morrowlife

Time for another vacation picture. Here’s another view of Lake Ogallala. What a pretty place.

Another day, another thousand dollars. What a life. Sadly, my off Friday is pretty much shot tomorrow. I have meetings scheduled all morning. I’m going to drive in, though, and hope to be able to leave around noon. I don’t have my hopes too high, but they’re definitely there. It will be interesting to find out the truth about the traffic, too.

Loyal Readers Number One, Two, and Four went up to Sacramento today for the temple open house. They said it was a really meaningful experience, so I’m glad they went.

The rest of our stuff is in California and will be delivered tomorrow! At least we hope it will turn out to be the rest of our stuff. We’ll know sometime tomorrow. I’m personally hoping it will include my rolling briefcase, which I really want to use but haven’t been able to find yet. The only place left where there are still lots of boxes is the garage, and I spent quite a bit of time there last night looking for it and not finding it. I did manage to find some other briefcases and the pillows for the couch in the loft, though.

One of my colleagues told me today she’s getting ready to build a Linux box to use as a digital video recorder. I guess I could use the Computer on a Dime (Larry for short) for something like that, although we just got a DVR from Comcast, so there’s not much need. If it turns out I can’t record saved programs on my DVD player, though, I might change my mind. Another possible use for Larry is to get it working with my older Linux server (Moe) as a Linux cluster. My own supercomputer! Or at least a junior version of one. I don’t have any use in mind for it, but it would definitely be cool. Besides, we generally find that when equipment is made available, new uses appear. I can always count on that.

I want to finish here and get back to my book. As you can see way over there on the right, I’m currently reading The Coming of Bill, by P.G. Wodehouse. It’s not like his other work; there’s a lot more tension. There are rich people in New York, as with other stories, but things aren’t going well at all right now, and it’s not because of the comic idiocy of the main characters. The characters are much more complex than usual and I’m horrifyingly riveted. I’m loving the book, of course, and I highly recommend it, but it’s not light amusement. Grab a copy and see for yourself.

Time to go. See you tomorrow.

We’re going way back to my early-summer trip to France today. The sword lady looks like she could use a little work on her complexion. They sure have some nice statues there, I’ll say that much for them Frenchies.

No WiFi on the train: America Held Hostage, day 8. How long can one person stand this abuse? Still, this WordPad thing is working out pretty well, all things considered. I just have to look up the links and add the Great Art when I get home.

The Pool People showed up late in the afternoon today to put in the concrete forms, shuffle the construction mess around a little, and generally get Ready for Inspection (Polish that brass, soldier! You’re all worthless and weak. Now drop and give me twenty!). At least that’s what I’m told. I should know for sure in roughly an hour. The schedule for further pool-related events is a mystery to us. They call us only a day or two beforehand. Fortunately, all their work is outdoors, so we don’t necessarily have to be there. In fact, I’ve never personally seen a Pool Person, but I have faith in their existence, having seen the fruits of their labors.

Unfortunately, the movers failed to show up today. Loyal Reader Number Four called them and learned that they hadn’t had a chance to get to us today, but they plan to make it tomorrow. Unfortunately, LRN4 has tickets to the Sacramento Temple open house tomorrow, so she told them she won’t be available until Friday. They said they’ll unload all our stuff at the warehouse tomorrow, load it into another truck, and deliver it on Friday. That’s not a very satisfying solution because of the incurable Moving Company habit of breaking and/or losing things every time they touch them, so it will be interesting to see what LRN4 manages to work out with them.

I forgot to mention that I’m the new Ward Mission Leader. I’ve done that job before and hope to enjoy doing it again and make a contribution of sorts. I was sustained on Sunday afternoon and conducted my first correlation meeting three hours later. I’m hoping to be a little bit better informed at next week’s meeting. I have a four-page handbook and the Sharing the Gospel book, which I’ve been studying pretty much every evening.

We’re about halfway home and we’ve used about half of the allotted time. The Supertrain may actually be on time tonight! The family won’t know what to do with me showing up so early.

I’ve been looking forward to actually taking my off Friday off this week but, alas, it’s not to be. I now have meetings scheduled at 9:00, 10:00, and 11:00. I suppose I’ll have to drive down there in the morning and come home at noon or so. I’m not happy about this, but life is tough. How long before I can retire?

That’s all for now, Vladimir. See you tomorrow.

As promised yesterday, here’s Loyal Reader Number Seven’s robot. It appears to be part of a Robot Competition of some kind, possibly a contest to pick up balls. Cool robot, LRN7! Tell us about it. Photo courtesy of LRN7, of course.

Not much to report today. The train’s running somewhat late again. I’ve been aboard for about an hour now and we’ve only gone about halfway. That should have taken more like 45 minutes. We were about half an hour late getting home last night, which was much better than the train just before mine. It was an hour and a half late. Yikes! I may be getting a chance to compare and contrast the trip in the train versus my car next week. I have a two-day offsite Management Training class on Tuesday and Wednesday. The hotel is very close to the Fortress of Solitude, which is very close to the train station, so it may well be that I can ride rather than drive. I’ll check out the location details on the internet sometime over the weekend. No hurry.

The Pool People are coming over tomorrow to put in the forms for the patio area. They have to get that work inspected before they can actually pour the cement, so we don’t know how long it will be before that part is done. One of the good things about this is that they’ll have to clean up the huge piles of cement they left all over the yard the other day when they sprayed the gunite.

I’m pleased to report that the tile work looks fine. There are a few mistakes they’ll have to correct, of course, but it looks like Good Solid Construction for the most part. The waterfall unit is in and looks fine too. I’m really starting to believe we’ll be swimming sometime in September.

I’m enjoying my twice-daily walks between the on-campus bus stop and my building at work. It’s about a 12-minute walk each way, and I always end up moving pretty much as quickly as I can. I was reminded my first couple of days of all those long walks across campus in college. The engineering building and PE complex were in opposite corners of the very large campus, and I inevitably had back-to-back-to-back classes between them, meaning that I had to make that walk at absolutely top speed twice every day. I would get terrible shin splints at the beginning of the semester, to the point that the muscles controlling my feet would just give out for a while. My feet flopped like clown shoes. The upside is that the exercise got me into much better shape.

I’m glad to report that my feet are still under control and the walk is already starting to get easier. Maybe I’ll even drop a couple of pounds. The other good thing (for my gut, anyway) is that there’s no place to buy any decent food anywhere near my office. I would have to walk all the way across campus to grab breakfast or an afternoon snack, which just isn’t worth it. We do have a roach coach, but I never remember to go check it out. I don’t even know its hours. There have been times when I would certainly have welcomed a breakfast burrito, though, let me tell you. I miss the Newtown C-Store, but it’s just as well, isn’t it?

That’s it for today. Da zaftra.

It’s (finally) Loyal Reader Number Seven’s Very Special Day! And here she is. Although she’s been a Loyal Reader – one of the most loyal of my Loyal Readers, in fact – for quite some time now, we’ve never had her picture available before, so she’s never had her own Very Special Day. Thanks for sending us your picture, thanks for the many interesting comments, and thanks for being a Loyal Reader!

In fact, this won’t be just a single-day Very Special Day. LRN7 also sent us an interesting picture of a robot, which I’m planning to feature prominently in this space tomorrow. I’m hoping she’ll post a comment tomorrow telling us all about the robot, since all I have right now is a picture. Try to bear the excitement until then.

It was another sunny day in Lardville. At least they tell me so. I’m on my way home right now, but Loyal Reader Number Four assures me it was indeed sunny. And pleasantly warm. Every day out here is perfect, but it’s not getting tiresome. Oh, no, not at all. Actually, I hear it might rain a little in the winter, but I’m not sure I believe it. Time will tell.

Anyway, the Pool People were there again today, installing the tile. As usual, I can hardly wait to see it. They tell me it looks nice. We weren’t quite sure what to expect, but it’s nothing like that at all. They also apparently installed the waterfall, which turns out to have come in a box, so it’s apparently prefab. I’m speechless.

Of course, I’m not writeless. I guess prefab is okay – it will probably work much better than if they had constructed it themselves. I just never imagined there was such a thing. I never imagined prefab fireplaces either until a few years ago, and they certainly have them. In fact, I’ve owned several, and they pretty much all worked. Other than the one in Gardenville, which always, and I mean always, smoked in the house, in spite of my explicit instructions to Take it Outside.

I’m listening to James Lileks’s Diner podcasts today. He’s been talking about family vacations in the 60’s, with the family piling into the wood-grained station wagon, tying the luggage to the top of the car, and stopping at the A&W drive-in for lunch every day. Ah, memories. That sounds exactly like my family vacations, except that my dad would NEVER strap luggage to the top of the car (might scratch the paint) (he was right, of course) and we ate lunch out of a cooler. We stayed every night at a Holiday Inn, pulling in at about 3:00 in the afternoon. We swam in the motel pool, ate at the motel restaurant, and played on the vibrating bed before turning in (parents and girls in the two beds, boys in a rollaway and sleeping bags on the floor). We were up at about 6:00, ate breakfast in the room our of Kellogg’s Snak-Pak boxes, and got back on the road by about 6:30. I loved those trips. I’ve been excited about the open road all my life.

Lileks also talked about the A&W food, which made me hungry. We’re having dinner at about 7:30 these days. That’s pretty late. Why is it that the root beer at the A&W restaurant was so much better than what they sell you at the grocery store? We had an A&W drive-in near our little house in Berkley, Michigan. I drove my unreliable British Sports Car over there a couple of times for a quick bite on a muggy Michigan summer afternoon. Ah, memories.

I loved that car, when it ran.

Well, that’s about it for today. See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number One looking very relaxed during our recent Family Camping Experience. The trailer looks a whole lot better in pictures than in person, that’s for sure. This was taken at the Lyman, Wyoming KOA. As mentioned yesterday, it wasn’t the world’s greatest campground, but at least we had nice soft grass underfoot. And their WiFi worked.

Greetings from the Ace train! Well, not exactly. The WiFi still isn’t working here (negative function all week now – grumble, grumble, grumble), but it occurred to me that I’m perfectly capable of typing in some text into WordPad on my laptop and then transferring it to Blogger when I get home. I’m really getting frustrated with the computer situation on the train. All my dreams of High Productivity have been dashed for now. Incurable optimist that I am, I’m hoping they have the new high-speed system working by next week. How hard could it be? Assuming they have the hardware they need, it ought to be a simple matter of hooking it up at this point. So what’s taking so long? Maybe Loyal Readers One, Two, and I should bid on the contract.

The Pool People sprayed the cement into our hole in the ground today. Loyal Reader Number Four tells me it’s really starting to look like a swimming pool now. I’m looking forward to seeing it when I get home this evening. We learned this afternoon that they’re planning to come back and do the tile work on Monday. If this keeps up, we’ll be swimming by next month! And not a moment too soon.

It’s the weekend! As much as I enjoy riding on trains, not to mention how much I’m enjoying my job, I’m ready to spend a couple of days at home. There are a million things that need to get done. Blinds (most of which are turning out to be defective – more about that a little later) need to be installed on every window except three bedrooms, which I installed the night we got back from the Sea-to-Shining-Sea campout. That still leaves a lot of windows. Next, I need to put my own stuff away. LRN4 has been really good about getting literally everything else out of the box and even putting a lot of my stuff away, but there’s still lots of my junk lying around waiting for a home. Then I need to attack all of those boxes in the garage. The Suburban must get inside! It’s never lived under cover in its seven-year lifetime, but we finally have a home for it as soon as I can get all those confounded boxes out of there, and I’m anxious to move it on in.

A couple of notes on recent books. The Adventures of Sally was the usual lighthearted P.G. Wodehouse brilliance. It consists of young British and American Upper-Class Twits meeting, falling in love, traveling all over the world, and getting into amusing, perplexing situations. Even though all of Wodehouse’s books pretty much have the same plot, each one is charming and incredibly entertaining. I find myself liking the characters so much I’m sorry to get to the end of the book. Maybe that’s one reason I’ve enjoyed the Jeeves series so much – when one story ends there’s always another with the same old familiar friends.

I’m getting near the end right now of a slightly different but just as entertaining Wodehouse novel, called The Clicking of Cuthbert. This one is a series of mostly-unrelated golf stories which, of course, generally revolve around young, rich British Upper-Class Twits meeting and falling in love, but this time they do it on the golf course. The common thread throughout the book is the golf club’s Oldest Member telling all the stories. It’s incredibly amusing and incidentally makes me want to start playing more golf. I couldn’t possibly be playing less golf, so there’s nowhere to go but up.

That’s it for now. Have a great weekend.