Bye bye Florida

So just to tease relatives, friends and colleagues back in Sweden as they have some extremely early winter weather conditions back there right now(!) I'll provide some more pictures from Florida. At almost 30C the weather is comfortable, the pool is still awesome, beaches nice, shopping great, relaxation level high, grilling/barbecuing is great and the restaurants are nice. Kennedy Space center has now been graced with my presence as well, something that was better than expected actually.

Unfortunately I left this paradise yesterday (Saturday) afternoon and I'll be back in Sweden today (Sunday). I'm currently waiting in Copenhagen for 4h for the last short (45min) flight, then I'm almost home.

Pool at night

A nice Florida beach, just south of Cocoa Beach (east coast).

Front of the house...

...and the back.

And another of those lovely sunsets as seen from the balcony outside my room.

Pictures from Florida

I'm not sure why that is so but I like it here at my uncle's family's house outside Tampa, Florida. It could be the weather, almost 30 degrees Celsius while it's almost freezing(!), though that is extreme, back home in Sweden and the fall-storms raging there. Or it could be the nice company, especially the little attention stealer that my lovely half year old cousin is. Or it could be the totally relaxed atmosphere after a busy week at a conference. Having a drink handed to you by your nice uncle coupled with wireless Internet at your fingertips in the pool. The hottub/jacuzzi next to the pool is sort of nice too, especially if you consider that we sat in the hottub having a great time and looking up at the star filled sky last night. The incredible sunsets perhaps?

I'm not sure where to stop, nice food, nice company, lovely weather and no work. The view is rather OK too, including the skylines of two cities across Tampa Bay. One is St Petersburg a bit to the west (a little to the left as seen from the house) and the other is Tampa a little further east (to the right, not clearly seen in these pictures).

Above: Me at the pool.

Above: Sunset as seen from the house/pool with the city of St Petersburg's skyline.

After the sunset

It's not all work...

Now that I'm over here (the American side of the pond called the Atlantic) attending the conference I'll take advantage of this and have one week of vacation here. "While I'm over there I can as well" visit my uncle, his wife and my newborn (April -06) cousin! They live in Florida though so not exactly close to Portland, Oregon, quite the opposite actually. About as far from each other as it can get but still be part of the mainland US (south east and north west corner respectively).

That will be great, and I'm really looking forward to it. As it happens, by pure coincidence (they had planned this long before this conference was planned for me) my father and mother will be in Florida as well, arriving the day before and leaving just a few days after me. Apart from having a great time with my relatives in a very relaxed environment with no work, I and my parents will go visit the Kennedy Space center. A childhood dream of mine :-) Another good thing with them coming over is that they can bring my camera which I forgot to pack...

Speaking of camera, I can still use the basic camera in my mobile phone to take some pictures, but I'm unable to use it for making phone calls... I sort of thought that was the primary purpose. Others here with the same phone provider (Tele2 Comviq) have no problems and the customer service back in Sweden didn't know what the problem could be, everything seemed fine to them, but would check tomorrow when the tech guys were back. Then what? Will they call me...?

We are still awake (it's soon 5 in the afternoon local time Saturday, but 2 in the morning Sunday in Sweden). I think we managed to stay up long enough (around 8 in the evening) yesterday to have compensated for most of the jet lag! We are to meet up with some other people at 6 for dinner and tomorrow, Sunday, the actual conference starts!

Oh almost forgot, as it happens it seems Portland is having a fashion week here at the same time. Maybe that will compensate for all geeks here for the software conference :)