morrowlife

Here’s another in my famous Head Sticking Out of Tree series. Possibly the last one. Time to shoot some more pictures.

Another short shrift night. My brother-in-law Ken came over (from Las Vegas) for dinner tonight and we used up all the blogging time. Sorry about that. Rest assured, Loyal Readers, that we had a nice time and it was definitely worth it.

Still trying to decide what to do automotively. I could get a used one-year-old four-door American car for about the price my three-year-old used Honda would cost. But is that what I want? And the Honda’s resale value will definitely stay higher than the Ford’s. Decisions.

The weekend’s exciting activities will have to wait one more day. See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve avoiding the camera flash. Smart girl for such a young age.

I stayed home sick today. Spent most of the day just relaxing. I thought I was doing pretty well by this evening, but seem to have had something of a relapse. Sigh. I really need to go to work tomorrow, so I’ll be there unless I absolutely cannot get out of bed in the morning.

Looked at a couple of cars this afternoon. My Honda’s lease is ending in a few months and I can’t decide what I would like to have next. Nothing really appeals to me from any manufacturer at any price. And the things I can easily afford are the worst of all, of course. I’m seriously thinking of just buying the Honda and being done with it. I still like the car very much, and it’s been pretty trouble-free. I do need to have the shifter looked at in the near future, though.

That’s it for today. The weekend’s activities will have to wait until I feel better tomorrow. See you then.

Here’s the new computer in all its glory, fresh out of the box. What a beauty! I find the Apple Remote surprisingly useful in controlling Front Row, which I find surprisingly cool. I now have a pretty good-sized collection of those Apple stickers, but haven’t yet found a place to put any of them.

Okay day at work today. I got a few things done, but not the one I most needed to do. I started feeling sick on my way home and haven’t had a very comfortable evening, but that’s life sometimes.

We had a nice home evening tonight. Played a round of Perudo and had fun. At least I had fun – I won. Other Loyal Readers’ results may vary.

I want to go to bed early tonight, so I’ll quit. See you tomorrow, with full disclosure of the weekend’s exciting activities.

Here’s another in my famous Workbench series. This is the watchmaker’s bench in the clock shop at Greenfield Village.

Wonders of Blogger. Luckily, it appears I’ve managed to beat my old pal Anon to the punch. As mentioned earlier, it was my off Friday. I had plenty of opportunities to blog, but somehow never found the time. The later evening was pretty well occupied, at least. Loyal Reader Number One was over at Loyal Reader Number Twenty-four’s house and Loyal Reader Number Two was at his friend Luke’s house for the night. Loyal Reader Number Four and I watched the first half of Herbie: Fully Loaded on Disney (moderately amusing), spent half an hour or so in the jacuzzi, and then came back inside and watched the second half of the movie, along with the latest episode of Psych (amusing). Then off to bed.

Slept in a little this morning and have actually gotten a little work done. We got the garage door insulation project done (finally!) in the early afternoon, after which I cleaned the pool filters while the other Loyal Readers cleaned up Loyal Pet Number One’s pooping grounds. Mine was certainly the more pleasant job. We also got the pool brushed and its water tested (it’s fine, thanks for asking), backwashed the pond’s filter, and fed the fellas. I was supposed to go visit someone with the missionaries, but they called and canceled just as I was supposed to be leaving, so we got in the car and went over and cleaned the church. Or at least part of it. We were the “pink” team. It went quickly. Oh, I also lightly updated our ward mission plan just before we left to clean the church. I had to send it out to somebody in the stake to use in some training tomorrow night.

It was a warmish (high 50’s, which isn’t really bad for mid-January), sunny day today. Perfect for all the outdoor things we needed to get done. We’re not supposed to get any more rain for several days, which ought to give the yard a chance to dry out.

Now I have a little bit of writing to do (this, to be specific) and then I’ll get back to studying my CSS book. Whew!

Have a great weekend. See you on Monday.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve playing peekaboo.

Greetings from the train! It was rainy today and (I’m guessing) the traffic was terrible, so here I am. Ridership was pretty light this morning and it’s pretty heavy this afternoon. It’s just like Friday traffic, and my question is the same – where do all these people come from? They don’t drive to work in the morning and they don’t ride the train, but they’re clogging the highways and aisles on the way home. Maybe they stay in town all week and just go home on weekends. If so, they have my pity.

Speaking of which, I pity the fools who have to go to work tomorrow. It’s my off Friday! All I have to do is generate some charts in the morning, conduct my 10:00 meeting via telecon, attend an 11:00 meeting via telecon, and do timecards in the afternoon. Other than that, I’m free as a bird. At least I can do all that work in my pajamas if I want to. On the other hand, maybe I could be wearing my PJs to work every day. Hmm. That’s something to think about. I wouldn’t ever have to worry about another promotion again!

Anyway. Loyal Reader Number Four and I are planning to finish the garage door insulation project tomorrow. I also ought to go to the library and return a few books.

Speaking of which, I just finished reading Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. It’s a very interesting history of the guy who solved the longitude problem. As my loyal readers no doubt know, it wasn’t too hard in the 1700’s to figure out a ship’s latitude (how far north or south of the equator it is) by solar observation. Direction was simple – compasses were available from a very early date. Longitude was a much thornier problem. Celestial observations weren’t accurate enough to place a ship even within a hundred miles of its true location. Dead reckoning was no good – winds and currents took care of that. Lots of ships were lost because they couldn’t figure out how far east or west they had gone, so they didn’t know how close they were to land or even which direction it might be. Since ships had to sail at night as well as in the day, they were likely to run aground or just get lost long enough to run out of food and/or water. Eventually, the British government put up a pretty substantial prize for anybody who could solve the problem.

Two schools of thought arose. The first one was to refine the ability to make celestial observations and publish tables. The theory was sound – knowing the relative positions of the sun, moon, and stars at your current location versus their predicted locations at a reference location (which ended up being in Greenwich, although the French – typically – demanded that the world use Paris), you could tell how many hours/minutes/seconds east or west of the reference point you were and hence your longitude.

The other school of thought was the timekeepers. If you took two clocks with you and kept one set to the reference time and the other set to local time, you could figure out your longitude without all those messy star charts, long observations, and difficult math. Unfortunately, there were no clocks that were even close to accurate enough. The book is the story of the great race between the two factions, with all the politics and pettiness that accompanied it. Good read. I won’t tell you how it turns out, other than to say that the good guy won.

Well, that was certainly a long explanation. Can you tell I enjoyed the book? Now let’s talk about one I didn’t enjoy. I also need to return The Little Book of Time. It certainly didn’t work out the way I had hoped. I was in the mood for scientific history books and that’s what this one sounded like, based on its title. It turns out to be the pseudo-scientific rantings of some two-bit, unimaginative, unoriginal, dumb philosophy major. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But don’t bother with his book. And if you happen to meet him, run away. Fast.

Okay, that’s enough for today. See you tomorrow.