One of the highlights of my Labor Day was getting together with the Jaycees to help out at Gaithersburg’s Labor Day Parade.
We had our usual problem where the city’s organizers’ eyes were larger than their streets: The balloon traveled most of the parade route within a few inches of the street in order to avoid getting tangled in the numerous low-hanging utility wires. (Still, this was better than two years ago when we were guiding an airplane balloon with such a wide wingspan that people on both sidewalks had to duck.)
All in all, the hassle was pretty minimal. It was a fun event as usual.
A bit more “interesting” (mostly in the “entertaining” sense) was the afternoon’s driving lesson.
Kay’s leaving the country in a few weeks to take a job in Italy. She’s taking her car with her, but she’s already been told that she’ll have to do some driving in rental cars (if nothing else, while she waits for her own car to arrive). There are however two small problems. Minor things really, hardly worth mentioning:
Evidently, most rental cars in Italy have manual transmissions.
Kay has only ever learned how to drive with an automatic.
After remembering that my car has a manual transmission, Kay asked if I’d mind teaching her. So because I’m such a great guy, I ended up spending about 90 minutes with Kay this afternoon, driving around a mostly empty complex of parking lots with plenty of hills to practice starting on.
It’s only the second time I’ve taught someone how to drive with a manual transmission and it brought back a lot of memories from back in 1987 when I first learned. I had a rough time learning how to start on hills too. (Kay was no doubt hating me the first time I made her stop halfway up.)
Because it’s a hybrid, my car’s engine is quieter than most. So between wanting to make sure Kay could hear the engine and just generally wanting to avoid the distraction, I’d turned off the radio before she got behind the wheel. After dropping her off (I made her drive) I switched it back on.
I burned out on pop music about 12 years ago. These days my preferred format is country and when I switched the radio back on, I started laughing.
The first song to come on was by Alan Jackson. He was singing Drive.
Something like 99% of the time (and possibly even more often) when someone forwards an email that was forwarded to them as part of a long chain of forwards, my reaction is one of annoyance. Even if it isn’t a chain letter, it tends to be something that 100 other people have also forwarded.
But still, there is that very small but non-zero number of times when the stuff being forwarded is actually good for a grin. I’ll probably be sick of this one too in a week or so, but for now, here’s one Mom passed along.
You might remember when this accident happened 8 years ago this March.
This Southwest Airlines flight from Vegas overshot the runway at Burbank
The plane smashed past the airport fence, careened across the street and ended up with a collapsed landing gear, right next to a gas station.
But that’s not the amazing part!!!
At the end of the first day of the floor installation, my bed was scattered across three rooms. I unrolled a foam pad from camping, laid some sheets across it, and that was my bed (and as expected, I slept quite well).
On the one hand, no camping experience is complete without a campfire, but on the other hand, I’m not quite dumb enough to build a fire in the living room. (Besides, isn’t that what the kitchen is for? I’ve certainly had enough smoke come out of there!)
I don’t know if anyone realized it at the time, but the report on Day 1 was written that evening. And not from a coffee shop either. (I don’t much care for coffee and although they do have other drink options, I really didn’t feel a need to drive somewhere at 10:30 PM just to post an update.)
When I moved everything to the basement, I very deliberately left my wireless router set up and connected. My plan for that entire period (and it ended up stretching over several weeks) was to use my notebook for everything.
My experience has been that the notebook is a very capable computer for a number of tasks, most particularly email, word-processing, and most online activities, but typing with the keyboard so close to the monitor for prolonged periods tends to cause a stiff neck. To solve that, I have an adapter that lets me plug a regular keyboard and mouse into the notebook through its USB port. Just elevate the computer a bit, and it’s a bit more comfortable than it might be otherwise.
So that evening, I stacked up some of the woods scraps that were laying around and used the computer as a replacement for a campfire. The only thing missing was a video clip of a fire, but there are plenty of those available on You Tube.
Related: Day 1 Photos
Day 2 Photos (Coming Soon)
Most of the photos sent to me for use on Shore Leave’s web site are scanned at a high enough resolution that they fill up the screen. But every so often a photo comes in scanned at such a high-resolution that the only thing that fits on the screen is the eyes.
Several people tried to guess who last year’s set of eyes belonged to (not just the comments, there were a few emails too).
So here’s this year’s batch:
So, can you figure out who they are? Last year’s eyes were:
It’s taken a while, but at long last, here’s a few photos of the floors being installed.
After Day One of the Installation, the upstairs hallway, the front bedrooms, and half of the master bedroom had floors. Here’s the sight that greeted me in the living room. Power tools, nails and wood scraps were scattered everywhere.
Here’s the reverse perspective from the dining room.
All of the upstairs carpets had already been removed, ditto for the stairs. But as you start to go up, the flooring in the upstairs hallway becomes visible. I’m probably biased, but I think it looks considerably nicer than the carpets. (The best comment on this photo comes from Mike whose first reaction was, “Nice airhose.”)
The two front bedrooms had their floors entirely installed on Day 1, all that remained was some molding along the baseboards and the closets. (All of the closets were put off until Day 2.) It’s a trick of the lighting that makes these two rooms appear to be different color with different flooring material. Both rooms were painted a week before the installation started and the floors are red oak (though there is an occasional piece of white oak mixed in).
The flooring in the master bedroom looked great too…
…but it wasn’t quite ready for me to put a bed in there. (To be continued!)
The floor installation started on May 30. During the last several days before that, I became a madman moving everything that wasn’t nailed down into the basement. As a result, the night before the installation started, the place was pretty darn empty.
Here’s a few photos to follow up on the progress report from a few weeks back.
As planned, the bed was the only piece of furniture left.
The only other thing left in the entire upstairs was a couple days worth of clothes.
The first floor was equally empty.
And here’s some updates on the basement.
Wylie’s turned out to be rather fond of my bedroom’s closet doors. Sooner or later though, I’m going to put them back in their standard vertical configuration.
Hopefully he’ll be OK with going back to his usual bed.
Furniture continues to migrate from upstairs to down. At this point only the TV and one piece of the sofa are left in the living room. Aside from that and a card table full of plants, Terry pretty much has the ground floor to herself.
Compare the basement to a few days ago; it’s definitely filling up.
I’m no longer certain everything’s going to fit into the finished portion of the basement. So I’ve started getting a little “creative” about finding places to put things.
