morrowlife

Here it is folks – a view of Paris from high up on the Eiffel tower. I think it looks best from this angle, don’t you?

I hope Loyal Reader Number Five has been reading the blog the last few days. She’s a big Paree fan, dontcha know. Watch for a few more Paree pictures in the near future.

Three more days at work in Newtown! Woo hoo! I’m really sick of being there.

Bad news – I found out I’ll have another company laptop in Sunnyvale. Now I can’t justify buying that 15-inch MacBook Pro I had my eye on. Well, there’s always another time. Besides, I still love the G5, and I can get one of them for no more than the cost of a MacBook Pro. I’ll probably wait and see what Intel machine they replace it with. It’s bound to be beautiful too.

Sandy and Scott are scheduled to arrive in another three hours or so. I’m home from work the whole time they’re here and we have some fun stuff scheduled. It’s supposed to be 90 degrees and sunny on Monday, which ought to be a pleasant day. Let’s not talk about the rain forecast on Friday and Saturday.

The potential house buyers evaporated today. They certainly had a quick case of cold feet. It’s just as well – I would rather have lost them now than a few weeks in the future, and I had developed a really bad feeling about them. We adjusted our price today and have a showing scheduled tomorrow. Our agent feels “confident” the house will sell within a few weeks. It needs to.

I finished Something New by P.G. Wodehouse today. What an enjoyable book! It’s classic Wodehouse – a frivolous look at frivolous upper-class British Twits. The story revolves around a rich guy who accidentally takes another rich guy’s valuable Egyptian artifact and then mistakenly assumes it was a gift. The other rich guy wants it back and hires a young guy to steal it. Lots of humor ensues. I highly recommend it, as I have almost all of Wodehouse’s work. Next up in the Morrowlife book club: Tales of St. Austin’s, by our hero, P.G. Wodehouse.

Remember, friends, most of our book club titles are absolutely free to download from www.gutenberg.org, and pretty much the rest come from the public library. Our goal here is to read some cool books without spending much money.

Remember also that the tools to convert the Gutenberg text files to Palm readable files are also free. I use Microsoft Word (definitely not free, but freely available on my work-provided laptop) to make a few formatting changes – eliminate paragraph breaks at the end of each line and delete excess spaces – and then use MakeDocW to convert it to a Palm-readable file. I use PalmReader, which is also free, as my Palm e-book reader. Try it out, Palm owners!

Time for a bowl of ice cream. See you tomorrow.

Here’s another in my always-popular Paris Statue series. Not content with having her own wings, this lady feels the need to hang around with other birds. Notice the clouds. That’s pretty much how it looked the whole time we were there. Too gray.

It looks like our house buyers are backing out of the deal. That didn’t last long. We’ll know for sure tomorrow morning, but I’m not counting on it. Besides, if they can’t stand a little bit of negotiation, I certainly don’t want to deal with them on inspections. Best to let these people walk on by. Of course, this complicates the household goods move plan, but that’s where we are. We absolutely need to decide tomorrow morning whether we’re being packed up next Tuesday or not. That’s way too late to change it anyway, but we just might have to do that.

I turned the reins over to the new scoutmaster this evening. I’m kind of sad to be leaving the position. I’ve accomplished some good things in my year, though, and I think he’ll do a fine job. The highlight, of course, has been to work with Readers Number One and Two.

Speaking of scouting, Loyal Reader Number One’s Eagle court of honor is on Friday. We learned today that either our congressman or his Loyal Assistant will be there. How nice of him.

My sister (not a Loyal Reader yet, but maybe I can turn that around) and her family (none of whom are Loyal Readers!) are arriving late tomorrow evening. We’re really excited for their visit and looking forward to an enjoyable holiday weekend. If we don’t have a deal tomorrow morning, we won’t have to be getting ready for the packers the day they leave, so things will be even more relaxing. See, there’s always a bright side to everything. Things are always darkest just before they go completely black. Or something like that.

Work is definitely ramping down. My replacements (three of them were required to take over my work) are starting to take responsibility for the missions, so I’m pretty much cleaning up a few things and getting ready to leave. They’re taking me out to lunch on my last day, which will be nice. It was kind of supposed to be a surprise, but a few people sent me email notes about it. I’ll just have to act surprised.

Sorry about no posts yesterday or Monday. It seems like there are always a million move-related things to do and it’s hard to sit down and chronicle My Fascinating Life. Knowing that my many Loyal Readers are sitting at their keyboards waiting for MFL is what keeps me going.

See you tomorrow.

This isn’t an artistic picture by any stretch of the imagination, but I really love the store name on this lady’s bag. Woob, woob, woob. The picture was taken up on the Eiffel tower. I’m well aware of the irrational French love of Jerry Lewis, which is reason enough to dislike them, but if they’re Curly fans too, I might have to rethink my opinion.

Visited my friend Mike this evening. Reader Number One and I spent two and a half hours over there and had a delightful conversation. He’s able to carry on a fascinating conversation on pretty much any topic. I’ll really miss him when we’re gone.

We went to stake conference this morning. It was conducted by video from church headquarters and was seen in various stakes in Pennsylvania and Michigan. In fact, some of my family members in Michigan were also in attendance. Small world. We heard President Monson, Elder Perry, Elder Bednar, and a very nice lady in the general Primary presidency whose name escapes me at the moment. All the talks were excellent and timely, as were last night’s stake adult meeting talks. It was a good church weekend.

Only one more Sunday here. Yikes.

Moving preparations continue to go well, if at breakneck speed. It’s definitely more than a full-time job just getting ready to move. I need to call utility companies tomorrow to arrange the shutoff of some things and transfer of others. Reader Number Four will take care of essentially everything else.

As usual, it’s late already, so I need to get to bed. Only seven more days at work in Newtown!

Nice shorts, dude. This guy’s from Paris, natch.

I’m back from France! I had intended to post every day this week – or at least as close to every day as possible – but my computer’s wifi card wouldn’t play nice with the hotel’s system. Bummer. I guess I did end up posting every day possible after all.

Much more later, but I’m tired tonight. Watch for yet another Very Special Weekend Post.

Here’s an old-fashioned wheelbarrow, not too unlike the one we hope to sell at our garage sale (link warning – lots of sound!) on Saturday. Buy, buy buy!

I listened to a few moments of Reader Number Two’s jazz band practice tonight. They were formed within the last few days and they’ll have their one and only performance tomorrow night. It should be good, though. Too bad they can’t stay together longer (another link warning – music clip).

The granite‘s in the kitchen! Reader Number Four wasn’t too sure she was happy with it, but I think it will be just fine. Now this place will really sell. If not, we’ll just keep covering things with granite until it does. I had to reinstall the garbage disposal and hook up the water supply and drain lines. Got it done and leak-free in about forty-five minutes or so.

I’m getting very tired of being in Newtown. I want to start my new job! Only three more weeks left, of which one will be spent in France. My last trip to Europe, hopefully. Not that I don’t like it there, but I’ve been there quite often for the last few years and I can’t stand the flight anymore. I’m ready to start working with laser beams.

It’s late, as usual. Isn’t it ever early? Anyway, time for bed.