Visit (Google Storyboard link fixed)

My nephew, ADHI works for Red Hat.

Actually, this is his second go round for RH. He used to work for RH starting about 15 years ago and he and his wife and daughter lived in Cary. About 10 years ago he moved back to Japan and worked for Google. This past year, he went back to RH - Tokyo.

Anyway, ADHI was in Boston for a Red Hat Developer Convention / Meeting. Afterwards he came to Raleigh to spend the week at RH Headquarters.

Instead of staying at a hotel, he came out to stay with me.

Our friend, Nuke, came up to from Southport to spend the week as well to catch up with ADHI.

The first weekend my sister and brother-in-law came down (on their way to Florida) and spent the weekend in Raleigh. ADHI stayed at their hotel with them. We got together on the weekend, went out to eat, to the Art Museum, and pretty much just hung around visiting.

During the week, ADHI and I commuted together to work in downtown Raleigh - my office building is on the same street about 6 blocks from the RH building. Evenings, we spent at home watching movies on Netflix (both DVD and streaming) and the women's soccer matches.

I cooked during the week.

Nuke, took care of all the cleaning up. He also took on a bunch of chores I had been neglecting. He cut the lawn and upper field; vacuumed the house, took the recycling to the recycling center and he washed all the pollen / dirt from the screened porch.

The porch was a big job I'd been neglecting for several months. It was so dirty and pollen covered - you couldn't sit out there. Now you can. I still need to go over the screen porch and deck with the power washer - but it will be a much easier job now.

I hope to see ADHI every year or so now that he's back with RH. Maybe even more often - which would be great. What would be even better yet - if he could occasionally bring his wife and daughter with him.

ADHI put together a Google Storyboard about the trip with excellent photos. (Click on Google Storyboard for the link)

To go with the photos of meals at my house -

The BBQ came from Smithfield's. Slaw, baked beans and fries from Harris-Teeter. There was no real cooking done on our part.

The tomatoes were roasted in the oven, then filled with home made tuna salad (made with celery, sweet relish, water chestnuts, spring onion, olive oil based mayo).

Nuke cooked taco night. Seasoned ground beef, hard or soft shells, chopped onion, tomato, spinach (for the lettuce), cilantro, shredded cheddar cheese, and sour cream. I made salsa using the scooped out insides from the stuffed tomatoes (had saved in a container in the fridge). Threw it into the Cuisinart along with onion and cilantro = instant salsa.

For the pasta meal I sauteed spring onion, garlic, mushrooms and wilted some spinach at the end - topped with fresh grated Asiago cheese.. Italian sausage and french bread (from the H-T bakery) on the side. Couple of tips - 1) don't over saute - three or four minutes is enough - turn off the heat - add the spinach and cover to wilt - about another minute and 2) Sausage or Kielbasa is already cooked - heat it up by tossing the cut pieces into the pot with the boiling pasta.

We had a coupon for a free appetizer at Outback. Honestly, the avocado and crab with chips wasn't that good. I'd skip it and go for the wood grilled shrimp or plain old wings instead. All our steaks were cooked exactly right. Outback has their procedures down pat.

I had briefly toyed with the idea of going to The Angus Barn. Outback was the better choice for a weeknight dinner after long day at work.

ADHI and I were both tired, we drove from Raleigh to Moncure to pick up Nuke and then back to Cary to the restaurant. Service was just the right speed and the cost was about $75 including beer, drink and wine plus tip. The Angus Barn, while always superlative and outstanding - the drive would have been longer, the meal itself longer (but spectacular) and the bill would likely have been in the $250 range. Tip would have pushed it to $300.

It was a great visit and a busy, full week. Now back to my regularly scheduled nothing-going-on boring programming.