morrowlife

Here’s a hungry-looking bear waiting for its prey – group campers. Fortunately, this bear is technically just a statue, making it highly unlikely to actually catch any campers. Part of both my famous Camping and Statue series. Let’s throw in my famous Vacation series for good measure, for a very rare Triple Series Great Art day.

Well, I’ve certainly been negligent again, haven’t I? Must . . . post . . . more . . . regularly.

Good weekend. My dad was here – had a great visit and had a chance to talk about a lot of important things. I really appreciated his advice on several things. LRN12 was also here, and was as fun as ever. If only that girl would sleep. Sheesh. I wonder how her mom functions. LRN4 is still exhausted.

Otherwise, not much is new. The Miata is finally officially gone, after spending several days at the mechanic (and several hundred dollars!) getting fixed so it would pass its smog test. Finally passed yesterday and got picked up by its new owners today. Hopefully, they’ll really enjoy it. I know we did. My next convertible: a Corvette. It’s either that or a Porsche, and the Corvette will be way cheaper to keep running, I suspect. Not for a while, though. I’m happy with the four cars I have.

Speaking of which, LRN4 canceled the Miata’s insurance today and put LRN2 on as my beloved pickup’s driver. We’re saving a thousand bucks a year! I think they were charging us way too much for the pickup in the past. I doubt we have any way of getting the overcharged money back at this point, but at least it appears to be fixed now. Let that be a lesson to us all. Check your insurance bill. Carefully.

Let’s see, what else is going on? I really can’t think of anything. And it’s time for bed, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: McNugget punch!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s the guy who robbed our train in Arizona a few weeks ago.  I had some money in my hand to give him, but he forgot to ask me for it.  I didn’t feel that it would be good form to invite him to come back and take it from me, so I kept quiet.  Photo courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Vacation series.

Wow.  It’s been a week since I posted.  Been busy.  LRN2 and I went to the Santa Cruz beach for about 14 hours on Saturday.  We had a nice time, but I have to say I think my favorite part was waiting for four hours for the group of yoots to get there.  We had the two pavilions to ourselves, it was nice and quiet, we got to read and talk, the weather was sunny and warm without being hot and the wind was calm.  Very nice.  Then the group got there and it was still enjoyable but certainly no long quiet.  I have a couple of pictures, which I’ll have to add to my blog Great Art backlog Real Soon Now.

Lots of car troubles.  Sigh.  The Suburban went for a smog test this afternoon and failed because it hadn’t been long enough since its minor emission system problem was fixed and the computer was reset.  My beloved pickup is in the shop in Sunnyvale as I write this.  Its positive battery cable disintegrated because of undetected corrosion.  Can I just buy a new positive battery cable for ten bucks or whatever?  No, of course not!  The battery cables are part of a $111 engine wiring harness!  And it takes an hour and a half of a trained mechanic’s time to remove the old one and install the new one!  For another two hundred bucks!  Double sigh.  Must be done, though.  So I’ve got problems.

Big things going on here at the Secret Undisclosed Location.  For starters, we sold the trailer on Saturday morning.  We (okay, mostly I) decided we were through with it and with camping in California.  So we priced it extremely fairly and sold it on the morning after the ad appeared on craigslist.  A nice young couple bought it, and we hope it will serve them well for many years.  We’ll miss it, but not much.

We also have my beloved Miata up for sale.  There are just too many cars in our collection.  LRN2’s especially sad about seeing that one go, since he’s been driving it for the past year.  But he’ll be fine.  He’s going to use my beloved pickup and I’ll keep the Suburban at work.  Which is fine with me at this point, but I’m looking forward to having the pickup back when LRN2 heads for school.

Speaking of which, we could get him graduated from High School in December if we want, and he could leave for college in early January.  He doesn’t think he’s quite ready for that yet, but we’ll see.  Otherwise, he’ll probably go in the fall.  We need to make a decision soon, though.

Yet another thing we’re selling is my beloved Mac Mini G4 – the first one I got.  We’re really not using it anymore, and I’ve decided ten computers is too many for three people.  So I’m getting rid of everything I can get rid of.  Plus all my spare parts.  This is going to be a Mac laptop shop from now on, so I don’t need a closet full of old obsolete PC parts anymore.  So far, I’ve eliminated about three desktops, and I have one more of those to go (good old Moe) and one or two laptops too (including this one, which I will probably hold on to for a little while until I’m convinced I won’t use it anymore).  It’s been excruciating, but I’m committed to get rid of everything around here we don’t need anymore.

As part of the old computer elimination, though, I’ve ordered a new MacBook Pro for myself.  That will leave all three of us with Mac laptops, which will be great!  I’m excited for it to get here.  Just ordered it last night and as of about ten minutes ago, it hasn’t been built yet.  I’m watching Apple’s website closely for signs of progress.

The new laptop will be named Curly, so old Curly will become new Moe.  It’s already been moved over to the upstairs TV and has assumed its new role.  Larry has moved down and is now serving the family room TV (lesser-prestige job, but he’s just glad not to be thrown out like old Moe, Shemp, Buddy, possibly Ted, and a few unnamed machines).  I’m excited to get the MBP because I’ll be able to do iPhone development on the train, which wasn’t a possibility before for obvious reasons.  Plus it’s cooler.

Anyway.  Lots of things being thrown away or sold, and we’re only just starting.  The generator is probably the next thing to go.  Plus just about everything else.  Sell, sell, sell!  I’d like to see the garage practically emptied out.  Plus a whole lot of the house, for that matter.  We’re hoping to end up in a condo or townhouse in the next few years, and we need to be ready for it.  Never again do I want to fill up an entire moving van with my junk.

Remember the watchword – nicer stuff, and less of it.

I guess that’s the watch-six-words.

Nothing much else going on, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: giant man-eating squid!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a very large tree in Calaveras Big Trees State Park.  Where else would you go to find big trees?  It’s really hard to photograph them in a way that shows their true scale.  This work of Great Art did not achieve that.  Part of my famous Camping series.  Also part of my brand-new famous Vacation series.

I decided I needed a new series because we’ve started taking non-camping vacations, and I think there are more of those to come.  We might just get out of the camping business.  I think we’d still like to visit beautiful nature-filled locales, but we might start staying in cabins, lodges, and other such places.  In the long run, it will probably be less expensive than maintaining, licensing, and storing the trailer, not to mention to cost of hauling it around.  The Suburban certainly never gets into double-digit fuel economy when we’re pulling that thing.  Plus, we think we just want to do other things for now.  Time will tell.

Had a nice time at the Grand Canyon with the extended family.  The train ride was fun.  Sadly, they discontinued the steam locomotives sometime in the past couple of years, so it wasn’t nearly as much fun as it could have been.  They’re being “green” these days.  Pity, that.  The weather was mildly uncooperative – it was sunny and hot the first day in the park and drizzly and cool the second day.  I think we would all have preferred sunny and cool both days, but it was not to be, alas.  Also, LRN4 mentioned that the Grand Canyon is kind of like the coast of Maine – once you’ve seen it from one vantage point, it’s pretty much the same everywhere else.  Still, the most fun was being with family.

Maybe the canyon looks different from the bottom.  It might be fun to find that out one of these days.  We could either ride the donkeys down or go down the river on a raft.  Or maybe even take a helicopter ride.  One of these days.  Maybe.  Or not.

Anyway.  We had a nice time and it’s good to be back home again.

Speaking of the extended family, I have two new Loyal Readers!  Have a look over there on the right, and help me welcome Christy and Candy, Loyal Readers Numbers 28 and 29, respectively.  It’s great to have you with us LRN28 and LRN29!

Put a new battery in the Suburban this afternoon.  I don’t remember whether I already mentioned it, but its battery died just before we left for Arizona.  LRN2 and I jump-started it to get it onto the driveway the morning we left, and he and LRN4 bought a new battery this afternoon.  Installation was pretty simple, of course.  I also took the liberty of unplugging the lights on the sun visors – both of them have suffered broken mirror covers, leaving them susceptible to burning down the battery without us really knowing it.  It was a fairly simple matter to unscrew three screws each and unplug their wires.  I don’t think I’ll replace the visors at this time.  Although I absolutely hate to watch the truck deteriorate.  Which it’s doing – the driver’s seat heater isn’t working and needs an $800 repair and a few of the dashboard lights have burned out (easy to fix – just never have gotten around to it yet).  And a couple of the little knobs on the radio have split.  And now the sun visors.  Sigh.  It’s turning into a junker right before my eyes.

Anyway.  Nothing much else going on around here.  LRN2 and LRN4 went nuclear in our battle with the moths today – they lit off a bug bomb.  We found another moth in the family room this evening, so the effectiveness of the tactic is in question.  Double sigh.  We’ve got to win this battle at all costs.  We will fight them in the family room.  We will fight them in the pantry.  We will never surrender.  All I have to offer is blood, sweat, tears, and insecticide.  This will be our finest hour!

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife employment opportunity: Monkey-annoyance expert!

See you tomorrow.