was visiting because her husband was speaking at an Environmental Engineering conference at Tech. What a coincidence!....Time for the hymns.

We continued our conversation after the service. She was pumped about engineering! The following are all direct quotes:

"I just love being married to an engineer. They are really the salt of the earth.!"

"Engineers are such solid people."

"There just simply aren't enough young people going into engineering."

Despite the fact that she was a very nice lady (who all but offered Sam a job in California), I had to get her to stop with the hype so Sam's head would have a chance to deflate. (It has returned to close to its normal size now, by the way.) Although I am certainly enjoying being married to Sam, I have to say that his engineer-hood is not my favorite attribute. The salt of the earth? Really???

We're getting a dog this Saturday!!!

Yep, that's right. This Saturday morning a dog will be delivered to our door. 'Her' name is Leroy. She's a mutt, but she's a nice dog...... laid back and easy going. Ok ok, we're just keeping her for a week for some friends, but I'm looking forward to it. Our house is always a little more interesting with a dog around. We've kept her before, and except for a little puke on our new rug everything went fine.

One thing I like to do is mess with her when we're gone. I setup Katherine's laptop in the kitchen hooked up to a webcam. I set it up so that I can view the webcam and broadcast sound from the Virginia Tech laboratory. That way I can check on her while I'm gone, and if I get bored I say "Here Leroy!" and watch her run around the house looking for who's talking...... simple entertainment I guess.

On a different note, most of our readers (all 7 of you) might not have seen our house in Virginia. I put up a picture below. Maybe we'll take some of the inside sometime soon.

This is a test.... this is only a test....

Is blogging for me? I'm really not sure. But Sam seems to think it is.... and if there's anything I've learned in almost seven months of marriage, it's that doing something someone else's way isn't necessarily bad. (Sam's learned that too, of course.)

My life doesn't really seem that exciting to me, but maybe some of you will get a kick out of it.... or at least learn what 'third party logistics' is. That's what I do. I help people move things, but mostly I talk to truckers all day. And don't knock it; things stay exciting.

ME: "Sir, what company do you drive for?"
DRIVER: "I om de drivah."
ME: "Yes, sir. What is your company's name?"
DRIVER: "De drivah!! Go California!"
ME: "Anyone want Foreign Trucking, line three?"

That's right, my language skills come in pretty handy sometimes. I've learned a whole new Spanish trucking vocabulary. But the biggest news at C.H. Robinson's Roanoke Branch is our new office. Last Friday, we moved from Salem into downtown Roanoke! It's really awesome. I get to park in a parking garage, eat lunch at cool places, and walk through the farmer's market everyday. (I hope I'm not the only one who thinks parking garages are cool.) I'll be sure to blog more about it when I've discovered more. Right now, I know there's a library, a coffee shop, a YMCA, a lot of little cute boutiques, and numerous restaurants (including a marginal-looking Thai place) within a seven minute's walk of my office.

Oh, and the theater! The Mill Mountain Theater is right across the street, and Sam and I have tickets to several upcoming productions! And I didn't even have to twist his arm.... true, one features the music of Hank Williams; but I know we'll both enjoy them all.

And my brother has convinced me to begin the Harry Potter series.... My friends know I have a tendency to pick up a book and never finish, but I'm determined to finish all these books. Quite a feat for me, I know. So if any of you bloggers/readers out there know how this much-hyped seventh book ends, please don't tell me. Really, even if I ask.

Now it's bedtime, and I still don't feel like I've written anything of interest to anyone. But Sam assures me that people don't read blogs for excitement. (That's why they ready Harry Potter, right?)

Mall design: Creating a man-friendly environment

Last night, Katherine and I made a trip to the New River Valley Mall. Let me begin by saying it was a pleasant experience overall. Never before have I seen a mall which mixed guy stores and gal stores so well. Beside Victoria Secret there's a Dick's Sporting Goods and Radio Shack. Over near Belk there's a game shop with X-Box's and Wii's setup to play...... amazing! You can also watch kids learning karate through a big open window. The karate school is called "The One." I think Jackie Chan works there......

On a different note, we're shocking this weekend. I'll explain. For my master's research, basically what we're doing is running a lab-scale wastewater treatment plant...... 3 actually. The treatment plants run all at the same time, and I put toxic chemicals into only 2 of them. Out of the two with toxic chemicals, one is operated normally while the other is run differently in a way that hopefully minimizes the harmful effects of the toxin. The 3rd, unshocked reactor is a control (shows what the plant would be doing if there were no toxins). Basically, I wake up every morning and go play with sewage. We pump raw sewage from a man-hole into our 55-gallon drum that lasts one day. Right now we're running all three the same until we 'shock' 2 of them. That's tomorrow. I'm not expecting much sleep. We pretty much take samples and analyze them using different lab experiments. By the time we're through with the experiments, it's time to go get more samples. It slows down after the first 2 days though.

Well, I have to get to work........ with poop.

To Market To Market...........

First, in my last post you'll notice the comment that Katherine would likely have little direct input to this blog. Gretchen Wilson's "Redneck Woman" made it to my blog playlist (not without a fight I might add), quickly proving me wrong. Still, there should be enough Texas Country gold to convert even the most stubborn haters.

Today was a relatively active Saturday. We went to downtown Blacksburg to see the farmer's market. Amongst the peppermint, sage, and basil jellies was a nice woman affectionately referred to as 'Nanny' by the regulars. Being somewhat of a jelly connoisseur I tried several of her strange formulas......... not my thing. I'll stick to plum, muscadine, and fig. Walking downtown, we browsed through stores with nice, over-priced stuff ranging from gong chimes to flasks adorned with fairies. The best shop, by far, was a gourmet cooking store. I love cooking and I love gadgets, and it would have been easy for me to spend another hour in this store. I didn't want to end up broke, so we bought a sushi recipe book (we're going to learn), a petitfour (guess who that was for), and fresh scallops (we just ate them...... delicious).

Did I mention the high today was 84 with no humidity?

How Does Any Respectable Document Begin?

With an introduction, of course. Following the lead of my two sisters, I am hereby officially opening this Blog. While I have always considered myself extremely knowledgeable (at least compared to them) when it comes to the internet and electronics, I have no problem admitting that I am completely behind the trendy custom of reporting my life to both friends and strangers. Even though the title suggests it, I doubt Katherine will choose to have much direct input. Still, she will no doubt be the subject of many entries that follow.

If you know me and are reading this, you may have wondered where the nickname, Smoke, came from. If you didn't, then you are no doubt lacking in attention to detail and should work on being more observant. It all stems from 1st semester, freshmen year at Mississippi State (cue me thinking back to the past):

My roommate, Bryan, and I were both taking Chemistry I. It wasn't an easy class, but I realized in graduate school that I actually remember more than I thought I did. The class had about 150 people in each section. It's just not feasible to call out names when handing back tests in that situation. So the professor had the clever idea of posting the grades online. To protect the kids that got 30's and 22's on their tests, he let us have ID's that our grades were posted under. That way, while every student can see every grade in the class by looking at a website, the student only knows which grade belongs to him. His instructions on the first day of class were, "write down on a sheet of paper what you want your ID to be, followed by your name." Most of my friends put down their SSN or campus NetID (e.g. sch54). I wrote down what I wanted my ID to be, and I turned it in. I didn't tell any of my friends what I wrote (I wasn't sure if I would be the guy with the 22). Six weeks later, our first test was graded and posted online. Suffice it to say that several of my dorm-mates (probably 3 or 4)were in the class with me and Bryan. We were all sitting in front of the same computer to find out how we did on one of our first tests in college. As we went down the list of ID's, there were several "Oooooo's" and "Ahhhhh's," followed by laughter and tears (mostly expletives). At the end of the list everyone knew everyone else's grade except for me. They asked me what my grade was, and I sheepishly replied that I didn't remember what my ID was. I only recalled that it wasn't my SSN and was kind of random. The only logical thing to do was pick through every ID. As I worked, everyone was curious as to both what I made on the test and what ID I picked that I couldn't remember. Once we hit the 'S' list I immediately had a clear flashback of my hidden identity....... "Smoke! That's it!" No one laughed, they all kind of looked at me funny and said, "Smoke?". Every now and then it still comes up.