morrowlife

Here’s a truly Artistic Photo. Fame and glory to anyone who can figure out where it was taken.

It’ll have to be another short post tonight, as it’s pretty late and I just got home. Went out with the missionaries tonight and talked to a couple of nice people. Then I brought them to our house, fed them ice cream and cookies, and took them home. That pretty much took up the whole day, though.

I drove the truck to work today. Those new tires really make a difference. There’s much less noise and a much smoother ride now. I guess I don’t mind so much spending a bunch of money on one of the cars as long as I can tell the difference when it’s done.

I don’t think I mentioned earlier that Loyal Reader Number Four and I went to a used book sale at the library on Saturday. We happened to be there when they announced the “buck a bag” sale, so we got a couple of bags and stocked up on a bunch of books we only sort of wanted. We can throw them away when we’re finished with them. The upside is that I have a large stock of obscure books for Morrowlife Book Club fodder. I’m sure my Loyal Readers can hardly wait. Mine are mostly books from the 70’s about auto racing. That was a really good era for racing, so I’m looking forward to reading them. I also got one about fly fishing, which I would very much like to have the time to learn how to do. I think there’s a gardening book in there somewhere too. LRN4’s books appear to be mostly kids’ stuff – Newberry award winners, etc. I’ll add to the Book Club list as I get to them.

Speaking of which, I’ve finished everything previously on the list, plus another Wodehouse title whose name escapes me right now. It was about high-school-aged boys at a boarding school and their shenanigans. Nobody could write light fiction about upper-class twits quite like Wodehouse. I added a couple more of his books to my Gadget this afternoon, which will make it to the book club list Real Soon Now.

That’s all for tonight. See you on Friday!

Here are Loyal Readers Two and Four overlooking one of those beautiful valleys in Pennsylvania. What a beautiful place that was.

Went out and visited the Faulkners tonight. It was the first time I had met them, and they’re very nice people. It was a pleasant way to spend the evening. Their football-playing son is just recovering from a broken jaw. No, he didn’t get it in a game (warning: while it’s certainly not a disgusting picture, squeamish Loyal Readers might not care for it) or even in practice. He got it while roughhousing with buddies after a scrimmage. Oops. He’s out for the season.

Apple has updated iTunes 7 already, but it didn’t help me at all. It crashes all the time! I got on the Apple website and looked at their forums. Somebody suggested turning off the Sound Enhancer function. I tried it and it seems to have worked. Until it crashes again, that is. Apple really has a huge black eye on this one – it was bungled massively. They were apparently in such a hurry to get movie downloads before the competition that they pulled a Microsoft and released software for their customers to beta test. Very bad form indeed.

LRN4 got the license plates for the Suburban today, so all we have left to do now is the trailer. She also got the front tires replaced, which was overdue. I still need to get some license plate bolts for the front. The ones we had on there before got rusty in Virginia, so I threw them away when we got to Pennsylvania, one of several states that issue only one plate per car.

It’s late again, so I have to go to bed. Maybe I can find time to write some more tomorrow. See you then.

Here’s the pool as it appears now. Much better than that last picture, I can assure you.

Well, at least it was sold for a day. It appears that our buyer’s buyer is having some kind of financial problem, and the Gardenville house remains unsold. Very sad. It was fun while it lasted, though.

The Pool People showed up again this morning to make the automatic filler stop filling (it was a couple of inches too high when we noticed it last night – I hate to think of what might have happened if we hadn’t gone out there) and give us a chemical test kit that wasn’t oozing. Big improvement. At least they’re always prompt and pleasant. Except for that PDA incident. And even that seems to have turned out okay.

Loyal Reader Number Four got official California license plates on her car and mine today. Only the truck and the trailer left to go. It took her a good portion of the day, but she reports that at least the DMV People were reasonably pleasant.

Nothing else to report today, so I’ll quit and go to bed. See you tomorrow.

Here’s a “before” picture of the pool. Look for “after” tomorrow. Now you have something to live for.

Big news today – we have an official buyer for the Gardenville house! We loved that place and have been discouraged that nobody else seemed to love it too. These folks have made it clear to our agent that this is the house for them, so we’re glad it’s going to them. They were waiting to get their old house under contract. It finally happened for them and they made an immediate offer on our place. We countered, they re-countered, and we accepted. We still have to get it in writing through our relocation company tomorrow, but we believe it’s a done deal. Cool. And we’re not even in the poor house yet! Soon, though. We’re fully committed to Lardville now – there’s no turning back. Not that there was before.

Everything else that happened over the weekend and today pales in importance, especially since there’s a rumor that Thursday’s post was actually written on Sunday afternoon. I’m neither confirming nor denying, of course. The Loyal Reader will have to draw his/her own conclusions.

Anyway, nothing happened over the weekend that my Loyal Readers don’t already know about. So what shall we discuss here?

Let’s see. I rode the train this morning and enjoyed the ride. Slept practically the whole way. A weight-challenged passenger sat next to me and made me a little uncomfortable, but I’m only paying for one seat, so there’s not much I can do about that. But I can still complain. Anyway, the ride was otherwise uneventful. I’m on the way home as these words are being written. No fat people next to me. So far, so good.

My boss was home sick today. I attended her boss’s staff meeting for her. We had one other guy out sick too, and the guy in the cube next to him should have stayed home. We’ve got the plague going on there. I’m avoiding all human contact, just in case.

We’re about to stop in Fremont. Fat person alert!

Later – Somebody sat down next to me, but he wasn’t fat, so he wasn’t a bother. I did put the computer aside for the rest of the ride, though. I read an RV book (not too good so far, but that’s a subject for the HRVA) and listened to my iPod for the rest of the trip.

Done for tonight. See you tomorrow.

That museum was definitely cool. Downright cold, in fact. But it was one of the cooler museums around too, in the other sense of the word.

Loyal Reader Number One pointed out that when I cheat and use Blogger’s superpowers to back date a post, I ruin the deception by admitting it. So I won’t do that again.

It’s a beautiful Sunday morning, about two hours before church. I’ve been relaxing and doing a little reading. We’re watching a talk on BYU TV from Education Week. This year’s? I don’t know. It’s a pretty good talk, though. BYU TV is a pretty good channel from time to time.

I’ve been struggling with Real Player this morning. I noticed yesterday afternoon that it wouldn’t allow any sound to play. This is something of a problem with a program whose purpose is to play sound. I’ve tried reinstalling it and resetting it. I’ve looked it up on the internet – no help there. I’ve restarted my machine and tried logging in as a different user – no joy. LRN1 has the same program version as me, and his is working perfectly. Mine was working a few days ago. As of now, I have no idea what the problem is. I could reinstall the operating system, but that seems a little extreme, doesn’t it?

The reason I want Real Player to work is that Car Talk comes only on Real Player, and I like Car Talk. They had dumped the terrible Real Player software sometime back, but Real Networks apparently made them an offer they couldn’t refuse and they changed back. More worried about getting their palms greased than about pleasing their listeners, apparently. Now I have to decide whether to keep trying to get RP to work or just quit listening to CT. Yet another tough decision in a life full of tough decisions.

We invited a family from the ward over to breakfast this morning. Unfortunately, they called late last night and cancelled. Since we had already bought all the stuff, we had a great breakfast by ourselves this morning. Delicious, but alas. Maybe next time.

Went to the wedding reception of the son of some friends from Pennsylvania last night. He married a girl from Turlock, so the reception was only half an hour away from the Secret Undisclosed Location. It was great to see them again. Their son was one of LRN2’s best friends and has even been featured on these pages a couple of times!

Back to life. Look for Swimming Pool Pictures in a day or two.