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Lancaster
Weather
Saturday 30
November 2002
Saturday - wasn't a particularly busy day. In fact,
I'm not sure what I did, really. We got up late, and just kind of sat
around. My brother and I went down to the boat. More bailing.
Sigh. This is getting really old. It has a new pump, and a battery, and
shore power to keep the battery charged, but there was 10 inches of
water in the bilges and the battery was dead. Well, it's been submerged
a couple of times, maybe it's shot. Also they have messed around with
the shore power connection, it's now a new dock box, with metered power. Other than that, the boat looked OK.
We did talk to a guy who worked for a charter company locally. The boat
with a broken mast, that I posted a picture of a while back, was
one of theirs. Apparently while sailing in about 40 knots of wind an
inner shroud parted, and the mast folded up, fairly gently. Nobody was
hurt, and a new mast is on order.
Dinner was a great pot roast, cooked by my brothers' girl friend. Yum.
Dad says there hasn't been a pot roast cooked in this house since 1994.
Time flies. Then we all went out to see Harry Potter at the movies. It
was almost empty in the theatre, so we were able to park right in
front. It was a good movie, though perhaps not quite as good as the
first. I have read the book, and the secret bathroom entrance
makes a little more sense now - I could never quite visualize it.
Friday 29 November
2002
Friday - the Thanksgiving dinner last night was as my
sisters. Despite the distraction of a sick daughter and a number of
other things that I won't go into, she put on a very nice spread.
Turkey, dressing, pie ( yummm, pie...),
and some nice wine. Her daughter helped make the biscuits, and
they were yummy as well. Have I mentioned my biscuit cravings before?
My brother and his friend are staying with us in Martinez. We had some
nice shredded port sandwiches for dinner, as well as some cake, and
some fresh baked bread. Then we sat around, talked, watched some home
movies, napped (well, I did), and watch Jumanji on tv.
Thursday 28
November 2002
Thursday - yesterdays "bag of evil" was in fact
the bag around some fresh baked bagels that I had brought up from San
Diego. Late in the evening I heard a strange sound and went to
investigate. It was Phoebe, behind the couch with the shredded
remnants of the inner paper bag - and bagels. So, bah humbug on
him!
On another note, people have been telling me that this page is hard to
load, slow, pops up with errors. Looking at the HTML source, I see a LOT
of garbage. Scripts, missing bits, mystery stuff from one of the many
composers I have used. Apparently they don't all play nice with each
other. So, I spent a good hour removing junk with WORDPAD and nicely
formatting a clean copy again. Of course, the first time I used
Netscape Composer it put some stuff back, and eliminated a lot of the
whitespace, but it's mostly OK and seems to load reasonably well now...
Wednesday 27
November 2002
Wednesday - I didn't write much yesterday, as I was
tired and rather sad. What I didn't mention was that a friend had called
me, early in the morning, with news that her cat had been hit by a car.
She was very upset, and I did what I could to help, called around for a
veternarian, went with her, and tried to be a comfort when it was
decided that it was too badly injured to live, and had to be put to
sleep. It was a wretched experience for us both.
I then had a scare the next day. When I came home from work the next
day one of my cats, Phoebe, was missing. I looked all over the house, in
the stove, in the fridge, under beds, in the garage, and eventually
outside, asking neighbors if they'd seen him. No one had. I was
upstairs, getting the car keys to head out to the pound when I heard a
small sound. It was Phoebe, with part of a plastic bag around his neck.
He was all right, except for being terrified. Apparently he had got the
bag around his neck and ran terrified about the house until he realized
that if he sat very quiet and still it would not rustle and scare him.
My calling and even the sound
of me picking up his food dish was not enough to make him move
again until that bag was gone.
I policed the place, picking up a lot of bag bits, and other bags,
but there is more to be done.
Prior to the holiday I have been trying to clean up the house, and
to get ready for a visit north. One of the things I did was order a cat
feeder, to offload some of the chores my cat sitters go through. It
hasn't arrived yet, though I warned them to look for it, but when it
does is should be the mother of all cat feeders, a Pet Safe UM-100.
Tuesday 26 November
2002
Tuesday - assisted in two flights for the
AAW. Everything went very smooth and normal. I was noticing how much
more and better telementry we now get, compared to fifteen years ago -
real improvements everywhere.
Monday 25 November
2002
Monday - work. Went to a F18AAW crew
brief for the Tuesday flights. It is always impressive to see the amount
of care and professionalism that goes into a flight at Dryden. Tomorrow
I probably will observe in the SAF (Structural Analysis Facility) as
they continue to clear the plane's envelope. We have a new software
package, IADS, that I need to see in action and come up to speed on in
there.
Sunday 24 November
2002
Sunday - I was down at my friends, and
got off to a fairly slow start. Saturday night I stayed up late watching
"Spiderman" on my friends' new DVD player. I actually enjoyed it more
than in the theater for some reason. So it was late to bed and late to
rise. After a late breakfast of poached eggs on bagels I headed over to
Fry's and picked up some computer components. At first I couldn't find
the models and makes I had decided on, but persistence paid off and I
walked out with enough stuff to build a nice new Pentium 4 when I get a
couple of hours free. From San Diego back to Lancaster was about a 3 1/2
hour drive, with a stop for a fast food dinner.
Picture of the Week
Photo Notes: When down in
Hollywood a while back I took this photo of a mural, just off of
Hollywood's "Walk of Fame" on Hollywood Boulevard. I can recognize a few
of the people, Marilyn, the Duke, but most are a mystery to me.
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