Where Have I Been?

Inspired by this post and this post from Brother Andy, and with a desire to move that Rabin obituary off the top of the page, I've created a map of all the states I've visited, with two caveats.



create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.


I've visited 42, or 84% of the United States! What are the caveats? I included Mississippi and Kentucky, but maybe I shouldn't have. The Memphis (Tennessee) airport is actually in Mississippi, and the Cincinnati (Ohio) airport is actually in Kentucky. So using the "Incarceration Gambit"*, those two states qualify.

Similarly, I've produced this map of countries I've visited.


create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

I'm up to 6% of the world's countries, and I plan on adding another two (at least) in the next year or so. There are a ton more that I want to get to eventually. I don't think I could even prioritize them right now. I'm invoking the IG* once again for the UK. I had a stopover there on a flight from Atlanta to Copenhagen, and I didn't even get out of the plane, but I'm counting it as one of my countries anyway.

I'm planning on making a map like this for the entire family as a unit. Individually, Jennifer would dog me internationally, but I think I have her beat domestically. The kids are holding their own, for their ages, and will get a big boost next summer. Check back over the years for updates

*Incarceration Gambit: If I were to commit a heinous crime here, whose detention facility would I end up in?

UPDATE March 2010: Having just returned from 2+ weeks in England, I can now state without asterisks or qualifications that I have been to the UK. Later this year: a new state for the map: Alaska!

Adieu, Rabin

Rabin was born on October 24th, 1994, and Jennifer carried our beautiful six-week old chocolate labrador retriever puppy into our home on December 1st. Jennifer and I were recently engaged, and living in a rental house in Peachtree City, Georgia. As far as the Traveling Roths go, I guess Rabin was one even before Jennifer was, and of course the kids were years away from even existing.

She made the 14-hour drive to Pennsylvania for Christmas that year, and met the whole family.






As a puppy, she was a handful, never slowing down, destroying remote controls, telephones, baseball hats. . . and always ready to play. She loved to. . .

Swim


Hike


Camp


Or just tool around Peachtree City in a golf cart


Eventually the kids came along. Rabin was there the days each of them came home from the hospital. They got along great.


Rabin grew out of her puppy stage by the time she was seven or so.

We moved to North Carolina, and Rabin spent a year in Pennsylvania since our rental house didn't allow pets. When she came back to us, the kids could barely remember when she did live with us. She protected us. Well, we assumed she would. She never hurt anyone, but if you didn't know her, her bark sounded very intimidating.

She barely slowed down. By the time she was 11 or so, she lost her hearing, and couldn't jump into the back of the truck anymore, but you'd hardly notice. She'd still swim all day, given the chance.




She still traveled to Pennsylvania with us


And enjoyed a day in the park


In June we noticed something wrong with her. Although she still seemed like her old self, she had a lump in her belly. The vet tested it and determined that the lump was a stage 3 mast cell tumor, it was very aggressive, and there wasn't a lot that could be done for her.

She went on for another month or so, generally herself, but slowing down with less energy, and occasionally having trouble standing up. When she was up, she'd still want to go out and catch a frisbee. We told the kids that she was sick, and that we didn't want to suffer. The kids didn't want to hear it. Tristan would cover his ears and tell us to "stop talking," as his voice cracked and his eyes teared up.


By early this week, she's pretty much stopped eating. You could see the tumor growing almost on a daily basis. By Wednesday, we knew it was time. The histamines released by the tumor wouldn't allow her to eat, yet she was getting sick everywhere and her tumor would bleed on and off. I took her to Mebane Pet Clinic for her final visit. She didn't want to get out of the truck, so I carried her. They took her into the back, and that's the last we ever saw her.

Goodbye old friend. You've been a part of our family even before it was a family, and the kids have never known a time without you. You'll always be with us.

Rabin Olias Roth
October 24, 1994 - July 11, 2007

(PS, If you're reading this before Sunday the 15th, and happen to interact with Tristan and Zoe, please don't say anything to them. They don't know yet. They're at the beach with Jennifer, and we wanted to give them a few more days to enjoy themselves before dropping this on them.)

I Could (Have) Be(en) a Winner!

FM Talk 101.1 ran a contest this week for an Apple iPhone. Be the 20th caller after you hear the Apple noise, and you get entered into a raffle for the iPhone. . . a $600 value. The iPhone is the latest/greatest cool new geek toy that saw thousands of people lining up outside of Apple stores for hours or days in advance of last week's on-sale date.

I was the 20th caller.

There was one entrant per hour of the show, on each of four days, so there were sixteen total entrants. One in 16. . . not bad odds.

On Friday near the end of the show, they took the 16 preliminary entrants, and eliminated eight of them.

I was not eliminated.
My odds were now one in eight.

Later, they eliminated four of the eight remaining.

I was not eliminated.
My odds were now one in four.
I have a 25% shot at an iPhone.

Later, they eliminated two of the four.

They called my name, adding insult to injury by mispronouncing it in the process. (Come on, it's a four-letter, one-syllable name!)

I was eliminated.
My odds are now zero in . . . . . whatever.

I had big, non-specific plans for that iPhone. I wasn't going to activate it, as the minimum service plan is $60/month, which is $15/month more than what I'm currently paying for two phones. I could give it to Jennifer for her birthday. That would be a pretty sweet gift. We could hack it, and just use it as an iPod and wireless web browser. That would be pretty cool. I could auction it on eBay, and use the proceeds to buy my next camera, or maybe swap it with someone for something.

My iNtentions have fallen to the floor.

Tristan and Zoe Return to the Homeland

Summer vacation is here, for those of us who get vacations. Vacation Bible School has come and gone, and Jennifer, Tristan, and Zoe have taken advantage of their long break to return to their homeland, Georgia.

In addition to catching up with Grandpa Joe and Pam, and spending copious amounts of time in Grandpa's pool, they've seen lots of friends, gone to Dixieland in Fayetteville, The Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, and gotten some dinner and dessert in Buckhead at Fellini's and Cafe Intermezzo.

Rather than trying to present a narrative of what's been going on, I'll just link to the pictures.

Go to http://www.zooomr.com and enter the search term "Georgia2007" without the quotes.

Here's a sample:


Jennifer at her all-time favorite dessert place: Cafe Intermezzo


Tristan's first go at the Nintendo Wii


Zoe driving a Go Kart at Dixieland in Fayetteville. (Where are the pedals? Nowhere near her feet!)



A fish and a kid, seemingly in the same place.


Zoe outside my favorite Atlanta pizza place.

So check the link for more, and maybe encourage Jennifer to write too.

UPDATED: No Sleep 'til Wayne

I'm back in Pennsylvania for work. I'm pretty sure that I will not be waylaid by freezing rain this time, but I wouldn't dismiss the possibility of some kind of weather event causing me to get back later than I had planned.

Since I'm about sick of US Airways, I flew up on Southwest this time. It was my first time on that airline, and some people cringed when I told them that was who I was flying with. I'm not sure why. Southwest has been around 36 years, and has actually turned a profit for the past 34, so they must be doing something right.

Southwest has "cattle call" boarding, where everyone boards at one time, and there are no assigned seats. On this flight, that worked out great, as the plane was probably less than 2/3 full -meaning that for every group of three seats, the middle one was empty. My plane pushed back from the gate two minutes early, flew through smooth air (affording me a great view of my plane's right winglet)


and landed 15 minutes early. For comparison, there was a coworker who flew up on the 7:00 US Airways flight (fifteen minutes after my flight left), who ended up getting to the meeting at least 90 minutes late, since his flight was delayed at RDU, and once again at PHL. Yup, US Airways was once again not the way to go.

Avis upgraded my rental car for being an (alleged) first-time Preferred user (with my seven year old Avis Preferred card from aaiPharma). I got in early enough to get some leisurely breakfast before my 10 - 4 meeting in Upper Providence (Collegeville/Phoenixville).

After work it was off to Wayne, PA to the Wayne Hotel. It's a very cool place, and Wayne seems pretty neat so far. The hotel appears to be Victorian, the rooms seem like a Bed and Breakfast, and the place is 101 years old. Here's the view from my room:

You can see the backs of the buildings on the right that have their fronts on US30/Lancaster Avenue/The Main Line.

Here's the view from the street


Tom (my GSK manager) and I are heading out to dinner in a few, so check back later for more pictures.

Later:

It turns out that Wayne is a fine town to walk around. North Wayne Avenue between Lancaster Avenue and the Septa station was sort of a restaurant row. Tom was familiar with a few of the places (all of which looked great), but we decided on Teresa's Cafe, 124 N. Wayne Avenue, Wayne, PA 19087. The place had a restaurant side, which was decidedly Italian, and a bar side, which was decidedly not. The bar specialized in French/Belgian bistro food and beer.

Teresa's had a very impressive beer selection, between the 20 or so on tap, and the many others in bottles. I wish I had brought something to write down the beers we tried, for they all were worthy of revisiting.


For food, Tom started with the Moules Frites, (mussles and fries), my favorite Belgian/French dish, which is traditionally 1 kg (2.2 lbs) of mussles and a bowl of fries. These were cooked in beer, and had some chorizo sausage added. Tom was gracious enough to share.

I had the Steak Frites, my favorite Belgian/French dish. It's just steak and fries in some kind of delicious sauce, but maybe it's the French name that makes this better than any old American steak and fries. The remoulade on the side there wasn't too shabby either.
My second beer was a Rodenbach Sour Ale., a traditional Belgian-style red ale that I'd had once before at Monk's Cafe in Center City Philadelphia.



As an aside, all these pictures in the dimly lit bar were taking using my new GorillaPod SLR tripod that Andy got me for my birthday. Tom's a photography guy too, so we had lots of fun playing with the tripod and the camera. Some random lady even came up to us to ask me about the tripod and how much I liked it. I like it plenty. I highly recommend one. It is choice.

As a digestiv, we had shots of Jameson's Irish Whisky.


From there we walked to Gryphon Coffee Company, 105 W. Lancaster Ave, Wayne, PA 19087. There were some college kids hanging out, a guy with a guitar doing some pretty decent covers of some John Mayer songs, and Tom and me hanging out, drinking coffee, and goofing with the camera and the GorillaPod.





We got a few more shots on the way back to the hotel. The coolest of which were probably of the art deco-style Anthony Wayne theatre


It was time to call it a day. One and a half more remaining in PA.

Pig Pickin' 2: A Public Evening of Enjoyment

After all the invites had been sent, orders placed, deposits put-down, and planning accomplished. . . it was time to start the Pig Pickin' 2 Weekend.

Friday afternoon: drive the truck to Satriale's Pork Store,


get the 72 lb. (37.7 kg) pig, and put the pig cooker on the trailer hitch, and carefully take North Carolina Highway 54 all the way to Mebane.


Take the requisite portraits with the pig,

then into the action packer for the pig, and off to the store for some ice to keep the pig cold for 36 hours.

Saturday: More ice.


Sunday, 9 am. Pull the pig out of the action packer, lay it out on a table, dry it off as much as possible, and cover with foil to keep the flying critters away. Pose for more pictures.


Pull the pig cooker out from under the carport, remembering how I almost melted the carport roof last year.

Load it up with ~12 pounds of natural lump charcoal, and a good bit of lighter fluid, and toss in a match.


Let the coals burn down and lose that awful lighter-fluid smell,

replace the grate, and get your younger brother Andy to help you heave the pig onto the cooker.



and then pose for some more pictures, remembering to stop doing inappropriate things to the pig when the picture is taken, even if your brother doesn't.


Sit around for the next seven hours, manipulating the cooker's doors, chimneys, and fuel consumption to try to maintain a constant 225 - 250 F temperature inside, tossing in the occasional chunk of wet hickory wood, for a nice smoky flavor.


And then a lot of other stuff happens, like getting ice, borrowing stuff from the church, setting up the stereo and party lights, getting cleaned up and putting on some non-hickory-smoked clothing.

If one of your guests offers to bring a keg of Carolina Brewing Company's Spring Bock, you take them up on it, and encourage them to come early to allow the proper amount of Quality Assurance testing on the beer before serving it to the other guests.



About an hour before it's time to eat, the pig has to go on its back to a) crisp-up the skin, and b) create a concave surface to hold the Eastern North Carolina-style barbecue sauce.

You need two people to flip the pig, and at least two more to take pictures.




Close the lid for one more hour, and then you're ready for the Official Tester to declare the pig fit to eat. In our case, Stephen has fulfilled this role.


And that's it: Time to Eat.

For a whole bunch more pictures, including shots of nearly all of the guests, visit our Zooomr feed. Browse them all, or use the search term PigPickin2 to see everyones' pictures from the event. Click on each picture for notes, portals, to leave comments, or choose a size to download and print for yourself.

Special Thanks to Andy and Shelley without whose invaluable assistance this annual event probably wouldn't be possible, or nearly as much fun,
To Tom for bringing the beer,
To Mebane Presbyterian Church for the ice, coolers, chairs, and Presbyterians,
And to all the guests, who brought all that food and enjoyable conversation, and without whom this whole endeavor wouldn't be a party at all.

We look forward to seeing you all again next year on Sunday, May 25th, 2008 for The Traveling Roths' Pig Pickin' III: Triple Figures.

A Pig-Pickin Teaser

I just finished getting all my (and others') Pig Pickin' pictures uploaded to the new and improved Zooomr, and now I'm too tired to write about it, so this picture and the link below will have to do.

Check out the PigPickin2 Smart Set here, or you can go to the Zooomr home page and use the search term "PigPickin2"

Shouts Out to Buick

My photo hosting site, Zooomr, is slowly but surely coming back to life, so I'll have pictures and words here soon. If you want to search Zooomr now, use the search term "PigPickin2" (w/o the quotes).

But in the meantime, I just got some e-mail from one of my Penn State Blue Band Drumline buddies, Buick (Matt Kozsuch), telling me that he now has a blog. Not only that, but Buick is a guy who also journals his travels, and he's gotten his honeymoon trip to Spain posted. Check that out here:

http://kozsuch.blogspot.com/2007/06/honeymoon-to-spain-2006.html

Of particular interest is the post on dinner at La Terraza de Casino Madrid. This place is a foodie's dream, and Buick writes about it well, and includes some amazing photos.

Buick is also a proud new father, so he should have plenty to say for a while. So check out Buick's blog (regularly), and comment. You'll be glad you did.

So Where's the Pig Pickin' Post?

The Traveling Roths' 2nd Annual Pig Pickin' was Sunday, and it was great. There was plenty of pig, plenty of people, and plenty of pictures. A good time was had by all. But I haven't written about it yet because the photo hosting service I use, Zooomr, is currently offline. I can't post any new pictures to my account, so there isn't a good way to get pictures into my blog posts here.

So rather than having a pictureless narrative about Eastern North Carolina-style barbecue, I'm going to wait until my pictures are available. Check back regularly, for when I do post it, it'll probably be in correct chronological order with the other posts here, and this post will be gone.

Also, if you have pictures you'd like to share, and use Zooomr, (once it's back up) use the tag "PigPickin2", so I can include them in a Smart Set link.

Pig Pickin' Prep Part 2: Getting a Pig

[My photo serving site, Zooomr, is currently offline. To offset the lack of pictures, I've inserted the occasional colorful font.]

If step one of having a Pig Pickin' is getting a pig cooker, part two would be getting a pig.

With the deadline for RSVP-ing past, we used the secret Traveling Roths Guest Attendance Algorithm (TRGAA) to predict how many people would be here. Here it is.

People who said the'yre not coming score a 0
People who said they are coming scored a 1 for each adult, and 0.5 for each child
People who failed to respond despite multiple reminders (Jeff Overstreet) scored 0.5 for each adult, and 0.25 for each child.

Applying all the factors, we came up with a guest count of 63. Adding a little more for "random error", the statistical version of poetic license, we decided to get a 70 lb. pig. So on Monday we made the call

Satriale's Pork Store
I'd like to order a pig, please
Sure. Name?
Traveling Roths
Oh wow, I read your stuff regularly. I'm a huge fan!

(ok that last line did not happen)

What size?
Seventy pounds, please.
OK. When do you want to pick it up?
Friday afternoon.
OK, we'll have it ready for you.


It's just that easy. Friday came, and I made the trip to Satriale's. I signed the pig cooker rental agreement, paid for our 72 pound pig (they used a little "random error" too), and watched the kid struggle to hoist it into the back of my truck, and then not attach the pig cooker properly. After some correction from an adult (who was not me, since I couldn't get it attached right either) we were on our way. . .taking the back streets back to Mebane, since homemade pig cookers do not do well at Interstate speeds.

Once home, after the requisite photos, the pig went into the action packer, and got covered with Presbyterian ice. There it'll sit 'til Sunday morning.

In the meantime. Andy/Shelley/Alex/Ella arrived from Maryland. We all walked downtown and partook of some fine Pomodoro pizza, and checked out the changes of Downtown Mebane (the whole block!) and went home to relax. It'll be a busy weekend.

Atlantic Beach Weeknd: Pre-Post

We're down in Alliance, North Carolina right now, and will head out to Atlantic Beach after breakfast. The temperature is only supposed to get up to 70F, which is not as warm as the water at ~72F, so it could be an interesting day. What's the water temperature at the South Jersey shore right now? Around 57F.

And because I've been remiss, here are some pictures from last weekend. . . Mothers Day (tm)

Three Taylors Landscape Hosted on Zooomr

Generations Hosted on Zooomr

More later. Watch the Twitter feed for updates --->

Postcards from Down Under: Great Barrier Reef

Continuing in our series from Jeanine and Sean, we have today's postcard from the Great Barrier Reef.

Australia Great Barrier Reef Hosted on Zooomr

Dave, Jennifer, Tristan, Zoe

Now that we know we have made it to the traveling roths blog - we couldn't pass up this opportunity to send another lovely post card from our Aussie Adventure. Billy [Jennifer's cousin, and Jeanine's brother] is here with us in Port Douglas. It is sunny and hot and we are having a great time. We've already seen the Daintree Rainforest, Cape Tribulation and of course the Great Barrier Reef. Sean and I went snorkeling while Billy went diving and we were all lucky enough to see a green sea turtle. As I write this not on our outside porch, there is a lovely green tree frog sitting beside me.

Love,
Jeanine, Sean and Billy