Saturday - RIP, Neil Armstrong. A
friend mailed me the news. It's hard to believe, he was a hero of mine.
I don't have many, but there were tears in my eyes when I read the
news.
Godspeed Neil.
Friday 24 August
2012
Friday
- Book #72 was The Metal Monster,
by Abraham Merrit. This is ancient SF, written in, I'm guessing, the
1920's. It's an 'adventure' story, with very cliche stereotypes for the
characters. The monster - self assembling nanobots who can assemble to
enormous sizes - steals the show. They are the bad guy, but, really, I
was kind of rooting for them...
Book #73 was Seven Footprints to Satan,
again a free Kindle book by Abraham Merritt. And again, very cliche
characters, very dated writing, but the makings of a pretty good plot.
Yeah, a FOUND CD, haven't done any of these in a while.
Found CD - Primus:Pork Soda.
Thursday 23 August2012
Thursday
- Keeping busy, doing this and that...
Wednesday 22 August 2012
Wednesday - Not much to say. Hot again. Did some painting.
I was a bit worried about the cat, that he might be having trouble
going #1 or #2, but he seems OK. My guess is that he wasn't eating
enough while I was gone, and that had caused issues. A careful check of
the originally clean litter box at the end of the day, today, showed
some appropriate little 'treasures', so things are better. I'll try to
make him eat more soft/moist food. Gahh.
I spent time researching new running rigging for the boat. I am leaning towards the Samson XLS Extra
as the stuff to get, but man, it's expensive! If I want eyes spliced
in, whipping, and new hardware (captive shackles) from the supplier -
it's even more. I may just get the line, plain, and use a buntline
hitch on the shackles. That worked fine on the little Coronado 25 for
years and many people recommend it so that you can end-for-end your
line every year. Or I can try to splice it myself, at my leisure, and
use my existing shackles. There are YouTube videos out there on how to
do it.
Back in 2010, this week, I had mentioned Traveling With the Dead
as Book #59. I mentioned that there were no sequels, and that the
author was probably having trouble making a vampire - who is by nature
a serial killer that makes ordinary serial killers look like pikers -
sympathetic. Well, I just noticed that there are two more sequels
now: Blood Maidens andMagistrates of Hell. Hmm.
Tuesday 21 August 2012
Tuesday
- Went to the fair again, this time, sadly, we had to pay. On the other
hand it was only about 80F, a nice evening to walk about in.
My friend and her boy both had entries in the live judging, and he won
second place for his peanut brittle. He could only show up for a few
minutes as college started Monday and he had homework to do, already.
We also found that she'd received a
blue ribbon for her bread of last week.
Then we wandered around a bit, visiting the antique engines display and the photography and art halls.
We had some BBQ, at a place recommended by someone working at the State
Parks booth. My friend found it very tough, and went back to the BBQ to
complain. The manager was very defensive at first, but she "Dale Carnegie'd"
him, telling him, quite truthfully, that the non-tough stuff was good
and much better than at "Bubba's" down the way; but that 50% was,
essentially, inedible. She told him that she wasn't asking for her
money back, or anything like that, but thought he'd appreciate some
feedback. In the end he mellowed out, and actually forced some more
food on her gratis, a pork chop on a stick thing...
I was amused by the music selection at the small "free" bandstand. Here's the list:
Friday - Tribute to Chicago
Saturday - Tribute to Chicago
Sunday - Tribute to the Eagles
Monday - Tribute to Dave Matthews
Tuesday - Tribute to Credence Clearwater Revival
Wednesday - Tribute to the 80's
Thursday - Tribute to Aerosmith
Friday - Tribute to Journey
Saturday - Tribute to Motown
Sunday - Tribute to Bon Jovi
No country western music at the Alfalfa Festival? No Tribute to Waylon or Tribute to Garth? Seems wrong, somehow.
Monday 20 August 2012
Monday
- It was the first day of school for my friends kids, so I went with
them and watched as they assembled at the school. It's been years since
I spent any time at an elementary school. It looks like a nice school,
and they say it has a good scholastic ranking, and clearly the kids
were happy and excited to be there.
Afterwards we downloaded the pictures and videos I'd taken at the 50th party (5 or
6GB worth I think), then I had to hit the road. Since there was a lot
of construction on the Hwy-138 west of Phelan I decided to go through
Adelanto and back to Lancaster via the highway out near El Mirage dry
lake. This worked well enough, though it was slow. Things haven't
changed much out there in the ten years or so since I last drove it.
There is one homestead out there that I remembered as having the
cockpit from an airliner on it. That's still there, but there are now a
half dozen sailboats in the mid 20ft range there as well, mostly on
trailers. Odd.
Sunday
19
August 2012
Sunday
- I was pretty tired by the time I got back to my friends house on
Saturday night - fell asleep in my cloths, for the first time in years.
We went over to the parents place again, for a nice champagne brunch.
Delicious, with home-made omelets that were absolutely scrumptious!
We also took a brief excursion down to San Diego harbor, and gazed at a
truly amazing amount of boat traffic. It was a beautiful clear day,
with a nice 10 knot wind, and boats were everywhere! Very nice.
Picture of
the Week Photo Notes: San Diego Naval Base
from bridge.
