Wednesday - Sad news in the morning,
my sister emailed to say that my aunt Idele had passed away, at age 97.
She had fallen last week and broke some bones, and died in her sleep in
the rest home yesterday. Her husband Jim passed away just last year. A
nice lady, may she rest in peace.
Probably no updates here until I get back from Ventura, sometime next week.
Tuesday
24 January 2012
Tuesday
- Not a lot to say. Mostly just doing some chores around the house. Watching Lie to Me via NetFlix in the evening.
Book #8 was Tongues of Serpents: Temeraire #6, by Naomi Novik. Lawrence and Temeraire are exiled, transported actually, to New South Wales (Australia). They run into various problems involving the Rum Rebellion
mutiny (against Governor Bligh) and undertake a transcontinental
crossing of Australia and have more encounters with the Chinese Empire.
Dragons are named by their partner, and the then naval
captain Lawrence, surprised to be chosen by a newly hatched dragon on
his deck, had impulsively named him after the most beautiful thing he
knows, the HMS Temeraire, a 98 gun ship of the line, then in British service.
Dragons are born literate, speaking the tongue of those they hear
through their shell. Temeraire is unusual in that he had three
languages at birth: Chinese from his origin in China, French as
spoken on the ship transporting him to France, and English spoken on
the ship that captured him. And, it turns out, he has a particular
knack for languages (and math) and learns a number of other languages
during his travels.
Monday
23
January 2012
Monday
- Rain. Which we desperately need here in SoCal. No complaints! Except
from Riley, who considers wet lawns a dereliction of duty on my part.
Talked to the boss, looks like work later this week and into the weekend. Yay!
Another Republican debate. It's too bad there aren't any Democratic
debates this year, it'd be fun to compare and contrast. Maybe there are
and I just haven't heard about them? I only watched about the first ten
minutes of this one, long enough to watch Newt lay into the "moderator"
and get a standing ovation, then I had other things to do.
Well, not really. But there isn't a lot to take away from these debates. Instead I watched "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World"
on DVD instead. Much more fun! I kind of had to crank the brightness
and volume controls up, maybe it's the DVD - I wish I had a Blu-ray
disk to try out.
Lunch with friends, T and her daughter E. T's
mother passed away a couple of weeks ago - stage 4 lung cancer that was
discovered on a few months ago. They were both there when Y passed away in her sleep. A very nice lady, sometimes Y would accompany T on her visits to my house and she would leave a little origami souvenir.
Rest in Peace.
Sunday
22
January 2012
Sunday
- The Giants beat the 49er's in Candlestick, in overtime, on a fumble.
It was a good game, two very evenly matched teams, and could have gone
either way. A second year man had the ball stripped, with the
Giants in field goal range. Well, so it goes. It looked good on the new
TV, broadcast by Fox in 720p locally. Patriots versus Giants should be a good Superbowl match up.
I'm enjoying NetFlix on the new TV as well. The app isn't quite as good
as the Roku box, but good enough.
I have to keep reminding myself that I don't need to sit right next to
the TV - I can see it just fine from across the room now.
A bit of rain in the morning, but then mostly gray and cloudy with
intermittent patches of blue.
I don't have a laptop drive that I can put in the old Inspiron 2500 -
none laying about the house and apparently it's picky about drives anyway - but maybe I'll just remaster a CD
(customized for video and ethernet options) to boot from. It won't boot from USB, and there is no option for that
in the BIOS.
Book #7 was Victory of Eagles, Temeraire #5.
Why eagles in a series of novels centered around dragons? Because
Napoleon has successfully invaded England and his troops carry "Eagles"
standards before them. Lawrence and Temeraire are imprisoned by the
British for turning over the cure to the dragon plague to the French,
but are given parole to fight Napoleon from the British bases in
Scotland.
Picture of
the Week Photo Notes: Raptor with fish at Quarry Lakes Park.
