Interesting Happenings

If you are following our DIY adventures we really appreciate it. We recently decided to begin chronicling some significant or interesting happenings in our personal lives, too. Don’t worry, this won’t become a twitter-esque play-by-play of our daily lives, just an update every now and then when something noteworthy happens. Recently, my husband up and did something amazing which provided the impetus to begin this portion of our blog.

I flew up to Ohio this past week to attend my husband’s grad school graduation, pack up the apartment and then drive down to Florida in our little Honda Civic. At the award ceremony prior to graduation my husband was called up to receive the Dean’s Award for the Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering. The award was presented “In recognition of the most exceptional master’s thesis reflecting exceptional research contributions to scientific, management or engineering knowledge.” Each of the six departments within the Graduate School of Engineering and Management selected one of these awards. The aero/astro department was composed of 53 students and was one of the largest departments at AFIT (The Air Force Institute of Technology). I was so proud of him!! I couldn’t believe it when they called his name. His thesis was titled “Evaluation of the Thorax of Manduca sexta for Flapping-Wing Micro Air Vehicle Applications.” It was essentially a mechanical evaluation of a biological mechanism…reverse-engineering natural technology to further our understanding of flapping-wing hovering flight with the long range goal of FWMAV development.

After the Award Ceremony 

After graduation we had one day to pack up before we headed down to Florida. Many of Alex’s peers were baffled by our fast take off, but we had this beautiful house that Alex purchased in FL for us and he had only seen it once for a viewing and hasn’t been down since so it was only logical that we wanted to get to FL ASAP.

Moving day!

Our little Civic was loaded down with 600 pounds of stuff. It was packed to the brim! You can see in this picture that there was barley any room for Zoe. We thought that she would have to stay on the passengers lap the whole trip. She proved us wrong by squeezing herself anywhere and everywhere she could throughout the 14 hour drive, often burrowing through the layers of clothes and pillows squeezed on top of the stuff in the back seats. A tip for travelers with grumpy cats: very small doses of Benadryl (for the cat) go a long way toward improving the ride for all involved. Don’t worry, we got it prescribed by a vet.

Bad picture of us but it shows how Zoe traveled comfortably in the Civic

 Once we Got to Florida I put Alex Straight to work. We now have lots of different projects going on at once. We are building a shelving unit, hanging drapes and paintings, tearing down the old shed in the back yard, redoing our fire place, replacing a hinged door with a sliding door, painting, and we just bought engineered hardwood floors (which we will install ourselves...we'll see how that goes) for our living room and hallway. Can you believe we have all this going on at once?

Clearing out and tearing down the rusted shed in our backyard