Throwback Thursday Four Generations

#tbt Throwback Thursday. A wonderful reunion of four generations just three months before our mother passed away. Left to right, top down: Myself (youngest of seven), Jill (the oldest), Peggy (our mother), Alex (my daughter), and Jasmine (Jill's granddaughter). And, of course, Lilly, our dog, just loving all the attention. :) August 2008

Now onto the next subject - JavaScript

Now on to the next subject to learn - JavaScript. Using three books Mark, our work area's GUI guru, graciously loaned me. Next week will start on the company's online JavaScript course as well. Currently enjoying a yummy iced mocha at Parkville Coffee while I study and people watch. Place is packed! It's an absolutely gorgeous day, so will only spend a few hours studying. Then, later this afternoon, indulge in a very long walk with the Lilly (our dog) at the park. Then start on my dreaded to-do list I've been putting off. Would go astronomy observing tonight but clouds are forecasted to move in this evening and not clear out until after midnight. Darn. I'm getting a bit addicted to working on my astronomy Messier objects award. So far have nearly 40 logged. It's kind of cool as you first need to find the object in the sky (which can sometimes be very challenging as some objects are extremely faint even with my 10 inch Dob telescope). Then stare at it for awhile, sketching it in the log book, and log the conditions and what scope and eyepiece you're using. For me, at least, it takes about 10-30 minutes for each object as I like to enjoy the process. With frequent breaks due to tons of bending over, taking time to drink a ton of coffee, having to wait around as clouds move in and out over the course of the evening, getting distracted looking at other objects (planets, the moon, and non-Messier objects) and giving your body breaks often? About 14 objects is pretty good for one evening. Ok, need to give Facebook a break and dive into the beginner's book and start studying. Glanced through it yesterday. It looks like it'll be fun to learn JavaScript!

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to my mom. Miss her dearly. She was loving, beautiful, funny, brilliant, and curious about life. She instilled in me the love of science, exploring other cultures, hiking & camping, and giving to others. She let me be a kid, letting me enjoy my childhood, and loving me unconditionally. She was my role model and a wonderful one.

Love and miss you dearly, Peggy Whitcomb. Happy Mothers Day to all my sisters, aunts, nieces who are momma's, and friends. And to my daughter who is why I'm a mom and made the journey a wonderful one with her. Love you, Alex!

My First Toastmasters Speech

Wrote my Toastmasters Icebreaker speech this afternoon. I'm giving it to the club in July. It's your first long speech and it's supposed to be you telling the club a little about yourself. I gave my first speech to the club a few weeks ago and won the Table Topics award! When doing a Table Topic speech, you are given a topic and have to talk on the fly, for about 2 minutes, with no prep. A handful of people do it during the meeting, then everyone votes for the best speech. But this will be my first written out, long speech. Soon will start practicing giving it. The mirror will become my friend - or enemy. Lol. But think it turned out pretty well. However, this translates into me avoiding doing my Java homework and studying for my final. Which is why I'm taking today and Monday off. My heart just isn't into it, knowing that I'll probably not even get a B with the way the instructor is. It'll be the first time ever, and that's just depressing. I usually get A's with a smattering of B's. So not being a given a path to success in this class is disheartening. Almost makes you want to give up. Almost but not quite. I'm pretty stubborn and don't like to be pulled down. I'll shoot for 'C' and call it day. Again, I took Java 13 years ago and got an 'A'. This is a refresher only. Need to keep telling myself that so that I don't take this upcoming grade too seriously. The instructor is a nut job per the words of others. Found out a friend tried taking the Java class from him 10 years ago and dropped the class. And also found out, from three individuals, that he used to work at my company as a COBOL programmer! His reputation wasn't stellar back then either. So good to know it isn't me, but him in general. Says a lot when you kind of flunk at two major jobs (programming and teaching).

Enough belly-aching about college. Here is the speech I will be giving on July 3rd to DST System's "Don't Stop Talking" Toastmasters club. Wish me luck!

Hello. I’d like to tell you a little about myself. I was born and raised in the Northwest, one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Oregon was a wonderful place to grow up with its wild strawberries and blackberries fields galore, rain forests, the Cascade Mountains, and the Oregon coast. Perfect for a tomboy who loved building forts and playing well into the late night with a great group of friends. Times were different back then, safer. One of my favorite memories was the summer we built a fort inside a huge line of wild blackberry bushes, building tunnels in them by lining them with cardboard boxes, providing a cool place for a daytime nap in the hottest hours of the day. That fort took a lot of patience and resulted in many pricks from the thorns but we were so proud of it when it was completed. Our family often visited the Oregon coast, a little less than a two hour drive away, and played on the beaches, ate clam chowder, and went on whale watching cruises. Depot Bay is the perfect spot, the smallest bay in the world with a pod of whales that live there year around, almost guaranteeing you’ll see a whale each time. Mountains were also my second home, backpacking so far up the mountain that you encountered snow in July, with everything you needed on your back, and sleeping under the stars with no tent. It was heavenly and almost a religious experience to be immersed in nature where the usual crowds rarely visited.

I come from a large family, baby of seven but was really part of a second family when my mother remarried. There is a sizable age gap between myself and second to the youngest. Spent the second half of my youth as an only child. I see it as the best of both worlds and love my siblings dearly. Active as child, playing football in grade school, swim team in middle and high school, track in high school along with French club and pep club and a volunteer club. Performed a lot of volunteer work in high school, which I loved. Took most sports and clubs none too seriously, mostly enjoyed my childhood as I realized even back then that life was too short. I think experiencing hardship made me grow up faster and learn to appreciate the good at an earlier age than most. And helped me develop empathy for others early one, having gone through my own hardships. One example of our challenges was the fact that times were finally extremely tight when I was younger, after my mother’s second divorce. She went back to school while working two jobs. I would go days without seeing her and to this day still not sure when she slept. My siblings had to raise me for a few years. But her hard work paid off and she became a family therapist for both the state and for her private practice. She even took some programming classes including COBOL in the early 70’s, which I think is incredibly cool. As you can tell, I loved my mother a great deal and her passing in 2008 was difficult. She was an awesome role model. She obtained her private pilot’s license in her 50’s which inspired both me and my daughter to do the same. I took lessons for a while and am looking to go back and finish this year or next.

I went into the Air Force after high school to obtain college money which eventually funded me becoming a computer programmer. Met my first husband while we were both stationed near Miami. Moved to Japan, a small island called Okinawa which was a subtropical paradise for us. Alexandra, our only child and who was born there, grew up playing at the beach on the weekends or hiking with us in the rain forests. When she was five we moved to Missouri to be closer to our parents. It was the first time I didn’t live within a two hour drive of the ocean. No ocean or mountains nearby? I thought I was stuck in the Midwest, not realizing until how later how awesome the Midwest, Missouri, and Kansas City was. Missouri has a great deal of beauty in nature if you look for it, especially down south in the Ozarks where I love to go camping. It also ended up a great place for our daughter to grow up. Eventually my first husband and I divorced after 16 years of marriage, the best decision for the both of us. By then I was working at DST and enjoying my job. Through my love of astronomy I met my current husband. I had met my soul mate and best friend. I’ve loved science and was curious about life in general since I was young and he did as well. He and I met when I joined the local astronomy club. I was a Morse code operator in the military so becoming a ham radio operator was a natural progression when I met him. The whole family, including both our daughter’s, have their licenses. These days I often spend a night from sunset to sunrise exploring the universe, galaxies, nebula’s, and planets with my 10 inch Dobsonian telescope with him observing beside me with his own telescope. Walking my dog in a beautiful river park near our house is one of my favorite things. Checking out different coffeehouses, as anyone who knows me will tell you, is another favorite thing of mine to do. Not a coffee snob, more just love coffee in general and the atmosphere of the coffeehouses. Each has their own personality.

My husband, Leif, and I often hike and explore various parks together, we both are weather spotters, both into high power rocketry and are certified, are amateur ham radio operators, are Buddhists, attend various physics and science lectures, and love learning about other cultures. I enjoying traveling and have been to Ireland, England, Japan, and Mexico and would like to continue to explore the world with him by my side. We are looking to go on a delayed honeymoon to Iceland this year, next year the latest. He spent five years of his childhood in Germany, traveling all over Europe, including Iceland and he’s always wanted to return there. I have a good life with a loving family, an interesting job, and many opportunities. I think having an interesting life is much richer and fulfilling than having a lot of money. And you don’t need a lot of money to really explore your community. I appreciate the life I have today, the opportunities life presents to me, and those individuals who I’ve been blessed to share it with. Thank you for letting me share the story of my life with you.