morrowlife

Here’s some Great Art from a few days ago. The boys were driving their RC cars in an under-construction lot late in the afternoon. I had a look in the garage and saw these bags full of junk. I like the colors and hope you do too.

Short post tonight, especially since I used the Wonders of Blogger yesterday (actually, this morning).

Easy rides to work and home today. I think a lot of people are still on vacation this week. No problem as far as I’m concerned except that I’m not one of them. Several of my coworkers were, though. It was like a ghost town around the office, and just about everybody I talked to said they had a real hard time getting up this morning. Me too. As usual during the break, I went to bed way too late and had to get up way to early for my taste.

That’s it today. See you tomorrow.

Here’s a look at the Disney version of the True Spirit of Christmas. That there’s one big tree.

Happy New Year! In spite of the fact that I’m using the Wonders of Blogger today. It was a fine weekend and a great New Year’s day. The Eve was on Sunday, so we didn’t do much except go to church and associated things. We had a nice little family party (I was going to say get-together, but we’re already together, so I guess it should be stay-together, no?) consisting of a few fun games and a bunch of appetizer-type snacks. We toasted the new year with our traditional Martinelli’s and went to bed.

Some neighbors very close to us went pretty extreme with the New Year’s Eve fireworks (link warning: noisy!). They shot numerous really nice ones over about an hour period, I would guess. They weren’t the uber-high-powered ones from commercial fireworks shows, but they were only one tier down. They went up maybe about a hundred feet and produced effects of a proportional size. Other than the very real danger that our house would catch on fire, we thoroughly enjoyed the show. There were also some very loud firecrackers (at least I hope so – they didn’t sound like gunshots to me) coming from an undetermined-but-very-close location. Those Lardville people really know how to party.

I’ve been playing a lot with my new super-cool combination laser pointer and flexible LED flashlight. I got it for four bucks at a Kragen auto parts store. Great Christmas present to myself. It really came in handy over the weekend when we were digging under Loyal Reader Number One’s dashboard. Checking out the link above, I just discovered that the thing’s base is magnetic. Another cool feature! I can stick it to stuff!

Well, the holiday is over. I believe Loyal Reader Number Six is planning to go home on the Second or Third, depending on when a highly-important DVD he ordered arrives. I’ll be sorry to see him go – we’ve enjoyed his visit. I’m sure he’ll also be sorry to go, since Loyal Readers Numbers Five and Twelve are staying behind for a little longer.

Anyway, the holiday is over. Not to worry, though. My next paid holiday is coming right up . . . on May 28th. That’s only six months away. Sigh. Can I retire and start up Gardenville Software yet? Luckily, I at least like the current job, if not the longish commute so much.

Time to go. See you tomorrow. More cute pictures of LRN12 soon, for all you clamoring Loyal Readers.

Here’s some of Loyal Reader Number Twelve’s Christmas loot. She’s not too interested in these guys yet.

Spent another day in the garage. We got Loyal Reader Number Three’s brake discs turned, thus eliminating a shudder he was getting when he hit the brakes at high speed. We then tested Loyal Reader Number One’s radiator cap (it was bad and we replaced it) and cooling system (it’s leaking but we can’t figure out from where although we’re pretty sure it’s not going to be easy to fix).

We pulled out his turn signal flasher and went to the auto parts store for a new one. They had something pretty reasonably priced, so we took it home and installed it. It didn’t work. We took it back to the store and got another one. Installed it. It didn’t work either. We got suspicious and called our friendly Ford dealer. It turns out the flasher for a ’93 Taurus is a special-order $70 part. We took the semi-working one apart, fiddled with it for a while, and put it back in the car. It seems to be working now, so we’re waiting for it to fail again before we get too excited about ordering an expensive new one. Our fingers are crossed.

That was pretty much it for today. We jacuzzified again this evening and Loyal Reader Number Four and I started watching a free on-demand movie called Ernest Goes to Jail. It’s every bit as sophisticated and cerebral as you would imagine. I’m enjoying it anyway.

Loyal Readers Numbers Three and Fifteen are leaving tomorrow morning. We’ll be very sad to see them go. Their visit has been lots of fun. Loyal Reader Number Six is here until about the Second of January, so at least there’s one visit that isn’t ending right away.

LRN3 brought a bunch of DVDs with him that I’ve been meaning to rip but haven’t gotten around to yet. Now I’m doing it on a panic basis. As usual.

And that’s my day. Have a great weekend, a happy New Year’s Eve, and I’ll see you on New Year’s Day!

Here’s an interesting gargoyle we noticed in front of a building in Chinatown the other day. Pretty cool.

It was anniversary day today! Loyal Reader Number Four and I went up to Stockton to eat dinner at the Macaroni Grill. The food was good and so was the company. All the restaurants looked quite crowded (McDonald’s was pretty empty, though!) and we had to wait about half an hour to get seated. No problem. Worth the wait, but I’m absolutely stuffed. Then we came home and jacuzzified. Loyal Readers Numbers One and Three jumped into the 52 degree pool. Twice. They’re nuts, of course.

Pretty much the rest of the day was spent with Loyal Reader Number Three, buying parts for the brake job we’re going to do on his car tomorrow. I haven’t worked on any of my own cars yet, and the vacation is swiftly coming to a close. Don’t know how I’ll find the time. And don’t even get me started on the stuff I wanted to make.

But the water softener is in! And it even works. I need to tighten up a couple of connectors to stop a little bit of water seepage, but it’s otherwise complete. Ahhh . . . that soft water feels great.

My 1GB xD card for the new camera arrived today. I can now take 128 pictures at the absolutely highest quality level or about 512 pictures at very high quality. Combined with the new rechargeable batteries I bought yesterday, the new camera is officially In Business. No more Great Art from the poor old retired Loyal Camera. Long live the new Loyal Camera.

And it’s already time for bed. See you tomorrow.

Here’s this year’s Christmas loot, shortly before we dug into it. Too much stuff, but we enjoyed giving and receiving it. The new camera is somewhere in that pile there, so this one was taken with the old one.

Well, it was another fine day at home. I started out making my day-after-Thanksgiving-trademark turkey omelettes for the family and a few of the boys’ friends, who were here for the long-planned Firefly marathon.

As I type this, it’s just about 10:00 PM and the marathon is still going strong. It was scheduled to start at 8:00 but was about half an hour late. There were breaks for lunch and dinner, but non-stop TV otherwise. I stayed for the series pilot and another show or two, but I had Big Things that had to get done, so I did them.

You may wonder what big things I had to do. So did I. It turns out Loyal Reader Number Six and I needed to finish installing the water softener that we got a good start on yesterday. It was rough – one of the solder joints leaked and took forever to get right – but it’s done and it works! Now we can quit destroying all our faucets, the showers, and the washing machine with that nasty old hard water. Many thanks to LRN6 for his invaluable help. The major byproduct of the exercise is that I now feel confident in my pipe soldering abilities.

By the way, we had the turkey omelettes today because we were out of town for Thanksgiving and couldn’t do them then, and we had a great day-after-Christmas turkey dinner last night. Hence, turkey omelettes today.

So that was my day. A few omelettes, a couple of Firefly shows, and a water softener installation. Tomorrow’s our wedding anniversary (28 years!), so there ought to be a little less work and a little more celebration.

See you then.