The new mayor had taken office, and she had appeared on many different local television shows and radio shows. It seemed like every time she spoke, she spoke about the importance of retaining jobs. She spoke about the importance of keeping local businesses.

It was amazing to hear, and yet it was not amazing to hear. It was amazing to hear in the sense that very few politicians ever talk about retaining jobs. Sure, they are more than willing to promote the next new local headquarters or the company that is moving a facility to their jurisdiction. But rarely do politicians talk about the importance of retaining jobs and companies in the future.

The reason why it was not so surprising is that the local economy had lost some major employers recently, and there was an increasing sense of concern permeating the community about the loss of more jobs.

Just like with any private sector business attempting to retain clients, government entities need to have strategies focused on retaining their local businesses and local jobs. These strategies involve having an organizational structure setup that is continuously touching base with local businesses in key industries to ensure they are getting their needs met. This strategy includes ongoing research by directly contacting companies as well as more passive research where the municipalities are gathering information on local businesses about leadership changes, changes in company performance, facility changes, and industry trends. That strategy includes making sure that there are incentives in place to help with economic development for companies willing to expand and stay locally so that those incentives can fend off other jurisdictions offering relocation incentives.

It’s sad that it takes a bad economy to get politicians to talk about business retention, but if it does nothing else, it proves that every local job, every local business, and every industry impacted by local business is important.

Make sure that your jurisdiction has a sound strategy for business retention and expansion.

Interested in improving your company’s customer service?  See more information at: http://www.cssamerica.com/

Severn Surveyors provided Simplified Building Energy Model (SBEM) modelling of Islington schools to secure credits under the Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method¹ (BREEAM).

 The Bristol based energy report specialists provide level 4 accredited energy surveyors to undertake the necessary SBEM modelling in support of the building design phase of the project. 

 In an effort to achieve BREEAM Excellent Status for the school building project, SBEM modelling techniques were used to assess design proposals for the proposed extension and refurbishment of Laycock Primary School, Islington. Working with the Client, Cambridge Education @ Islington, PROJECT 5 ARCHITECTURE LLP, and EngDesign Ltd, Severn Surveyors developed a number of SBEM models to report on the energy efficiency of the design team’s proposals. The outcome of the modelling directly influenced the design decisions relating to the source of heating, and targeted improvements to the thermal performance of the building fabric.

 The use of the BREEAM assessment method to assess sustainable building design proposals is becoming increasingly popular with planning authorities, particularly throughout the London area. The BREEAM approach is generally accepted as the de facto measure used to describe a building’s environmental performance, and is expected to become widely adopted throughout other UK Counties.

 ¹Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) addresses wide-ranging environmental and sustainability issues and enables developers and designers to prove the environmental credentials of their buildings to planners and clients. BREEAM claims to set the standard for best practice in sustainable design and provide the measure used to describe a building’s environmental performance.

 For more information Severn Surveyors can be contacted by email: epc@severnsurveyors.co.uk

Other related information is available from their Website: www.severnsurveyors.co.uk

I noticed that I got a couple of hits from the great men and women over from the510realm.com, so ladies and gentlemen…  Here’s to you!  Also, Mr. Perreira, when your uncle’s SR-510 is done, you HAVE to convince him to take me for a ride along!  Each of these 510’s/Bluebirds had something special that caught my eye.  Feast your retinas on these before you feast your belly on turkey!

Missing C-pillar vents and front turn indicators are a sure sign that this 510 is a work in progress.  Those Longchamps however, are absolutely PERFECT.  They look like they were just shipped out of the SSR factory, with the sizing and offset on point!

I’m sure nearly every Datsun enthusiast is familiar with this Bluebird.  Sporting an SR20 from a S15 Silvia, it was immortalized in the pages of Super Street.  I have never been a fan of oversized and modern wheels on vintage cars and this ‘Bird is no exception.  HOWEVER, I am crazy about clean engine bays and this ranks right up there with the best.  I’m looking forward to pulling my L28 so I can weld up holes, clean up some wires and repaint the bay.

One of the most infamous racing liveries as far as American Import racing is concerned.  The corkscrew at Laguna Seca.  Need I say more?

Dave Coleman has always been one of my favorite writers and editors in the magazine business.  I was a Sophomore in high school when his 240sx/S13 project car hit the stands in ‘01-02ish.  $3,000 to build an S13?  OMG.  I was planning on joining the Air Guard and using the $2,500 signing bonus (or whatever the bonus was back then), to build my very own street bruiser S13.  Unfortunately, the drift tax destroyed my dreams.  Clean running S-chassis, were apparently worth $3,500 instead of the $350 I used to see them listed for after drifting exploded into the mainstream.  Mr. Coleman began a new project car that I went head over heels for.  Combining my two favorite things ever…  Datsuns and rally racing.

R.I.P. Sport Compact Car.

Finally, I leave you now with this Bluebird.  Perfection.  I would not change a single thing on this car.  The stance is flawless.  Hayashi Streets are one of the most iconic wheels one could run for a period correct look.  It even has the 80’s-style rear deck speakers!  Just imagine terrorizing the streets in this beast!

Happy Thanksgiving!  I’m thankful for my family, friends, car, health and job (In that order!).  Also, thanks to those who read this blog!  I’ve been watching the statistics and it looks like the reader base is really starting to grow!

Jacob is now 2 months old! He is getting so big. Today we went to the pediatricians office for his first vaccinations. Poor baby. He got 3 shots and one was oral. He cried pretty loudly. The vaccinations were DTap, HBV, HIB, Polio, PCV, and Rotarix. Today he was 22 3/4 inches long and 11 lbs 13 oz. He is right on the 50th percentile for both weight and length. His head is a little on the small side. He’s in the 25th percentile for head size but that’s not a big deal. Jacob is smiling much more and cooing a lot. He is a happy baby most of the time. He is sleeping more and more through the night. He has slept up to 7 hours straight. We hope this will continue. Here are some recent pictures of Jacob.

He had his hands up like the dog.

cute little fingers

small head

Have you ever heard of the term “Sip N See”? Well apparently it’s a southern event for people to see the new baby. We had a Sip N See for Jacob on Sunday in Atlanta for all of Ben’s friends and family to come and see the baby. It was wonderful. We are so blessed to have so many friends that love us and shower us with gifts. I haven’t needed to buy much of anything but diapers and wipes for Jacob which is a huge burden lifted off of us. We are truly grateful to all of you who helped and came to the Sip N See. Jacob slept almost the whole way through it but woke up towards the end. He says thank you for all the great gifts. Here are some pictures of the event.

The wonderful food

Our new addition

The hostesses and me

This post will show how to use BizTalk ESB toolkit 2.0 with the BRE Resolver for setting a custom WCF Adapter setting. In one of my current projects, my team and I were faced with creating some custom WCF LOB Adapters to communicate with various servers. Some of these servers were running on Unix based OS’s and even still others were proprietary and used serial line based communication protocols. In our implementation, we used BizTalk 2009 and the ESB toolkit 2.0 to create a massive ESB to send data to these systems. The interesting part about this does not rely in the fact that the systems we were communicating with were proprietary that warrants a separate blog posting about its trials and tribulations. The most intriguing part was that we had to support dynamic endpoints. We had to support ever changing Adapters, endpoints and worry about the addition of new systems coming online within months of going to production. By the way, all of this had to be accomplished without affecting the current production running solution. So, how do we accomplish this???

As we started to dive into the agile challenge at hand, we discovered that the overall concept of this project was using a Controller pattern. This is where commands are sent from “Controller” to client listeners. In our implementation, the Controller sent the command to the ESB, and it acted as a second “Controller” where it routed, transformed, duplicated, filtered, and suppressed the commands to various client listeners.

Figure 1 ESB Controller Pattern

We accomplished the routing, and transformation using BizTalk Business Rules Engine (BRE). The ESB toolkit 2.0 allows BizTalk Server to become an ESB, and within it there is a BRE resolver who uses the BRE to determine which transformation to apply, and which endpoint to send the information to. Using the BRE Resolver to determine a map is outlined in various blog postings, as well as samples inside the ESB 2.0 toolkit documentation so I won’t drill into the details on that. In addition to this, using the BRE Resolver to select a particular send Adapter (endpoint) in BizTalk is also outlined in various blogs and sample documentation, again I will not delve into that. However, using the BRE Resolver to configure a custom WCF LOB Adapter is not covered, and I have found it wanting on various blogs; thus the reasoning for this article.

In order to use the BRE Resolver to configure your send adapter, it is always best to verify the WCF LOB Adapter is successfully running and configured correctly using a Static Send port. Once this is done, this takes most of the guess work involved in dynamically setting it up.

In our example, we built a generic adapter around set of patterns we discovered when communicating to the various endpoints using Managed Extension Framework (MEF). I’ll blog on this in another posting. To continue, we have a custom WCF LOB Adapter called “Generic” which uses a MEF component to invoke the endpoint using any particular protocol needed.

Figure 2 Static Configuration of Send Port

To statically configure this, we use a WCF-Custom adapter, the genericAdapterBinding created using the WCF LOB Adapter framework, a Soap Action header of deleteCustomers, and an Uri set to generic://MefEndpointProcessor/MefSsoKey. Just for explanation of the Uri, the MefEndpointProcessor is the name of the MEF endpoint processor to use for a particular endpoint, and the MefSsoKey is a SSO Key used within the SSO Configuration database to retrieve any custom connection settings for the endpoint/server we are sending to.

Once we have configured this statically and it works, we’re ready to move on to the more interesting part, how to configure this using the BRE Resolver inside a Business rule and thus fulfill our requirement of adding endpoints dynamically without affecting the overall system at production time.

The steps to configure the WCF Custom Adapter at a high level are rather easy.

1. First we need an itinerary which will use the ESB BRE Resolver, so create an Itinerary that receives the message from an OnRamp.
2. Specify the Itinerary Service routing step to route the message.
3. Within the Itinerary routing step, create a BRE Resolver to resolve the send adapter promoted properties to use for routing to the WCF Custom adapter.
4. Create an Off Ramp extender, and an Off Ramp, specify the dynamic port for the off ramp.

To resolve the WCF Custom adapter dynamically, configure the BRE Resolver to use a policy which contains a set of rules that have actions that configure the endpoint settings.

Figure 3 BRE Policy for configuring WCF Custom LOB Adapter

The first step in creating a BRE rule to configure the endpoint is to create a policy, and add a rule to the policy using the BRE Composer. In our example our policy is named Tellago.Demos.ESB.BRE.

There are 2 rules within the policy, one named: isActionITV and the other isNOTActionITV. These rules check the incoming command message from the “Controller” to determine who to send the message to. If the action is set to ITV then the action that executes are a series of steps to configure the WCF Custom adapter to send it to the ITV Mef Processor, for transmission to the ITV endpoint.

The next step is to configure the actions within the rules. When using the ESB 2.0 toolkit, there are a set of vocabulary definitions installed that populate a dictionary collection of key=value pairs. These keyed items that need values populated are:

• Endpoint Config
• Endpoint Fix JAX RPC
• Endpoint Message Exchange Pattern
• Endpoint Outbound Transport Location
• Endpoint Outbound Transport Type
• Endpoint Target Namespace
• Endpoint Transport Namespace
• Endpoint WCF Action

The items in the collection we are interested in are the Endpoint Config, Transport Location, Transport Type, Target Namespace, Transport Namespace and WCF Action. Once these items are populated with values after the rules execute, the ESB uses the Adapter provider to promote the associated items in the collection for the dynamic configuration of the send port. In our example, the WCF adapter provider will be used to promote binding type and configuration, WCF action, namespaces and transport Uri values.

Specifically the WCF adapter type will be WCF-Custom; the transport location will be set to generic://MefEndpointProcessor/MefSsoKey; the WCF binding information will be set to <genericAdapterBinding><binding name=”genericAdapterBinding” /></genericAdapterBinding> (even though you only set the <binding…> portion of it and leave off the <genericAdapterBinding> section inside the rule); the namespace for the message will be set to http://Tellago.Demos.Schemas.EsbBreCommand; the WCF Action will be set to deleteCustomers.

When using the WCF Custom LOB Adapter, the WCF Adapter type must be set to WCF-Custom any other value will yield an incorrect configuration. The Transport location should be set to the Uri which the Custom adapter is expecting. The Endpoint Config is a set of values that support setting WCF behaviors, binding information, and any other custom information for WCF to run. To complete the configuration, WCF also requires the namespace of the message, and action to be set to a non-empty string value.

After you’ve completed all these steps, test it out you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the agility of the solution.

Happy ESB’ng

Don’t forget about my giveaway! It ends tomorrow! http://runningaroundnormal.com/2009/10/31/symbolism-haircuts-pink-tatas-and-halloween-giveaways/

Good morning! How’s everyone today? Hanging in there?? It’s almost Friday!

I have somewhat of a busy day planned for today at work, plus I have a deadline by tomorrow for something, so I’ll be working away at my desk and at meetings probably all day today. That’s sad because I had planned to go out to lunch with a group of friends, too. Oh well, I s’pose they’ll have to get over it, right?

I woke up this morning with more than a little scratch in my throat, so I’ll be continuing my inhaling of emergen-c and green tea. Speaking of inhaling, my sore throat might have to do with inhaling (literally) my water last night instead of drinking it. It’s like I went to take a drink, and my body inhaled instead of drank. And that ended in a major coughing fit. Thing is that isn’t uncommon with me. I’m special

So my quest yesterday throughout the day was to make sure I hit my fruits and veggies quota of my back on track goals. Here are some of the delicious fruits and veggies I ate yesterday:

And actually, I kept track on a little note card:

I definitely met my quota! Hooray! It really didn’t take that much effort. A great tip is to make sure you include at least one of each in every meal.

After work, I met my girl Missy at the gym to pound out some mileage. Missy has plantar fasciitis, and her heel has been bothering her, so this was quite a feat for her We did about 3 and a half miles total on the treadmill, and I ran intervals going from 2 minutes at a 9:30-9:30 min/mile to one minute at an 8:20 min/mile. I was jamming out to the Glee soundtrack (trying not to belt out in song while sprinting) and was a fabulously sweaty mess by the end of the 3.5 miles. Then we hit up the new elliptical and did about 15 minutes later.

When I got home, I arrived to see my husband on the kitchen floor and this in front of him:

Apparently it was clean-out-the-drawers night, and the hubski was absolutely astounded at how many bags I fit in that little drawer. I’m a bit of bag hoarder. It’s genetic, ok?!

Clarabelle was on my side though, when she showed daddy that it is a big drawer! “See! I can fit in here!”

If only we weren’t talking about the skinny one above it…mahaha

Then it was time to get started on dinner. I had a beautiful his and hers recipe planned, hers being from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan: Everyday Vegan Recipes Worth Celebrating’>Eat, Drink, & be Vegan

The his and hers meal last night was

“His and Hers Spaghetti and Meat Sauce”

I boiled the whole wheat spaghetti from Fresh Market pictured above in one of the veggie pictures. This spaghetti was for both of us.

For my spaghetti, I made the Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto with Toasted Almonds and Pine Nuts:

I was hesitant, because as I was making the pesto, I could tell it was going to be extremely flavorful and pungent. Which is a good thing if you like the taste, but not so good if you don’t. Well, I didn’t have to worry, because it was freakin’ awesome.

Oh, my deliciousness. Plus, it kinda looks like spaghetti and meat sauce, eh?

And on Shane’s, I topped the spaghetti with the usual ground beef + mushroom tomato sauce:

On the side, I chopped up a zucchini, a couple carrots, and a sweet potato, coated them in EVOO, sea salt, pepper, chili powder, and cumin, and roasted them for about 25 minutes at 375º

And while cooking, I had a class of my new favorite pinot noir (at least that I can get in this city – Okeye still has my ♥)

Everything turned out amazing!

My setting:   

And Shane’s (I added some naan to give his meal a bit more substance – though I think the spaghetti covered it, but I digress..)

See? His and hers! They don’t look all that different – but they definitely tasted different, and one was vegan. I’m finding this isn’t as difficult as I originally thought it would be

Speaking of vegetarians/vegans, did anyone watch Top Chef last night? Natalie Portman, who is also a vegetarian, and the guest celebrity, and the chef’s had to cook a veggie meal. I couldn’t believe all the animosity towards vegetarians!! I was very astounded and how patronizing and belittling some of the chefs seemed with their comments, but I guess that’s a whole ‘nother post!! haha

So since I already had my big food processor out from making the pesto, I decided to wash it out, and use it again to use up the rest of the pumpkin I had in the fridge by making some pumpkin spread. This idea was actually fueled by Taylor and how she kept mentioning that delicious pumpkin cream cheese!

In the processor went neufchatel cheese, pumpkin, agave, and some pumpkin butter to add some pizazz.

Blendy blendy, and voila!

Wow…this stuff is amazing guys. It tastes SO decadent. I tried some with my vitabrownie (I was scouring for anything to try it with!!) and it was delish with it!

Yes, Top Chef inspired me to try to get artsy with the spread. How do they do that and make it so pretty?! Mine just looked like a 1st grader playing with her food. Oh well, yummy nonetheless!

And I’m going to spread a wee but on the breakfast cookie I have waiting for me in the fridge (which already has a thin layer of pumpkin butter on top.)

    Ahh…this cookie is the best I’ve created yet. It’s got a 1/4 cup of oats, a couple T of pumpkin, a few golden raisins, a t of carob powder, a few carob chips, and a squirt of agave. SO good. I can’t wait to eat it up!

We had a fun week last week.
Monday: It started out with a visit from a good friend, Amanda, who lives in Belgium. Jacob and I both really enjoyed it.


Wednesday: The Blue and White game, first UK scrimmage of the year. Jacob got dressed up for that.

Thursday: Jacob turned 6 weeks old. We went to small group that night. He did really well.

Saturday: Halloween, Jacob dressed up like a pumpkin. He was too cute. We had some trick or treaters come by but we didn’t go out anywhere. Jacob is too young for candy.

Sunday: First time to take Jacob to church. He slept through the whole thing which was a great relief to me. He looked really cute that day. We told Jacob that he can’t always sleep through church but right now it’s perfectly fine with us. This was also the first week we dressed Jacob for the Titans game and they won for the first time this season. Maybe our son is good luck for them. Who knows!


Update: Jacob is now 6 1/2 weeks old. I can’t believe it. He is able to sit up pretty well with the help of his Bumbo. He likes to try to stand up with help. He has been sleeping much better and eating much less. This past week we moved him to his crib to sleep and it was hard for him the first two nights but now he’s doing really well. He’ll wake up and then fall back to sleep without crying. He got to experience his first UK game (Blue and white game) and Titans game. He was dressed appropriately for both as you can see from the pictures.

This past weekend we had some fall fun! It started out on Saturday when my brother Andrew, Dad, and Selwyn all came up to visit. We went to the Fall Fest at the Franklin Fresh Market. The only problem is that I didn’t know there was a closing time and we got there when they were putting everything away. Too bad. We just walked around The Factory after that. Then we headed back home.

We spent most of the afternoon watching football and then Dad and Selwyn babysat for us that night. Ben and I went to a fall party with some of our friends from church. It was fun. We ate chili, chicken tortilla soup and lots of great desserts. Then we had a bonfire and roasted some marshmallows for smores. That was the first time I had smores in probably 2 years. It was great. We headed home fairly early just because we’re not used to being away from the little one. Jacob did great and slept while we were gone though.

bonfire

At trunk or treat

The whole family

Update on Jacob: Jacob has slept 5 hours in a row for about 5 nights now. This has helped me tremendously! He is also waiting a little longer to eat although he grows through periods in the day where he is especially hungry. He likes to “snack.” I have been able to take Jacob to Publix, Target, and the mall. I have found that taking him out helps him to take a good afternoon nap. He may cry when I put him in the car at first but then he’ll cry himself to sleep. Jacob keeps growing. He is able to hold his head up pretty well and even tries to roll over although he doesn’t have that down yet.

Really good news!! We have found someone to keep Jacob when I go back to work in January. Our good friend, LeAnne, offered to help us out and watch him. She’ll come to our house which is so convenient for us and keep him all day. I am so thankful for this and I know this was an answered prayer. We were worried but then decided that God would take care of it somehow and someway. He always does! What a blessing.

Our nanny, LeAnne

Når filmen “Eyes wide open” legges ut for salg i Norge, så blir det med mye ekstramateriale i form av dokumentaren “Open Your Eyes”. SE TEASEREN MED NYDELIGE KLIPP!

Folgefonna og Juvass er blant mange av stedene hvor Field Productions var og filmet til “Eyes Wide Open” som i høst har vært vist på en filmtour rundt i Norge.

Les og: “Eyes Wide Open”!

Når filmen kommer på DVD, så blir det med mye ekstrastasj i form av dokumentarserien “Open Your Eyes” som viser bakom filming og intervjuer med mange av kjørerne som er med i “Eyes Wide Open.

HER KAN DU SE TEASEREN FRA DOKU SERIEN “OPEN YOUR EYES” SOM BYR PÅ HERLIG SKIKJØRING OG FILMING!

Her kommer noen utvalgte bilder fra Ramsau samlingen så langt. (Klikk på bildene for å se større utgaver.)

On Saturday Jacob turned one month old. My in laws came to visit for the weekend and we had a good time. We decided that we needed some pumpkins for fall so we found a local pumpkin farm to check out. It’s called Hicklen Farm and they have all kinds of pumpkins and squash. It’s out in Nolensville, TN and it’s a very cute place. We’ll definitely be going there again. The prices are excellent. We got 3 pumpkins and 2 small squashes for only $10. Here are some pictures of the event. Jacob slept through the whole thing, like usual.

After this week I’ll just start counting the months I guess. Today Jacob is 4 weeks old and he keeps growing and growing. On Monday we’ll go back to the doctor to find out how much he weighs. He is probably between 8-10 lbs. He has had a rough week. It seems like he can’t get enough to eat. I’ve had to supplement some with formula to get him good and full. Otherwise he doesn’t sleep and he’s constantly fussy.

Last night we had a really good night of sleep so I’m hoping we’re getting past this stage. He is still getting used to being in this world and all the fun things that come with it like gas, poop, pee, and eating. He didn’t do all that 4 weeks ago. He gets very uncomfortable if those don’t come quickly enough. I don’t blame him though.

On Sunday Ben and I took Jacob to Ben’s office to get some good pictures of him. They have photography equipment like backdrops, lighting, and a tripod. We got a few really good shots and we can use one for his birth announcement, coming soon. It took us most of the day to get just a few pictures done because Jacob would need to eat and then his diaper needed to be changed, then he’d get fussy…etc. Here are a few good pictures from the photo shoot. On Saturday Jacob will be a month old. Crazy how time flies by.

   This was written to Titus by Paul about 62-64 years after Jesus had sacrificed His life for us. It’s an encouraging reminder for us to be obedient and pleasing in our every day life towards those who are in charge over us. Since we’re not slaves(like the people that Titus was encouraging) it would be meant towards teachers, parents, and employers. Not to be back talking and to avoid disputes. To always be faithful and know that God does and has always had a plan for our lives. We need to be peaceful and gentle even when you don’t agree with the person that we have to listen to. To deny ungodliness and to not get distracted by the things of the world. These can all be very hard, especially because of the many worldly temptations we all have. A lot of us go to public schools. Its amazing how easily we can stop praying, and not read the word just because of the people we surround ourselves with. That’s why we need to make sure we are spending time with God no matter how hard things can be. Paul is saying to remember what God has done for us, and who we were before we knew Him. This passage really made me stop and think of how blessed I really am, and how much God loves me. He could work in my life in a radical way if I just let Him, and how just spending time with Him is the way we let Him.

- Bre Matthews

Snøen har lagt seg flere steder i fjellet. Bli med opp på Folgefonna hvor det nå ligger nærmere meteren med tørr fin nysnø. SE BILDENE!

Rapporter om snøfall har kommet fra flere steder i landet, men Folgefonna er nok ett av stedene som kan skilte med mest nysnø.

SE FLERE BILDER NEDERST PÅ SIDEN OG I ALBUM SOM DU FINNER HER!

Etter mange regnfulle dager viste endelig Vestlandet seg på sitt beste da vi våknet opp fredag morgen. Etter noen timer med jobbing, ble turen lagt mot Hardanger og målet var Folgefonna sommerskisenter.

Skisenteret stengte i begynnelsen av september på grunn av mye regn som tok knekken på snøen. De siste ukene derimot, har det lavet ned med nysnø på Fonna.

Vi kjørte på dårlige dekker denne dagen, og valgte derfor å parkere helt nede i dalen ved det store vannet. Skiene og støvlene ble hengt på sekken og så var det bare å labbe avgårde.

Vi gikk ikke mer enn noen hundre meter før vi møtte den første snøen oppe i bakken og mer ble det jo lenger oppover vi kom. Like ovenfor den store plattingen ved veien var det å ta på støvler og ski og så gli inn i et eventyrlig vinterlandskap.

Det ble en ganske frisk tur å gå oppover, men til gjengjeld var det en mektig naturopplevelse i herlig frisk luft.

Oppe ved skisenteret nærmer det seg meteren med snø  som fredagen var tørr og fin. Bortsett fra oss, var det bare et skispor å se i området.

Etter matlaging og en fotosession ved skisenteret, var det å komme seg nedover igjen med litt møre bein på silkeføret.

VÆR FORSIKTIG!
Skal du opp til Folgefonna nå, er det viktig å være klar over at det er mye sprekker i isen helt nede ved skisenteret. Lenger oppe ligger det gammel snø under, så der er det bare å gi gass i den herlige nysnøen.

Veien har vært igjensnødd de siste dagene fra plattingen og oppover, men det er sagt at den vil bli brøytet på søndag.

On Saturday night we went out on our first outing with Jacob. I was real apprehensive about it because he has been really unpredictable lately. He can eat at anytime and there is no consistency. Sometimes he can wait every 3 hours and other times only 1 hour. So we decided to venture out and take a chance.

After a feeding around 6 in the evening, we packed up and went out to Green Hills mall. We decided that Jacob needed a few more outfits in the newborn size. All of the 0-3 month outfits were too big for him. We only made it to the parking lot before Jacob was hungry again. I had to get him out of the car seat and feed him in the car. Luckily it was dark and not a big deal. After a short feeding he was sound asleep so we went into the mall.

We first went to baby Gap where we found 2 cute outfits that would fit him now. Then we went to the Apple store. That was Ben’s idea. He wanted to get a picture of Jacob and an iphone but we didn’t want to wake him up. Then we went to Janie and Jack, a store that I can never resist but to check out everytime I walk by. They have the cutest clothes. We got a onesie that says “little pumpkin”. Jacob slept through most of the experience but he did look around some. He doesn’t know it yet, but his mommy will be taking him to the mall many times in his life.

Det lages vanvittig mye bra ski- og snowboard filmer i Norge etterhvert. Og mange er innom Fonna! SE TRAILER!

I`m Here, out There er nok et stykke film som blant annet har hatt location på Folgefonna tidlig på sommeren da det var godt med snø og spektakulære solnedganger.

“Piratene” slipper Jolly Roger

“Eyes wide open”!

On Thursday, Lauren Conrad hosted the launch party for her new line at Kohl’s.

I thought I’d let you know that some of the items from the collection are on sale at www.kohls.com.

Also, check out the video for the inside scoop,  featuring Lo, Whitney, Covergirl and ANTM alum, Bre, and Lauren herself.

Believe it or not it was two weeks ago today that Jacob was born. Time is flying by already. Jacob is doing really well. He is gaining weight at a great rate and he’s starting to be awake more of the day. He also likes to be awake at night, much to my disappointment.

I’m used to not sleeping though. Remember all my posts about that in my pregnancy? When I do sleep now it’s much more comfortable though. If Jacob sleeps a 3-4 hour stretch that’s really good. The past few nights it’s only been 2 hours or less. I find myself at 1 am rocking Jacob to sleep for an hour. I don’t say this to complain at all. I actually enjoy these times the most. He is so precious when he is falling asleep. I love watching his many faces that he makes.

I also want to take the time to thank all the visitors who have come by and all the food we have been provided. This is just one less thing that I’ve had to think about. Thank you to all of our friends and family who have helped us! We love all of you.

Ok, so the scenario is we throw  2-3 million windows away annually, according to the BRE (Building Research Establishment): Glass Waste report.

A close colleague has developed a  system using state of the art technology devised by NASA that enables the upgrading of existing glazing in Georgian and Victorian windows to be retained.

The end product meets all building regulation compliance  and enables the retention of original windows.

Conclusion:  double glazing salesmen can never again tell you that your old windows need replacing on grounds of non-compliance with modern building standards.

Another myth dispelled and lots of windows redirected from landfill! More from MASCo Sustainability on Twitter.

Selv om høsten så langt har bestått av typisk Vestlandsvær, har vi da hatt noen lyspunkt i elendigheten.

Folk flest er veldig flink å fokusere på det dårlige været, men hva så med de tre fire dagene med godt vær som har dukket opp?

Les og: Istid!

I skrivende stund er det grått og regn som er status utenfor vinduet på kontoret mitt og jeg tenkte nok en drittdag.

Kaien ved Tørrvikbygd i september.
Eplehage i Hardanger.
Epler i Hardanger.
Naust ved Tørrvikbygd.
Oselvaren på svai ved Haugsneset på Os.