morrowlife

Here’s a guy out for a ride on one of them flying machines. His eyes bear mute testament to his slight level of discomfort at straddling that thing. Picture taken at the Hiller Aviation Museum. Part of both my famous machinery and statue series.

Great day at home. On the downside, off-week number two is 20% over. Sigh. On the upside, I rested like crazy, and actually got a few things done. Let’s see, now. The pool filters are now clean, the leaves are picked up from the bottom of the pool, the Honda is clean, Larry’s server files are moved over to Moe, an HDMI cable for Larry and a 1 terabyte disk drive for moe are on order, the workbench light power strip is back on the wall, new windshield wipers are on the Honda and the Sable (and will be on the Suburban tomorrow morning), the band of my new watch is more my size, and a lot of food has been consumed. Not bad for a day off.

Lots of things are on the schedule for tomorrow, but they’re too boring to discuss here. Suffice it to say that I’ll be as busy as a leisure-filled day will allow.

I just finished reading The Blight Way, Patrick F. McManus’s first (as far as I know, anyway) murder mystery. Highly recommended. It’s a delightful little murder mystery. No gore, no sex, no profanity. Just fun and a triple homicide to solve. Exactly what I expected from McManus, and exactly what I wanted. If I still have a Morrowlife book club, this would be this month’s selection. I’m looking forward to reading McManus’s other mystery book, as well as the one scheduled to come out next September. Not to mention his new book of humor columns.

Anyway. No other news. Having a great holiday. See you tomorrow.

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers One, Two, and Three in a rare joint appearance as the flight crew of a 747. Picture taken at the Hiller Aviation Museum. Part of my famous Machinery series.

Wonders of Blogger. Friday was game day, and we were having too good of a time for me to blog. Sorry about that, Loyal Readers. And special thanks to LRN1 for noticing.

Loyal Readers Numbers Three and Fifteen went home today. Sob. We had a great visit with them and were very sorry to see them go. The good news is that LRN3’s job back at Fish and Game is a definite. He’s still working on either getting a second part-time job or converting what he has into full-time, but this is an excellent start at a job he’s very likely to enjoy as much as he did before.

Went to downtown San Francisco to see A Christmas Carol at the American Conservatory Theater. It was well done and we had a great time. The building itself was beautiful, which I always enjoy. The new TomTom guided us there and home flawlessly. It’s pretty cool – I knew all along that as soon as I got a modern GPS, I wouldn’t be able to live without it anymore. And I was right.

That’s all for now. We have friends coming over tonight, and preparations must be made. See you on Monday.

Here are Loyal Reader Number Four and one of her many colleagues working on an old Hiller helicopter. Part of both my famous Statue series and my famous Machinery series.

Merry Christmas! We had a great day. Lots of presents were given and received, new stuff was played with, video games were played, He-Man cartoons were watched (that show was so bad it was great), a new jigsaw puzzle was started (and will probably be finished tonight), and a general nice time was had by all. I’m sorry the day is over.

But it is, and I’m exhausted. We stayed up way late again last night, what with preparations for the holiday. We slept in quite late, but it still wasn’t quite enough. Need more sleep tonight.

Tomorrow morning is shooting time (at the range down the road, that is) for the boys and shopping time for the girls. Except that some of the girls might be coming for shooting time too. I’m hoping it’s not raining. The Weather Channel is calling for cool but mostly sunny weather. So there’s hope.

I played with my TomTom for quite a while today – it’s pretty cool. I never went out of the house other than the back yard, so I haven’t actually used it to navigate anywhere, but I’m looking forward to trying it out in the car tomorrow. It locks on to satellites really easily and knows where all the roads are. I updated it online, and discovered you can put your own splash screens, voices, map updates, and lots of other stuff on it. I especially like the ability to do custom voices. I just might try that.

Also love my new Seiko watch. It’s small and light, unlike the monstrosity I’ve been using lately.

Lots of other new stuff to talk about, but it’s too late. See you tomorrow.

Here’s the blacksmith at the Victorian Farm. I love blacksmith shops. We mentioned to this guy that his shop must be a nice place to be on a cold winter day. He said it’s not too bad in the summer either, other than right by the fire. Picture courtesy of the famous Treo-cam. Part of my famous Machinery series.

One more day of work. Must . . . survive . . . one . . . more . . . day. Today’s luncheon was okay – potluck is never my favorite, but there were a few good things.

Loyal Reader Number One finally got home this morning. They canceled his flight last night due to the lack of a pilot. Apparently, the snow in Las Vegas pretty much closed the airport and his pilot never made it to Salt Lake. He called his uncle at about midnight and spent the night at their house. He got out on this morning’s 10:00 flight. Welcome home, LRN1! At least you weren’t on Flybe Airlines.

I briefly considered buying myself this additional gift for Christmas. I’m afraid it might make the Loyal Pets see me as meat, though. So I’ll probably skip it.

No controversy, no toilet news, no food attack news. Maybe tomorrow.

No more for tonight. It was Thursday Meeting Night, and it’s late. See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Two at the controls of a Mercury space capsule. Not too much room in there. Picture taken at the Chabot Science Center. Part of my famous Machinery series.

I am so ready to be done with work for the year and start wassailing and chestnut-roasting and tinsel-draping and caroling and figgy-pudding-eating and all that.

But it’s not to be. Not quite yet. Two more days.

The week’s second luncheon went well. We went to one of those fondue restaurants (link note: the good reviews all look suspiciously written by the restaurant owners, don’t they?) in downtown Sunnyvale. The food was pretty good – I enjoyed my self-seared ahi tuna – and the service was . . . ummm . . . ordinary. Certainly not excellent. But I’ve had worse. Not too often, though.

Anyway. The cooking part of the meal was interesting. Appetizers were dipped in a pot of cheesy creamy sauce. Dessert was dipped in a pot of dark chocolatey pepperminty creamy sauce. But the meat was cooked on individual hot rocky slabs. Everybody seemed satisfied when it was over and nobody was rushed to the hospital with third-degree burns, so it appears to have been a success. And the program appears to have paid for it all.

Would I go back to that restaurant? I wouldn’t avoid it, certainly, and it was interesting and different. But there are a whole lot of other places I would definitely choose first. It was just kind of . . . bland.

Not much else new today. I attempted to cash my annual Prudential dividend check after lunch. Some years ago, they changed from a mutual insurance company to a publicly-held corporation. They gave me three shares of stock. Every year, I get a hefty dividend check – this year’s was $1.74. I cash it and buy a sandwich or a car or something. I presented this year’s check to my friendly teller this afternoon and it was returned to me uncashed. It seems they post-dated it to December 19. Sigh. A whole nother trip to the bank for a measly buck seventy four.

Haven’t decided how to spend the money this year. Loyal Reader suggestions are welcome. And will be treated with the respect they deserve.

We’re off to the Oakland airport tonight for Loyal Reader Number One’s arrival! Everbody’s looking forward to it. Safe travels, LRN1!

See you tomorrow.