Fifth member of the Green family

Say hello to Coco (formerly Java) our new four-legged friend. She is a gorgeous 2-year old chocolate colored Lab that we brought home yesterday from her foster home. She’s been amazing, sleeping through the night on her new bed, going for walks and doing her business, playing ball with Jack in the back yard and sleeping on the floor by my chair in the office all day.  She is a rescue Lab from the Lab Rescue of North Carolina who are a non-profit organization specializing in the rescue and placement of Labs. Original Picture by Java's foster mom, Jen Lydon of Trade Wind Images.

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Proud to be an American!

Today at approximately 2pm, I took my oath of allegiance and became a Naturalized Citizen of the United States of America. It's been a long and somewhat painful path through all of the immigration paperwork, but I can confidently say that I did it the right way and earned it.  I am very proud to be a U.S. citizen and grateful that I was able to share this very important and significant day with my beautiful and loving family.

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It is possible to go Stove Crazy!

I love Tinny from Minibulldesigns. He's been an inspiration to me and many other ultralight backpackers not only through his innovative and ingenious stove designs, but through his great attitude and ability to make fun of himself. Here's a perfect example of Tinny having a great time!



I have to say a most sincere thanks to Tinny for sharing all of his designs and thoughts with us. Without him I would have no clue in how to build a decent soda can stove! You know they say plagiarism is the greatest compliment :) It's good to see I'm not the only one going stove crazy! You should check out his full YouTube channel.

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Becoming a US Citizen

Today I had my US citizenship interview and civics test as the final step in applying to become a US Citizen. I'm very pleased and proud to announce that I passed and will be sworn in as a US Citizen on February 18th. It should be a very exciting ceremony and I know my family are looking forward to being there with me :)

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Black-Ops Soda Can Stoves

I've been going nuts trying to perfect my soda can stove construction over the last few weeks and below is the final result - the one I'm calling the Black-Ops Stove. Why? Well it seems all stoves need to have a cool nickname and this one sounded appropriate. All joking aside, this is a finely made ultralight alcohol stove that will boil two cups of water in under 5 mins and weighs in at under 1oz.



The construction of this stove has evolved through the iterations to where there are now over 15 individual steps in the process. I've also fine tuned all of the measurements so that the height of the stove, spacing of the jets, and height of the jets from the top rim help to ensure the stove performs optimally each time.



The main joint is sealed and welded to ensure a pressure tight fit. The holes are drilled precisely at a specific distant apart to ensure even cooking/heating.  There's really nothing drastically new in this design, for the most part it's the one made famous by Tinny at MiniBullDesign and I give him full credit where it is due - but the small tweaks and refinements do make this a very rugged and reliable lightweight alcohol stove.  I hope you like it. This will now be replacing my SnowPeak GigaPower stove on all my trips for the foreseeable future!

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