Friday
- Pouring rain, all day. No working on the sprinklers...
Fridays repairs, another left to do.
How I heat the cat food in the morning:
Thursday 12 April2012
Thursday
- The tree service showed up and took out the tree that was wrecking my
block wall on the west side. I hate to see a nice tree go down, but it
did a lot of damage before it went. I also asked them to grind down a
stump near the house. They did, but they also went through two
irrigation lines. I sort of expected it. One was pressurized, as it was
the feed to the rear manifold. The other wasn't, it was just a
sprinkler line.
It took me most of the day to repair the pressurized line. Mostly
because the old tree had grown in and around it, so I actually had to
take a chisel and chip away enough wood to fit some elbows and new line
in. I'll do the other tomorrow, or whenever it stops raining. The
pressurized line was Schedule 40, but the other line is nasty old
thin-walled Schedule 200 which breaks if you look at it hard.
Wednesday 11 April 2012
Wednesday - Working away on this and that. My brain seems to be stuck in 1st gear this week :-(
Book #42 was A Path to Coldness of Heart, by Glen Cook. This is the most recent in his Dread Empire series. It is not, despite the Amazon review, the conclusion.
My brother Bob pointed out that yesterday, April 10, was the 49th anniversary of the loss of the USS Thresher. There has been a lot of hoo-haw about the Titanic, but I don't think anyone mentioned SSN-593 or the 129 souls aboard.
Tuesday
10 April 2012
Tuesday
- A rather surprising post on Slashdot the other day - apparently Vista is reaching it's official end-of-support. Huh. I think of it as "the new OS" since it is what my (relatively) new laptop uses, but of course machines with Win7 have been shipping for years, and I guess Win8 is in beta already. I just retired my last Win2k box in the last few months, and my XP
laptop rarely gets any use (I keep it for a few programs that I don't
want to re-purchase). Actually my office is full of old PC's that
really should just go to the toxic waste drop off. I'd save a lot of
room.
A big storm is predicted to blow through, so no work in the channels this week.
It is still nice here, though, and I took my usual walk.
On my way home I heard the screech of tires and the "thummpfff" of a
collision. An SUV heading north had clipped a mini-van turning left in
front of him. You could hear his anti-skip at work, so "screech" isn't
quite the correct word for it. And the actual collision sound itself is
muffled these days - the crush and crumple zones at work I suppose.
Occupants of both were out and walking about, and when several fire
department vehicles showed up - rather late - the FD left quickly and
without picking anyone up. I took a picture and emailed it to the 18
year old - a caution for him - the other guy is your worst enemy out
there!
The grey SUV was moving towards the left of frame, and came to a halt after spinning about 140 degrees or so.
Monday 9
April 2012
Monday
- Back in Lancaster. Mowed the lawns.
While we were gone from Lancaster, the only evenings I
was gone, it froze overnight. It damaged the newly planted tomatoes,
though some may survive. Mainly those exposed to the wind, on the south
side. Those sheltered by the house, on the east side, were fine. But
the stalks of the damaged items were still green, and there are still some leaves that are
undamaged on most of the plants, so they have a chance. It's been mild
during the day, hazy sun and in the 60F range, so maybe they will come
back. My friend S spent a lot of time going
through catalogs and reviewing the different types online, and then growing
them from seeds in what she said should have been the perfect potting soil. Fingers
crossed.
Sunday 8
April 2012
Sunday
- Down in San Diego, returning in the afternoon. We let the boy drive
on the Hwy-138, since traffic wasn't too bad. Still, he got to
experience people riding on his bumper and crazed family vans passing in a no passing
zone, over the rumble strip, against traffic. The biggest menace out
there, we are trying to impress on him, is the other driver.
My mother passed away in 1998, April 10th, which was Good Friday that
year. I had left Lancaster on Thursday and planned to be there, but on
my way, just a few miles up the road - not even to Rosamond - a spark
plug blew out of the head, stripping the threads in the aluminum block.
So I made an appointment for repairs at Scott's, and early on Friday
morning as I prepared to take it over my sister called to say Mom had
passed away in her sleep. We were all in shock. Mom's health wasn't
good, she'd had a series of small strokes and was in a wheelchair, but
this was out of the blue.
Picture of
the Week Photo Notes: The Golden Hind
replica, Vallejo, Ca., late 1980's?
I went with my father, and we were both surprised at how small
the ship was, even the captain's quarters. Somewhere there is a
picture of me in front of her, it was on my father's wall for years.
