morrowlife

Here’s one more picture from my trip to Paris earlier this year. They had lots of nice old statues and sculptures and things.

I think it’s time for me to quit being Held Hostage. I’m seriously wondering whether the Ace train is going to work for me. I’ll probably switch to driving for a while. I can always come back to the train when I get sick of the car. Maybe if I can find a way to get a reliable, useful traffic report before I leave home, I can make a decision in real time. The train just takes a lot longer than the car, even on the worst traffic day. The good thing is that I have the choice.

The rumors of a sale of ILS (my former employer in Washington, as you know) have been confirmed – the company told the ILS people, sent out an announcement to all employees, and announced it publicly today. They’ve been sold to a completely unknown company, and they’ll deal exclusively with Proton and Angara. I wonder if any of my former colleagues will move on. I suspect the company will refuse them in-company transfers, if recent experience is any guide. I’m really glad I got out when I did.

PEC went well last night. I like the other members of the council. It’s a little hard to keep the group on task, but they enjoy their meetings. It’s kind of nice the meeting is held on a weekday evening rather than Sunday morning. The atmosphere is just a little more casual. I got home a little later than I would have liked, so I’ve been sleepy today. That was especially hard because of all the meetings I had to attend. I’ve been able to get a little sleep on the train, but it’s really not restful enough. There’s just no substitute for shuteye under the old blankets. Maybe I’ll get my eight hours tonight.

The Pool People are supposed to come tomorrow and clean up the backyard. Hopefully, that will include removing the many piles of cement all over the place and smoothing the yard back out. They’re skipping a week after that – don’t ask me why – and coming the next week (probably) to install the equipment. The plaster should follow shortly after that.

The Crating People were supposed to come today and take a bunch of boxes from us. I hope they did. I’m really ready to be rid of the head-high pile in the garage. Unfortunately, the Crating People aren’t willing to take away the huge boxes full of paper, but the Moving People are supposed to come take care of that. They’re being strangely cagey about the whole thing, though.

The HRVA website is up to five members now! Of course, they’re all family members and Loyal Reader Number Seven, but that’s about right for now. I haven’t been able to get any additional content produced yet, so my readership might not increase for a while.

Time to do some reading. See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Two at Fort Bridger, near Lyman, Wyoming. It was an interesting tour that day.

America held hostage, day one million and seven. No internet on the train. Sadly, nobody from ACE is a Loyal Reader, so my plaintive cries don’t carry any weight. Maybe I should stop complaining. Nah.

Busy day today for meetings. I was in a conference room from 10:00 until 2:00. It’ll be even busier tomorrow, though. Let’s just check my calendar here . . . Okay, I’m back. 9:00 to 1:00, 1:30 to 2:30, and 3:30 to 4:00. I guess that’s not so bad, is it?

Short post today. I have my first 8:30 PEC meeting this evening. There’s not much time to compute beforehand and I need to go to bed afterwards. Besides, I’m pretty much working, commuting, eating, computing, and sleeping this week; so there’s not much to write about.

Here’s one thing, though – the company has a Macintosh club that holds a monthly meeting. This month’s meeting is on the 14th from 4:30 to 6:30. The subject is iMovie – how to work it, presumably. Here’s the big question for my Loyal Readers: should I go? I’ve already created a couple of iMovies, so I at least know the basics already. Will they go beyond the basics? Is there anything useful there for me to learn? Is it a productive use of my scarce free time? Loyal Reader Number Four has an Enrichment meeting that night, so she won’t care much whether I’m home on time or not. Besides, I’ll bet I wouldn’t be home much later than usual if I start the drive home at 6:30. So what’s your opinion?

My (much) older sister’s birthday is on Friday. Sadly, she’s not a Loyal Reader, so she’s ineligible for our usual hearty Morrowlife birthday wishes. I hope she has a nice day anyway.

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a non-sunset picture of Lake Ogallala. That sure was a pretty place.

Back to work today. A few colleagues were busy over the weekend, but it was pretty uneventful overall. The schedule’s unchanged and things are humming along. There was a big scare this morning over something that was more or less pointless, so I spent a little time whacking that mole. The good news was that if our Masters have enough to time to obsess over pointless things, that’s a pretty good indication that things are going very well. We’ll be zappin’ down them missiles before you know it.

Loyal Reader Number Four and I spent a little while last night looking at the pool, the deck, and the backyard in general. There’s a lot of difficult and expensive work ahead of us, but we’re anxious to get started on it. We’re seriously thinking about a shed. It would be much smaller than the one we had in Pennsylvania – probably about 6 x 8. We just need to store the lawn mower, trimmer, edger, blower, gas cans, picks, shovels, rakes, pool chemicals, pool toys, and whatever else comes easily to hand. There are a couple of spots in the yard where it might work, neither of which is perfect but neither of which is terrible, either. What to do, what to do . . . The bottom line is that there’s no way we’ll be able to conveniently fit all that stuff in the garage, so we need to figure something out.

Loyal Reader Number Two expressed some interest in coming up with a script for my upcoming movie. He’s pretty creative, so I though he might want to do it. Get your nose to the grindstone, LRN2! My other thought was to look on the internet for acceptable scripts. I know there’s a lot of stuff out there; I just need to look for it. Google is a wonderful thing.

America Held Hostage, yet another day. I’m sitting on the train right now and can’t get to the internet. We’re all still wondering why they had to disable the old system months before they install the new one. Grrrr. The train is moving through town at about ten miles per hour right now, so we’re likely to be pretty late getting home. Grrrr. The service may be lousy, but at least it’s slow.

Bulletin: the speed just started to pick back up. The internet is still dead.

Response to the HRVA continues to just skyrocket. There are four members as of now (thanks for joining, Katie!), only one of which actually owns an RV, and none of which own a vintage RV, but that shouldn’t be construed as a less-than-stellar website kickoff. Slow, organic growth is what we’re going for. Besides, I haven’t printed any stickers or certificates yet. Or added any content either. So, the response is probably right where it ought to be at this point.

I got a few books at the library on Saturday. I’m putting one of them in the current Morrowlife book club reading list over there on the right, and the others in the On Deck Circle. I’m enjoying Quit Your Day Job. I have no plans to actually Quit My Day Job anytime soon, but the author offers some very solid advice on writing for money. As an example, he dismisses all the pointless writing exercises found in other writing books because they make no money, and his book is all about writing for money. Instead, he suggests writing and submitting one article a week as an exercise. He also talks a lot about writing quickly, the idea being that the faster the words go into the word processor, the more regularly the paychecks roll in. He thinks it’s better to write garbage down quickly and edit it into an acceptable state than to write only perfect stuff, thus effectively writing nothing. He suggests that we accept the idea that we’re not writing Art, we’re selling prose. There’s a big difference.

So I’ve decided to continue to write garbage, but to do it more quickly. Oh, and maybe do a little bit of editing along the way. Aspiring writers in the Book Club might do well to check out Don’t Quit Your Day Job.

One of my new goals is to actually convince a Loyal Reader to read one of the books in the Book Club. Maybe I should start reading more interesting books.

With that said, it’s time to quit. See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Two climbing around in a rock field in one of those neat-o Pennsylvania state parks. Golly, how I want to go camping again.

I noticed that Loyal Reader Number Seven discovered and registered on the HRVA website. There’s not much there yet, huh? I hope to add content over the centuries – things like pictures of Historic RVs we come across in our travels, interviews with owners of old RVs, reviews of old RVs and both modern and vintage camping equipment, and reports from campouts. Member submissions in any of those categories are most welcome. If multiple people actually become interested in the organization, I hope to even organize events, but that’s probably somewhere down the road. On the other hand, we could just call all of our future family campouts Official HRVA Outings and see if we can get anybody to come along with us.

We’ve been joking about starting the HRVA ever since our terrible but beloved old 1973 (or was it a ’74?) Starcraft popup. Everybody else in the campground had nicer campers than us, so we decided we should give our trailer a little cachet by starting the HRVA. The slogan was going to be something like, “It’s not a beater, it’s Historic.” Ever since I got my own web hosting, I’ve thought I ought to actually try to get the club going. I had a few minutes yesterday and had been wanting to learn how to work a new web Content Management System, so I went for it. The CMS I’m using (one of the two CMS’s included with my web hosting package) is a little bit more poorly documented than I would like, but I’m figuring it out. There are a couple of forums with some good information out there. Google is a wonderful thing.

Many thanks to LRN7 for finding the site and joining the club. You’ll get your membership certificate and sticker as soon as I have them made. And rest assured that even if I have to start charging a membership fee, you’ll always be a paid-up charter member. Along with Loyal Reader Number One, who also signed up today. Keep watching the website for more stuff.

Happy Labor Day! We went to the Lathrop Ward picnic, which was a lot of fun. The people here sure are nice to us. They provided the food, beverages, and activities. Each family provided a side dish or dessert (we brought some very good brownies/chocolate cake) and just hung out and had fun. We planned to only stay for an hour or so and ended up there for about three hours. Good times.

On the way to the picnic, we discovered that Manteca puts about 2400 American flags along many of the main roads for major patriotic holidays. There are holes in the sidewalks at regular intervals and somebody comes along and puts an identical flag in each one. The cumulative effect is pleasing.

Had to work on some work this evening, so my time is up. See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Three’s snake. Cool. Speaking of which, it’s Loyal Reader Number Three’s birthday! Happy birthday, LRN3!! What did you do on Your Special Day (link warning – smarmy reading of children’s book)? Probably the same thing I did on My Special Day – work. Welcome to reality, unfortunately. I’ll call you after I get home. Photography courtesy of LRN3, of course.

America held hostage: day I-don’t-know-how-many-plus-yet-another-one. No wifi on the train. I saw an email from a Railroad Person today that said they’ve pushed back their first car’s installation until the end of September, with the others coming on line as late as three months later. I’m searching for some reason to believe them this time but haven’t been able to come up with anything yet. I’ll sleep on it. In the meantime, why is it they can’t get the old system to work anymore? Huh? Answer me! I thought so.

On a happier note, it’s the holiday weekend! I’m home for three whole days! There’s so much I want to do, I don’t know where to start. I need to get Loyal Reader Number Four’s car washed. I need to get a California driver’s license (assuming the DMV is open on Saturday, which I believe they are). I have a lot of stuff I need to put away in my closet, dresser, and file cabinet. And then there’s the garage. That truck’s going inside there sooner or later, so it might as well be sooner.

I’ve been thinking about making another movie. I’ll have to talk to my Loyal Readers and see if we can’t come up with a script. Any budding screenwriters out there? I’m looking for something that runs somewhere between three and ten minutes and that can be made using next to no equipment and a camera that can’t even take an external mic. Also, we’ll have to use ourselves and any friends we can manage to find as actors. And we’ll have to do all the shooting and editing ourselves. And we have no budget. Otherwise, the sky’s the limit. Let me know.

Forgot to bring my camera on the train today. Maybe next week. The weather should be approximately exactly like it is today, so at least I don’t have to worry about waiting for favorable conditions.

I got up at 3:54 (tried to make it at 3:45 but seem to have hit the snooze button without gaining consciousness) and took the early train this morning. Made it to work a few minutes before seven. The idea was to nap on the train and not do any work until I actually got to work, especially given the absence of Wifi on the train (grrr…). I slept some and felt fine all day (well, no more sleepy than usual, anyway), so I guess I can count it as a success. I’m not sure I got any more done, though, so I guess I can count it as a failure too. Like everything else today, we’ll have to see how it turns out on a more permanent basis. I expect I’ll drive to work at least one day next week too – Friday, in all likelihood.

I read a few pages of The Scientific American Boy last night and today. It’s fun, as you might expect a 1905 book written for adventure-seeking boys to be, but it relies heavily on its many illustrations, and they’re not included in the Gutenberg electronic edition. Most of the prose is descriptive of the numerous (and incredibly complicated) Projects for Boys, with related diagrams. It’s still interesting, though, so I’m going to keep reading a little longer and see if I can treat the pictures as optional. In the meantime, I loaded three more Wodehouse novels (getting near the end of Gutenberg’s list – a pity, that) on the Gadget yesterday (see them in the on-deck circle over there on the right), so I’m ready to move on if necessary. I’m also adding my new Dick Francis book and a couple of other things in my reading pile. My Loyal Readers require this information as soon as they can get it so they can get the most out of the Morrowlife Book Club.

Speaking of books, I got a Lardville library card a couple of weeks ago, but haven’t checked out any books yet. I probably have plenty to read already, but I hope to get over there tomorrow and see what looks interesting. I’m lucky I don’t have unlimited money, because I’d be emptying out the bookstores on a daily basis, and there’s just not enough shelf room at home. Of course, if I had unlimited money I could buy a house with a huge library. Never mind. I wish I had unlimited money.

We’re really ready for the pool to be full of water and swimmable. Not too much longer now. Must . . . be . . . patient. Okay, I’m fine now.

Well, this has become inane, so it’s time to quit. Have a great weekend. The Morrowlife blog never rests, so we’ll see you on Labor Day.