Quite possibly this is the funniest thing you'll see this holiday season - at least if you're a geek like me.
Also, check this watercolor out - that's my lake and the rower could as well be me. I was able to find a phone number for someone who has the name of that artist; I'm thinking of calling him to see if he's done any others like it.
Today quite a few of the things that could go wrong did, though at least the first one to do so redeemed itself.
At ten 'til five, I got into my cold car (the garage door still being broken) and drove to the little airport a quarter of a mile away to meet my flight instructor. Five AM, no CFI. Five after, no CFI. At ten after I left a note and went home - I'd have waited longer but a convertible that has been sitting outside overnight is not the warmest of vehicles when temperatures are in the low 30s. At home I took off my jackets (fleece and shell), hung them off and had one shoe off and was considering whether to erg, work, or do some of the studying for the IFR I'd been neglecting, when the phone rang. Of course it was my instructor, who has just moved and who had seriously underestimated how long her drive to the airport would take. Back again to the airport, and we did have just enough time to get a good lesson in. ("Good" being a relative term. I don't like doing stalls, let alone doing them under the hood.)
Next it was home to wait for the garage-door repairman and to try to install the software and certificate onto my new laptop that will let me work from home in future. The repairman won that one; it was fifteen minutes after he'd finished that we (I and the person from the "Help" Desk) finally got the software in and almost working - that is, it seemed to be working and I got no other error messages but apparently the remote server was down so I couldn't actually log in. Then I walked over to tell my next-door neighbor his sprinkler-system pump was squealing. (He'd heard it but had thought it was a car alarm; I was afraid it might be his burglar alarm and was pondering whether to call the police if he hadn't been home.) Then it turned out the repairman didn't win after all, because as I was trying to leave for work the garage door wouldn't close all the way. By then, of course, the repairer was long gone, so I called his company, they had him call me back, and we arranged for me to leave the side door open so he could get in to fix it without me there.
The laptop had shown one odd behavior at home: when booting up the screen would go blank as if it were trying to use a projector or other monitor instead and I'd have to hit F8 to get the display back. This turned out to be foreshadowing. When I got to the office I found the silly thing had decided it likes its independence; now it goes blank while booting up in the docking station and will not show any display after the first Windoze splash screen, though it works well enough when not docked. I've called IT about it and after trying afew things they promised to send out one of their local people to address the problem. That was, oh five hours ago now. This laptop screen is tiny. There's a reason I used quotes when mentioning the "Help" Desk in the last paragraph. Eyestrain R Me today. But apparently the garage door is now working.
Posted by dichroic at December 1, 2004 02:52 PMI never imagined your lake to have so much man-made stuff in and around it. In my mind's eye I saw that lake Forrest Gump runs past on his 2 year run. The lake that reflected the mountain and sky. Thanks for all your recent kindness. You're a good friend. ~LA
Posted by: LA at December 2, 2004 06:09 AMI loved the cartoon! Thank you for the link :-)
Posted by: Maria at December 2, 2004 07:35 AM