morrowlife

Here’s James Monroe – well, at least it’s a statue of Monroe outside of his old house near Charlottesville, Virginia. Maybe it’s time to clean the statue. I hope he looked better than this in life. It looks like he has leprosy.

No post yesterday. This getting ready to move stuff is really time-consuming. I’ll keep trying to stay on schedule, though.

Loyal Reader Number One talked his mom into buying a dual-layer DVD burner at Staples yesterday. It was only thirty bucks, and it appears to be a really good one. It’s an “internal” drive, but we’re going to use it with my Mac, so we need to buy an enclosure soon – probably a firewire one. LRNO thinks he can find one for about twenty-five dollars, which will result in our having gotten this thing for a very attractive price. He hooked it up to my machine using his test cable, and the Mini recognized it right out of the box. He burned a DVD, which works perfectly, so we’re in business! I’ve really regretted not getting a burner in my Mac ever since I got my video camera, so now the self-recrimination can end. Our long national nightmare is over.

We’ve been selling a bunch of stuff on eBay. Reader Number Two is our agent, for which service he gets to keep all the money, if any. So far, he’s sold two books and made about fifty bucks. Not too shabby. We’re also getting to be much better eBayers. We’ll be selling the whole house full of stuff before long. In fact, Reader Number One has been posting model railroad stuff all evening. He’ll probably make a few dollars.

The new countertops come tomorrow! Reader Number Four has wanted granite for quite a long time, and now she’ll have it – for about three weeks. We will really need to get it in California.

It’s way too late again, so I’m quitting. See you tomorrow.

Here’s an old blockhouse interior at Cape Canaveral. In fact, this blockhouse was used for some of the first launches. The sad part is that it looks very much like the stuff we were using in our blockhouse for years after I joined the Atlas program.

I really need to get out and take some new pictures. I really need to go somewhere interesting where there are pictures to be taken. What kind of attitude is that? Aren’t there many beautiful and interesting things right here at home? Probably. We never appreciate what we have right now.

Two groups of potential buyers have come to see the house. One of them liked it but not enough to buy it. The other liked it very much but has a house to sell before they can offer. The search continues. Fortunately, both of their real estate agents liked the house very much, so we can hope they bring other people over soon.

The listing’s up. Have a look.

The guys came on Saturday to fix the garage door springs. The cost was pretty high, but it was done quickly and well, so I’m not complaining. They guy was very pleasant too. Other competent and polite guys showed up today and put in the drain system we had ordered to correct a drainage problem beside the house. That price was reasonable and the quality of the work looks excellent. We’ll see how it really is next time it rains hard. Now we’re just waiting for the granite countertop installers on Thursday and all the scheduled (and unscheduled) work will be done.

We went to the neighborhood quarry for a tour during their open house on Saturday. We had house visitors, so we needed to get out, and we had been curious about this particular quarry, so it seemed like a good idea. It was a good idea – the place is interesting, the people were very anxious to answer our questions, and we got a free bagel and glass of juice. It’s a pretty big quarry and will get much, much bigger before it’s used up. They’re good neighbors – you can’t see the quarry at all from anywhere other than the air and they don’t really make much noise – but I’m certainly not crazy about all the dump trucks on our local roads. The quarry began operation after our house was built, so it’s pretty new. It was a farm before that. One interesting thing I learned is that they will sell rocks to anybody. I had just assumed they wouldn’t sell less than a dump truck load, but I was wrong. Now if I only needed some rocks.

They found us a place to stay for our temporary housing in Sunnyvale. Actually, it’s in Santa Clara, but that’s close enough. It’s about six miles from work and appears to be in a very nice apartment complex. We also got our flight reservations today. We’re out of here in the morning of Saturday, June third. That’s well under a month now.

Come to our garage sale next Saturday! We’ll have lots of junk for you to buy. I just hope somebody takes some of it off our hands. Please.

It’s after ten o’clock and time for me to go to bed. ‘Night.

Here are Reader Number One and Your Humble and Obedient Servant at the Hopewell Furnace. That was really an excellent day and an interesting place. I think we can pretty safely say this picture wasn’t taken by me. Sadly, I don’t know who to credit. It’s either Loyal Reader Number Two or Number Four.

I finally fixed the door on the bottom of the planter box in the back yard. After only one and a half years! It took about half an hour. It’s funny how you get motivated by the desire for money. Come to think of it, though, that’s the only reason I go to work too.

I also fixed the pond again. Both pumps had basically stopped pumping. I took some things apart, based on what I’ve discovered in the past, but finally found out the filters were both just really full. Apparently, the fish have been pooping at a record rate. Good work, fellas!

I also found Whitey again. He hadn’t shown up at mealtime for a day or two, and we were getting worried. I noticed him when I was working on the filters, and he popped up again when I fed the fellas this evening. Had quite an appetite too. I’m really going to miss the fellas when we’re gone.

Reader Number Two and I went over to my friend Mike’s house to help him take the snowplow off his tractor and get the bucket back on. He’s a lot of fun to visit because he owns literally everything, most of which he bought on eBay. He showed us his new military water-supply bags today. They hold a hundred gallons each but fold down to about the size of a small pillow when empty – perfect for food storage. He’s in a little bit of trouble health-wise. We’re hoping and praying for him.

We have a house showing tomorrow morning! It’s really good to get the first one out of the way – it makes it feel like we’re making progress. Of course, one of our garage door springs broke this evening, just in time for the first showing. We have a serviceman coming tomorrow in the early afternoon. I guess we’ll have to leave a note for the suckers guests telling them not to open the garage door. Reader Number Four is seriously worried about what else is going to break before we can get this place sold. “Pretty much everything” is my guess.

We’re planning to take a quarry tour tomorrow during the showing. Our local quarry is having an open house and we need someplace to go. Besides, we’ve always been curious as to what exactly is going on in there.

Time for bed – I missed out on ice cream tonight. See you on Monday.

Okay, this is kind of a formulaic picture, but I like it. Hopefully, you do too.

There’s a price to be paid for not posting for a couple of days, on top of missing a few days last week. I fear my loyal readers are starting to abandon me for other blogs. We cannot allow this to happen. This calls for a dramatic increase in quality.

Maybe I can think of something besides that. There must be some other way.

Nobody bought the house yet. I guess we need to give it at least a few days. It’s not even on realtor.com yet. As soon as it hits there, you can depend on finding a link here.

Took Reader Number Two to a barbershop chorus performance this evening. They did a very nice job and I was glad to get to go. Reader Number One went to his dance class and Reader Number Four went to her book group. I’m the only one who had nothing to do tonight. Well, there’s also Belle, but I’m not sure she counts, being a non-human and all.

We had our Relocation Orientation Session this morning with Matt, our Relocation Consultant. It went fine, and I was delighted to learn that the company will pay to ship our two cars and for us to drive the truck with the trailer. They won’t cover meals and lodging while we’re on the road because we’re flying out there in June and coming back for the truck and trailer in August, but the mileage is the important thing, believe me. I calculated today that we’ll spend about $1000 on gas alone, assuming we take the most direct route, which we don’t intend to do. In fact, we hope to be able to follow through with our family camping trip to Ohio in August as part of the trip. Fortunately, the company will pay over $1600 for the mileage (45.5 cents/mile for the truck and 13.5 cents/mile for the trailer). That ought to about cover the gas.

It’s only 10:00 and I’m already exhausted, so I’m off to bed. I need to chase the boys there too. See you tomorrow.

I’m pretty sure this picture has never graced these pages before. It’s Reader Number One working on his Eagle project, for which the court of honor is scheduled on the twenty-sixth of this month. Congratulations, Number One!

No posts yesterday or the day before, and barely time for one tonight. We just got home from the opera – well, from a dress rehearsal for the opera. It was very well done and the director didn’t have to stop the action at any point. There were a lot of school kids in the audience, so it was maybe a little noisier than the average opera, but we really enjoyed it. And the tickets were free. Rode the train down there, which was also enjoyable.

Our house went on the market today. We’re priced surprisingly high, but the real estate agent is pretty sure we’ll get our price or very close to it. We certainly need it. Maybe we can afford a shack in California, rather than the hovel I was expecting.

It’s way late, so I’m off to bed. Good night.