Does the immigration department realize how good they have it?

Finished up the "The Draco Tavern" by Larry Niven. 27 short stories about life with alien tourists from around the galaxy visiting earth. Beings from faraway places coming to experience life on earth. Niven has created beings of many variations from slugs to insectish, carnivorous hunters who only eat fresh kills... typical day at the airport. Some of these stories must have been the inspiration for "Men in Black" and the bar scene in "Star Wars". The stories were written over a period of years and published in various magazines. I got to thinking after going through the first few stories that these would have made a terrific blog. One of these every few days or so. There is a blog I don't visit enough, quite humorous actually, written as Captain Picard of the Starship Enterprise: Captain Picard's Journal. The writer takes shall I say, takes a few liberties with the character development many of us are familiar with. Keep an eye out for Ensign Britney... darn, you guessed that one! Be sure to immediately scroll to the bottom to pick up the thread in some sort of order - good luck with that.

$60 per hour to answer survey questions

Unfortunately it took five minutes so I only made $5. Earlier in the week I had stopped for gas on my way to work when from the adjoining store a guy with a clipboard approached me and asked if I could spare a few minutes to take a survey after which he'd give me five dollars. I wasn't in a big hurry so I agreed. Five bucks more than covers a couple of afternoon coffees this week. The survey overall pertained to my perceptions of the oil company that provides the gas I was buying. Other than the general basic age, zip code type things the questions went into the type of news sources I utilized and what I thought of the oil company, their services and whether I thought well of what they do for improving the environment. Heck, they're an giant oil company - they do what they do and we buy the product. So I went along with it, kind of enjoyed the attention answering the questions then went abouts my business.

Another spring break comes and goes

Ian headed back to school today with a full schedule ahead of him with classwork, woodsman and rugby practices and even some EMT duty mixed in. As usual it's been a great time getting caught up with his recent activities and it will be several days readjusting to his absence. He's back briefly on Easter weekend.

Orbiting overhead

So there we were on the backyard deck, Carol, Ian and I, Patches and E'owyn too though it was only the people staring at the northern sky as we watched the International Space Station (with the shuttle Discovery docked) passing by last evening. Granted the view was that of a bright star moving right along. It was a three minute sighting as dusk was on us. Still hasn't gotten old. This was the first time Ian had watched it and though he indicated it didn't seem that it should be a big deal he thought it was pretty cool to watch. Tonight at almost 8pm will be another sighting in generally the same location and time duration, 3 minutes, not quite as high, 17 degrees - last night was 36 degrees which is enough to till your head back a bit.

Photo from NASA: This scene gives evidence that the "work crews" have arrived at the International Space Station to continue the "home improvement" project. A Soyuz vehicle used to transport the station crewmembers is in the foreground, with the Space Shuttle Discovery visible just beneath it. Ten people are busy on the station, and two of them are preparing to exit the shirt sleeve environment to go outside for a March 19 spacewalk, on which the other crewmembers will be pitching in their support and technical assistance. (18 March 2009)

Stuffed, again

Ian, Carol and I ate at the Maine Bean tonight - I had a "Taste of Italy" Pannini - Italian Salami, Proscuitto, Fresh Mozzarella and Provolone Cheese, Roasted Red Peppers, Marinated Mushrooms with Pesto Mayonnaise on Sourdough Bread. I was stuffed to say the least. It's one of those sandwiches that when you see it you know that half will do the trick but rather than deal with packaging the remaining half you eat the other half and damn the consequences. I should have taken a picture of it though you'd probably want to make a run to their location and get one yourself. We never learn.

Dad's Birthday

It's my Dad's birthday, I think he'd be 87 if he was alive today. I was a terrible helper when I was a kid. Dad would occasionally do some side plumbing jobs on Saturday mornings and take me along to "help". All I wanted to do on Saturday mornings was watch cartoons. My task on these jobs usually consisted of sanding and wire brushing copper pipe and fittings to prepare them for soldering as we were sequestered in someone's strange basement. Then I get to tamp the yokum into sewer pipe connection after which Dad would pore in hot melted lead to seal it. I sometimes wonder if being around that lead was a problem knowing what we know now?!? Looking back it was good for me to go along, not that I ever wanted to be a plumber but once I was out on my own I had something to draw on when a home repair type thing came along.

Still think about you Dad!

The photo is cropped from a family portrait I think may have been taken in 1959.

Down in the den

Carol and I have been gearing up for a couple of weeks now to rearrange our den and this was the weekend to do it. There was a lot of junk to box up and trash to be tossed just to get started. The kind of stuff that starts in small piles and over a long period of time collects to the point of smothering you. To clean that up was reason alone but the new arrangement in itself opens the room up nicely and with a wicker rocker in one corner it's now much cozier. Still a lot of stuff to sort out but the space to work helps to clear the mind to do the job.

Before: we've cleaned out the stuff from the desk units and are ready to rearrange things.

After: feels a lot roomer this way. Carol's desk is on the left.

Comfy rocker in the corner.

keeping up with the weekend

As I mentioned in the previous blog post Carol and I attended a play Thursday night. "City of Angels" at the Lyric Music Theater in South Portland. It was a benefit performance for the Cumberland/North Yarmouth Lions Club. Ian and I bought the tickets for Carol's birthday in January and I got to go with her. The theater itself was a small venue and the place was only half filled though that didn't make any difference to us, we were at a play, we're going to enjoy it and that we did.

'The musical weaves together two plots, the "real" world of a writer trying to turn his book into a screen play,and the "reel" world of the fictional film. The setting is Hollywood, late 1940s, with the two story plots occurring simultaneously: musical comedy and a detective story. City of Angels won six Tony Awards, including best musical, Best Book and Best Score, and was nominated in five other categories.' Bruce M. Merrill, Theater President.

It took a little getting use to, bouncing from one reality to the other but for me it hit home near the end of the first act when the line of realities crossed. This is only the second theater production play I've been to and given the upcoming circumstances of the Carol's early morning travel departure I'm glad we went.

After dropping off the the sisters at the airport I was at the office by 4:45am in somewhat of a zombie state as I had only 2 hours of sleep. Left to get breakfast at Marcy's, floated through the rest of the morning on large quantities of coffee and left for home at 2pm. The day before my new laptop computer arrived so I removed that from the box and began the process of setting that up until I decide it was nap time. Whew, that was a pick me up. Afterwards I loaded up the dogs in the truck and I took care of a few errands. Later I tried to watch the Netflix movie and dozed off, woke up to a call from Carol in the hotel she and her sisters were staying in. Heard how things were going (good) then tried to finish the movie, that didn't work out so I went to bed, finished it Saturday evening. Wasn't very good, a Russian SciFi-ish fantasy Called the Night Watch. Won some awards though I'm not sure why. It did have some good stuff, gruesome at times. When I'm home alone for the weekend I sometimes pick movies that are a little out of the realm Carol and I will watch together.

I ended up spending a lot time setting up the computer, mostly trying to get it to network with Carol's laptop. My new one is a Dell 1525, 2 G Hz Intel processor, 3 GB Ram, and a 320 GB hard drive. Runs on Windows Vista. So far I think it's a very nice machine. I named it Cormac after a character in some of Neal Asher's books. I thought about naming it after one of the AIs in Asher's stories but a laptop isn't self aware so I went with a favorite human character instead.

Preparing this blog on Cormac.

I did manage to get out of the house and did a three mile walk each day. Today Carol sent me a cellphone photo of where they were, one of her and Lois' favorite stores, IKEA.

This is the photo I received from Carol while I was walking.

Texas bound county girls

Packed, fabulous and dangerous, (L-R) Elaine, Carol and Lois

I dropped off Carol, her sisters Elaine and Lois at the airport yesterday, at 4:25am. They left for Dallas to attend their niece Lena's wedding shower (their brother Greg and Bev's daughter). This was a surprise visit as Greg's family had no idea what they were up to. The three of them went to great lengths to pack only enough to fit in carry-ons including the two volume scrapbooked family recipe cookbooks they had been working on over the last view months a shower gift for Lena and her fiancee Jim. The flights with a stop over in Detroit were on schedule if not sooner. It was a long day and more so for Carol as the two of us attended a play in South Portland the evening before after which Carol got 3 hours sleep before getting up at 2:45am and I had two hours as I had some website work to do before going to bed. I think we both caught up on our sleep last night in spite of the distance between us.

Cookbook front cover

* "county girls" is specific to being from Aroostook County, Maine.

Wouldn't a little global warming be nice

Another week, another snowstorm. The most recent on was only half what the last one left us, just 12 inches this time. That replaces the melt off since it's predecessor, a spell of mind temperatures and some rain. At least that washed away the ice dams on the northside eves. Unfortunately the bad weather postponed to today the funeral of my aunt and godmother and I was unable to attend due to workload commitments. Tonight the temps are suppose to drop to around 5 degrees (F) - keep that extra blanket handy.