Archive for November, 2008

Slider

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008


Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve getting ready to go down the slide. Her baby (that’s the object in her right hand) went down first and LRN12 followed. She had fun. We all had fun. Except for Loyal Pet Number One – she was tied to a tree.

Drove the Miata today. It was yet another warm, beautiful day and I wanted to do a little open-air motoring. It turned out to be pretty much perfect in the afternoon, and I kept the top up in the morning. The only minor problem was that I had put the top down during the afternoon when I had to go to another building for a meeting, and there was quite heavy dew on everything when I left the building this afternoon. It was on the inside of the windshield and took a little while to get out of there. Can’t complain, though. Traffic was heavy in some places and light in others. Pretty average day, in other words.

Worked, ate, read, commuted, et cetera. Nice day.

More toilet news. Don’t let the scammers fool you – let the toilet flush itself.

Speaking of which, I firmly believe there’s a special spot in hell reserved for the worthless scum who steal from old people.

So there’s that.

I’ve noticed that Loyal Reader Number One hasn’t posted to his blog for a week or so. It’s harder than it looks, isn’t it, LRN1?

No controversy, no poetry. My Loyal Readers will have to be satisfied with the poetry in the comments.

See you tomorrow.

Dolphin rider

Monday, November 17th, 2008


Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve riding a dolphin. Which is something you don’t see every day. Picture taken on Saturday at the park near the Secret Undisclosed Location. Picture also courtesy of the exclusive Treo-cam.

LRN12 came over for several hours on Saturday while her parents went to a movie and did some other things. She’d been asking to come to Grandma’s house for a few days and they relented. The four of us (Loyal Reader Number Four, LRN12, Loyal Pet Number One, and I) walked over to the park for quite a while in the afternoon.

Otherwise, the weekend was fairly quiet. Saturday, I bought more stuff for the rocket launcher and then never got around to trying to fix it yet again. I’m discouraged. So much for my unbreakable oaths. We did a little shopping, picked up the Suburban (but not the trailer yet), got a new fish from our favorite pond store (a nice big koi – very pretty), and did a few other memorable things I don’t remember right now.

Sunday was average. Lots of time at choir practice.

Toilet news continues to pour in. So to speak. In the latest episode, we learn of the dangers of a combination of pyromania and deodorization. Don’t let this happen to you. Especially in a train.

And of course we can’t forget Destiny’s New Toilet. Yes, we’re flush with toilet news.

Thanks to all my Loyal Readers who are participating in the Virtual Poetry Slam. Here’s another entry:

Insightful comments
Great art and controversy
The Morrowlife blog

Or, if you don’t like that one:

Inane, dumb writing
Today’s Great Art is blurry
Why do I read it?

Take your pick. I like the first one, of course. Although I wrote both. So they’re both Great Works of Art.

Today’s controversy: Pick a poem. Choose wisely, Loyal Readers.

See you tomorrow.

Pool shark

Friday, November 14th, 2008


Here’s a rare appearance of Your Humble Webmaster, playing one of my favorite games at Baikonur. Loyal Reader Number One happened to mention his enjoyment of the game the other day, so I thought I’d hop on the bandwagon.

I hope all my Loyal Readers are following the virtual Poetry Slam (link warning: pathetic talking) I’ve got going in the comments section.LRN1 added an excellent Haiku yesterday. Keep the Great Word-Related Art coming, Loyal Readers.

Speaking of poetry, I downloaded the Haiku operating system last night and installed it on my virtual machine. It’s a development of BeOS and appears to be basically a flavor of Unix. There’s not much there, but it works. Slowly.

Fine day today, although I spent a good five hours working. The good news: I got all the performance appraisals done! I also rebuilt the water rocket launcher. It still doesn’t work. It looks like it’s an o-ring problem this time. I need to go back to Home Depot tomorrow and try a slightly smaller one. The trouble is that I might have cut the o-ring groove too deep for the new one and I’ll have to do some more cutting and gluing. Sigh. I am determined to get that thing working right or die. Well, maybe “…get that thing working right or cry” would be a little more realistic.

No other accomplishments to speak of today. Although the night is still young. Maybe I can still do a little reading.

Watched a little bit of golf on TV while I was working. There was a women’s tournament in Guadalajara, Mexico. Those ladies are really good. Golf is real easy to watch while you’re doing something else. Probably because nothing much happens.

Following up on my recent series of transportation-related toilet issues, here’s some news my Loyal Readers can almost certainly use. I wonder if some enterprising passenger was trying to kill the power with excessive flushing. Not generally a good idea on an airplane.

See you on Monday.

Tom and Monique

Thursday, November 13th, 2008


Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twenty-Six and his non-Loyal-Reader spouse at the recent ward Halloween party. Question: What were they going as?

Moderately long day. As predicted, I got up at 4:00 to catch the uber-early train. I needed to put in a minimum of nine and a half hours, which was easily done in plenty of time for the 4:45 train. Home at 6:30.

Tomorrow’s Off Friday! The trailer’s going in to the shop early for brake and axle work. The water rocket launcher needs to be rebuilt to eliminate its unfortunate leak. I’m thinking of trying an o-ring for the bottle seal this time, as opposed to the heat-and-deform method I used before. Don’t know whether I can produce a straight, even groove without the proper power tool, though.

Let’s see, what else is on the weekend agenda? The pool and pond filters are probably good to go another couple of weeks. The lawn may need a quick trim – need to check it in the light tomorrow.

I definitely need to get some Work done. There’s the normal preparation for and conducting of the 10:00 meeting, of course. There’s the preparation for an upcoming financial audit. And then there are the Performance Appraisals. I’m WAY behind on those things, and we just got approval to hand them out next week. So I need to get them finished up. The Quiet Home Atmosphere should make it a lot easier to get through all those babies.

Heavy fog this morning, all the way from Lardville to Sunnyvale. Since both of my drives are on lightly-traveled secondary roads, I suffered no ill effects traffic-wise, and I certainly do enjoy a foggy morning.

Today’s Morrowlife controversy: Are young musicians really smarter? And if so, do music lessons make you smarter or does intelligence make you a good musician?

Thanks to Loyal Reader Number Two for his excellent poetry the last couple of days. Recommendation: Try Haiku today.

See you tomorrow.

Trick or treat

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008


Here’s one more Halloween picture – Loyal Reader Number Twelve in her devil costume scamming a few handouts. Good job, LRN12!

Short work day. Got to work at 7:45 after working only half an hour on the train. Then I heard from Loyal Reader Number Four in the mid-afternoon, telling me my brother-in-law Ken was going to be in Lardville at 5:00. We had just approved an important software release, so I decided to head out on the 3:45 train. I should be home at 5:30.

I have no idea what I’ll do with myself at home that early. I’m sure that as a family we can jointly think of something.

One thing I can definitely do with myself is get to bed early. Need to be up at 4:00 on the dot.

Let’s see . . . what else is going on? Ummm . . . nothing.

No new controversy either. Feel free to generate something of your own.

No links either. Too late to search for them. Tomorrow’s blog will be better.

See you tomorrow.