One week until Easter, one week left at work

Orchids are blooming

My wife Theresa and I always liked orchids.  I've kept the plants for years and as long as I do not kill it (hint: don't over or under water it) the plant would bloom maybe a year later and typically around Easter.

In her last year I wanted to make sure she always had flowers in the house so orchids were a perfect choice.  A live orchid may cost several times more than cut flowers, but the flowers last for a very long time.  I ended up with four plants that I've kept alive since 2012.


The two plants with the first bloom.  Picture taken March 30th.
April 12th, the flowers continue to open.

I was happy to see that two plants would be blooming for Easter.  Orchids bloom in slow motion and I've been watching the flower stalks grow for over a month before I took this picture of the first flowers.  As I am learning to blog and need to figure out pictures I decided that this would be a good post to practice.
Close up of the other flowers on April 12th.









OK - so the sizing of pictures in blogspot is not terribly flexible, but I think I can presize the pictures in another tool and then post if I want pictures side by side.











But I think I can figure it out.













Getting stuff for Ghana

I'm in the process of getting stuff for my trip.  I recently bought a battery charger that will work off a USB port.  My current battery charger is not dual voltage so the 220-240 volts in country would fry it.  This charger can be powered by or power a USB device.  My plan is to charge during the times when the power is one and then have batteries and an emergency battery pack to charge a cell phone or such.  I'm also thinking about getting a more substantial power brick that could power my laptop and such. 

So far I think I have about 30 pounds of stuff including an external hard drive, a sleeping bag, shoes and sandals, flashlight, and some school supplies.  I'm allotted 100 pounds, so still need to figure out cloths and everything else.

Getting rid of stuff

I'm also in the process of deciding what stuff I need to keep in the house for me and the kids and how part with the rest of it.  I've been donating some things over the last several months and we have a subdivision garage sale the weekend of my first week off work.  So I'm getting organized for that.  Hopefully, I'll be able to see a lot of progress on this front is a couple of weeks.

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