morrowlife

Here’s the Loyal Pet apparently doing a little fishing. She didn’t catch anything. Didn’t even see anything. Photo taken at Big Sur.

Speaking of camping, we’re heading back into the wilds this weekend. Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two are coming to work with me on Thursday for Take Your Kids to Work Day, or Young Minds at Work, as we call it for some reason, possibly involving the fact that it’s too hard to figure out who is whose kid these days so they’ve given up trying.

Anyway, we’re planning to finish up a little early that day. After we get home, we’re heading out to Caswell State Park, which is less than half an hour from our house. We’ll be coming home on Saturday. We’ve never been to the park, but Loyal Reader Number Four wants to go check it out, since she’ll be taking her Girl’s Camp group there a month or so later. So we get to go this weekend.

No post Friday. We went to the Boy Scout spaghetti dinner and I never got to it afterwards.

Not that I didn’t have plenty of opportunity – it was my off Friday and I was actually home! And I only worked about two hours! How unusual!

So what did I do on Friday (and Saturday (and Sunday))? Well, let’s see. Loyal Readers Numbers Five, Six, and Twelve came over and spent the day Friday. They even stayed the night and went home on Saturday morning. We were glad to see them, and were pleasantly surprised to see LRN6, as we thought he had some work to get done at home. It was a nice visit.

I bought and installed a new coolant overflow tank on the Sable. The coolant level sensor had failed, and it’s a permanently installed part of the tank, so I did what I had to do. Both Loyal Reader Number Four and I are quite relieved to have that little job done – the light and bell had gotten to be quite an annoyance.

LRN6 and I also tried to replace the headrest speakers on the Miata (finally!). Sadly, the very nice – and very nicely priced – speakers we bought really didn’t fit and I wasn’t willing to make the modifications needed to make them fit. So I returned them and ordered some properly sized new ones online. I hope they arrive sometime this week. And maybe I’ll get them installed Saturday afternoon after the camping trip!

Let’s see, what else? Oh, LRN4 and I went to Costco and bought a new palm tree. This one is roughly eight feet tall and is now safely planted behind the pool. I believe that’s exactly what that spot needed. We also worked on the drip system for the garden in the back yard.

Oh, and we bought and I installed a new ceiling fan for the family room.

So it was a fairly busy weekend. Sunday was the usual – more meetings than would be consistent with a truly restful day, but not bad.

Oh, and I called Loyal Reader Number Twenty Three yesterday – it was his birthday. Happy birthday, LRN23!

And that brings us up to date. Time for Home Evening. See you tomorrow.

Here’s the company store. I finally found that place where I owe my soul. The prices don’t look that high. Picture taken at Great America.

I’m back! Welcome home to me. The Loyal Family seemed mildly pleased (link warning: cute Lego-themed film with sound and a horrifying ending) to see me, and I’m certainly glad to be home from the short little jaunt down south.

Spoke with my younger sister on the way home. They’re doing fine. She had a birthday the other day and this was my first chance to talk with her since then. We’re going to visit them in a month or so and trying to figure out all the details. I still need to rent a car, for example. Details – they’re killing me.

Well, it’s late already, so this will turn out to be yet another Short Shrift day. See you tomorrow.

Here’s the lovely view outside my hotel room window. Picture taken about five minutes ago.

Greetings from Lancaster! I made the trip in good time and am comfortably ensconced in my hotel room. See the link – there’s even complimentary on-site parking! This isn’t one of those cheapo hotels with off-site parking and shuttle buses running back and forth every thirty minutes. No siree.

The hotel opened in January and feels new and nice. There’s even an HDTV in my room. Four hundred channels and nothing’s on. But in high-def!

Tonight’s sushi dinner was pretty good. It’s not the best sushi place there is, but it’s pretty good.

Off to the Air Force base tomorrow morning. They’ve closed some of the more interesting places on the base, so I guess I’ll have to concentrate on my meeting. No horseback riding for me.

I’m going straight home from the meeting tomorrow night, so I’m likely to be pretty tired when I get home. Probably of bloggage is rated “dubious.”

Gotta read my book and get to bed. See you tomorrow. Or maybe Friday.

Here’s a nice distant shot of the Pacific Ocean at – you guessed it – Big Sur. Taken from the hiking path going towards – you guessed it – the ocean.

Extremely Short Shrift tonight. I just got home from my Tuesday evening meeting, chatted with Loyal Reader Number One for a few minutes, and played with my VMWare installations of Ubuntu Linux and Solaris Unix. Now I have to get to bed. Need to get up at about 5:00 to pack my bags for tomorrow’s trip to Edwards. As (probably) mentioned previously, I’ll be back late Thursday night so I don’t miss a single minute of my Off Friday.

I’m kind of looking forward to the trip and kind of not. I like Edwards and these meetings have been instructive and useful. I also enjoy a road trip from time to time. On the downside, I have plenty to do at work and not enough time to do it, and it doesn’t help to be gone for a couple of days. But I’m going anyway.

Tomorrow night’s dinner: sushi.

Blogging will continue from the remote location. See you tomorrow.

Here’s a railroad engineer. Taken at the miniature railroad we rode nearly two years ago in Los Gatos. And especially appropriate today, given the state of things (see below).

Well, it was certainly a warm weekend, wasn’t it? I’m pleased to report that our air conditioner is working just fine. And it certainly had plenty of opportunities to prove it.

It was sunny and well over 90 degrees in Lardville both weekend days. The truck’s thermometer reported 95 at about 4:00 on Sunday afternoon. We’re back down into the mid-70’s today and are only expecting to get up to 70 tomorrow. After that, it’ll be back into the 80’s. Very pleasant.

The pool is starting to warm up a little. Loyal Reader Number Four and I were feeling quite warm on Saturday afternoon, so we rolled up our pant legs and waded in about a foot deep. Meaning we were standing on the top stair. That was about all we felt like doing, but you could certainly have swum in it without dying of freezation. You might not have enjoyed it thoroughly, but you wouldn’t have frozen.

Let’s see, how was the weekend spent? Saturday morning, we went over to visit Loyal Readers Numbers Five, Six, and Twelve, as scheduled. We picked up the sofa, which LRN5 noted in Friday’s comments isn’t really uncomfortable at all. It looks nice in the room and we’re glad to have it. We also had a nice lunch together and just enjoyed hanging out a little bit. Their place is looking very nice and getting nicer all the time.

Saturday afternoon, Loyal Reader Number Two and I got the pond and pool filters cleaned. LRN4 helped me work on the pond’s plant life a little bit. We got last year’s papyrus plants out of the deep end. We thought they were dead, but there were signs of life, so we trimmed off the dead stuff (which was really most of the branches) and set them back into the shallow end. They may come back and they may not, but they at least have a chance now.

That’s pretty much all the work for the weekend. We watched a movie on Saturday evening and otherwise relaxed.

Sunday was the usual busy day. The good news for the near future, according to LRN4, is that choir practice is finally moving to directly after church. That will save us the frustration of having to rush home after church, grab a quick bite, and then rush right back for choir. It will make the church block four hours long, but it will be worth it to not have to come back right away.

Anyway. I got all the paperwork done and signed for buying the Honda, so I assume that will be taken care of within a few days. I can quit watching the mileage so closely! Although there’s no reason to wear it out prematurely anyway.

I’m out of subjects. See you tomorrow.

— Much later —

Greetings from the train! Still! It’s now 8:45 PM and we’re just pulling out of the stop immediately after mine. This should have happened about two and a half hours ago. It turns out a freight train had an unspecified “emergency” that left one or more cars stranded on the tracks just ahead of us. They’re just getting it cleared now and we’re finally on the way home. Sigh. I don’t expect to be home before 10:00 – and maybe later if things don’t go well. Guess how I’ll be getting to work tomorrow! That’s right – in my car. See you then.

— Even later —

It looks more like 10:30. We’re just pulling up the grade outside of Livermore. Still have to stop at Tracy and then we’ll be home. Well, we’ll be in the Lathrop station, anyway. Five minutes of driving and then I’ll really be home. Just in time for a few bites of dinner and bed. I’ll get this posted, but there will be no links (no wifi on the train today for some reason). See you tomorrow.