morrowlife

Here’s a recent picture of my father in Oak Creek, that beautiful Colorado utopia. Or broken-down old wreck of a town – you be the judge. Anyway, he’s standing in front of part of the town’s historical downtown display. As discussed here the other day, he knew a bunch of the people in the pictures behind him. Very cool

Rainy morning. At least it was in some places – Modesto and Sunnyvale, at least. There doesn’t appear to have been very much here in Lardville, though. Too bad; we needed the moisture. It was raining fairly hard when I got to the office. It slowed things down a little bit, but it wasn’t raining hard enough most of the way to make any difference. We’re expecting sunshine and warm temperatures for at least the rest of the week.

The landscapers still haven’t shown back up. Tony the Dad apparently hurt his foot (link warning: ancient Greek frieze without much in the way of clothes!) so badly he was in the hospital. So we’re hoping for his rapid and complete recovery so he can come back and finish the job. I will be really glad for it to be done. Then I can get back to work on the pond.

Otherwise, things pretty much just maintained today. Ergo, I’ll see you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Pet Number One being lazy. I can’t blame her.

Short weekend. We didn’t do too much. Loyal Reader Number Four and I went to the temple on Saturday morning and out to dinner with three other couples on Saturday night. We went to an all-you-can-stand-to-eat Chinese restaurant. I suppose it might have been worth the price, but there was a lot of inedible stuff there. I’m not a fan of all-you-can-stand-to-eat restaurants.

I finally got the old Coleman lantern working on Sunday afternoon! Huzzah! I’m not really sure what was wrong with it. The pump was working fine, so I didn’t have to install the leather seal I had bought. The generator appeared to be brand new. The mantles were brand new. The fuel seemed to be fine. It just wouldn’t light. I ended up replacing the generator anyway (don’t know whether it really helped or not) and went through a lot of matches with no luck. I finally got out one of those long-necked lighters and got it going after pumping it way up. Lots of spluttering and flashing and – finally – light. Once it was lit, it ran just fine. Hopefully, it will be easier to light the next time. It’s a really cool old lantern (it’s a 220F, built sometime between 1964 and 1973). Now I have to decide whether to put it in the trailer with the camping gear or keep it here for emergencies. Decisions.

Took the back roads (link warning: annoying Nissan-sponsored blurb) home this evening and enjoyed the trip. It had been a very slow ride this morning, so I stayed about an hour late tonight. The freeway through Livermore and Tracy has been more crowded than usual lately, so the back roads have been more attractive. The mountain switchbacks are fun in the Miata and it’s nice to have pretty much zero traffic for a very large portion of it. I need to figure out how to drive it in the opposite direction some morning. Maybe tomorrow if it’s not raining.

Let’s see, did I cover all the high points of last week’s Utah weekend trip? Drive: check. Salt Flats: check. Dreary Nevada wasteland: check. Fun dramatic performance: check. Visiting with family: probably not. We visited with family and it was nice to see them again after too much time had gone by.

The visit with my father last week was also fine. I hope he’s having a nice time with his brother. Don’t know when that visit is over and he goes home – maybe that time has already come and gone by now.

My father brought a bunch of pictures of his hometown in Colorado that were very interesting. We had been there a few years ago and had found it interesting, but the father’s comments and perspective were especially interesting. Example: he went to the old school and found pictures of all the graduating classes from Way Back When. He remembered a lot of them and told us interesting things about them. The same with the old pictures of the coal miners from the historical display in the middle of town. Just fascinating. The town itself is a wreck, of course.

Okay, it’s time to be done tonight. See you on Tuesday.

Here’s a small portion of the view from Loyal Reader Number Four’s brother’s house in Salt Lake. Very pretty.

Fear not, Loyal Readers! I haven’t dropped off the edge of the earth. There was no blogging the last few days because the Loyal Grandpa was visiting us, and we spent every evening chatting. Until way too late every night, in fact. Grandpa pushed on further west this morning, though, so I’m back into my routine. Sorry about all the missed blogging and Great Art opportunities.

Let’s talk briefly about last weekend’s trip, shall we? We had a very nice trip. The drive took roughly eleven hours each way, which is doable on a long weekend, but not quite as convenient as the drive from Denver was. The drive is kind of interesting. It gets prettier and prettier as you go west through California from Sacramento. You climb fairly high into the mountains (over 6,000 feet), go through large pine forests, and pass some beautiful lakes. It just gets prettier and prettier. And there’s some interesting history up there too.

Then you cross into Nevada. And it gets immediately brown, flat, and ugly. It’s amazing. Now don’t get me wrong – the desert can be lovely – stark beauty and all that – and there are mountains in various places to break up the landscape, although you never climb any of them. Utah has the salt flats and even larger mountains (none of which you actually climb either). The salt flats are fascinating. I would love to go there when the land speed record cars are driving on them.

Grandma’s play was very nice. It was definitely an amateur production, with some performances much better than others, but it was very nice overall. She was very good, the woman who played her sister was very good, and her son Joel was outstanding. We really enjoyed the play.

Was it worth the trip to Utah? Sure.

It’s late once again and I have to get up early for a temple trip, so I’ll discuss the vacation more on Monday. Have a great weekend.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve, closeup-style. Awww.

There are new LRN12 pictures available, but I don’t know where they are! Loyal Reader Number Five sent a note saying they’re on Snapfish, but she didn’t say where on Snapfish. Several other people have found them, but so far I’m out of luck. I’ll try one more time – hang on a minute.

I found them! They’re great. However, I still hope LRN5 will send them to me – Snapfish wants to charge me to download them. Hopefully, LRN5 will at least be a little cheaper. In any case, I’ve copied one at its low Snapfish resolution. It’s now featured up there on the top of this post. If and when LRN5 sends me the pictures, I’ll update this one to the hi-res version. What a cute little baby!

Our extended weekend trip was fun. The play was cute. It was great to see family. Everything went well. And that’s all I’m going to say until tomorrow. It’s time for bed.

See you on Tuesday.

Here’s the obligatory statue of Lenin in the town square in Leninsk, the nearby town to the Secret Russian Rocket Base, where I used to go pretty frequently. I suppose he wasn’t quite the mass murderer that Stalin was, but he wasn’t too nice a guy either. The Russians sure don’t know who to admire and who to shun. I thought for a while they were figuring it out, but recent world events have them coming down once again on exactly the wrong side of pretty much every issue. I am so glad I don’t go there anymore.

We’re off for four days tomorrow! I’m looking forward to the vacation and seeing family in Utah again. We used to get to visit fairly often when we lived in Denver, but it wasn’t possible during our East Coast years. On the other hand, I really regret that we can’t see my family in Michigan anymore. Sigh.

I had my three-hour interview for my top-secret clearance today. Yikes. I’ve traveled abroad quite a bit, and they were very anxious to know all about it. Fortunately, I never went anywhere in Europe and Russia without a US Government monitor. Nobody can pin anything on me, seeing as how there’s nothing to be pinned. I don’t expect any problems, of course, and it’s heartening to learn that they’re moving so fast on the investigation.

I don’t know if there will be an internet connection there, so blogging may or may not happen. In any case, we’ll be back on Tuesday. See you (no later than) then.