Get my PE license – Hells Yea!  on May 28 2011 I received notice that I had passed the PE exam and became a licensed Professional Mechanical Engineer.  Just recently I used my license for the first time in the design of a lifting device.

Get my eyes fixed - On April 23 2011, I went under the laser….one of the decisions I ever made.  It is amazing how quickly I have forgotten about the hassle of dealing with glasses and contacts.  If you are considering it, do it!!

Loss Weight – I started actively trying to loose weight on Dec 1st 2010 at the weight of 198 lbs as I sit here today typing I weigh 169 lbs.  I lost the 30 lbs in mostly traditional ways, counting calories and  exercising at least four times a week. I found a website called Loseit.com, to help count calories and track exercise.  I also stopped drinking beer at home…mostly.  I would have a beer if we went out to dinner or where celebrating something, but I stopped having a beer after dinner for no reason.  I have stopped counting the calories but I still try to keep my portions under control and lay off the beer. I weigh myself about once a week just to keep everything in check.

Finish the $#%^ing Engine for the Falcon – I managed to get the engine back in the Falcon just in time to haul it to Omaha and park it in a shed.  Like ever other step in the never ending story of the Falcon’s resurrection, I started to do “just one thing”, then went all OCD and ended up manhandling the engine back in.

Paint the Ceiling & Install the sink in the Garage – Well, we sold the house without doing these things so I count that as the same as actually getting them done.  Now, we have a new house, subject of the next post I swear, so we get to start over and do all the things we have already done before.

So, yea 2011 was pretty damn good.  So good in fact that I am not making resolutions for 2012.

Thanks, for wading through the sea of misspellings and grammatical errors to read about the quirky adventures of the Frost Clan.

Escape is actually a poor choice of words, Grand Island treated Gillian, Elena, and I very well and we feel incredibly guilty for leaving. We made some wonderful friends, gained amazing job experience, had a great house, and welcomed our first child in that town but both our families are in Omaha and I was give an opportunity I couldn’t refuse.

We were never going to be in Grand island forever, and I think everyone that knew us realized that but they way left did come as a bit of a shock to everyone, including us!  We had discussed moving to Omaha (or Denver) off and on for nearly the entire time we lived in Grand Island but at the beginning of the year we had decided that we would just live in GI, we had never really felt settled and that bother both Gillian and I.  We stopped making decisions with “what if we move to Omaha”  in mind.  We bought new furniture, we took a trip to North Carolina and flew out of Grand Island, we planed our trip to Germany, and I was planing on putting up a new fence when we got back.  Hell, I was even considering moving to a bigger house in Grand Island.

During the summer I was worrying about things like  Elena’s first birthday and the international flight we would be taking with a  one year old, a new job was the furthest thing  from my mind.  So naturally, two weeks before the Germany trip I got a call from an odd sounding company, conduct…something.  The only reason I called back was that the message was from the HR manager of the company and not some random job recruiter…I am not a fan of recruiters.  Things move quite quickly after that, I called them back on Monday, on Tuesday I had a phone interview and before I got off the phone set up a in-person interview for Friday…and Sunday we left for Germany.  I was offered and excepted the job while still in Germany.

This meant that after taking a two-week vacation we had to come back and quite our jobs and tell our friends we where leaving, I have never felt more like a jerk in my entire life.

Less than a week after we got back from Germany our house was up on the market.  A month later I was on my way to Omaha with my clothes, the cat, dog and not much else. The next morning I started my new job, and Gillian and Elena came down with more clothes and not much else.

At this point we had moved into Gillian’s Aunt and Uncle’s basement, leaving our house and most of our stuff in Grand Island, hoping it would sell quickly…needless to say it was a little stressful.

Moving into Renee and Howland’s basement was a huge help, actually huge isn’t a big enough word.  Because of Renee and Howland generosity we were able to move to Omaha without a significant financial burden or the need to move in with my in-laws or my mother and for that I am eternally grateful!!

Lucky, a month after moving to Omaha, Sept 29, our house in Grand Island sold!  I will say that it is a lot easier to keep a house clean for showings and open houses when you are not living in it.  In total the house was on the market for 60 days, a number that still amazes me as I thought it would easily take twice that long.

We had all of October to get everything out, closing date was Nov 8th, and I spent most Saturdays driving down with the CFO truck, another thing I am grateful for, filling it with all the things we had collected over our 6 years in Grand Island and move then into a storage unit…a very large storage unit.

During this time we also found a house that was the right size, in the right neighborhood with the minimum number of required garage spaces, but that will have to be the topic of my next post as I have already rambled on far too long and I don’t have any pictures of it yet because Gillian says the house looks too messy.

In the end we will miss Grand Island, it was good to us and we will be back to visit, but Omaha is home, it was always home.

]]> http://frozenrobot.com/2011/12/15/escape-from-grand-island/feed/ 0 Frosty Sold!! http://frozenrobot.com/2011/11/13/conduc-a-wamp-whater/ http://frozenrobot.com/2011/11/13/conduc-a-wamp-whater/#comments Sun, 13 Nov 2011 04:55:23 +0000 Ryan Frost http://frozenrobot.com/?p=1353 ]]>

Conductix Wamplfer, a division of the Delachaux Group, yep most of that has a red squiggly line underneath it as I type, but trust me, it is spelled correctly.
This unpronounceable French American German conglomerate is what has brought us back to Omaha…brought us home.

Not only am I working for a tongue twister of a company, I am also working in an industry that is completely new to me.  My title is Development Engineer, working in our Transit Division.  Transit as in trains, but more specifically I develop electrified conductor rail systems that power people movers like monorails and subway trains….yea, a little different than farm equipment.

I will spare everyone the technical details, but I will say that I really do enjoy my new job, it will allow me to use my PE license and hell we have a 3D printer!!

So after we landed, and found Brandon and Erika, and I stopped drooling over the cars (Ok, I never stopped drooling over the cars) one thing became obvious, Germany is very old.  Dan would argue that we only saw the Bavarian part of Germany and that the rest of Germany is not like that.  I can only blog what I have seen, so I will stick with Germany is old, but that is not a bad thing.

Most of our site seeing was in and around Hohenfels because we didn’t really want to spend 6 hours on a train with a one year old, so we saw a number of very old towns with very old churches and bridges and center squares.  I am not even going to attempt to give a history lesson on each one, Wikipedia does a much better job and Erika does an even better job.  For most of the trip I wondered around taking pictures of as much as I could without much understanding of what I was taking pictures of, this drove Erika crazy because she was doing an expert job of being a tour guide and I kept wondering off from the group.  I tend to be less interested in why or when something was built and more interested in the detail of how it was built and there was no shortage of detail.  Everything was just so ornate and (insert synonym for insanely detailed here).  No one builds things this way any more and no matter how many picture I took I could not do any of these builds justice, you just have to see them with your own eyes.

To go along with the beautiful sights I enjoyed a number of delicious beers.  Now, I have never been to Ireland, though my wife has, and I have been to the Czech Republic and even though I don’t remember much of my time in the Czech and I only partly trust my wife’s taste in beer I can say with certainty that neither place’s beer can hold a candle to what Bavaria brings to fest table.

The following is a list of the place we visited, click the “pics” link to see all my pictures, because I didn’t want to fill the post with a million links.  Click the “wiki” link to actually learn something about these places, remember I kept wondering off from the group.

Munich – pics - wiki

This is where I learned a new word…dunkel.  Dunkel is a dark lager with a smooth malt flavor popular in Bavaria and it is the most wonderful thing I have ever tasted (period).  This is also where we saw the Rathaus-Glockenspiel and it is home to BMW, again that will be the topic of another post…hopefully.

Velburg – pics - wiki

Velburg is a nice little town with a castle ruin up on a large hill…a very large hill.  The view from top was spectacular. We did not drink any beer here, but it was still a very interesting town.

Regensburg- pics - wiki

Regensburg is fairly close to Hohenfels, so we actually went there twice, the first time to have Indian food for diner and to buy some vinegar in one of these neat little stores.  I am sure I had a beer with diner but I honestly can’t remember so it must have only been OK.  This is also where we saw the Dom and the Danube river.  I had actually forgot the memory card to my camera the first time we visited, so I am glad we went back.

Nuremberg – pics - wiki

I ate braised boar knuckle and the largest potato dumpling thing in the world and sour kraut that I really liked.  So I don’t hate sour kraut, just the crap they try to pass off as sour kraut in the states. I finished off the kraut with another wonderful dunkel, this became a common theme of our trip.  We  saw the Frauenkirche and “The Beautiful Fountain”,were Gillian and Linda spun the gold rings for good luck.  They was also a few other interesting fountains.  Then we climbed up to the castle…I don’t know why they had to put all these castles way up on top of hills.

Grossbissendorf/ Hohenfels – pics - wiki

Grossbissendorf is the small village we Brandon and Erika live.  I say village because saying it was a town would imply that people live there.  Linda swore the entire time that no Germans actually lived there and everything was just staged to look like a town… it was small.  It was right out side the Army base in Hohenfels were Brandon was stationed.  The base is mostly a training huge (I say huge, Brandon says it isn’t really that big) facility large enough for tank maneuvers, complete with mock Afghani town.  Brandon kept the house fully stocked with a number of types of bees and this had nothing to do with our visit, he is just a man who enjoys beer…we get along quite well.

Hohenschwangau – pics – wiki

Cinderella’s Castle, this was the most touristy place we went, I am glad our whole trip wasn’t like this day.  Don’t get me wrong it was a wonderful day and the castles were amazing, but being around that may other tourists took the “German feel” out of everything.  The beer even tasted less German.

Ebersdorf bei Coburg / Lichtenfels – pics – wiki

This is where we meet up with Dan and Ines.  We visited them at Ines’ sister’s (Ellen) and brother-in-law’s (Jens) house and attempted to go to a festival, but after fighting the rain and riding bumper cars, we decided to head back to the house and grill lots of meat, which is funny because Ines is a vegetarian, oh and yes there was plenty of top-notch German beer. Jens and Ellen also have a daughter, Nelly, that is just four days younger than Elena, so now we can say that Elena has a playmate in German.  We had a great time just hanging out and telling stories and playing a horrible game of horse and table tennis, table tennis is huge in Germany.  I can not thank Jens and Ellen enough for the hospitality, it was one of the best days of the entire trip.

Bamberg – pics - wiki

This is where we bought Elena one of those European baby bandanna things that all the trend setting German Babies seem to be wearing.  Actually when I say “all those” I really just mean Nelly, I think she may have been the only other baby we saw anywhere the entire trip.  As far as I can tell Germans will become extinct in about 20 years because no one is propagating the species.  Every place we went Elena was nearly the only baby or child, though surprisingly all but one place had high chairs.  We also visited a monastery with a crazy beautiful church and a nice little brewery, the Dunkel was delicious!

Walhalla – pics – wiki

The Walhalla Temple was an interesting place, basically it is a crazy building up on a hill full of stone heads.  Ok, the are actually stone bust a  number of historically significant Germans, Einstein is in there, but I think the more impressive part is the view.  The hill over looks the Danube river and it is worth the hick up.

Rothenburg – pics – wiki

Rothenburg is one of the only midevil towns with a still intact city wall.  I believe it was so well-preserved because it was also extremely poor and no one really wanted to attack it, that may not be true.  Rothenburg is also home to a torture museum, I mean “Mid-evil Crime and Punishment Museum” which I found incredibly interesting but also felt a little odd carrying my 14 month old daughter through.  There was what seemed to be an elementary school field trip also going through the museum, so I guess it wasn’t that odd.  That was the largest single group of children we saw during our trip…in a torture museum.

The night before our trip to Rothemburg is when I got the e-mail offering the job that I have now been at for a month and a half. Everything after this point is a bit of a blur because I was having a mild panic attack for the rest of the trip.

Weltenburger -pics -wiki

This was our last trip while in Germany, Weltenburger is the monastery/brewery that makes the beer Brandon keeps stocked in the house.  So I was looking forward to that, except getting there involved a half an hour boat ride.  For those of you how don’t know, I am prone to sea sickness…and car sickness…and plane sickness, and I am not a fan of those carnival rides that spin around and around.  Though despite the boat ride and that fact that my stomach was already doing somersaults over the job offer, I kept is all down and did enjoy myself.

So that is our trip in a very large nut shell.  Our trip was hands down one of the best two weeks of my life and we are truly blessed to have such great family and friends.  German is not a place I am just going to cross off my list.  With your ambrosia-esque beer, beautiful, technologically advance, enthusiast minded cars and amazing unlimited roads, German you have ruined me and I will be back some day.

This post is most likely wrought with inaccuracies, grammar errors and misspellings but I really just needed to finish it so I could move to things like getting new jobs, selling our house, moving to Omaha, life in a basement, international business trips,and  oh did I mention my mom is getting married?

So, all of that and more in my next installment, and I am sure I will get around to explaining is agonizing detail the awesomeness of the BWM museum/plant/world.

So in an attempt to do something and to get away for a group of women that would surely start yelling at me for no reason any minute, I took my laptop and wondered off to find wifi.  I had an e-mail with Brandon’s cell number, I am not sure what calling to tell him we are here was going to achieve, he knew we were here, but again this was more of a self preservation move than anything.  So after signing up with T-mobile in German and paying 6 euro for an hour of internet, which I think is like $130 US, I got Brandon’s number and made my way to the pay phone.  Now, I am not sure I could operate a pay phone in States successfully, if I could even find one, but trying to do it in German was a futile effort at best.  First off phones don’t ring in Germany they beep, so when I put my credit card in and dialed the number and pressed the button that I thought looked the most like “send”  I got a few beeps then nothing.  I also wasn’t sure how many of these numbers I had to dial since I was not calling from the States.  Anyway, after some struggling then an overly gestured conversation between Linda and a pair of shockingly attractive female police officers, I was able to get the phone to do the German version of ringing only to get the voicemail of a very husky sounding German man that was not Brandon. 

Two minutes later Brandon and Erika should up, so I had accomplished nothing but entertaining the ladies for about 30 minutes. 

At this point the plan was back on track and we made our way the parking lot to put our bags in the car, this is where I saw the true beauty of Germany…it’s cars.  Audis, BMWs, Mercedes, Porsches for as far as the eye could see and these where German spec cars, so they are just better than the ones we can get in the States. Those watching the Flickr updates may have noticed a lot of pictures of cars, some parked in garages, some on the street and some in museums, the later being the topic of another post, if you don’t understand why I was doing this then let me enlighten you.  Germany does many things well, beer, chocolate, scary sounding dialect but first and for most is das auto!  Nowhere else are they making all wheel drive, manual transmission, wagons designed to go 155mph and that 155 mph is electronically governed because any faster and the windshield wipers rip off…or something.  I will be honest I am a bit of a BMW fanboy, we bought Gillian our BMW about 5 years ago and about two years ago it became mine, thanks Elena!  Even though it is nearly 8 years old I still prefer my all wheel drive, manual transmission, German sports sedan to nearly everything new coming out of Japan, Korea, Italy and the Unites States.  In Germany though my car would be nothing, about as boring and common place as a Toyota Camry. German cars are just better, except any new Volkswagen. Hell, even the “American Cars” built in Germany are better.  Brandon rented a Ford Galaxy, no not a mid-60s sedan, it was a minivan with manual transmission and a diesel engine, and it would go at least 120mph!  Why can’t I get one of those here in the states, I mean it is a Ford.             

Okay, so this was supposed to be a post about our first day in Munich and I really only got to the parking lot of the airport and then made a hard left into a rant about cars, that never happens, so Munich will be the next post.  I’ll give you a little taste though, Munich is where I learn the word “Dunkel”…though I had a hard time remembering it.

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My biggest concern about our trip to Germany wasn’t the cost, it wasn’t foreign language, it wasn’t even sauerkraut, I hate sauerkraut, it was the nine hour flight with a one year old that has a reputation for being “busy”.

Our flights were from Omaha to Atlanta and then on to Munich, the flight from Omaha to Atlanta was…well, good I guess.  I don’t actually remember it, so it must have been fine, the flight from Atlanta to Munich is where things got a little interesting.

We landed in Atlanta with plenty of time to catch our flight to Munich, which was mostly during Elena’s bedtime so it would work out nicely,  so we got a little dinner and slowly made our way to the gate.  We had been sitting there for about 5 minutes when they called me up to the front desk.  They asked if I had a child’s ticket for Elena, I looked at them funny and told them that she is going to be sitting in our lap.  They informed me that for flights into Germany, even if she sits in your lap you need a ticket, it is not actually a seat, just a piece of paper saying she is on the flight and directed me to the help desk or whatever they call it.  I figured I’d go up and tell them I need a child ticket, they would print one off  and we would be on our way…of course it wasn’t that easy.

It turns out for a” Child’s Ticket” you have to pay the taxes on what a regular ticket costs, so about 10%.  Ok, not the end of the world except it took the lady nearly an hour of talking with someone in Germany and typing on her damn computer to get it all straighten out, mean while they have been calling final boarding for our flight!

Luckily they knew I was down there and had no intention of leaving without us but it was still quite nerve-racking.  They asked me a number of times “No one told you,  you needed one of these in Omaha?”  Nope, the people  in Omaha very nicely helped us check in with Elena and asked what we are going to be doing in Germany, but never mentioned that we didn’t have all the paperwork we needed to actually get into the country with our daughter!!

In all reality the people at Atlanta’s airport where very nice and worked as fast as possible to get this all straightened out, as for the people in Omaha…they are idiots!

So I got to have one of those movie scene moments where I am running through an airport to catch my plane, which made me regret my choice of flip-flops for footwear.

We got on the plane, Gillian and I both all flustered so naturally we yelled at each other for the next 30 minutes until we both realized we were all on the plane and everything was fine…well, kind of.

We were seated in the middle three seat in the last row before the bulkhead, right next to the bathrooms so people were constantly standing next to our seats and well, it smelled  like a bathroom.  That really wasn’t that big of a deal though it was convent when we needed to change Elena’s diaper which unfortunately happened a lot!  The biggest problem was that the plane had these really nifty touch screens on the back of every seat so you could watch movies and TV shows and it also controlled our over head light, or I should say it would have if it was working.  Even more annoying was that it wasn’t the entire plane just the section we were in and since we couldn’t turn on the overhead lights the flight staff left the main cabin light on when it started to get dark so most people could read.  It was very considerate for those people, incredibly annoy for the couple trying to get their daughter to sleep.  Thankfully they eventually went around and asked everyone if it was ok to turn off the light, I think mainly because they knew we were trying to get Elena to sleep.

Elena did manage to get to sleep and was very good through the entire flight and even though there seemed to be one catastrophe after another the Delta flight staff did a very good job of being as accommodating as possible.  It was all about the little things, as they headed up to the front of the cabin to start handing out meals they stopped and gave Gillian her meal first so she could eat while I held Elena and then I ate when they came to our row, this was incredibly helpful and also something we would not of even thought about.  They were also just very nice to us and sweet to Elena, it helped that she was not screaming the entire time.  I was afraid that everyone would think “great, there is damn baby on the flight” and be rude or hostile, but it was the complete opposite.

The flight back was much less eventful, the people at the Munich check in desk were also very helpful and changed our seats to put us behind the bulkhead which gave us more leg room and they could mount a cot for Elena to sleep in, seeing as it was a morning flight she didn’t sleep much but when she did, it was the greatest thing ever invented in all of the known universe.  It also gave us a place to put her stuff when she wasn’t  in it.  Our screens also worked on this flight though due to Elena not sleeping it took Gillian 9 hours to watch an hour and forty five minute movie, I didn’t even try.  The flight attendants on this flight were mostly new grandmothers so they just loved Elena and commented a number of time on how well she did, they even gave her a set of wings.

What I thought was going to be the most stressful part of our trip..was, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.  After this I am confident we can travel with Elena anywhere, though once she turns two we have to buy her a real ticket so I am guess the next international flight the Frost’s take, Elena will get to spend quality time with her grandparents.

This should be a post about Gillian, Elena, Linda and I’s trip to Germany to visit Brandon and Erika and Dan and Ines, but it is not.

The Friday before we left for Germany I had a job  interview with a company in Omaha called Conductix Wampfler, no I didn’t make that name up.  Three days before coming home I was offered the job, via e-mail.  After spending the last three days of our trip a bit stressed out over the decision we had to make, I accepted the job.  This job is a great opportunity to further my career and use my professional license, it gets us to Omaha, where we have wanted to live for some time now, and it is an increase in pay.  The only problem is the news of moving to Omaha has completely over shadowed our trip to Germany.

I promise on the next few posts I will get into the details of our trip with all the run-on sentences and poor grammar you have come to love.

So needless to say we are selling our house, commuting is just not an option!  So if there is anyone in the Grand Island area looking for a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom ranch on the Southeast side of town, do I have the house for you!!

Gillian has started her job search as well and managed to line up three job interviews last Friday!  This is why I had to find a job first, Gillian is in much higher demand.  All three interviews went very well and I would not be surprised if she has three job offers next week.

Now we just need to sell our house (seriously buy our house!) and buy a new one…easy right?

Until I can get to blogging about our trip, head over to Erika’s Blog she put together a post about her hectic July, which has a nice summary of our trip.  As always I have hundreds of photos of the trip in my sets of Flickr.

Ok, so it was almost a month ago now (we have been a bit busy), but on June 30th 2011 our daughter celebrated her first birthday. We planned the party for Sunday the 3rd of July the day after the Frost 4th of July Extravaganza which was held on the 2nd, there was a little confusion about that in the beginning. The 4th on the 2nd was a good time as always but more people actually showed up for Elena’s party the next day, she is quite popular apparently. Hosting a one-year-olds birthday party was yet another adventure in parenting. Honestly, I think Gillian did most of the work but when it came to the toys, assembly is a Dad’s job. I had plenty to assemble too, a baby doll stroller, a water table and a little red car (Mark and Linda helped) all needed to be assembled…while Elena and her friends where trying to play with them. It adds an extra challenge when the parts and pieces and tools keep “wandering off”. Despite the fact that Elena was not feeling well, I think she had a good time or at least that is what I will tell her when she is older. As a thank you for everyone coming to her party, Elena gave nearly everyone a present of their own…the stomach flu. Thanks to everyone that came to celebrate our daughter’s special day and sorry for the rough Monday.