morrowlife

Here’s the solution to yesterday’s puzzle. Loyal Reader Number Four was right! Sort of. Turns out it was the front ends of a few members of non-Loyal Reader Ken’s 1956 Ford pickup model collection. Time to dust those babies off, Ken.

Went to a wedding this afternoon, for a young couple in our ward who are about to join the church. It was cute – the first potluck wedding I’ve ever attended. Had a nice time.

Otherwise, slept, worked, ate, and commuted.

Nothing else going on today, so I’ll head for bed. Long work day tomorrow. See you then.

Here’s the first in my famous Unidentifiable Great Art series. Can any of my Loyal Readers figure out what it is?

Juggernaut update: I’m over a dollar! I checked today, and my account balance has jumped to $1.33. Thanks to whichever Loyal Readers have been clicking on my Commerce section. I’m rich! (Link warning – audio of Daffy Duck shouting. And here’s the cartoon to accompany it.)

Finished the Mark Steyn book on the train this evening. It was interesting and entertaining, but the subject matter could have been covered in a long magazine article or two. Otherwise, highly recommended. Now I’m down to the Einstein book, the garden book, and the Mark Twain book. Plus, there are several on the floor by my side of the bed, waiting to be read.

Plus I got a new Make Magazine in the mail yesterday. I’m seriously afraid it will turn out to be one of the lame ones – the main topic this time is Magic. A subject about which I’m not overly interested. There appear to be a couple of good project articles, though. In general, I like Make, but experience says that only about fifty percent of the issues are really good. The rest are kind of hokey, like the one covering the terrarium and the one about the single-string guitar, and the one about… Plus, they’re just a little too Granola for me. I’m sure it never even occurs to them that some of their potential readers may not share their political/religious views. All of their friends do! Still, I like it on balance and recommend my Loyal Readers at least check it out. I bought the first issue on the newsstand and have been a subscriber since the second issue.

Going-away luncheon for three of my people tomorrow. Sigh. Time for bed. See you tomorrow.

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers Three and Four fighting off freezation at the wedding on Saturday. As mentioned yesterday.

Normal day. Drove the Miata and, for the first time in at least a few months, came home with the top down. I was chilled but not frozen upon arrival. No regrets.

Met my new boss today. Engineering is reorganizing (prepare three envelopes!) and my real boss is now a very nice woman. It looks like my job will pretty much go on as before. As predicted.

Got a call from the service manager at the Honda dealer. My Loyal Readers may recall that my car was in the shop a couple of weeks ago with transmission trouble. They changed the gearbox oil and pretty much left it in that inconclusive state. Well, it seems they got a call from Honda yesterday, informing them that there’s a known problem with six-speed transmissions, for which there will be a technical service bulletin coming out soon, possibly accompanied by a warranty extension or even a recall. He noted that two weeks ago, they laughed at him and acted like they didn’t know what he was talking about, but now they’re admitting the problem. The good news is that my transmission is going to be rebuilt. As soon as they figure out how to fix the problem, that is. My car’s still very drivable, though, so that’s no worry.

I just finished listening to Love Conquers All, by Robert C. Benchley. What an entertaining book! It’s basically a collection of a bunch of his articles from the 1920-ish time frame. He’s dry and hilarious. One example: he was reviewing Rip Van Winkle, by Percy MacKay, and invited the reader to:

“Just ask for “Rip Van Winkle” and spend the evening falling out of your chair. (You wake up just as soon as you fall and are all ready again for a fresh start.)”

Apparently, he didn’t like it much. Benchley’s book is highly recommended, and I’m on the lookout for more of his stuff (for free, of course). I enjoyed the guy who read the book too.

I’m also working on America Alone, by Mark Steyn (in print form). It’s overdue at the library, so I’m trying to finish it as quickly as possible. Another day or two at the most. It’s basically about the threat to America and the world from radical Islam. His point is that it’s basically too late for the rest of the world to do anything about it, so America is the world’s last best hope. As usual. Recommended reading also.

Time for my Tuesday evening meeting. See you tomorrow.

Here’s another in my famous statue series – the Governor’s pixie. It’s also another in my budding Governor series, so I guess that’s a two-for-one. Now if I could just find a way to get a bird in there too. Great subject, questionable focus.

No post on Friday. It turned out the Loyal Brother-in-law didn’t have wifi. He switched to internet-on-power-lines a while ago, but there was nowhere for me to hook up. So, no post. Sorry about that, Anon.

The wedding was nice. It was definitely aimed at the twenty-something bride and groom, rather than their middle-aged relatives (nonstop loud, obnoxious music for a large percentage of the time), but that’s the way it ought to have been, I suppose. We visited with a lot of relatives, and even if there hadn’t been a wedding, it would have been worth the trip to visit with Loyal Readers Numbers Three and Fifteen.

They’re doing great, by the way. Thanks for asking.

The trips took just about exactly eight hours each way. We took Highway 99 on the outbound leg. It goes through numerous populated areas, with the attendant traffic, which we didn’t enjoy. So we came home on Interstate 5 and enjoyed the peace and quiet of traveling through miles and miles of blossoming orchards and green, velvet-like rolling hills. And no towns. Huge difference.

Got some rain on both legs. Worse on the way down there. In fact, I was worried about it turning to snow on the Tehachapi pass. The temperature got down below 40 and there was some slush on the road, but that’s as bad as it got. Wedding day was warm and sunny – until, that is, time for the actual wedding ceremony, which took place outdoors. It turned cold, cloudy, and windy about half an hour before. The rain held off for a couple more hours, though, and everything went well. Except that the bride and bridesmaids weren’t exactly prepared for cold weather. Poor them.

Otherwise, no problems. I rode the train today and didn’t feel too crowded. Tomorrow’s likely to be a Miata day – it’s going to be warm and mostly sunny every day this week, with no rain on the 10-day forecast. Spring is definitely here – lots of trees are blossoming, the grass is greening up, and leaves are popping out everywhere. Ahhh.

Time for bed. See you tomorrow.

Here’s another entry in my famous Pond series. This one is in Tokyo. Taken with my original lousy Sipix digital camera. Strangely, they don’t make it anymore.

I think I may have mentioned before that that camera is so bad it has a chance of becoming immensely popular. Don’t laugh. It’s happened before. As in this example.

Which brings an idea to mind. Somebody needs to produce a Photoshop/Gimp plugin giving the “Holga effect” to a photo. Shouldn’t be too hard.

Which brings another thought to mind. Have a look at some of the Holga photo galleries. These people do some pretty amazing work with quite primitive tools. Great Art doesn’t require expensive cameras, does it? Except mine, of course.

No post yesterday – sorry about that. The Loyal Mom was spending her last evening with us and we were busy.

Speaking of the Croc Hunter movie, I really like it. It got some bad reviews back in the day, but I think they generally missed the point. It’s just about goofy fun. Recommended.

We’re off to Las Vegas tomorrow! Maybe. Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two are still quite sick and we’re not sure whether it’s a good idea to leave them home. We’re going to make a decision tomorrow morning.

I took LRN2 to the doctor‘s office this evening while Loyal Reader Number four was taking the LM to the airport. He appears to have an ear infection. He has antibiotics now, so there’s hope for a quick recovery. LRN1 also went to the doctor today, but he only got a throat swab, so we have to wait for the results before he goes on the amoxycillin. If he needs it. Which I’m guessing he does.

Anyway. Should we both go? Should LRN4 go by herself (she’s not excited about making the long drive alone, but the wedding is on her side of the family, so she should be the one there)? Should I go by myself (I have no trouble with the drive and would love to be there and to see Loyal Readers Numbers Three and Fifteen along with many others, but I’m second priority)? Should we skip the whole thing? Only time will tell.

We really enjoyed the LM‘s visit and are sorry to see her go. It was just a really comfortable thing to have her here.

I started reading Simply Einstein: Relativity Demystified at the doctor’s office. I’m only a couple of pages into it, so it’s a little early for a review or even a preview, but I’m cautiously optimistic. Could be very interesting. I’ll let you know more later.

Better get to bed. I (possibly) have a long drive ahead of me tomorrow. Friday post doubtful, but I’ll try to use the Wonders of Blogger on Saturday morning. See you then.