A Little Bit of Catch-up

17. June 2008 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

“So, what on earth have you been doing? I haven’t seen a substantial posting in a while!”

Well, now that Timmy is napping and Jacob is in NEW YORK with his grandparents, I have a chance to catch up a little!

On Thursday of last week, Dave’s parents flew into town. Right in the middle of all that smoke mentioned here .

Friday morning was Dave’s dissertation defense at NC State. This is his one-hour-long opportunity to give a summary of his 3-years of research. The general public is invited — well, the general public in this case is anyone who is interested in stratospheric turbulence — and this is the part Dave’s parents and I sat in on.

As is the tradition for a morning defense, we put out a small breakfast spread from our local Panera Bread shop.

Unbeknownst to Dave, I had taken a couple pictures of his presentation. Lots of vertical profiles of the atmosphere. I guess I understood most of it with a little brain effort.

After the presentation, Dave was left to his PhD committee behind closed doors for another 1 1/2 hours or so, and when that was done we received the happy phone call: “I passed!”. Wonderful news!

That afternoon we went to Dave’s office where one of his professors, Dr. Yuter, gave him this clever cake:

The family had a celebration dinner at the Angus Barn Restaurant in Raleigh…a place we’d been trying to visit for some time. It was most wonderful — Dave and I were reminded of one of our favorite restaurants in State College, The Tavern. The menus are a little different, but the atmosphere and the friendly staff brought back many nice memories.

On Saturday, several of our Raleigh friends (and my sister’s family) threw us a delightful going-away picnic. We combined the celebration with one for Dave completing his PhD, so we had invited his NCSU colleagues, too. Several of them paid a visit to the park. We had a great visit with so many of our friends and family…

And here’s the cake I’d made to celebrate:

Several of the families we’d befriended here presented us with a precious photo album that included pictures going back the past 3 years — from the very first playgroups my boys were in when we moved here! It must have taken hours to gather the photos and assemble them for us. I was definitely in tears going down memory lane with my boys and their friends…and my dear friends, too.

Dave’s parents had a nice relaxing rest-of-the-weekend, and on Monday they took Jacob with them back to New York. This coming weekend is Dave’s family reunion in Lancaster County, PA and we’ll pick up Jacob there and have a great weekend at Uncle Jack and Aunt Shirley Henderson’s farm.

About to Explode

08. June 2008 · Comments Off on About to Explode · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags:


No…not me. My poor husband.

He’s at T-6 days and counting till his PhD dissertation defense. I won’t even TRY to explain what he’s up to, but let me just refer you here if you also have a 100lb. brain and would like to learn more. He last updated the homepage on 18 Oct 07, but he uploads all his research result graphics as he makes them.

So he’s working 12-18 hours per day, every day, probably between now and Thursday evening, when Dave’s parents arrive for Dave’s defense and Father’s Day weekend. This started around June 1st. His attention is purely on last minute calculations, literature reviews and final preparations on his hour-long dissertation defense Powerpoint presentation.

That’s it.

“Dave, Father’s Day is next weekend, what do you think your Dad would like?”

“Father’s Day? When is it?”

“A week from Sunday…”

“Already?”

We took about 3 minutes to come up with a nice idea, and I will take it from there. But since it’s Dave’s Dad, and the two of them talk at least weekly, along with e-mails, sometimes Dad Vollmer might mention something he’d be interested in and we’d do something with that information.

My point here is that in the 16 years since I’ve first met Dave, I’ve never seen him so focused! He’s barely making time to eat!

So let’s have some fun here!

How many of you knew that Dave is an artist??? Raise your hands!

Not many, not since we moved to NC. Dave hasn’t done much of any drawing except for some model railroad diagrams lately. It’s unfortunate.

Dave’s mind would wander in classes when we were at Penn State and while we were working on our Master’s degrees. His mind doesn’t wander like that anymore, I guess.

As a joke, when we were in grad school in 2002 I did an online “art showing” for our M.S. program classmates.

Now, in honor of (hopefully) Dave’s last week as a PhD candidate, I’ve transfered Dave’s art gallery to our new family homepage and I present it here to you.

Enjoy and smile!

PS: You’ll see pictures of Dave in the gallery in which he’s wearing the same shirt. That’s his Air Force “Class B” uniform, a short-sleeved light blue shirt with epaulets on the shoulder.

The Skirted Swimsuit — Revealed!

07. May 2008 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Okay, this had come up some time ago, but I’m just now getting around to addressing it.

I received a lot of crap regarding my Swimsuit Identity Crisis blog posting. “Why would you want a skirted swimsuit?” “You don’t need to wear something like that.”, etc.

But let’s get to the bottom line.

I’m lazy.

Most of my regulars have met me in person. For those who haven’t met me, you can look to the right and see the picture of me. I have dark hair. I have thick hair. Friends have flatteringly told me about how they’d kill for hair like mine (blush).

But there’s a flip side. Not to gross you out, but consider that beautiful lush dark thick hair translated to my legs, armpits…and, ahem, other areas.

Back in the 50s and 60s, the term was “defuzzing”. How dainty, delicate. Ugh.

My Chinese Mom doesn’t even have to shave her legs at all (seriously, you can’t see a thing!). I think she was quite appalled at the jungle that erupted on my legs when I was 11-12 years old.

Ever met a girl with 5 ‘o clock shadow on her LEGS?

Anyway, one of the corollary reasons for wanting a skirted swimsuit was that I could avoid the whole shaving/waxing/plucking of the bikini line. I tried the boy-short suit one season, that was okay, but the skirt seemed prettier.

Ultimately it was Dave who convinced me to skip the skirt-thing altogether this year, and I selected this suit, tankini top and bikini bottom, both in the Geo Dot pattern, from Athleta.

(Notice how much larger the picture of the bottom is here — that’s about how I had to buy these, really!)
So I’m back to the summer routine of waxing and plucking. Shaving doesn’t cut it (no pun intended).

If you dare, check out the latest poll…it’s a wild one, don’t worry, it’s anonymous! Men, feel free to reply, there’s an option for you too!

Photos from Dave and Jake’s Dream Train Vacation

05. May 2008 · Comments Off on Photos from Dave and Jake’s Dream Train Vacation · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , , ,

Enjoy these pics from Dave and Jake’s big model railroading/railfanning weekend. Hopefully Dave will blog about this soon on his own.

Timmy and I had a fun weekend together in South Carolina!

PS: We have two offers on the house, possibly more by tomorrow morning! Whoo hoo!

An Updated Experiment

13. March 2008 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Well, while the enthusiasm is there to have our family live with just the one car, in practice we discovered some “issues”.

First, Dave usually leaves his office around 5:30pm. If I’m doing a labor-intensive dinner, such as a stir fry where I’m chopping veggies and standing over the stove for a few minutes, taking the 40 minutes to go out and pick up Dave every day would be a challenge. With the time change, though, we’ve been having dinner closer to 7pm lately, so we might be able to swing it…at least for our experiment.

If I do simple dinners, such as casseroles and quick homemade pizza, and if I prepare everything ahead of time so I throw it all together as soon as we get home, it can be done. Tonight it was homemade cheesesteaks with raw baby carrots and Ranch dip. 15 minutes.

Also, Thursday is soccer night for Jake, at 5:30pm. So I’d have to pick up Dave at 5pm on the nose to get back to Apex in time for soccer. Dave is willing to work from home on Thursdays, which would be great! I can make a fancy dinner on Thursdays, at that!

So today I drove about 60 miles in just the Prius. That would be ~1 1/2 gallons of gas, compared to 3 gallons it would have been in the van. This morning I dropped off Jake at preschool at 9am and then went straight to campus and was able to drop off Dave around 9:20am. Dave usually is at his office from 9:30am-5:30pm.

I drove Daniel home from the park today, and we had to cram his booster seat into the back of the car along with Jake’s booster and Timmy’s 5-point convertible seat. The seats all fit, but it was barely so and the seat belting was certainly an effort. But we were legal!

Picking up Dave was an adventure. I can’t remember ever being on campus at 5:30pm…what a nightmare, between the auto traffic leaving campus, the students walking everywhere, and the buses stopping every 50 feet. I pulled a “stupid” and tried this roundabout way to get to Dave’s building that wasted about 10 minutes. I ended up behind a bus that was stopping at each bus stop. Argh!

Jake, however, enjoyed his views of the young pretty girls. He asked me to put down his window (it was 65 degrees!) while I was crawling through campus traffic and he was hanging out the window yelling “HI!” to the girls. Of course the girls were swooning over cute-little-Jake. What a ham!

While I’m Having a Blast With My Two Weeks’ Tour…

08. March 2008 · Comments Off on While I’m Having a Blast With My Two Weeks’ Tour… · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

…here’s Dave.

I’m almost home, dear! You’re doing great!

Ch, Ch, Ch, Changes

18. February 2008 · Comments Off on Ch, Ch, Ch, Changes · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Hi! This weekend Dave and I have been doing some web rearranging. His Model Railroading website is very very popular among others in the hobby, generating over 1000+ hits per week! Up until recently, another PRR Model RR fan had been graciously hosting Dave’s website, but recently some changes to Mr. Britton’s servers have made it hard for Dave to keep up remotely.

So this weekend we took the plunge and purchased a domain and hosting capability of our very own. $60 per year through InMotion Hosting. Feel free to visit at your leisure, although most of what you’re going to see is already on my blog, and are otherwise links to other websites Dave and I have floating around.

Owning our own domain is pretty nifty, with the ability to put up shopping carts and credit card transaction capabilities, as well as up to 1000 e-mail addresses. For fun, I set up patricia@thevollmerfamily.com but don’t bother sending me anything there — I’ll rarely check it. I’m trying to get it to redirect into my AOL account.

I Can’t Believe I Lived Here for 2 1/2 Years and Didn’t Know About This!

17. February 2008 · Comments Off on I Can’t Believe I Lived Here for 2 1/2 Years and Didn’t Know About This! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Yesterday Dave and I took a field trip to the Carolina Brewing Company for one of their weekly tours. We had a nice time (without the kids).

Dave did a description of the brewery and nice review of their beers here.

I just can’t believe we’ve been living right up the street from the place all this time and never thought to do this. It’s a great free activity for when family or friends come to visit.

Every Saturday afternoon from 1-3pm (perhaps even 4pm) they open up the taps for free “samples”, although you’re basically getting full pint glasses and you’re welcome to get as much as you like. Needless to say, we saw a lot of college kids.

Get there early, though…Dave and I arrived at 1pm exactly and there was a 10-15 minute wait before we made to the taps the first time. And we went straight back to the end of the line after we got our first pint, because we had drained our glasses when we got back to the taps (another 15 minutes). The taps are turned off during the tour portion itself, which is about 1/2 hour around 1:30-2pm.

We bought a set of 5 pint glasses, each of them featuring a different one of their beers. I was really wanting one of their Groundhog Day Imperial Stout glasses (go figure!) and the gentleman said they were out of new ones for me, but if I mingled among the crowd and found someone with one for their free samples, I could provide a clean drinking glass and take the used Groundhog’s Day glass. So that’s what I did! (I had 1 1/2 beers in me by this time, I had no problem batting my eyelashes at a guy to do it).

Happy Valentine’s Day II: Patricia and Dave, the early days.

14. February 2008 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Enjoy this photo from one of our earliest outings, my AFROTC Military Ball in Spring 1994. Made the dress myself! I miss sewing. Will need to talk about that sometime.

More importantly, check out the brillo pad on my Dave’s head! Once he came on active duty he’s kept it so short you can’t tell how curly it can get.

From 1994 05 AF Ball

Happy Valentine’s Day — An Ode to my Dave!

14. February 2008 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags:

I got tagged by Susie to do this, so here goes.

From DaveABUs

What is his name?
David Russell Vollmer.

How long have you been married?
13 1/2 years.

How long did you date?
About 1 1/2 years.

How old is he?
33.5 – yes, he’s a tad younger, but it’s definitely fun that way!

How old are you?
34.5

Who eats more sweets?
That’s a tough one. He’s the family chocoholic, but I can put away the Halloween candy like no tomorrow, if left unchecked!

Who said I love you first?
He did. In a Valentine’s Day card 15 years ago today. (“Awwwww”)

Who is taller?
Dave

Who can sing better?
We’re about even. We both have a good time belting it out in church, but you probably won’t hear us otherwise.

Who is smarter?
Dave’s the almost-PhD man. But one could argue that a piece of paper does not equal smarts. Seriously, though, Dave’s pretty brilliant and I couldn’t be more proud!

Who does the laundry?
Usually me. I just recently signed Dave off as being trained on our washer/dryer.

Who does the dishes?
Usually me, since he is bathing the kids at the same time. If I slack off or if there’s a dish he needs, he’ll do them. Or, if Dave needs a favor, he’ll surprise me and do them.

Who pays the bills?
I do. I have been thinking recently that if I were somehow incapacitated, it’d be good if Dave could do our bills. It’s a combination of auto-pay, Quicken and Web Bill Pay.

His guilty pleasure?
Chocolate and a good beer.

Who sleeps on the right side of the bed?
If “right” is defined as by one standing at the foot of the bed, that would be Dave.

Who mows the lawn?
I usually do. Up till NC, it was exclusively Dave but the allergies here have been horrible on him. It’s a sight to see, all these men mowing the lawns, and my next door neighbor (single woman) and I mowing our lawns at the end of the cul-de-sac.

Besides you, who is his best friend?
Joe, one of his PSU roommates.

Who cooks dinner?
Usually me, but he gets a hankerin’ to mess around in the kitchen sometimes and he has a good time. He’s wanting to learn more about cooking, especially with wholesome, natural ingredients, which I think is great.

Who drives?
I do more often, because he can read books in the car and I get carsick if I do anything besides look out the window.

Who kissed who first?
I’m really not sure — it might have been one of those movie-moment-style mutual first kisses.

Who asked who out first?
Dave asked me.

What was your first date?
The movie “Gettysburg”. Not recommended for a first date, it’s a 4-hour long war epic.

Who proposed?
Dave. At the Victorian Manor restaurant in Bellefonte, PA. It was in front of everyone and I was very embarassed by all the attention.

Who has more siblings?
We each have one sibling. Dave has an older brother, I have a younger sister.

Who wears the pants?
Dave.

What is your favorite thing about him?
That he makes me happy, he treats me with respect, and he’s awesome with our boys.

I tag Morgan, Margaret and Maryann.

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