August 13th, 2019 – Old Town Trolley Tour

It’s 9:03 pm. The kids are watching super wings again before bed.

 

Today we got up at 6:30 am to see the sunrise.

 

After breakfast we drove down to St. Augustine to do the Old Town trolley tour.  It started from the north side of town and went south. We first stopped off at the distillery, which was not what I expected to do. It sounded like they might have something for kids, which ended up being some lemonade they didn’t’ like. The St. Augustine distillery is five years old, started in an ice factory abandoned in the late 90’s after the collapse of the shrimp industry in St. Augustine. Apparently, there had been hundreds of shrimpers in St. Augustine and now there were six. The ice  factory used ammonia compression to make huge blocks of ice picked up by cranes. I didn’t realize they used to do that.

 

This retired school teacher and baseball coach gave a tour of the distillery.  They fermented mash for 6-10 days and distilled it to make rum, gin, vodka, and bourbon. The bourbon they stored in barrels. They bottled all the alcohol by hand. Crazy. They gave us several free drinks, Moscow mule, a rum pina colada drink, and a gin drink.  I liked the rum drink so I bought the rum and mix. They also gave us a whiskey with old fashioned mix, which was great. I also tried several whiskeys straight.  It was a good tour.

 

Then we took the train again, but not for long. We stopped at a chocolate tour. This tour wasn’t free, it was $8 per adult. They gave us a bunch of free chocolate, too much really. The kids had too much as well. I didn’t like the chocolate too much. It was too sweet for me.  In the factory we had to wear hair nets, but the kids didn’t want to. When we went into the factor it was very noisy so I couldn’t hear the tour guide guy. We saw this machine squirting out white chocolate and this guy was putting it in a mold by hand. It looked very tedious. The tour guide said this chocolate place, Whetstone, had supplied chocolates for Disney and many other companies until the 1990’s, but then the companies wanted them to move someplace cheaper to supply the chocolate. They didn’t want to move the business out of St. Augustine, so they lost that business anyway and shrunk the company.

 

After the tour we ate some lunch quick, chicken sandwiches packed by Keira at home, then jumped on the train. It took us past the Flagler hotel again and the oldest house, then back to our car. Harvey was sleeping in my lap. It was very hot. We drove home and I got on a phone conference with a collaborator about one of my research projects. After the hour-long call, I came out and Harvey was bouncing off the walls. I guess the chocolate kicked in.  Keira hung out with him on the beach so he wouldn’t destroy the condo while I ate something, then I relieved her. A bit later we came in and had dinner. Dinner was salad, some leftover meats (salmon, chicken, pork chop), and some leftover shrimp with spaghetti sauce and squash. Good!

 

After dinner we took the kids out to the beach. I make a couple huge piles of sand, and Harvey tried to push his truck into it. Keira used the boogie board on some waves, riding up on the shore, and I did the same. Then I pulled Harvey along on the boogie board through a bunch of the tidal pools. He loved that. Alexandra was content holding someone’s hand in the surf, or poking the wet sand near the water.  It was a full moon rising when we went home.

August 12th, 2019 – The Beach

It’s 8:52 pm. I’m sitting on the couch with my laptop while the kids are watching Super Wings on my iPad. We are in the condo in Florida. We drove down last Saturday, August 10th. We started down at 8:30 am in the morning, and I remembered I left my keys to the condo shortly after we left. Oh well. We stopped for pee at a rest stop, then lunch in Florence, SC at the same Which Which we had visited several years ago. The kids had these rolls of cheese wrapped around meat, along with a couple carrots and apples. It wasn’t that good a lunch for them. Keira got a milkshake and they definitely enjoyed eating that. I had a black bean patty with avocado.

 

We stopped for dinner in Jacksonville. Got to the restaurant just as it started pouring rain. The place was called Hawker’s Asian street food. It was a 25 minute wait at 5:25 pm. Crazy. So we ran down the street to a Ramen restaurant. It was ok. We had tonkatsu, pork bone broth with some fatty pork and noodles. Harvey had fried chicken pieces and Alexandra had pork fat buns. We stopped at Publix and picked up supplies on the way to the condo.

 

We got down to the condo around 8 pm and of course it was locked, even though I had called up that morning to ask them to leave the door open. Oh well. We didn’t have to wait long for a guy to come open it up, maybe 15 min.

 

The next morning Keira got up at 6:30 am to see the sunrise. I went with her. We tried to take pictures but the camera got all clouded up because of the humidity. We had breakfast and took the kids out to the beach a bit later. It was SUPER hot. We didn’t stay out that long. We thought Christa and Carrie were going to come around 10 am, but Christa slept in.  So, they came down around 2:20 pm or so, meeting us at the Washington Oaks. We were hanging out in the air-conditioned visitor center. Just too hot and humid to be outside for very long, even though we liked to look at the living oak trees. Now I remember turtle! We saw a big turtle crossing the road as we drove in. I grabbed and showed it to the kids in the back seat. The really wanted the turtle, so we parked and ran back before the turtle could run away. I grabbed it and put it in the shade so the kids could run after it for awhile before it escaped into the woods.

 

We left Washington oaks not long after Christa, Carrie, and Ken arrived. We chatted in the condo’s living room with the kids providing some entertainment. It was fun to see them and catch up. They headed out shortly before dinner.

 

After dinner we took the kids out to the pool and then the beach to play with the sand and whatnot. It was much better since it was all shady. We didn’t hang out in the pool too long. We have a pool at home. On the beach Alexandra got into the pools left by the ocean on the beach and liked to run away from the surf coming up on the beach. Harvey enjoyed pushing his truck around in the sand.

 

Today Keira went to see the sunrise again, got some better pictures. I slept in. We then went out to boogie board in the morning.  It was really fun, but Keira had trouble catching a wave on her small, crappy kickboard. I traded with her. The crappy kickboard was useless.

 

We took the kids to the alligator farm in the morning, getting back to the condo around 1pm. At first the kids were not happy at the farm since it was so hot. But eventually they got used to it and started running around exploring. After we watched them feed the alligators some pellets and rats, it was time to head out through the gift shop. Alexandra had to have this blue and green snake, so I paid the $15 and we headed back home.

 

Lunch at home was salad and spaghetti for the second day in a row. Alexandra loved to put the snake with the blow-up swan. She is very entertained by those animals. Today we could get the kids to nap. Alexandra slept with grandma, Harvey slept with me for an hour. Then I got up to do some work with Harvey still sleeping. I worked on emails and Nanoscale for an hour and half before Alexandra woke up.  We played for a bit, then Harvey woke up too, quite cranky. Dinner was ready – salmon, baked chicken, broccoli, and some fried potatoes with carrots. And sweet potatoes! The kids love sweet potatoes. Harvey said “Sweet Potato” very clearly for the first time.

 

After dinner we went straight to the beach. I dug a big hole with Harvey to chase after a crab, but no luck. Then I modified the hole so the ocean would flow in.  Alexandra walked with grandma back and forth to the ocean, running away from the surf. She did the same with Keira then me. I held Harvey’s and Alexandra’s hands as they tried to stay upright in the surf with some success.  Seems they are not afraid of the ocean anymore. When Alexandra first came to the beach here, she wouldn’t stop crying, and wouldn’t go anywhere near the surf. Now she loves it. Harvey was not as scared, but he was pretty content to push his truck through the sand.

(The picture gallery below has photos in reverse chronological order)

On the way to FL
Pit Stop
Dinner at Raman Place
Seeing the ocean for first time
Seeing the ocean for first time.
Exploring the condo
Breakfast
Turtle
Aligator Farm
Komodo Dragon

August 9th, 2019 – NIST and Eye Doctor

It’s 11:47 am. This morning I took Alexandra to her 3rd visit to the eye doctor. We made some progress! She let the light shine in her eyes. Next time we’ll do that again and get some eye drops to put in her eyes before the 5th visit. OMG.

 

Two days ago I took a trip to DC to visit NIST. I woke up at 4:15 am before my alarm and got to the airport around 5:20, 10 min before boarding.  There was a big line at security, but not in the TSA pre! So I could sail through. I took the subway and a shuttle to NIST, working on a grant on the way on my computer. At NIST I met with many people, including a bunch of postdocs. It seems the environment there is fun.  A bunch of scientists working on a bunch of interesting problems. Even the food in the cafeteria was pretty good. They have an apple tree there that is descended from the one that dropped the apple on Newton’s head. I took a bunch of pictures of the Scanning tunneling microscope and surface-enhanced infrared spectroscopy setups I want to use there. I was visiting in advance of sending a student to do some experiments.

 

Unfortunately, my flight was delayed from 8:50 to 1 am. On the plus side, that gave Tom Moffat and I more time to chat over sushi, and I just watched some Netflix. Got back to the house around 3 am and got ~4 hrs sleep.

 

Yesterday I was tired. But I managed to do some work on putting together data to supplement our hydrogel patent application, as well as do a legs work out.  I took it pretty easy in the workout, doing fewer reps than usual. At home, we went down to get ice cream from the food trucks, and I mowed the lawn while Keira gave the kids their bath.  Working out gave me a lot of energy! Haha. Looking forward to driving to Florida tomorrow.