morrowlife

Here’s Your Humble and Obedient Blogger pushing the button that launched the first man into space. Photo taken at the Baikonur museum.

Wonders of Blogger today. Friday night was busy.

Lots of things going on today. The drive to work was amazingly quick – just a hair under 1.5 hours. Of course, the Traffic Gods require that I spend a minimum of four hours in the car every day, so the drive home was very slow, even for a Friday evening. It turns out there was a motorcycle accident on the freeway in Tracy. That tied things up pretty badly for quite a long time.

Which was unfortunate, since I had a 7:00 appointment with the missionaries at the church. They had a building tour scheduled with some people. I went directly to the church and made it with a few minutes to spare. The tour was fine, although only one of the several people they had invited showed up. The elders had gone to quite a bit of trouble to prepare and it was a nice tour.

I finally got home at about 8:00, and the weekend is here! It’s general conference weekend, so we’ll be pretty busy watching BYU-TV. In between sessions, we’re planning to wash a bunch of cars, go to the library, clean the pool filters, and who knows what else. Busy, busy, busy. Andy and I need to do one more home teaching visit today too.

And I had better start paying more attention to the conference. See you on Monday!

Here’s a Russian train guy in Baikonur. Hi, Vladimir!

Very little to write about today. Yesterday was Late Meeting Wednesday, so no post popped out of the blog machine, as usual. I worked kind of late yesterday (along with Monday and Tuesday, for what it’s worth) and barely had time to shove some food down my gullet and leave for the meeting. Came home again and went to bed.

Today was a little more relaxed. I got up a little late, got ready, and went down and had some breakfast (Cocoa Krispies and toast – the real breakfast of champions) while doing my morning meeting agenda and checking email. This was followed by a relaxing drive to Sunnyvale. Not a bad trip home either. And work was just fine to boot. Although we had a very serious server crash and also found out we have a bad bug in some new software that was built yesterday – bad enough to require a rebuild tomorrow morning. Alas.

Let’s see, what else? I helped Loyal Reader Number Four take out the garbage this evening. And . . . that’s about it for today. Sheesh. See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Pet Number Zero, taken back when he was alive. He was a great pet. Photo taken with my lousy first digital camera. That camera was so bad that some of its results actually look kind of artistic.

Easy ride home from work today. We expected rain (which we didn’t get) so I took the big car. I have no idea where everybody else was, but I’m not complaining.

I realized today that yesterday’s post omitted one of the more important aspects of the weekend. We finally bought a high-definition TV! It’s a Polaroid(?!) 37-inch LCD. It has 720P resolution and looks and works quite nicely. We also got a Zenith Dolby 5.1 surround sound system that includes a VCR (not really necessary anymore, but it was there) and a DVD player. We’re enjoying it. Loyal Reader Number One is already planning a movie-watching get-together with his pals.

Time to go. See you tomorrow.

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers Five and Twelve getting a little shuteye a couple of months back. LRN12 certainly used to get a lot of it. I hear she’s been cutting back lately.

I have no excuse for not posting last Friday. I was home all day. It was busy, but I could have found the time. Sorry to disappoint my Loyal Readers.

Anyway. Loyal Reader Number Four and I went and got the trailer Friday morning. I checked the water systems (all present, accounted for, and fully operational) and the general condition (no worse than the last time we saw it, meaning fully operational but showing a little cosmetic wear). I also checked the generator, since we’ll need it on our Easter week campout (fully functional). Then I got Loyal Readers Numbers One, Two, and Four to help me wash it, which went surprisingly well. There’s still some mold on the window moldings (maybe that’s why they call them moldings!), but it’s better than before and I’m hoping it won’t get any worse here in the Dry West. I made major improvements to the awning’s cleanliness as well. The trailer has been declared Ready for Camping.

The one thing I forgot to do was to take pictures of the cleanup for the HRVA. Dang. I’ll have to write a little note there anyway.

I also took Loyal Reader Number One’s car to the dealer for a free cooling system check on Friday. They called on Saturday morning and told me it needs head gaskets for an astronomical price. We’re going to get it done, but not at the dealer and at hopefully a less astronomical price. It’s a good car and I might as well put the money into the one I already have as get another one with more unknown problems.

Friday evening, we went to the Modesto Junior College spring organ concert. There was lots of excellent music and we enjoyed it. It was held at the Protestant church where LRN2 takes his organ lessons. It’s a beautiful old pipe organ and it sounds fantastic. I wish our church was still doing pipe organs – there’s just something special about them. The strange thing about this place, though, is that the organ console and piano are at the back of the chapel, requiring us to turn around if we wanted to watch the musicians play. I spent most of my time enjoying the music and not necessarily the performances. The other strange thing is that they passed a collection plate around, which I thought was odd for an MJC-hosted event, even if it was at a church and even if most of the organists perform at various churches on Sundays. Oh, well. I gave them a few bucks.

Maybe I have an excuse for last Friday after all.

We went to Lockheed Martin day at Great America on Saturday. We rode the rides, ate the food, and got slightly sunburned. A good time was had by all. I decided not to take my camera, which may have made the day more convenient but eliminated the possibility of getting any new Great Art for the blog. Sigh. This was my first time on a stand-up roller coaster. Fun. I also enjoyed their big wood coaster. It wasn’t exactly old, but it was certainly old-fashioned, and that’s good enough.

Sunday was busy but enjoyable. LRN1 and I got a little home teaching done, but we still have one more visit to make this month. Not good.

It’s almost 10:30 and I need to get to bed. See you tomorrow.

Here’s an Artistic View of the Leaning Tower. Is it the tower that’s leaning here or the statue? Either way, it’s hoity toity for sure.

No time to blog tonight. I worked for twelve hours today – it was my Monthly Marathon Day. I got some things done (or at least started and well under way) that had been on my plate for a long time, so I’m feeling good about the day. On the other hand, I just got home and it’s already late and I’m tired. On the other other hand, I’m not going to work tomorrow. On the other other other hand, I have lots of things to get done tomorrow, so I need to get some sleep.

I hope to work on the trailer, fix the Miata’s door speakers, go to the library, and maybe work on Loyal Reader Number One’s car. In addition to the coolant leak, it’s apparently running terribly now. We need to figure out if some of the coolant is getting into a cylinder or what’s going on there and maybe even get it fixed. Don’t know for sure what to do right now. It might need Professional Help.

It was nice to hear from Loyal Reader Number Sixteen in Tuesday’s comments. Thanks for staying Loyal, Reader!

No post yesterday – it was Meeting Wednesday. There doesn’t seem to be much time for anything but work and sleep right now, but that will get better one of these days. In the meantime, work’s over so I’m for sleep. See you tomorrow.