OMG, what a hectic month. But I will try to recap here. When I got back from the Chicago Urban Sketchers workshop, I was inspired to take a class on fountain pens (since that was all the rage). They happened to be offering one at St Louis Art Supply in the Central West End. After a few introductory activities (like putting the ink cartridge in the pen), we went up to the rooftop deck above the store to sketch. What a relaxing, peaceful place with gorgeous views of several historic buildings. I really enjoyed the class and even managed to do a few practice drawings this past month.
Then onto a quickie trip to KC. The flower girl from my wedding (who's not so little anymore - actually she's a grandmother...Yikes!) was in town - unfortunately for her mother's funeral. I wasn't able to make the funeral, but I was able to catch her before she headed back to Virginia. Her life is about as hectic as mine, because she's planning to move to Colorado in 2 weeks (as of this writing, she's probably already there). So maybe one day soon, I'll have to take a trip to Colorado to have a longer visit with her. We'll see.
Before I left town, I had dinner with some of the family
and got to hold baby Hazel (who was 2 months old when I took this photo, but just celebrated her 3-month birthday 2 days ago - how time flies).
Then it was off to Tampa for the Engineering convention. This year we were highlighting our new wireless sensors. In this demo, I'm using a reflex hammer to demo a mechanical knee. When you tapped on the knee, the foot would kick up. It was a very popular demo.
One of the international consultants that lives in Sarasota decided to join us for this convention. But rather than drive his car, he drove his boat down (only a 2-hour ride) and parked it at the marina (the Tampa convention center is right on the water). He even slept on his boat rather than get a hotel room. I never made it onto his boat, but he said it had 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. I think international consultants must make a lot more money than I do.
They always have something indicative of the area on display at these conventions, so since we were in Florida, they brought in a couple crocodiles. This one is a baby, but he was still pretty heavy to hold.
But he wasn't nearly as big as his mother who was in a make-shift holding pen in the exhibit hall. Notice how both of them have their mouths taped shut. I learned a lot about the difference between crocodiles and alligators (probably more than I really wanted to know), but the biggest difference is that the crocodiles are meaner than alligators. Thank goodness for the tape.
I also got to spend a little time with one of my former students (also much older now - she's a professor at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology). We took the trolley to Ybor City (pronounced E-bore). It's in the historic district and is the place where the Cubans used to roll cigars.
I always love historic architecture, so I went back the next day to sketch one of the Spanish-style buildings. The whole area is being renovated, so it wasn't a very peaceful setting with all the jackhammers and buzz saws going off.
But the noise didn't seem to bother the chickens that were wandering around the street.
After the Engineering convention, I took Amtrak up to Philadelphia. It's about a 23-hour ride, so I got a sleeper car. This car was different than the ones I've been on before, because the toilet and sink were right in the room, rather than down the hall. The sink folded up into the wall when you weren't using it, and the toilet could be used as a stepping stool if you were using the top bunk (I just used the lower bunk). It was certainly a much more pleasant way to get to Philadelphia than having to fight the crowds in the airport. On the plane from St Louis to Tampa, there were only about 20 adults; all the other passengers were kids on their way to Disney World.
The weather in Philadelphia was gorgeous - very mild and MUCH less humid than Tampa. Since I was there a day early, I did a little sketching in front of City Hall. They were having an outdoor festival - kind of a combination craft market and beer garden.
The next day, I had to help set up the booth for the Technology Education conference. I've always wanted to go to this conference, because the products you see are usually state-of-the-art, and this year didn't disappoint.
But I've never had to set up such a large booth. It took 6 of us over 4 hours to get everything set up and we actually started with the TV structure and overhead sign already in place (you have to have union workers do big stuff like that).
Of course, the most popular product at this conference was robots. I think every other booth had their own version. We had 3 of our own. The Pitsco folks (my favorite company) had a new one. You used your phone to make the eyes, so they were very, very big. It gave a cute, cuddly feel to an otherwise mechanical transformer.
I got to walk around the exhibit hall a bit. There were a lot of major players - Google, Lego, Best Buy. Microsoft was right across from us and even had 2 of our sensors on display in their booth (they were using them to input data into an Excel spreadsheet). One thing that caught my eye as I was walking around was this sign showing Carmen San Diego. That game is almost 40 years old, because my kids were playing it back in the 80's.
But after 3 days, it was time to take the booth back apart - much more time-consuming than putting it up, since all the exhibitors were fighting at the same time for the attention of the union workers. We had a full flight on the plane back from Philadelphia. Hardly any young kids this time - just 2 dogs, 2 volleyball teams, and a ton of noisy teachers who had just come from the conference. This was probably my last conference; setting up all that equipment is just too demanding.
But I'm not getting out of the business altogether. The Pitsco people have partnered with the SmartGurlz robots (the Barbie doll look-alikes on Segways), only they've renamed them SmartBuddies and added a line of Ken dolls. Looks like I'll have another potential project to pursue. Lincoln will be happy to hear about the change, because he was quite adept at driving the Segway robot around with my phone. I wonder what they'll think up next.
