Oh, the places we went in 2012

Nobody who knows me will be surprised to learn that I enjoy reading travel blogs. Recently, many of my favorite travel bloggers have been posting end-of-year summaries, which got me thinking about such an update for our blog. It also helps that we've just returned from a trip to Thailand, and I've been getting lined up to write some posts on that subject as well.

Without further introduction, I give you the 2.5 Geeks 2012 travel summary; tag this one "navel-gazing":

• Jan: no trips
• Feb: no trips
• Mar: Arizona and Colorado (business)
• Apr: Oregon (business)
• May: New Mexico (business)
• Jun: California and Idaho (business), Ohio and Pennsylvania (family)
• Jul: Virginia Beach (family)
• Aug: Shenandoah National Park (family)
• Sep: California and Germany (business)
• Oct: Ohio (family)
• Nov: no trips
• Dec: California (business with a side dish of family) and Thailand (family)

In all, I had nine business trips, 25 flights, 44,000 miles, and too many redeyes. Oddly enough, Mama Geek and Geek Girl had no flights at all until December, when we flew 20,000 miles for our trip to Thailand. That trip included our longest single segment ever - 13 hours, 41 minutes from IAD to NRT.

Travel Geek that I am, I can't resist keeping some lists, including one of all the airports I've flown into or out of over the years. I got to add four new ones this year - Bangkok Suvarnabhumi and Chiang Mai, Thailand (BKK and CNX); Bremen, Germany (BRE); and Narita, Tokyo, Japan (NRT), so the full list now looks like:

ABQ ACA AEY AMS ANI ANC AUS BET BKK* BOI BOS BRE BRU BSL BUR BWI CAN CBR CDG CLT CKG CMH COS CPH CNX* CTA DCA DEN DFW EDI FCO FLL FRA GDL HKG HNL IAD IAH ITO KOA JAX JFK KEF KWL LAS LAX LGW LHR LIN MAA MEX MUC MSP MXP MYU NRT* OAK ORD ONT PDX PEK PHL PHX PMO REY RNO SAN SAT SEA SFO SHA SIN SJC SLC SMF SNA SYD TPE TXL WUH XIY YYJ YUL ZIH ZRH (*most recent additions)

We also have lists of all the countries we have each visited, where our definition of "visited" requires that we at least leave the airport/train station/bus station/whatever and walk around a while. Depending on how you count Puerto Rico, Thailand was my 19th or 20th country:

• Daddy Geek: 19 or 20 (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, and Vatican City, plus the US territory of Puerto Rico). If you count airport transfers, add in Denmark, Japan, and Taiwan.


• Mama Geek: 12 or 13 (Austria, Canada, China, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, and Vatican City, plus Puerto Rico). If you count airport transfers, add in Germany and Japan.


• Geek Girl: 6 or 7 (France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, and Vatican City, plus Puerto Rico).  If you count airport transfers, add in Germany and Japan.

We also have a list of our geographic extremes - the northernmost, southernmost, easternmost, and westernmost spots we have been on the ground:

• Daddy Geek:
• N: NE of Húsavik, Iceland (66.20N, 17.05W)
• S: Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, ACT, Australia (35.47S, 148.90E)
• E: Sydney, Australia (33.86S, 151.22E)
• W: 10 km W of Mekoryuk, Alaska (60.34N, 166.39W)


• Mama Geek:
• N: Inverness, Scotland (57.48N, 4.22W)
• S: Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok, Thailand (13.69N, 100.75E)
• E: Shanghai, China (31.24N, 121.49E)
• W: Hale'iwa, Hawaii (21.59N, 158.12W)


• Geek Girl:
• N: Frankfurt Airport, Germany (50.05N, 8.57E)
• S: Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok, Thailand (13.69N, 100.75E)
• E: Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok, Thailand (13.69N, 100.75E)
• W: Kona Airport, Hawaii (19.74N, 156.04W)

I'm still the only Geek who has traveled south of the Equator, and none of us has yet visited Africa, Antarctica, or South America. Clearly we need to fix all these deficiencies soon. Should I tell Mama Geek that Geek Girl and I have already been discussing our next destination?

[Note: edited by Daddy Geek on 3 Jan 2013, 0711 EST, because Mama Geek reminded me she has also visited Taiwan.]

How we spent Christmas Eve 2012

A taste of things to come: how we spent Christmas Eve 2012.













Merry Christmas, everyone!

(And Happy Birthday, Neighbor Geek!)

My Plant Project

At school we are learning about plants. We had a choice of whether or not to do an optional project to make a model of a flowering plant. I decided to do it.

I cut petals out of blue felt. Our neighbors let us borrow their glue gun to put the flower together. We used straws to straighten the petals. Here's a picture of the side with the straws:

This is a picture of the other side:

After glueing the petals together I added the sepals. The sepals are the leaves that protect the flower before it blooms. Here is a picture of it on the side with the straws:

And the other side:

Earlier I had made a stem out of a boba straw and stuck two intertwined pipe cleaners into it to color it green. Then I poked a  hole in a box and stuck it in. After that I taped on some yarn for roots. Here is a picture of all of that:

I had also made the pistil (the "female" part that has what will become seeds) and the four stamens (the "male" part with the pollen) earlier. I attached them together with the hot glue gun. Here is a picture of them:

Then came putting it together. We attached a bent paper clip to the stem and poked a hole in the petals and sepals. Then we used the hot glue gun to attach the paper  clip to the pistil. After that I  glued on the leaves. That left one last step. I had to label the parts. I had a numbered list with the functions of the parts, so I only needed to use numbers. Here are the parts: 

• Ovules- the "eggs" that will become seeds
• Ovary- holds the ovules
• Style- brings pollen to the ovules
• Stigma- catches pollen
• Pistil- the "female" part of the plant. The ovary, style, and stigma are part of it.
• Anther- makes and stores pollen
• Filament- holds up the anther
• Stamen- the "male" part of the plant. The anther and the filament are part of it.
• Petals- attract insects to pollinate
• Sepals- the leaves that protect the flower before it blooms
• Stem- transports nutrients throughout the plant
• Leaves- absorb energy from the sun
• Roots- absorb water and nutrients from the soil and keeps the plant grounded

Here's a picture of the finished plant:

Note: Daddy helped with the glue gun.

Old Rag

On Friday 11/23/12 Daddy and I hiked up Old Rag. This is us at the bottom at about 10:45:

The trail was rocky and it zig-zagged back and forth a lot. I got tired soon after we started, so Daddy gave me almonds and chocolate-covered blueberries.

After a lot of normal steep trail, we came to "the rock garden", a part of the trail with a lot of rock scrambling. There was a rock that hung at an angle over another rock. I had to get on my side and squirm under it. A little after that there is a "staircase" of rock. Here I am in front of it:

Here is Daddy in front of it:

At one point we found a rock balancing on another rock. Here I am "holding it up":

After more scrambling and hiking we finally reached the summit. We reached the summit around 1:45. Here we are standing in front of the sign saying that we reached the summit:

Here we are on the tippy top of the summit:

Here we are where we ate lunch (in front of that rock):

Here is the view:

After all that we had to hike down again. We left the top around 2:45. The sign (see above) told us that we had 5.2 miles left. There are 9 miles in the trail. It took until around 5:00 to finish.

The hike was pretty fun, but it was tiring.

Announcing a new author!

Mama Geek and I are happy to announce that Geek Girl is now a full author on our blog, rather than a guest poster. Be on the lookout for some new perspectives from our third author, who is even now writing her first official post... Clearly, we have too many Apple devices in the house.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Wieder Auf der Straße

Guten Morgen!

I'm on the road again, this time in Germany for the upcoming week. I'm meeting with colleagues for the kickoff of an international collaboration for data exchange.

I'm excited to be in Europe but I know I'll miss Mama Geek and Geek Girl. To help with that, GG gave me my traveling companion for this trip: TJ the Tiger.

I give you TJ catching up on the news:





And TJ having breakfast in the Lufthansa lounge while we await our connecting flight.




I'm also a happy aviation Geek - I've seen two A380s so far on this trip.

More to come this week.

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California explores LAX

My traveling companion on this trip got bored waiting for our delayed flight home. Have you ever tried to control a cat in an airport?

At first, she played solitaire...



She is well-read...



But then boredom sets in...




Cali is displeased...comfortable but displeased.



Yep, still delayed.




Yes, Cali, you are a cool cat. Now let me have my sunglasses back, please.



Yes, we are really in LA.




Hey, what's up? Oh, just stuck in LAX. Meow.



Hipster cat finds an acceptable bed.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Los Angeles, CA