Richard put out a gasoline fire with a fire extinguisher in a test run sponsored by the Mercer Island Fire Department.

Martha needs a nap every afternoon, whether she admits it or not. Today she fell asleep right on her chair while playing computer games with Nathan.

Back to school

Leah sets up her desk just-so before her third grade class starts in the morning. That's her teacher, Mrs. Vandegrift, in the background. Meanwhile, Nathan is proud of his status as one of the only boys in his kindergarten class who has not yet had a time-out. We hope someday his hair will be as well-behaved as he is.

Martha follows her mommy to school.

Look at these clowns!

Richard's back, so we all went to the Circus on Sunday afternoon.

I visited the Romanian Parliament, the second-largest building in the world (after the Pentagon). The guy on my left is an outspoken member of Parliament, who met with us and showed us around.

Cars share the road with horses, which are clearly still used by many farmers. We also saw cows, chickens, goats and sheep grazing at the side of the road.

This is the Sinaia Monastery, which is still in use by monks from the Romanian Orthodox Church. It was a short walk from our first night's hotel. Romanian is a romance language, descended from Latin, so most of the words are familiar if you know Spanish or French. Hello is "Salud". They also say "Merci" and "Da" (yes) "Nu" (no).

There's my boss, Fil Alleva, standing in front of the Peles Castle. It's an amazing 19th Century palace built for the first King of Romania, who was actually a German appointed to the position when the Romanians decided it would be a nice way to make peace with Bizmark.

My first night in Romania was spent in the resort town of Sinaia. Several people from our local Microsoft subsidiary brought us there to see the Romanian countryside. It's quite pleasant, but reminds me of the rural poverty in other East European countries I've visited like Hungary or Lithuania.

Richard at Dracula's Castle

Here I am, not far from Transylvania, about two hours' drive north of Bucharest at the castle of Vlad Dracul, the original Count Dracula. The site is now part of the Romanian National Museum Complex in Targoviste.

(I'm here on a business trip. If you'd like to see more photos and information, check out family web site, or see my work blog. )

 

 

Bike riding Richard is on a business trip to Portugal (9/5-9/10), Romania (9/11-9/13), and Dublin (9/14-9/16), so the family went on a long ride together

This is a satellite image of the shopping center a few blocks south of Gary's house. Google Maps claims this photo was taken between Aug 31 and Sep 2. The red dot is a grocery store across from the drive-through Starbucks we visited frequently when I was there at Christmas.

Gary's house in New Orleans

Richard's brother, Gary and his family live in Kenner, Louisiana but were fortunate to evacuate last weekend before Hurricane Katrina.
They are safe in Houston, but we don't yet know the status of their house. You can see a satellite image of their house before the disaster, but of course we really want to know how the house looks right now. Over the past few days, NASA and others have been releasing updated images so we hope to have an update soon.

Meanwhile you can see the latest news about the disaster on Richard's public blog.