off to Ohio

This week end we had a great time with Nick. He stayed both Friday and Saturday nights sleeping on the couch. Saturday morning we introduced him to geocaching. He was really excited when Rudee told him it was a "treasure" hunt and was not too disappointed when he found out the "treasure" was just trinkets and the fun was in the hunt and the find.
I had picked out several caches in the area and we ended up finding all but 1 of them. Nick caught on pretty quick. We have two Garmin handheld units that we use for geocaching so he got to operate one and guide us to the "treasure".
We ended up back home in time to get ready for the Saturday night races in Putnamville Indiana.
One of Rudee's co-workers races his car here every week end so the rest of her team felt like it would be a great outing for the office. They even had t-shirts printed up with his picture on the front so he had his own rooting section :-).
We were supposed to meet everyone at a restaurant at 5pm and have dinner and then go to the races. When we got to the restaurant things started falling apart pretty quickly with several people canceling out for one reason or another. We ended up with only the three of us and one other couple. Oh well, their loss because the races were great!!
Jimmy (Rudee's co-worker) won his heat race and then started on the outside of the first row in the feature race. He ended up coming in second but was battling for the lead the entire race. It was really exciting.
Nicholas enjoyed the race cars and was on his best behavior. He is really growing up to be a nice, well mannered young man. We were both very proud of him.
We made it back to the 5th wheel shortly before midnight and we all headed straight to bed.

Sunday we made a little later start than normal since we had such a late night. I had my suitcases already packed and after loading them into my car we all went to breakfast. Rudee and Nick followed me in the Dakota so we could head separate ways after our meal.
I was driving to Cleveland Ohio today for the start of my training on our company computer system.
We had a nice breakfast and I hit the road shortly after 11:00am for my long drive. Rudee and Nick followed me for a few miles before turning off and heading for Nick's house.
The drive was pretty boring since it was all interstate. There sure did seem to be a lot of road construction going on. At least it was Sunday and the traffic was fairly light except around the larger metro areas.
After turning North from Columbus I noticed a definite change in the trees. The leaves are changing a lot more here that at home. It sure did look like Autumn here.
I arrived at my motel and got checked in about 5pm. Plenty of time to get settled in, eat some supper and be ready for the Colts game to start at 8pm.
The game was a lot better than last weeks and the Colts won by a large margin.

Today has been my first day of class and things went pretty well. The class seems well organized and we have a lot of hands on practice with training laptops. They are using my computer as the class demo unit so everything I do is up on the big screen for all to see (Yikes!!) , The best part is I get even more hands on practice rather than just sitting and watching someone else move from screen to screen while they teach us where to locate everything we need.

The office here is pretty large and they have their own cafeteria. I plan on eating lunch here everyday where I can relax some after a quick bite. Sure beats having to fight traffic just to rush around to wolf down a greasy burger somewhere and then rush to get back to class on time.

Only 4 more days of class left. I am trying to just be a sponge and "soak it all in". I guess we'll see how much "absorbed" once I start working on the system for real. I'll keep you posted.