Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Recap: What's Up For This Year?

It’s been a good year so far, though some of what I thought might happen didn’t and, of course, other things did. Here’s what I thought would go on, and how those things turned out:

  • Jan - Phil Keaggy in Rockford, IL

    Missed it. Couldn’t get anyone else to go – was it the Winter weather?


  • Jan - Visit to Hope College in Holland, MI

    Didn’t go until March.


  • Feb - Annual sales meeting in San Diego, CA

    Got there. Fly in, stay a night, fly out. Pretty nice weather, though, and our training sessions went well. Had a nice dinner after our training was complete, at a restaurant directly out of the 1950’s, on the bay.


  • Mar - Church band to Heartside in Grand Rapids, MI

    Happy we could make this one. Daughter Amy had an internship at Heartside, and we were happy to bring (a smaller version of) the church band there for their store-front service.


  • Mar - SAP BW and Portals Conference in Las Vegas, NV

    Nancy went with me to this conference, the third year I’ve gone and the first she has. Conference was minimally exciting (I’m not planning on going again next year), but was able to spend time with Nancy and her cousin leroy and his wife Jerri. Our conference hotel was the Venetian – absolutely gorgeous, especially in the very expensive room we got due to arriving late on Sunday after all of the “standard” rooms were given out.


  • Apr - Visit Aunt Yolie in San Antonio, TX

    I didn’t go down to San Antonio this year, but Nancy and her sister Linda did. Glad they got to spend time with Aunt Yolanda and their cousin Harv. Nancy bought her dad a book about the San Antonio River Walk, as her parents really enjoy San Antonio, as well. When Nancy showed Aunt Yolanda a picture of her Aunt – Rosita Fernandez, “San Antonio's First Lady of Song” – Aunt Yolie pointed out that the little girl in the picture with Rosita was her!


  • May - Graduation at Hope College in Holland, MI

    Two down, two to go . . . what else can I say?


  • May - Open friends' cabin in Land O' Lakes, WI

    A beautiful weekend “Up North”. Take a look at this map link and you’ll see how far north in Wisconsin we were.


  • Jun - Church band to Pecatonica, IL

    Played at a Lutheran church out west of Rockford, IL, in our music director’s home town.


  • Jul - Family reunion in St, Louis, MO

    Cancelled!


  • Aug - Vacation in Land O' Lakes, WI

    We went in July, over the Independence Day holiday. What a great time! But by the end of the week it was hot, hot, hot! Ninety-some degrees in a climate where daily highs can only reach into the low 60’s at times (like our first vacation trip Up North several years ago).

Reprise: I Think It's Time To Hang Up The Wenches

My daughter has my 2002 Honda Civic now. She lives in Michigan, about 200 miles from home. She called recently to let me know that the brakes were making noise, and that she was worried about them. Eventually, we agreed that she would take the car to the mechanic her boyfriend’s parents use (and trust), and I’d talk to them after they’d completed an estimate of the work that needed to be done.

They called a couple of days later and told me that the car needed pads, rotors and calipers on the front and shoes and new drums on the rear. Total price: $700.

Now, I know I said that I thought it was time to put the wrenches away a while back (7 Jan 2007), but when I called the local auto parts store and found out that the total cost for parts was only $230 – and I’ve done all of the work that needed to be done on different Honda cars at some time or another – I decided to do it myself, inspired by the approximately $470 in savings.

Happily, there’s no real down-side to this story, except that the Chilton manual is wrong on how it instructs you to re-install the back brakes (it can’t be done on the 2002 Civic, at least). Oh, and I cursed myself out for being too stupid to figure out how to stretch the top spring across from one shoe to the other (I’m sure there’s a tool I don’t have that would have been useful).

I finished the second part of the job last night – the front brake repair – and I have to say that, after driving the car to work today with no ill effects detected (and the car stopping like . . . something that stops . . . well) I feel pretty good about getting the job done!

Quotations V3.01

Ran across this one in the March 2005 Smithsonian ["Where East Met (Wild) West"] about the excavation in Deadwood, South Dakota's old Chinatown, which dates from the 1870's.

"These people had names. They had faces. These people were alive."
- Rose Estep Fosha

Friday, July 13, 2007

Quotations V3.00

A new, and timely, quotation from French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, who participated in writing the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. At bottom . . .


"Luck is when preparation meets opportunity."
-- Drummer Neil Peart of Rush

"I don't have to write about the future. For most people, the present is enough like the future to be pretty scary."
-- Science Fiction Writer William Gibson

"Never forget, even if you win at the rat race of life, you are still a rat."
-- as quoted by Prof. Dianne Porfleet, Hope College

"There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do."
-- Cartoonist Bill Watterson

"Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don't have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace."
-- Writer E. B. White

"It is much easier to make war than peace."
-- French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Quotations V 2.00

A few quotes I find interesting. Will update this when I find a new quote worth saving . . . and that's today, already!

"Luck is when preparation meets opportunity."
-- Drummer Neil Peart of Rush


"I don't have to write about the future. For most people, the present is enough like the future to be pretty scary."
-- Science Fiction Writer William Gibson


"Never forget, even if you win at the rat race of life, you are still a rat."
-- as quoted by Prof. Dianne Porfleet, Hope College


"There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do."
-- Cartoonist Bill Watterson


"Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don't have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace."
-- Writer E. B. White

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Interesting Reading

I recently picked up a book called "Crime Novels - American Noir of the 1930s and 40s" from the Library of America (http://www.loa.org/) - a collection of 6 separate novels. Very interesting reading, especially because I'm generally a Science Fiction reader and don't read much other that data processing technical manuals.

What I find most interesting, though, is the description of the way people lived at that time. Switchboard operators for the apartment buildings. Most people taking taxi's from place to place, rather than driving their own cars. Lots of hard drinking (which my parents did when friends dropped by, much different from my three drinks per month). Overhead fans instead of air conditioning. In one novel, a dance marathon (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?).

I see the places they describe, in my minds eye, in black and white, though I realize that it's only television and movies coloring my inner vision. I also see my relatives in some of the situations - my folks when the scenes are placed in the city, my aunts and uncles when the scenes are West Texas or Southern California. It's funny, too, but I don't see myself in those scenes, though I've always thought that I'd like to have lived then.

The stories are also very inventive. There aren't any horrible scenes of violence (thank goodness, as that really turns me off); most of the stories turn on the interaction between characters and the situations they find themselves in. And there are a few really neat twists and turns in the stories - things I didn't see coming at all.

If you're not a reader of this type of novel - or if you are, but haven't read back into the novels written in the 30's and 40's - I'd suggest picking this book up and giving it a read.

Quotations

A few quotes I find interesting. Will update this when I find a new quote worth saving . . .

"Luck is when preparation meets opportunity."
-- Drummer Neil Peart of Rush

"I don't have to write about the future. For most people, the present is enough like the future to be pretty scary."
-- Science Fiction Writer William Gibson


"Never forget, even if you win at the rat race of life, you are still a rat."
-- as quoted by Prof. Dianne Porfleet, Hope College


"There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do."
-- Cartoonist Bill Watterson