Mary and I went to Florida March 6-17.the main reason for the trip was to attend Mike and Melanie’s wedding in Gainesville on March 14. We decided to head down a week early to visit with Family.

The day after we arrived, we took a walk on the beach, then headed to Gumbo Limbo Environmental Complex in Boca Raton. Gumbo Limbo is on a strip of land between the ocean and Lake Wyman. They have a boardwalk through the mangrove with an observation tower (see picture on left). They also have a marine turtle conservation program. They had a lot of turtles in their facility earlier this year due to the cold spell in the area. when the water gets too cold, the turtles can go into shock and drown. The center rescues the turtles and nurses them back to health, releasing them when the waters warm up again. There are more photos in the Gumbo Limbo gallery.

My niece Molly and her friend Jen arrived on Monday. They immediately started on Spring Break when we got back to Joe’s place and met up with his crew. Despite the evening festivities, on Tuesday, Mike, Molly, Jen, Mary and I went to Everglades National Park. We entered the park near Homestead and stopped at the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center. Next, we did a couple short hikes in the Royal Palm area: the Gumbo Limbo and the Anhinga Trails. We saw a lot of gators (right) and birds.

We drove all the way out to the Flamingo Visitor Center, stopping at a number of short trails along the way. Near Flamingo, we saw a lot of osprey, including the one on the left. There were 3 or 4 nests visible from the visitor center. After lunch, we started back out of the park.

On our way out of the park, we stopped at the Mahogany Hammock for another short loop. At the trailhead, there were signs about some resident barred owls. When we were on the loop, we heard there were some owlets, and managed to find them (pictured on right)! It was really cool seeing the pair of young owls. There are more pictures of the owls ans other critters in the Everglades gallery. On the way back to Joe and Mike’s place, we stopped to visit Joan, Andy and Carlos. We enjoyed the visit, including a nice dinner and way too much pie!

The rest of the week was fairly quiet. On Friday, we spent most of the day driving up to Gainesville, with a short stop in Orlando to pick up Maggie. The three days in Gainesville were a lot of fun. It was great catching up with all the family, and Mike and Melanie’s wedding on Pi Day (3.14) was very nice.

While we were in Gainesville, I had a chance to meet up with my friend Dori and her husband Frank. They took us to an great coffee shop (Volta) and showed us around Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park. We saw a ton of gators on the La Chua Trail (picture on left). We ended up visiting the park each morning we were in Gainesville. While visiting the south end of the park, near the visitor center, we found a pair of bald eagles with a nest (picture on right). There are more pictures posted in the Paynes Prairie gallery.

Mark and Jane headed to South Florida after the wedding. We got to spend a couple more days with them before we flew home. Mike took us out on the Intracoastal (picture on left) one day looking for manatee. We didn’t manage to find any.

Mark, Jane, Mary and I went to lunch at My Big Fat Greek Restaurant after boating. Wouldn’t you know, there was a manatee in the canal next to their deck! It was resting when we arrived, but even after it woke up a bit, it didn’t do much (picture on right). Even without the manatee sighting, we all enjoyed the restaurant, including the Greek coffee. There are more pictures from the days events in the South Florida Gallery.

On our last night, we went to watch Nick play baseball (pictures in the gallery). We had a nice dinner at Joe’s place. In the morning we all went to Shoney’s for brunch, then Mark and Jane took us to the airport. Overall it was a great trip. We really enjoyed the wedding and seeing everyone. Where’s the next reunion?

I updated my Maps page to include some trails I’ve mapped on a site called Gmaps Pedometer. This site lets to map a route, calculating distance and calories. It even takes elevation into account! This is pretty handy for tracking my calories burned which I started doing on SparkPeople a few weeks ago. I also track my nutrition and calories consumed. At the moment my goal is to lose 10 pounds by the end of the year. My SparkPeople page is BlueValhalla.

For Earth Hour this year, Mary and I decided to make a candlelight dinner. We got a late start, so we actually had to make dinner by candlelight (picture on right). Good thing we have a gas stove. We decided to make something simple: pasta. We made some multigrain penne and a spicy red pepper sauce with chicken sausage. With that we had some left over broccoli and some raw snap peas. To top it off, we had chardonnay and some sort of German mountain cheese (I’m not sure what that means, but it was tasty). We had everything out of the fridge and ready to cook by 8:25PM. The pasta and sauce were cooking and the wine was chilling in a bucket of ice when we turned out the lights.

Dinner was ready around 8:50. We ate by candlelight (picture on left). It was quite romantic. We enjoyed it so much that we decide we should do it every week (though maybe that was the wine talking). By the time we finished of dinner (and the bottle of wine) Earth Hour was over. With the lights on there was nothing left of Earth Hour except dirty dishes and an empty bottle of wine (picture on right). We’re looking forward to doing this again next year.

There are a few more pictures in the Earth Hour 2009 gallery.

It looks like I’ll be moving on to the next phase of my professional career. I’m not sure what that will be, but it will most likely not involve Aptility. Nate and I had some discussions earlier this week and came to the mutual conclusion that we should go our separate ways. Nate will continue on with Aptility, and I wish him the best of luck.

For now I’ll be spending my time figuring out what I want to do next. That means I’ll probably be spending more time at Panera Bread and various cafes with friends like Ron and Khoa. I’d still like to do something in the clean tech space, but mobile applications are also a distinct possibility. Time will tell, or as my sister Sue keeps reminding me, “one day at a time.”

I forgot to mention that on Thursday I saw the dermatologist for a simple procedure to remove and annoying skin tag from my right eyelid. It was fairly small, but at times I could see it at the edge of my vision, and it seemed to be growing. The procedure lasted all of 90 seconds: a shot of a local anesthetic, a quick cut with a scalpel, and some cauterization to seal it up. The doctor is sure it’s just a skin tag, but she sent it to the lab just to be sure.

This morning I went hiking at Mission Peak with Mary and her hiking crew. It was the first time I went hiking for a while, but I did ok. My knees didn’t bother me much, but a blister on my little toe slowed me down at the end. I guess I’ll need to toughen up so we can do some backpacking this year.

After hiking, we went through Alviso to visit the white bunny we discovered last weekend. Apparently the people we saw there trying to catch it last weekend did not succeed and it also turns out there are two bunnies! They are really cute (see picture on left). We didn’t seem them on our first pass by, but we dropped off a little spinach and went to Don Edwards. After a walk around the park, we went back and waited near where we had placed the spinach. We saw one come out and eat some of the spinach. After a while, Mary got out of the car and made a successful attempt to feed the bunny. They seem content with the local vegetation, but they seemed to enjoy the spinach a bit more. We know we shouldn’t feed wild animals, but we haven’t decided what rules apply here. They seem quite content in their new home, but they definitely stick out like a sore thumb. It’s hard to say how long they will manage to avoid predators. At least they found a nice home borough excavated by the local ground squirrels. I have more pictures of the bunnies in my gallery.

After our visit withe the bunnies, we came home to watch the Collegiate Rugby National Championship match between Cal and BYU. The match was played at Stanford, but I was too lazy to go to the game. I chose instead watch it on the internet on the new USA Rugby Network. I only caught the second half, but it was already over by then anyway since Cal was up 45-0. Cal went on to win their fifth strait national title, 59-7.