Paree

Here it is folks - a view of Paris from high up on the Eiffel tower. I think it looks best from this angle, don't you?

I hope Loyal Reader Number Five has been reading the blog the last few days. She's a big Paree fan, dontcha know. Watch for a few more Paree pictures in the near future.

Three more days at work in Newtown! Woo hoo! I'm really sick of being there.

Bad news - I found out I'll have another company laptop in Sunnyvale. Now I can't justify buying that 15-inch MacBook Pro I had my eye on. Well, there's always another time. Besides, I still love the G5, and I can get one of them for no more than the cost of a MacBook Pro. I'll probably wait and see what Intel machine they replace it with. It's bound to be beautiful too.

Sandy and Scott are scheduled to arrive in another three hours or so. I'm home from work the whole time they're here and we have some fun stuff scheduled. It's supposed to be 90 degrees and sunny on Monday, which ought to be a pleasant day. Let's not talk about the rain forecast on Friday and Saturday.

The potential house buyers evaporated today. They certainly had a quick case of cold feet. It's just as well - I would rather have lost them now than a few weeks in the future, and I had developed a really bad feeling about them. We adjusted our price today and have a showing scheduled tomorrow. Our agent feels "confident" the house will sell within a few weeks. It needs to.

I finished Something New by P.G. Wodehouse today. What an enjoyable book! It's classic Wodehouse - a frivolous look at frivolous upper-class British Twits. The story revolves around a rich guy who accidentally takes another rich guy's valuable Egyptian artifact and then mistakenly assumes it was a gift. The other rich guy wants it back and hires a young guy to steal it. Lots of humor ensues. I highly recommend it, as I have almost all of Wodehouse's work. Next up in the Morrowlife book club: Tales of St. Austin's, by our hero, P.G. Wodehouse.

Remember, friends, most of our book club titles are absolutely free to download from www.gutenberg.org, and pretty much the rest come from the public library. Our goal here is to read some cool books without spending much money.

Remember also that the tools to convert the Gutenberg text files to Palm readable files are also free. I use Microsoft Word (definitely not free, but freely available on my work-provided laptop) to make a few formatting changes - eliminate paragraph breaks at the end of each line and delete excess spaces - and then use MakeDocW to convert it to a Palm-readable file. I use PalmReader, which is also free, as my Palm e-book reader. Try it out, Palm owners!

Time for a bowl of ice cream. See you tomorrow.

Bird lady

Here's another in my always-popular Paris Statue series. Not content with having her own wings, this lady feels the need to hang around with other birds. Notice the clouds. That's pretty much how it looked the whole time we were there. Too gray.

It looks like our house buyers are backing out of the deal. That didn't last long. We'll know for sure tomorrow morning, but I'm not counting on it. Besides, if they can't stand a little bit of negotiation, I certainly don't want to deal with them on inspections. Best to let these people walk on by. Of course, this complicates the household goods move plan, but that's where we are. We absolutely need to decide tomorrow morning whether we're being packed up next Tuesday or not. That's way too late to change it anyway, but we just might have to do that.

I turned the reins over to the new scoutmaster this evening. I'm kind of sad to be leaving the position. I've accomplished some good things in my year, though, and I think he'll do a fine job. The highlight, of course, has been to work with Readers Number One and Two.

Speaking of scouting, Loyal Reader Number One's Eagle court of honor is on Friday. We learned today that either our congressman or his Loyal Assistant will be there. How nice of him.

My sister (not a Loyal Reader yet, but maybe I can turn that around) and her family (none of whom are Loyal Readers!) are arriving late tomorrow evening. We're really excited for their visit and looking forward to an enjoyable holiday weekend. If we don't have a deal tomorrow morning, we won't have to be getting ready for the packers the day they leave, so things will be even more relaxing. See, there's always a bright side to everything. Things are always darkest just before they go completely black. Or something like that.

Work is definitely ramping down. My replacements (three of them were required to take over my work) are starting to take responsibility for the missions, so I'm pretty much cleaning up a few things and getting ready to leave. They're taking me out to lunch on my last day, which will be nice. It was kind of supposed to be a surprise, but a few people sent me email notes about it. I'll just have to act surprised.

Sorry about no posts yesterday or Monday. It seems like there are always a million move-related things to do and it's hard to sit down and chronicle My Fascinating Life. Knowing that my many Loyal Readers are sitting at their keyboards waiting for MFL is what keeps me going.

See you tomorrow.

Raoul and Curly

This isn't an artistic picture by any stretch of the imagination, but I really love the store name on this lady's bag. Woob, woob, woob. The picture was taken up on the Eiffel tower. I'm well aware of the irrational French love of Jerry Lewis, which is reason enough to dislike them, but if they're Curly fans too, I might have to rethink my opinion.

Visited my friend Mike this evening. Reader Number One and I spent two and a half hours over there and had a delightful conversation. He's able to carry on a fascinating conversation on pretty much any topic. I'll really miss him when we're gone.

We went to stake conference this morning. It was conducted by video from church headquarters and was seen in various stakes in Pennsylvania and Michigan. In fact, some of my family members in Michigan were also in attendance. Small world. We heard President Monson, Elder Perry, Elder Bednar, and a very nice lady in the general Primary presidency whose name escapes me at the moment. All the talks were excellent and timely, as were last night's stake adult meeting talks. It was a good church weekend.

Only one more Sunday here. Yikes.

Moving preparations continue to go well, if at breakneck speed. It's definitely more than a full-time job just getting ready to move. I need to call utility companies tomorrow to arrange the shutoff of some things and transfer of others. Reader Number Four will take care of essentially everything else.

As usual, it's late already, so I need to get to bed. Only seven more days at work in Newtown!

Nice shorts, dude

Nice shorts, dude. This guy's from Paris, natch.

I'm back from France! I had intended to post every day this week - or at least as close to every day as possible - but my computer's wifi card wouldn't play nice with the hotel's system. Bummer. I guess I did end up posting every day possible after all.

Much more later, but I'm tired tonight. Watch for yet another Very Special Weekend Post.

Wheelbarrow

Here's an old-fashioned wheelbarrow, not too unlike the one we hope to sell at our garage sale (link warning - lots of sound!) on Saturday. Buy, buy buy!

I listened to a few moments of Reader Number Two's jazz band practice tonight. They were formed within the last few days and they'll have their one and only performance tomorrow night. It should be good, though. Too bad they can't stay together longer (another link warning - music clip).

The granite's in the kitchen! Reader Number Four wasn't too sure she was happy with it, but I think it will be just fine. Now this place will really sell. If not, we'll just keep covering things with granite until it does. I had to reinstall the garbage disposal and hook up the water supply and drain lines. Got it done and leak-free in about forty-five minutes or so.

I'm getting very tired of being in Newtown. I want to start my new job! Only three more weeks left, of which one will be spent in France. My last trip to Europe, hopefully. Not that I don't like it there, but I've been there quite often for the last few years and I can't stand the flight anymore. I'm ready to start working with laser beams.

It's late, as usual. Isn't it ever early? Anyway, time for bed.

Leper

Here's James Monroe - well, at least it's a statue of Monroe outside of his old house near Charlottesville, Virginia. Maybe it's time to clean the statue. I hope he looked better than this in life. It looks like he has leprosy.

No post yesterday. This getting ready to move stuff is really time-consuming. I'll keep trying to stay on schedule, though.

Loyal Reader Number One talked his mom into buying a dual-layer DVD burner at Staples yesterday. It was only thirty bucks, and it appears to be a really good one. It's an "internal" drive, but we're going to use it with my Mac, so we need to buy an enclosure soon - probably a firewire one. LRNO thinks he can find one for about twenty-five dollars, which will result in our having gotten this thing for a very attractive price. He hooked it up to my machine using his test cable, and the Mini recognized it right out of the box. He burned a DVD, which works perfectly, so we're in business! I've really regretted not getting a burner in my Mac ever since I got my video camera, so now the self-recrimination can end. Our long national nightmare is over.

We've been selling a bunch of stuff on eBay. Reader Number Two is our agent, for which service he gets to keep all the money, if any. So far, he's sold two books and made about fifty bucks. Not too shabby. We're also getting to be much better eBayers. We'll be selling the whole house full of stuff before long. In fact, Reader Number One has been posting model railroad stuff all evening. He'll probably make a few dollars.

The new countertops come tomorrow! Reader Number Four has wanted granite for quite a long time, and now she'll have it - for about three weeks. We will really need to get it in California.

It's way too late again, so I'm quitting. See you tomorrow.

Blockhouse

Here's an old blockhouse interior at Cape Canaveral. In fact, this blockhouse was used for some of the first launches. The sad part is that it looks very much like the stuff we were using in our blockhouse for years after I joined the Atlas program.

I really need to get out and take some new pictures. I really need to go somewhere interesting where there are pictures to be taken. What kind of attitude is that? Aren't there many beautiful and interesting things right here at home? Probably. We never appreciate what we have right now.

Two groups of potential buyers have come to see the house. One of them liked it but not enough to buy it. The other liked it very much but has a house to sell before they can offer. The search continues. Fortunately, both of their real estate agents liked the house very much, so we can hope they bring other people over soon.

The listing's up. Have a look.

The guys came on Saturday to fix the garage door springs. The cost was pretty high, but it was done quickly and well, so I'm not complaining. They guy was very pleasant too. Other competent and polite guys showed up today and put in the drain system we had ordered to correct a drainage problem beside the house. That price was reasonable and the quality of the work looks excellent. We'll see how it really is next time it rains hard. Now we're just waiting for the granite countertop installers on Thursday and all the scheduled (and unscheduled) work will be done.

We went to the neighborhood quarry for a tour during their open house on Saturday. We had house visitors, so we needed to get out, and we had been curious about this particular quarry, so it seemed like a good idea. It was a good idea - the place is interesting, the people were very anxious to answer our questions, and we got a free bagel and glass of juice. It's a pretty big quarry and will get much, much bigger before it's used up. They're good neighbors - you can't see the quarry at all from anywhere other than the air and they don't really make much noise - but I'm certainly not crazy about all the dump trucks on our local roads. The quarry began operation after our house was built, so it's pretty new. It was a farm before that. One interesting thing I learned is that they will sell rocks to anybody. I had just assumed they wouldn't sell less than a dump truck load, but I was wrong. Now if I only needed some rocks.

They found us a place to stay for our temporary housing in Sunnyvale. Actually, it's in Santa Clara, but that's close enough. It's about six miles from work and appears to be in a very nice apartment complex. We also got our flight reservations today. We're out of here in the morning of Saturday, June third. That's well under a month now.

Come to our garage sale next Saturday! We'll have lots of junk for you to buy. I just hope somebody takes some of it off our hands. Please.

It's after ten o'clock and time for me to go to bed. 'Night.

Leaning Andy

Here are Reader Number One and Your Humble and Obedient Servant at the Hopewell Furnace. That was really an excellent day and an interesting place. I think we can pretty safely say this picture wasn't taken by me. Sadly, I don't know who to credit. It's either Loyal Reader Number Two or Number Four.

I finally fixed the door on the bottom of the planter box in the back yard. After only one and a half years! It took about half an hour. It's funny how you get motivated by the desire for money. Come to think of it, though, that's the only reason I go to work too.

I also fixed the pond again. Both pumps had basically stopped pumping. I took some things apart, based on what I've discovered in the past, but finally found out the filters were both just really full. Apparently, the fish have been pooping at a record rate. Good work, fellas!

I also found Whitey again. He hadn't shown up at mealtime for a day or two, and we were getting worried. I noticed him when I was working on the filters, and he popped up again when I fed the fellas this evening. Had quite an appetite too. I'm really going to miss the fellas when we're gone.

Reader Number Two and I went over to my friend Mike's house to help him take the snowplow off his tractor and get the bucket back on. He's a lot of fun to visit because he owns literally everything, most of which he bought on eBay. He showed us his new military water-supply bags today. They hold a hundred gallons each but fold down to about the size of a small pillow when empty - perfect for food storage. He's in a little bit of trouble health-wise. We're hoping and praying for him.

We have a house showing tomorrow morning! It's really good to get the first one out of the way - it makes it feel like we're making progress. Of course, one of our garage door springs broke this evening, just in time for the first showing. We have a serviceman coming tomorrow in the early afternoon. I guess we'll have to leave a note for the suckers guests telling them not to open the garage door. Reader Number Four is seriously worried about what else is going to break before we can get this place sold. "Pretty much everything" is my guess.

We're planning to take a quarry tour tomorrow during the showing. Our local quarry is having an open house and we need someplace to go. Besides, we've always been curious as to what exactly is going on in there.

Time for bed - I missed out on ice cream tonight. See you on Monday.

Gate house

Okay, this is kind of a formulaic picture, but I like it. Hopefully, you do too.

There's a price to be paid for not posting for a couple of days, on top of missing a few days last week. I fear my loyal readers are starting to abandon me for other blogs. We cannot allow this to happen. This calls for a dramatic increase in quality.

Maybe I can think of something besides that. There must be some other way.

Nobody bought the house yet. I guess we need to give it at least a few days. It's not even on realtor.com yet. As soon as it hits there, you can depend on finding a link here.

Took Reader Number Two to a barbershop chorus performance this evening. They did a very nice job and I was glad to get to go. Reader Number One went to his dance class and Reader Number Four went to her book group. I'm the only one who had nothing to do tonight. Well, there's also Belle, but I'm not sure she counts, being a non-human and all.

We had our Relocation Orientation Session this morning with Matt, our Relocation Consultant. It went fine, and I was delighted to learn that the company will pay to ship our two cars and for us to drive the truck with the trailer. They won't cover meals and lodging while we're on the road because we're flying out there in June and coming back for the truck and trailer in August, but the mileage is the important thing, believe me. I calculated today that we'll spend about $1000 on gas alone, assuming we take the most direct route, which we don't intend to do. In fact, we hope to be able to follow through with our family camping trip to Ohio in August as part of the trip. Fortunately, the company will pay over $1600 for the mileage (45.5 cents/mile for the truck and 13.5 cents/mile for the trailer). That ought to about cover the gas.

It's only 10:00 and I'm already exhausted, so I'm off to bed. I need to chase the boys there too. See you tomorrow.

Fire hydrant

I'm pretty sure this picture has never graced these pages before. It's Reader Number One working on his Eagle project, for which the court of honor is scheduled on the twenty-sixth of this month. Congratulations, Number One!

No posts yesterday or the day before, and barely time for one tonight. We just got home from the opera - well, from a dress rehearsal for the opera. It was very well done and the director didn't have to stop the action at any point. There were a lot of school kids in the audience, so it was maybe a little noisier than the average opera, but we really enjoyed it. And the tickets were free. Rode the train down there, which was also enjoyable.

Our house went on the market today. We're priced surprisingly high, but the real estate agent is pretty sure we'll get our price or very close to it. We certainly need it. Maybe we can afford a shack in California, rather than the hovel I was expecting.

It's way late, so I'm off to bed. Good night.