morrowlife

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve opening her enormous pile of birthday presents a month ago. I found the birthday pictures on my camera yesterday. Oops.

Rainy day again today, so Greetings from the Train. It rained all night and much of the day, but appeared to be clearing when I walked out the door this afternoon. I still think we’re expecting rain the rest of the week. I’ll be on the train a lot. And glad to be there.

The train was pretty empty this morning, but seems quite full this afternoon. Where did all these people come from? The other strange thing is that enough people got off the lightly-populated train this morning to entirely fill our shuttle bus, with one person (my friend and co-worker Dan, as it turns out) standing in the aisle. Strange.

It was also raining hard enough for water to be pouring in through the two roof vents on the bus, which is an old Hertz shuttle they maintain just enough to keep it from falling completely apart on the freeway. Most of the parts appear to still be there, but they don’t necessarily work. The only good thing it has going for it is that it’s big enough that when it eventually careens out of control, we’ll probably squish all the other cars without getting hurt ourselves. Thank heaven for that.

Anyway, it was raining inside the bus this morning almost as hard as outside.

I’m working short days this week to burn up my remaining comp hours, which are now down to about three. I especially want to go home early on Thursday, of course. If I’m on the train, though, I can’t really leave earlier than about 3:00, so that will have to be good enough. I don’t even want to think about trying to drive home on Thursday afternoon in the rain with the holiday traffic getting out of town. So it’s the train for me.

Nothing else significant to report today. See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Two sticking his head through a hole in a tree. Those two just can’t seem to get enough of sticking their heads through holes in trees. It guess it’s better to have a head in a hole than a hole in your head. Har har.

I need to get a little more Blog Fodder again. Fortunately, the holidays are coming up, the family members are coming to town, and work is closing for several days. Plenty of photo opportunities, no doubt.

Stupidly, I forgot to bring my camera to a few recent events that would probably have resulted in something blog-worthy. Such as Loyal Reader Number Two’s organ concert (did I mention he was the highlight of the show?) and possibly the ward Christmas party. Sigh. My Loyal Readers expect better.

Well, let’s cheer back up and see how the weekend went. First, the success/failure list:

Ward party and turkey: check, sort of. We watched the time carefully on Saturday and made sure we were home in plenty of time to put the turkey in the oven so it would finish cooking in plenty of time. No problem. Strangely, though, Loyal Reader Number Four discovered about an hour and a half before we were supposed to be at the party with a cooked turkey that somebody had turned off the oven at an unknown time. We had no idea how cooked or uncooked the bird was. She immediately turned it back on and we took it out of the oven at about our scheduled departure time. We did a little exploratory slicing and it looked done all the way through, so we sliced it up and took it to church – only about half an hour late. It all worked out and, as far as we know, nobody has died from eating it. In fact, most people weren’t even sick the next day. So all’s well.

Christmas shopping: check. We’re either done or essentially done. Phew.

Miata headrest speakers: no check. Never even looked at it. I need to find some speakers of the appropriate size, power rating, and price online and get them ordered. Then we can talk about installation. In the meantime, the buzz continues.

Robot, Android tutorials, and DVD ripping: no check, no check, and no check. They were just too low on the priority list. Maybe next weekend. The DVDs will have to be ripped no later than then; I want to return them to Loyal Reader Number Six when they’re here for Christmas.

Cold water faucet: check. Actually, LRN4 did it for me before the weekend ever started. I just hadn’t noticed it yet when Friday’s blog was written. Thanks, LRN4!

Sunday School lesson: check. I did it after all. My friend Jim had a serious relapse, and I got a call on Sunday morning. Prepared it, gave it, had a good time. Next week, I have to teach Gospel Principles, so there’s more preparation to do. Fortunately, I enjoy doing it. A lot.

Financial juggernaut update: I’m up to 26 cents and one click! Many thanks to whoever clicked. Nothing can stop me now! Riches! Power! Et cetera!

We had some rain overnight, and the morning commute showed it. It was dry the rest of the day, but they’re predicting rain just about every day until Christmas. Sigh.

See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve with her grandma. I’m not sure which one is having a better time.

Loyal Reader Number Four and I went to the Primary Christmas dinner this evening. It was very nice and was fun to be out with some friends. We had chicken with pasta and Alfredo sauce and a very nice Italian salad. There was a white elephant gift exchange. For a brief time, I was the proud owner of a plastic pooping reindeer, but somebody stole it (which was allowed, by the way). Sigh. We got some nice towels instead. They’ll be perfect for making bread rise. But they don’t simulate pooping, so they’re not nearly as good.

Loyal Readers Numbers One and Four had a great time at The Theatre last night. LRN4 reports that the scenery alone was worth the ticket price. Although she does have to admit that the price to her was zero. Still, somebody (Loyal Reader Number Twenty-Four’s family, to be specific) paid for that ticket, and it was worth it. Thanks, Loyal Friends!

Let’s see what’s ahead of us for the weekend, shall we?

We have another party tomorrow night – this time for the whole ward. We’re cooking and bringing a ward-provided turkey, so that’s a good indication the food ought to be pretty good.

The calendar also calls for us to put up the outdoor lights. However, that was taken care of yesterday by Loyal Readers Numbers One, Two, and Four. Nothing left to do there.

LRN4 and I are going to look at our Christmas present situation sometime tomorrow and try to get any remaining shopping done.

I need to replace the headrest speakers in the Miata. I think the new stereo was a little too powerful for the factory speakers, and they don’t appear to be any good anymore. They shouldn’t be too hard to replace. I also need to put some foam or something similar between the new speakers and the doors. There’s a little buzz in there somewhere.

What else? Well, I still need to finish the robot, do the rest of the Android tutorials, and rip the rest of the Home Improvement DVDs. With the new hard disk, I have plenty of room for them now.

The cold water faucet on my bathroom sink seems to be falling apart. Gotta get that thing fixed.

And I’m sure lots of other things will come along. Fortunately, my friend Jim is feeling better, so I don’t need to prepare a Sunday School lesson. I enjoyed teaching for a couple of weeks, though, so his good fortune is my slight misfortune. Alas, but there will be other opportunities.

LRN2 wants me to do some scientific research and figure out who Anonymous is. I think I’ll let it go, though. Life must have some mystery, after all. Stay anonymous if you like, Anon!

Have a great weekend. See you on Monday.

Here’s the river at Clark’s Fork. Ahhh.

No post yesterday. There was a Boy Scout Court of Shame Honor, to which I went directly from work, followed by a quick trip home for a fifteen-minute dinner, followed by a return to the church for the Wednesday evening meeting, followed by a trip back home, followed by bed. So no post.

Thanks as always to Anonymous, who always notices my absences and appears to have become one of my very most Loyal Readers. Maybe I should put him/her over there on the right as LRN26. But I won’t. I have a feeling good ol’ Anon is already on that list somewhere.

Nothing interesting to report today. Got up, went to work (longish trip), worked, had a nice holiday luncheon with the group at a local Thai restaurant (great food, which I can still taste), worked a little more, and came home. Had dinner with Loyal Reader Number Two, with whom I am home alone this evening, Loyal Readers Numbers One and Four being at The Theater (they’re seeing A Christmas Carol, I believe), watched The Mouse That Roared, and now we’re watching Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. Excellent night at the movies, I must say.

This morning’s long trip was at least partially due to a little truck accident. One of those execrable dirt-hauling trucks had apparently been driving way too fast, as usual, this time on a freeway entrance ramp. When I got there, it was lying on its side with dirt all over the ramp. It didn’t directly affect freeway traffic, but it was slow anyway. Sigh. I hope the driver was unharmed and loses his license. Along with all the other jerks who drive those trucks. Or something like that.

Tomorrow’s my off Friday. But I’m working. Sigh.

See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number One. From both ends. Picture taken at Calaveras Big Trees State Park.

Fine day today. I dragged out of bed at an extraordinarily early hour, but it was pretty much uphill from there. I had lunch with my old friend Al. He’s doing fine – thanks for asking. I also went to Fry’s and bought a new external drive for my Macintosh. It looks just like the Mini, has 500 GB, and even has powered hubs for USB and Firewire. Cool!

I pretty much spent the evening so far getting the new drive installed and getting Leopard installed on it. Now I’m waiting for my data from the Mac’s internal drive to transfer over. Only fourteen minutes to go! Then I can start finding out what went wrong.

In the meantime, I’m using Loyal Reader Number Two’s computer. He and Loyal Reader Number One are out at battle-axe, so it’s free for the moment. I just hope there are some pictures on it. We’ll all know in a minute or two.

In fact, I’ll look for one right now. Stand by.

I’m back. There don’t appear to be any pictures on this computer at all. I’ll have a wait a few minutes until my machine wakes back up.

In the meantime, I’ll see you tomorrow.