Mon Mar  9 09:32 EST 1998
Weekend Update: March 5-8

This past weekend was spent in our not-so-frequent social circles,
beginning with the Steve and Sue McConnell's on Thursday night
where we picked up a used PC for my brother-in-law who lives in
Pennsylvania.  They will arrive in another week or so for a
much-anticipated voice recital by Diva Charity Scheuermann.
But I get ahead of myself.

On our way home from the McConnell's, I realized how close I was
to Brice and Donna Allen's house so I veer off the road and invited
Joy and myself over unannounced.  This falls under the "practice
what you preach" heading, since I have asked people to drop in on us.
We had too good of a time because we stayed past my bedtime.

On Friday, we hosted SOC Bill Rapien from Puerto Rico with homemade
pizza and lively conversation.  Joy bowed out early to run a rehearsal
of the church's children's musical troup.  It was also good to have
Bill join us at church on Sunday.

Saturday's social event was held at the home of Don and Ann Dibona,
former work associate who went to Washington (state) to work at Microsoft
for a few years and moved back east a year ago.

On Sunday, we celebrated a year in our respective houses at the home
of Gerry and Sharon Desrocher, formerly the address of Metcalfe Party
Central in Nashua, NH.

We also managed to rake the front entry way to Metcalfe Manor as the
starting gun to our Spring cleanup.  I'm anxious to clean up the yard,
but Joy reminded me that we didn't finish the yard cleanup until late
April of last year.  I also held a backyard bonfire, reducing our tree
trash to cinders.  A couple of wicker chairs made for interesting flames,
too.  ;-)

We've settled on a painting contractor and will like spend the whole
month of April sprucing the Manor with a brand new look.  The front-
running main color is "pecos".  That's right.  Imagine telling people
to look for the pecos-colored house.  We'll be saying instead, "look
for the house in the color that you can't quite name."

My nephew, Tom Scheuermann, will be attending Yale very soon to work
on his doctoral degree.  Of the several Ivy League schools that vied
for his gray matter, Yale had the most trump cards in their hand.
We selfishly were hoping for Brandeis, not only because my nephew has
been recently changing the oil in my cars, but we've become very fond of
having them (Tom and his wife, Erin) nearby and coming for visits.
Just think, I may have to refer to my nephew and niece as
"Doctor and Diva Scheuermann."  (I wonder if he'll still change
his own oil (and mine) when he's a Phd.)  ;-)

Mark
        __________          Mark Metcalfe
     .- __   / -- -\        Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
    / <___> ___  | |\-      270 Billerica Road MS04
 .^| _---_ /   \ =   / \    Chelmsford, MA 01824
 |o |  =  / o | |   ||  |   Phone: (978) 446-6451
 =0=======0==|  |----|  |=  Fax:   (978) 446-6351
  \_\_/    \_\_/   \_\_/    metcalfe@cadence.com

Mon Mar  9 13:00 EST 1998
Extra: What I do for a living...

Want to know the types of things I have to look at here at work?
Even if you don't, read the following sentence from one of my
manuals:

  "MIPDs are implemented so as to distribute delays to each load in a
  port's fanout; they require no specific hierarchical relationship
  between drivers and loads or between ports and loads."

Some people ask me if I understand this sort of language.  Tragically,
I have some grasp, but not as much as one might think, nor as much as
some of the engineers who have to take this information and translate
it into useful computer chip design.

But if you want to impress people at parties, memorize the quoted text
and people won't dare challenge your knowledge, or know whether you're
talking about computers or oceanic cargo shipping.

Polysyllabically yours,

Markus-bo-barkus
     ____________________________      ____________________________
    /  Cadence Design Systems   /\    / Mark Metcalfe, Sr. Writer /\
   /  270 Billerica Rd MS04   _/ /\  / metcalfe@cadence.com     _/ /\
  /  Chelmsford, MA 01824    / \/   / Phone: (978) 446-6451    / \/
 / Technical Publications    /\    / Fax: (978) 446-6351       /\   ,
/___________________________/ /   /___________________________/ /   \_0__,
\___________________________\/    \___________________________\/      M
 \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \     \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \     .|\.