Category: Diary (Page 27 of 38)

A perhaps frivolous addition to our back garden arrived today in the form of a small wooden bridge, in kitset form. Once we assembled it and tried it in different places, we settled on a position where it crosses the fake dry river bed on a diagonal. The cats have not seen it yet, I wonder if it will be like the sudden appearance of the monolith in 2001: Space Odyssey and make them more intelligent? More likely they’ll just sit on it and look cute.

I took the telescope out the front of the house this evening, because Jupiter and Mercury were brightly visible in the northwest just after sundown. I had no idea Mercury appeared that far from the sun. I thought I’d never actually seen Mercury before, but now I suspect I have and just didn’t realize it. Anyway, this was the first time I’d pointed the scope at it. I am pleased to announce that with the 9mm Plossl eyepiece, we could resolve Mercury’s disk – at least, the half that was lit up by the sun. Fabulous. (Check out http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/05/16/mercury.rising/index.html for more info on this).

The carpet people show up at 8:15am. We were expecting them at 10, so we run around in our pyjamas for a bit as they pull up the dead temporary carpet and lay the new, good stuff. They finish at around 1pm, but we have already called in to work to say that we’re taking the rest of the day off. We spent the afternoon moving furniture into the master bedroom and front guest room.

We sleep in a bed tonight, yay! It’s very comfortable.

Now that we have carpet in all rooms, we have rearranged the game room and living room to some resemblance of normality, and hung our pictures and stuff on the walls, and it is all looking very cosy. What a wonderful house!

We’ve also added some storage racks in the garage to hold boxes and stuff.

We ate at a microbrewry called Humperdink’s Brewery and Grill. Nice beer. Eric and I talked about baseball all evening.

When we got back to the hotel, Eric begged for another game of pool. Only thing is, we have to order drinks before they’ll give us the balls and cues. Eric orders a Margarita (he’s hooked). I order the day’s special, a “Kamikaze” in honor of the cat (not named after the cat, I *ordered* it in honor of the cat) and it turned out to basically be a margarita made with vodka instead of tequila. Very nishe.

I scratched 2 out of three games but thrashed him on the third.

The cats are much friendlier with each other since they formed a gang and started terrorizing the local fauna. Basically, the teamwork plays out like this: Karma finds the critter – in this case, a baby jack rabbit – and taunts it for 15 minutes, then when the crazed animal makes a run for it, Kami jumps on it and kills it. Then eats it. Then, they leave the head on our back doorstep.

We’re still sleeping on the floor. My sore knee is still a nuisance, aching and stiff maybe 50% of the time, and I have to be careful or I twist it funny and start the whole thing off again. Movement is definitely coming back though. I think the range of motion increases as the pain threshold point moves further away.

This afternoon we planted some landscape lighting in the back yard, which runs off a 12-volt cable running around the planters under the surface. The final result is very cool.

The carpet will be replaced in the front room and master bedroom next week, then maybe we’ll be able to sleep in a bed instead of on the floor…

I have no idea about the numerical significance, what I do know is the landscaping people came today and transformed our backyard. They managed to finish this in one day! I took a series of shots of the backyard as the hours went by, and it would be possible to create a stop-frame speeded up animation effect from the raw images, but I probably won’t go that far.

We’re letting the cats out tonight and they’re exploring, everything is good.

I got up at 6:00am and dressed, jumped in the car, and drove down Buffalo Drive to get to the DMV office before it opened at 8:00. Managed to get there at about 7:00, and I sat in the cold dawn reading the latest Keyboard magazine with a bunch of other people.

The security guard opened the doors at 7:30 saying, “Here’s an Easter holiday present for you” and everyone streamed in through the doors, heading every which way. I was the only one heading for the written test booth though. I handed my permanent resident card (my only handy form of personal identification) and social security card to the grizzled-looking attendant, grabbed a test form and question book and ploughed through the questions. It was harder than I hoped! I had to really concentrate, and I wished I’d spent more time with the Nevada drivers handbook.

After 10 minutes I went back to the front and handed in my form. The official ran it through the scanner and grunted, “you’ve passed with 86%” and handed me back the stamped form and my ID. (I needed 80% to pass.) 

I took the form and briskly walked over to the practical driving test booth to see if I could get on the standby list – it was still only 7:40 so there were 20 minutes to go before the booked tests started. 

After some witty repartee involving my having to repeat everything twice due to my accent (sigh), I did manage to get assigned a driving instructor guy, who made me take the vision test (you have to read the top row of letters that you see when you look into this binocular scope thing) and then walked with me to my car.

I aced the practical test, but I don’t think that was ever a question in my mind. (Yes, you _do_ have to demonstrate parallel parking, if you’re wondering!)

The only appropriate thing to say at this point, is WAAAHOOO!

*

Today our freezer arrived, and it is installed in the garage. Somehow there is room for it despite all the cardboard boxes.

We got off to a late start today due to playing telephone tag with our insurance representative at AAA. Moving to a new state means re-registering the car and getting new drivers licences (or in my case – getting an actual licence – period.) We had to get things done in the right order: insurance, registration, licence? or registration, insurance, licence? or what? It turns out that the right order is insurance, registration, then licenses. So we have to have our insurance sorted before turning up at the DMV. Hence the telephone tag thing.

We get to the DMV at about 3:30pm, and there’s a big line. We stand with our California licence plates, using them as a firm surface to write on as we fill out our application forms. The line moves forwards quite quickly, as each person is checked for appropriate documentation, then assigned a number, which is subsequently called out by one of 27 separate booths. 

When our turn comes, the nice lady inspector checks our credentials, and it turns out that we can do our car registration, and Lisa can get her driving license renewed, but they won’t give me a license without my having to take a written and practical driving test. I figured as much. She said, “you can run down the corridor and take the written test now, if you like”. I told Lisa I’d see her shortly, and dashed off to the test center, only to find that they close at 4:30 and it was now about 5:00! Argh! I run back and relate my discovery. “Well, you have to do the written test before you can make an appointment for a practical test”. So how soon could I do this? “They’re taking bookings for next Tuesday now, but if you turn up real early tomorrow and pass the written test, you might be able to put your name down for a standby test. Then if there is a no-show on an appointment, they could test you sometime tomorrow”. 

This sounds like the best plan. In the meantime, we wait and eventually our number gets called and we get issued with new plates and Lisa gets vision tested and issued with a new Nevada driving license.

I put shelves up in my office today. I went to Home Depot, bought some nice planks of pine and some brackets, sandpaper, etc, and after a little work, I have a couple of nice shelves in my office. Somewhere to put my bookshelf speakers, among other things.

We picked the cats up from the kennel today. Kami yelled all the way back home, Karma said nothing at all.

Kami is fine, Karma is a bit worse for wear – he has some scabs around his neck that I suspect are self inflicted, either from heat or boredom or both. Both cats have explored the house thoroughly, and Karma is now lying on the floor behind some boxes in my office. Kami is still exploring.