The Time Sink

Okay, someone remind me to tell you about my mom's birthday party... I'd blog it tonight, but but we're home late and I need to get to a couple of things dealt with since the kids go back to school tomorrow. No, that's not a big deal: they just had a day off so the teachers could study being teachers or some such, but Daniel managed to score a ski trip to Tahoe with some family friends and got in late (but didn't miss Grandma's party). ...and Brad had a nice couple of days with no older brother, but one heck of a long day helping Dad handle case lots on a major shopping run for the company.

...and since I'm up early to drive Brad to school and Shelley to her class on how to be a teacher (go figure), I need to pack it in. Oh, and yes, photo notes on those restaurant shots since there seems to be some interest in them...

Mom's birthday party... Ya' know, she's a low key kinda' lady with a couple of less low key kids and two much less low key kids-in-law; and by the time we get down to the third generation ... well ...sometimes they're the one's keeping things in line. It was just supposed to be a nice little dinner out at a Chinese place two of the grandkids worked at, one that we all liked. ...and no presents or cakes or dancers or any of that stuff. ...and we all made it in and wiped out more than our body count in serving plates, which says something for three ladies on diets, three kids on sports training regimens, two men way tired from the work day and one teen who had been in Tahoe skiing for two days (we blamed it all on him).

...but the capper was when we noticed this untouched homemade cake at the table behind us; they'd been done with dinner and hadn't even started on it. ...and of course we had these elaborate plans set up for distractions while Brad slid it over to our table <g>. ...but as they got up, one of our group exclaimed, "See, they have a cake!", and one of the ladies asked if we'd like it since they were late for a movie! ...and another of our party said, "Well, this is a birthday party and we have no cake; we'd love it!", and it was ours... How cool was that? I'm thinkin' "Luck o' the Irish" there, Mom!

...and the cake ladies? When they returned to the place to pick up their cake plate after the movie they found a very nice thank you note from our two families and a gift certificate to the restaurant taped to the bottom.

Photo notes for the week (and weekend). Yes, I do have a few more ice sculptures to put up; we're in something like the twentieth day of below freezing nights, and even though the bad sub freezes are gone the farmers are still hopeing for some cull crop.

...and on the butter and butter light shots? While I'll take the A-2 camera along to a place like Mimi's to try to capture the decor (the faux balcony last Summer) or the 'music wall' the other night (both treated with the Dreamy Filter), when we hit a highs end place I tend to only bring the belt camera, the Xt. That forces me to ply my craft at ambient light with no remote trigger or even a good way to steady the camera. Needs must, so the oil 'candle' lucite block was moved closer to the butter and I tried two shots. ...and I went for another pair when it moved back to its normal postion. I also have a decent shot of Brad's oyster shells resting on a bed of rock salt.

Things may be sparse here on this side of the domain for a day or two; in my 'spare' time I'm working with an AMD 64 box that started life as an HP Pavilion and is now running Ubuntu 64. Yeah, that'll perk up a Daynote ear or two. ...and yes, it's all the uphilledness expected, but that's what it's all about, -neh?

Oh, email is a bit wonky, by the way. I'm configuring Evolution (yeah, one more time just to see how it's working before I drop back to Thunderbird) and the usual twiddly bits need adjusting. ...and it's taking me a bit to remember all the things I need to do specific to Evolution (like it cannot use AT&T's Internet Mail Host to send and I have to feed everything through SBC [even though AT&T owns SBC now]).

Oh, bother. I can send mail out via SBC, but it doesn't show up at the domain address. ...but I cannot hit the imail at AT&T because Evolution won't let me define the wonky port AT&T wants (as I recall... Time to dig deeper in the memory banks).

One plan for the entire weekend: get Christmas put away! I do believe Shelley needs to unleash the pink tidal wave of Valetine's Day and all this green and red hanging about is causing some serious tweakiness!

Oh, and attend the local college hoops game tonight. That wasn't in the plan, but that plan changed late Friday when tickets fell from the sky. ...and we enjoy those games!

I think it was sometime mid-day on Friday when Shelley and I both were out on separate errands and decided it might as well be Spring. We're done with the ice; we haven't seen much rain, so we may as well take the sunshine as the clue it should be and start living like we're in CaliLand!

...and on that note Shelley stopped by a meat market and picked up a bag of wrapped animal flesh of several denominations and I headed home Friday to cook something on the grill. A little while later we had a nice dinner of blue cheese and Cajun pepper chicken along with some mashed potatoes. Yeah... (But it got cold darned quick one that sun started to set in earnest!)

Yesterday was warm enough for me to head across the street and prune up two rosebushes for the guy who can't do yard work any longer. After that was completed I finished getting Christmas out of the living room and then fired off the grill for some Spencer steaks. The wind came up while I was cooking those, making that a bit of an adventure; but everything turned out fine...

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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"

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