This weekend Lisa and I flew to Fresno to attend Abi’s “White Coat Pinning Ceremony”

This recognized a phase in Abi’s doctorate where she has passed sufficient exams to start her clinical rotations. She has almost completed her first year (of three) and in two months starts gaining practical experience as a Physical Therapist at an outpatient practice.

The weather in Fresno was really nice (around 70°F or 21°C) warm and sunny so we got some great pictures after the ceremony. The ceremony was nice (and short) and her professors helped her into her white coat and gave her a pin – the White Coat has to be given back on Monday lol.

It was great seeing where she studies and we saw where she spends all her time (either in a classroom, a lab with her cadaver or the library where she studies)

The sad part of this bit of her education is she doesn’t really have any down time over summer and is expected to work in a PT practice in-between school semesters without any pay!

This feels very wrong to me, a lot of the students in the doctorate program are borrowing money to pay for their education and pretty much for 3 years they aren’t given the opportunity to earn any money. All the clinical rotations are considered part of their schooling/education. Yet the PT Practices get a student PT for free!

Oh well, it’s an important part of the process I guess and it’s only 3 years.

Anyway, we had a great (short) visit, and it was lovely to see her in Fresno.

Here are some of the pictures we took over the weekend:

We are so proud of Abi. We just got back from San Diego where we saw her graduate Magna Cum Laude from San Diego State University (SDSU) with a Batchelor’s Degree in Kinesiology.
For Abi, it’s a couple of months downtime before she heads to Fresno State University to get her doctorate in Physical Therapy.

Lisa, James and I had a wonderful weekend, lots of sun, sea, food and drink celebrating with Abi, her boyfriend Aidan and his family, and friends and family from Washington State and England (Thank you Nikki and Craig and Tania and Manesh for coming so far).

She’s now over halfway there, just 3 more years to go.

I took the camera and captured some pictures of her around the university and down on the beach. SDSU is a really pretty university with lots of white stucco buildings with Spanish tile roofs, makes a great backdrop for graduation pictures.

Here are a few shots (from the many I captured).

Again, congratulations Abi.

It’s kind of funny. My last posting on this site was back in 2017 and I led off with “It’s been quite a while since I last posted…”

Well after that posting life got really busy, work was manic, and I pretty much stopped taking pictures.

However, this year two interesting things or life events happened.

• Firstly, I turned 60 – so I’m officially an old fart! At least that’s what I consider myself.
• Secondly, I retired.

I’ve worked non-stop since I was 16 years old. Working numerous unskilled jobs in my youth until I joined the British Army at 20 and served 9 years.

After that I fell into software engineering (it was just a hobby until then) and ended up working for Microsoft where I stayed for 22 years!

So, I now find myself with a LOT of free time, for the first time, well ever!

That said we are still super busy. With retirement comes the opportunity to move somewhere new, and leave the Pacific Northwest (Redmond near Seattle) behind. We’ve lived here for 20 years and fancy a change of scenery.

After a number of trips, we’ve finally purchased a house in Colorado in a small city called Erie. The city is 14 square miles and has 30,000 residents, so MUCH smaller that Redmond in Washington.

Right now, we are prepping to sell our Redmond house and plan to move to Colorado in mid-September 2023 – a month away.

Both Lisa and I are SUPER EXCITED. This is a new adventure, and we can’t wait to start. We will miss our Washington friends of course, but the world is a smaller place these days and with James our son still living in Washington we will be back to visit.

One of my goals is to learn everything I can about living in Colorado, we are right between Boulder and Denver and the scenery and views are just spectacular, I’m looking forward to getting the cameras out and sharing our new State.

Our new house is currently being built! It won’t be ready until March so we will move into rented accommodation while we wait, so we have no pictures to share.

However, I did take this picture outside the house, bit of a teaser, I’ll share more when we get there.

Let’s see if my next posting is less than 6 years away

I know I’ve been to the Museum of Flight a few times, and yes I know that I keep taking the same pictures.  But here’s the thing, I don’t care, I love the place .

Last weekend we went back again as we had family in town and as usually it was fantastic.  Of course many of the plains remain the same and some don’t change position but it’s always to try and get a different perspective or a new shot.

As usual I turned up with a tripod (much to the frustration of other photographers who didn’t bother) and got some great shots.  In total I took 400 pictures (or just over) and out of those ended up with 50 I really like.  I won’t bore you with all 50 here , so I just picked 10 to share.

We also went to a new “Space” exhibit and went inside a space shuttle – which is huge!  Unfortunately they don’t let you go in the cabin (which would have been fun) but it’s still pretty impressive just how massive the thing is.  We also went into Air Force One, or at least the version of Air Force One that Kennedy used.  I always think it’s fun to check out where Jacky O took a crap

The cockpit image image is actually Air Force One and this came out well when you consider I shot this through a perspex screen.

They also have a great bridge that spans the major road by the Museum, that links some of the buildings together, and while on the bridge Abi did one of her cheer moves (called a Scorpion I think) so I shot that and like the image with the bridge disappearing behind her – so at least that’s a new pic.

There was also one pic where I lied on the floor looking straight up – people were walking past looking at me like I’m an idiot (which of course I am), but the image came out great – love that one too.

Another one I liked was a closeup of an Engine.  It’s a pretty old engine full of brass pipes and tubes but again came our really well.

Anyway a really nice few hours out, if you haven’t been I really recommend it.

Friday turned out to be a really beautiful day and as we had family (Regan) in town I decided to take a day off work and go out and enjoy the weather.  We all voted and picked Seattle as the location thinking the view from the Space Needle would fantastic.

So first we hit Pike Place Market.  The temperature was over 80 degrees and the tourists were out in force but we had a great time walking through the Market grabbing pics along the way.  I love the flowers, fruit and veg stalls and took a load of pics at each.  We found an interesting pasta stall and I got some great close up shots of pasta, I can see some of these making great wallpapers.

We walked past the gum wall which was recently cleaned and found that people had once again started to “decorate” the alley (much I’m sure to everyones delight – I don’t think anyone wanted Seattle to remove all the gum).

Then it was onto the Space Needle.  Now I’ve taken so many pictures of the Needle it’s difficult to come up with something new or interesting.  I got one shot I quite liked standing below the needle looking up and a couple of others getting the needles reflection in the “Experience Music Project” (EMP) building.

As expected the views from the top of the needle were amazing.  You could see for miles and even Mount Rainer was super clear.

To end the day, we finished up in Kirkland grabbing some Seattle Hot Dogs (you definitely need to try a Seattle dog if you never have) and then spent some time sitting by Lake Washington.

I took (as usual) a TON of pics, I’m just posting a few here today.

Really pleased I took the day off as I’m typing this on Saturday morning and it’s raining outside – you gotta love Seattle weather!