morrowlife

Here’s the guy who robbed our train in Arizona a few weeks ago.  I had some money in my hand to give him, but he forgot to ask me for it.  I didn’t feel that it would be good form to invite him to come back and take it from me, so I kept quiet.  Photo courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Vacation series.

Wow.  It’s been a week since I posted.  Been busy.  LRN2 and I went to the Santa Cruz beach for about 14 hours on Saturday.  We had a nice time, but I have to say I think my favorite part was waiting for four hours for the group of yoots to get there.  We had the two pavilions to ourselves, it was nice and quiet, we got to read and talk, the weather was sunny and warm without being hot and the wind was calm.  Very nice.  Then the group got there and it was still enjoyable but certainly no long quiet.  I have a couple of pictures, which I’ll have to add to my blog Great Art backlog Real Soon Now.

Lots of car troubles.  Sigh.  The Suburban went for a smog test this afternoon and failed because it hadn’t been long enough since its minor emission system problem was fixed and the computer was reset.  My beloved pickup is in the shop in Sunnyvale as I write this.  Its positive battery cable disintegrated because of undetected corrosion.  Can I just buy a new positive battery cable for ten bucks or whatever?  No, of course not!  The battery cables are part of a $111 engine wiring harness!  And it takes an hour and a half of a trained mechanic’s time to remove the old one and install the new one!  For another two hundred bucks!  Double sigh.  Must be done, though.  So I’ve got problems.

Big things going on here at the Secret Undisclosed Location.  For starters, we sold the trailer on Saturday morning.  We (okay, mostly I) decided we were through with it and with camping in California.  So we priced it extremely fairly and sold it on the morning after the ad appeared on craigslist.  A nice young couple bought it, and we hope it will serve them well for many years.  We’ll miss it, but not much.

We also have my beloved Miata up for sale.  There are just too many cars in our collection.  LRN2’s especially sad about seeing that one go, since he’s been driving it for the past year.  But he’ll be fine.  He’s going to use my beloved pickup and I’ll keep the Suburban at work.  Which is fine with me at this point, but I’m looking forward to having the pickup back when LRN2 heads for school.

Speaking of which, we could get him graduated from High School in December if we want, and he could leave for college in early January.  He doesn’t think he’s quite ready for that yet, but we’ll see.  Otherwise, he’ll probably go in the fall.  We need to make a decision soon, though.

Yet another thing we’re selling is my beloved Mac Mini G4 – the first one I got.  We’re really not using it anymore, and I’ve decided ten computers is too many for three people.  So I’m getting rid of everything I can get rid of.  Plus all my spare parts.  This is going to be a Mac laptop shop from now on, so I don’t need a closet full of old obsolete PC parts anymore.  So far, I’ve eliminated about three desktops, and I have one more of those to go (good old Moe) and one or two laptops too (including this one, which I will probably hold on to for a little while until I’m convinced I won’t use it anymore).  It’s been excruciating, but I’m committed to get rid of everything around here we don’t need anymore.

As part of the old computer elimination, though, I’ve ordered a new MacBook Pro for myself.  That will leave all three of us with Mac laptops, which will be great!  I’m excited for it to get here.  Just ordered it last night and as of about ten minutes ago, it hasn’t been built yet.  I’m watching Apple’s website closely for signs of progress.

The new laptop will be named Curly, so old Curly will become new Moe.  It’s already been moved over to the upstairs TV and has assumed its new role.  Larry has moved down and is now serving the family room TV (lesser-prestige job, but he’s just glad not to be thrown out like old Moe, Shemp, Buddy, possibly Ted, and a few unnamed machines).  I’m excited to get the MBP because I’ll be able to do iPhone development on the train, which wasn’t a possibility before for obvious reasons.  Plus it’s cooler.

Anyway.  Lots of things being thrown away or sold, and we’re only just starting.  The generator is probably the next thing to go.  Plus just about everything else.  Sell, sell, sell!  I’d like to see the garage practically emptied out.  Plus a whole lot of the house, for that matter.  We’re hoping to end up in a condo or townhouse in the next few years, and we need to be ready for it.  Never again do I want to fill up an entire moving van with my junk.

Remember the watchword – nicer stuff, and less of it.

I guess that’s the watch-six-words.

Nothing much else going on, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: giant man-eating squid!

See you tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 at 9:54 pm and is filed under vacation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.