morrowlife

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.

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.