morrowlife

Here’s Loyal Readers Numbers Five, Six, and Twelve’s new house, in its nearly-completed state on Easter weekend. I imagine it looks a lot more done than this by now. At least I hope those boxes of toilets on the driveway have been unpacked and installed. Looks like it’ll be a nice place. When do you move in, LRN5, LRN6, and LRN12?

It was supposed to rain today, but we didn’t really get any moisture. It’s supposed to rain tonight and all day tomorrow too, so maybe we’ll get at least a little.

The landscaping guy was here today and rebuilt the wall. It looks beautiful! This is more like it. He brought some helpers too, and they cleaned up a lot of the mess the former crew had left lying around lo these many weeks, fixed up the sprinklers a little, installed a nice drip system on the fruit trees, and did some other things. I’m starting to have hope.

Not much else with which to regale the Loyal Readers today. Tomorrow’s my off Friday, but I think I need to work a few hours. Unless my cold get worse. Or I can think of a good reason to work from home. Which I probably can’t. So I’ll probably go.

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a look at the ocean from the Big Sur beach last week. See if you can find the seagull. Look for more Big Sur Great Art in the near future.

No time tonight – it’s Wednesday go-to-meetin’ night. Since I inexcusably missed yesterday’s post, though, my Loyal Readers deserve to know I’m at least alive.

I’m sorry to report that I just learned that my aunt Bea Morrow (my dad’s brother’s wife) passed away this morning after a long battle with cancer. She had an operation about a week ago, and she appeared to be recovering well. Suddenly, she had a stroke followed by a heart attack. She never recovered significantly and it’s probably a blessing that she died at this point. I wonder if her husband Jack thinks so right now, though. We’re very sorry to hear the news.

The landscaper started working on the back yard again today after I threatened to sue him and started getting bids to get the work done properly. We’ve given him about a week to either get it all ripped out and done right, remove his defective work and refund our money, or be invited to go to court. We’ll see how it turns out.

And I need to get going. See you tomorrow.

Here’s last week’s campsite at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. What a beautiful place! For a few details on the campout, along with some pictures (several of which will probably be replicated on this blog), check out the article on the HRVA website.

Well, we’re back and the blog goes on. We had a great time in Big Bear and then another great time in Big Sur. It was great seeing Loyal Readers Number Five, Six, and Twelve’s nearly-completed house (picture to be featured soon) and, of course, just to see LRN12 again. She’s getting cuter all the time. On a sad note, she gave Loyal Reader Number Four and I a terrible cold. We’re both still fighting it, alas.

And then the campout was more fun that two barrels of monkeys (although I have serious doubts that a barrel of monkeys would be any fun at all, now that I think of it, therefore rendering virtually everything more fun than a barrel of monkeys). See the HRVA article and future Great Art for details. Other than to say that our trailer’s battery just barely makes it through a single night, and thank heaven for generators.

Back to work today. I planned to ride the train but got out of the house without my jacket. It was just a bit too cool for short sleeves at 5:30 this morning, so I just drove in. It turned out to be just a little short of two hours’ driving to get there, and only one and a half to get back. Not a bad day after all.

At work, I was unsurprised to be greeted by 600 unread emails. I’m down to 450 or so this evening and continuing to make good headway. Otherwise, it was pretty much business as usual around the old office, which isn’t a bad thing. I had a few checks to deposit and never got the chance. Don’t let me forget it tomorrow.

Thanks to all the loyal readers who kept the blog going in my absence with your insightful and witty comments. Your insights and wit were very . . . um . . . insightful and witty. Keep it up!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve lying on her butterfly mat, kicking her feet around. What a cute little girl! She’s gotten quite a bit bigger since we last saw her, and she’s way more alert. She started trying to crawl last night. She’ll be moving around on her own Real Soon Now.

Happy Easter! I’m forgoing the Wonders of Blogger today and just posting on Sunday. We’re in Big Bear, as the above picture indicates, and having a very nice time. We’re leaving for home a little later today and will be sorry to go.

The vacation has been fun so far. We haven’t really done too much other than visit with family, but that’s what we came for. Loyal Reader Number Two and I took a drive into town yesterday and visited Loyal Reader Number Five at work. We also took a little walk on the Big Bear Lake boardwalk, which was interesting. On the way back to the Rowes’ house, we came to the local Ace hardware store, so we stopped and went in. We bought a couple of combination LED flashlights and laser pointers (link note: we paid more for ours and didn’t get wrist straps or carrying cases, but we still like them). We had seen Loyal Reader Number Six’s dad using one last November, and then pretty much all the Big Bear-based Loyal Readers got them for Christmas last year. I looked at all the hardware stores at home and couldn’t find one, so I had hoped to be able to get one while I was here. Yea!

We checked out LRN5, LRN6, and LRN12’s new house. It’s coming along very nicely. They’re scheduled to move in next week and there’s still a lot of work to do, but they’ll probably at least come close to being ready in time. They were putting the primer coat of paint on the inside walls yesterday. They still have to do the finish coat and then get the cabinets finished and installed, install the appliances, sinks, and toilets, get the plugs and light fixtures in the walls, and get the flooring installed. That’s a pretty tall order for one week, so we’ll see how they do. LRN6 is working hard on it.

Loyal Reader Number One went over and helped paint yesterday. They were using a sprayer, so everybody got pretty well covered with the stuff. They looked like they had had their hair frosted. It was a good look for some of them, but I don’t think it’s LRN1’s best thing.

Time to go to church. As mentioned before, I doubt very much there will be any posting during this week’s vacation, so Loyal Readers are highly encouraged to do some posting of their own. See you later.

Here’s an early Russian spacecraft that was built to contain a bunny and a couple of other little rat-like creatures. Suffice it to say that anything flown into space in one of these things didn’t ever come back. The critters in this photo are stuffed, of course. Photo taken in the Baikonur space museum.

Maybe this wasn’t the greatest time to publish a picture of a bunny-killing spaceship, what with the Easter weekend coming up and all. Oh, well. Easter isn’t really about bunnies anyway, is it?

I’m on vacation! Woo hoo! I need to make the most of every single second, of course. So far, I’ve driven home (top down, of course, and on the mountainous back roads, of course), eaten dinner, helped Loyal Reader Numbers Two and Four review and edit a paper LRN4 is submitting in a writing contest and get it submitted, make a list of things to take to Sugarloaf, and read a few online articles. Things should be going uphill from here.

One thing I haven’t managed to do this week is go to the library. I was hoping to have a few new books to read during the trip, but that didn’t happen. I still have several unread books I bought at last year’s library book sale, so there will at least be something to look at there. I probably won’t have much reading time over the weekend anyway. Now the camping trip is a different story. Since we’ll be home until about noon on Monday, I just might be able to get out and get some reading material then.

LRN2’s story was a good one, by the way. It’s the story of one of his recent Scout hikes. From the sound of things, he didn’t enjoy overly much, but he did at least think the view from the top of the mountain was nice. He and I need to start hiking together, I think. I know I could certainly use the exercise and would like to be able to enjoy a nice long walk from time to time.

Don’t forget, Loyal Readers, that there will probably be no posting for a week or so. I’ll try to get Friday’s post done – possibly using the Wonders of Blogger (link alert – how many have you seen? My count is twelve.) on Saturday – but I doubt I’ll be able to do anything about it at the state park. Still, I’ll invite the Loyal Readers to check for posts from time to time, just in case, and I invite the Loyal Readers to step in and take up the slack while I’m gone. Let the rest of us know what you’re up to!

Speaking of which, thanks to Loyal Reader Number Seven for checking in with us today. Sounds like you have plenty of good stuff to do. Good luck with it all!

See you tomorrow.