Weekend Update - April 1st
Weekend Update
The city park workers fixed the irrigation system. It now no longer waters my balcony although I think it still reaches my neighbor’s balcony.
On Friday, I noticed that there were temporary no parking signs up in front of the building. Parking is prohibited for the first part of the week. Naturally, there was no advance notice or explanation.
This really sucks because there is no parking on the other side of the street because of construction that is taking place at the bottom of the hill in the next city over. I will be parking one of my cars on the street a block away so Doug will have a place to park when he is here this week. Thankfully, there is no forecast of rain.
Traffic was abnormally bad when I left school on Friday night after my substitute class. It was slow and go for about four miles. I finally found out why traffic was so bad. The California Highway Patrol [CHiPs] officers and local police officers had coned off a lane of traffic and were busy searching a vehicle’s trunk.
The combination of the burning red flares on the roadway and the flashing roof lights from about a dozen police cars created a visual spectacle that everyone had to slow down and stare at. This added at least twenty minutes to my drive home.
I was on my way out to school on Saturday morning. Traffic was not bad nor was it great; it just was. I was passed by a lot of other vehicles and that is normal. I was passed by a recent model year Jaguar sedan. Being passed by the Jaguar was not unremarkable. What was remarkable was the, in my mind, incredibly poor taste used to select the colors for a custom paint scheme. The sides of the car were white and that was fine if you like white paint. The roof, trunk, and hood areas were all painted a light turquoise color.
That struck me as being just so wrong for so many reasons.
Jaguars are not supposed to be painted colors like light turquoise and white. They should be painted dark or conservative colors like black or British racing green.
It was foggy at the beach this morning. The fog finally burned off around 10:00 AM. This is rather late in the year for heavy fog at the beach.
I went out this afternoon to buy some sheets for the new bed. I didn’t think about the fact that an extra long twin bed size mattress would make it difficult to find sheets. I wandered around one store and then went to another; I found nothing at either one. I phoned my ex-wife and asked her where she bought sheets for Doug’s bed. She told me that they are usually on sale as a going off to college item since this size of mattress is common in dormitories.
Great.
I came home and fired up the online buying function. The first website that I went to took forever to load its pages even with my high speed DSL service.
Then, I bounced over to bedbathandbeyond.com and found what I was looking for after a fashion. This site had the extra long sets.
Perfectomundo.
Some of the color choices were sorely lacking. I couldn’t see buying a tangerine or pink set of sheets for the bed. I ended up buying a white set and a medium blue set for the bed. This should work for now.
Visitors
March was a good month for Balancing Checkbooks. We had 678 visitors for the month. While this not very much compared to some blogs out there, it is still nice for me to see that I am tracking more visitors. Of course, some of the visitors are here more than once a month.
We had visitors from Canada [6], Thailand [2], Korea [5], Finland, Netherlands [3], Serbia & Montenegro, China, Australia [3], France [2], Hong Long, Germany, Malaysia [3], Portugal, Texas [2], Argentina, Japan [2], Czech Republic, Brazil [2], United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, United Kingdom [2], Austria, Poland, Belgium, Philippines, Singapore, India, and Spain.
We also had one visitor stop by for 44 minutes and another stopped by for 13 minutes.
Site Meter only counts the minutes when a visitor goes to more than one page. For example, if you only visit the blog opening page, you are counted as one visitor who was here for an unrecorded period of time. But, if you click on an archive page, Site Meter will count the total time in the blog.
I do appreciate each of you who take to visit my blog. I hope it provides some degree of enjoyment and satisfaction for you.
Teaching
My Friday substitute class went well; better than I thought it would go. Some of the students in the Friday class are in another class of mine so it was nice to not have a bunch of new faces and names.
The Friday students liked my teaching approach better than their regular teacher. I guess I speak slower and the other teacher is somewhat impatient with the students. It is nice to be well regarded by some of the students at least.
The Saturday class was something of a disappointment to me. I had offered to come in early and provide the students with some extra, individual help; some of the students were floundering on the basic concepts of accounting. I know they needed the help.
Regrettably, no one came in for the extra help.
This was a disappointment for me. One of the other teachers said, before the class, that my effort was praiseworthy but the students would not show up for the extra session. He was right. He later told me, during a lecture break, that students don’t appreciate a conscientious instructor who tries to help them pass the class and urged me not to become too discouraged by this turn of events. He was right again.
Prelude
I took the Prelude in for a wash and wax on Friday. It was starting to look a little dirty and seedy. It now shines and I am happier with its appearance.
The repairs to the exhaust system seem to have had a slight improvement on my driving performance. I think my average miles per gallon or kilometers per liter are up. The Prelude should be getting a major service check in another few months. This is excellent timing since I will have to have the car checked for its air pollution control system when I renew the registration this Summer.
My Brother
My brother called me on Saturday afternoon and left a message for me. He was concerned about how the sauce for the asparagus had turned out. It was thicker than what he was expecting. I called me him after I got home from my Saturday afternoon class.
I told him the sauce was going to be on thick side. There were several simple and workable solutions available for him. He could add some more olive oil and heat the sauce slightly. He could also add some mayonnaise and that should make the sauce more fluid. I said that I prefer the sauce to be on the thick side so it stays on the hot asparagus.
In the end, I think he decided to add some mayonnaise since that would be what he liked. He thought his wife would not like it anyway and he was not going to force the issue with her. He said sometimes his meals turn out great and sometimes they do not.
I could completely understand him when he said some meals are not great. I have had my share of those meals before.
McAfee Software
The new McAfee Security Software is taking time to get used to. It was a function that I thought was silly at first. The software dumps all of your email, unless it is from someone on your address list, into a spam file called SpamKiller. Then, you have to go in and retrieve the emails you want.
Now that I have worked with it for a couple of days, I am beginning to like it and think this is a good idea. I also like their scan which seems to be a bit faster on my laptop and more thorough or at least provides more information.
I also like their warning messages that are the size of a credit card. They are much easier for me to read. That is good for me because I don’t always have my glasses on.
Woman of the Moment
This is the next to last posting of Giselle Windecher as the Woman of the Moment. I am looking for a replacement. Right now, I am leaning towards a couple of Asian actresses where I have downloaded a limited number of their photos. This would mean a more frequent “changing the guard,” as it were.
University of Utah basketball
Our University of Utah Running Utes did not do well in basketball this year. Maybe that was why the school just hired a new men’s head basketball coach. The new coach is from Michigan State University where he was an assistant.
It looks like 2006 – 2007 was an off year for the Utes.
Utah has a great basketball tradition even if it is not one of the marquee basketball names. According the National College Athletic Association [NCAA], Utah is ranked tenth nationally with a historic winning percentage of .656. Being ranked tenth in the nation certainly is respectable and there are a lot of other good college programs that are no where near as good as Utah. The school regularly wins conference championships and goes on to play in the March Madness tournament.
I felt much better now.
Then, I read more about the announcement on the hiring. It turned out that nine of the thirteen players on the team were either freshmen or sophomores. They were not as experienced this year but they will be next year. Eleven of the thirteen players on the team will be returning; one player used up his academic eligibility and one player will be gone for two years while he is on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints [Mormons].
All of a sudden, the 2007 – 2008 basketball season looks much better for our Utes.
That was my weekend. I hope you had a great weekend gentle readers.
Be well and stay happy.
The city park workers fixed the irrigation system. It now no longer waters my balcony although I think it still reaches my neighbor’s balcony.
On Friday, I noticed that there were temporary no parking signs up in front of the building. Parking is prohibited for the first part of the week. Naturally, there was no advance notice or explanation.
This really sucks because there is no parking on the other side of the street because of construction that is taking place at the bottom of the hill in the next city over. I will be parking one of my cars on the street a block away so Doug will have a place to park when he is here this week. Thankfully, there is no forecast of rain.
Traffic was abnormally bad when I left school on Friday night after my substitute class. It was slow and go for about four miles. I finally found out why traffic was so bad. The California Highway Patrol [CHiPs] officers and local police officers had coned off a lane of traffic and were busy searching a vehicle’s trunk.
The combination of the burning red flares on the roadway and the flashing roof lights from about a dozen police cars created a visual spectacle that everyone had to slow down and stare at. This added at least twenty minutes to my drive home.
I was on my way out to school on Saturday morning. Traffic was not bad nor was it great; it just was. I was passed by a lot of other vehicles and that is normal. I was passed by a recent model year Jaguar sedan. Being passed by the Jaguar was not unremarkable. What was remarkable was the, in my mind, incredibly poor taste used to select the colors for a custom paint scheme. The sides of the car were white and that was fine if you like white paint. The roof, trunk, and hood areas were all painted a light turquoise color.
That struck me as being just so wrong for so many reasons.
Jaguars are not supposed to be painted colors like light turquoise and white. They should be painted dark or conservative colors like black or British racing green.
It was foggy at the beach this morning. The fog finally burned off around 10:00 AM. This is rather late in the year for heavy fog at the beach.
I went out this afternoon to buy some sheets for the new bed. I didn’t think about the fact that an extra long twin bed size mattress would make it difficult to find sheets. I wandered around one store and then went to another; I found nothing at either one. I phoned my ex-wife and asked her where she bought sheets for Doug’s bed. She told me that they are usually on sale as a going off to college item since this size of mattress is common in dormitories.
Great.
I came home and fired up the online buying function. The first website that I went to took forever to load its pages even with my high speed DSL service.
Then, I bounced over to bedbathandbeyond.com and found what I was looking for after a fashion. This site had the extra long sets.
Perfectomundo.
Some of the color choices were sorely lacking. I couldn’t see buying a tangerine or pink set of sheets for the bed. I ended up buying a white set and a medium blue set for the bed. This should work for now.
Visitors
March was a good month for Balancing Checkbooks. We had 678 visitors for the month. While this not very much compared to some blogs out there, it is still nice for me to see that I am tracking more visitors. Of course, some of the visitors are here more than once a month.
We had visitors from Canada [6], Thailand [2], Korea [5], Finland, Netherlands [3], Serbia & Montenegro, China, Australia [3], France [2], Hong Long, Germany, Malaysia [3], Portugal, Texas [2], Argentina, Japan [2], Czech Republic, Brazil [2], United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, United Kingdom [2], Austria, Poland, Belgium, Philippines, Singapore, India, and Spain.
We also had one visitor stop by for 44 minutes and another stopped by for 13 minutes.
Site Meter only counts the minutes when a visitor goes to more than one page. For example, if you only visit the blog opening page, you are counted as one visitor who was here for an unrecorded period of time. But, if you click on an archive page, Site Meter will count the total time in the blog.
I do appreciate each of you who take to visit my blog. I hope it provides some degree of enjoyment and satisfaction for you.
Teaching
My Friday substitute class went well; better than I thought it would go. Some of the students in the Friday class are in another class of mine so it was nice to not have a bunch of new faces and names.
The Friday students liked my teaching approach better than their regular teacher. I guess I speak slower and the other teacher is somewhat impatient with the students. It is nice to be well regarded by some of the students at least.
The Saturday class was something of a disappointment to me. I had offered to come in early and provide the students with some extra, individual help; some of the students were floundering on the basic concepts of accounting. I know they needed the help.
Regrettably, no one came in for the extra help.
This was a disappointment for me. One of the other teachers said, before the class, that my effort was praiseworthy but the students would not show up for the extra session. He was right. He later told me, during a lecture break, that students don’t appreciate a conscientious instructor who tries to help them pass the class and urged me not to become too discouraged by this turn of events. He was right again.
Prelude
I took the Prelude in for a wash and wax on Friday. It was starting to look a little dirty and seedy. It now shines and I am happier with its appearance.
The repairs to the exhaust system seem to have had a slight improvement on my driving performance. I think my average miles per gallon or kilometers per liter are up. The Prelude should be getting a major service check in another few months. This is excellent timing since I will have to have the car checked for its air pollution control system when I renew the registration this Summer.
My Brother
My brother called me on Saturday afternoon and left a message for me. He was concerned about how the sauce for the asparagus had turned out. It was thicker than what he was expecting. I called me him after I got home from my Saturday afternoon class.
I told him the sauce was going to be on thick side. There were several simple and workable solutions available for him. He could add some more olive oil and heat the sauce slightly. He could also add some mayonnaise and that should make the sauce more fluid. I said that I prefer the sauce to be on the thick side so it stays on the hot asparagus.
In the end, I think he decided to add some mayonnaise since that would be what he liked. He thought his wife would not like it anyway and he was not going to force the issue with her. He said sometimes his meals turn out great and sometimes they do not.
I could completely understand him when he said some meals are not great. I have had my share of those meals before.
McAfee Software
The new McAfee Security Software is taking time to get used to. It was a function that I thought was silly at first. The software dumps all of your email, unless it is from someone on your address list, into a spam file called SpamKiller. Then, you have to go in and retrieve the emails you want.
Now that I have worked with it for a couple of days, I am beginning to like it and think this is a good idea. I also like their scan which seems to be a bit faster on my laptop and more thorough or at least provides more information.
I also like their warning messages that are the size of a credit card. They are much easier for me to read. That is good for me because I don’t always have my glasses on.
Woman of the Moment
This is the next to last posting of Giselle Windecher as the Woman of the Moment. I am looking for a replacement. Right now, I am leaning towards a couple of Asian actresses where I have downloaded a limited number of their photos. This would mean a more frequent “changing the guard,” as it were.
University of Utah basketball
Our University of Utah Running Utes did not do well in basketball this year. Maybe that was why the school just hired a new men’s head basketball coach. The new coach is from Michigan State University where he was an assistant.
It looks like 2006 – 2007 was an off year for the Utes.
Utah has a great basketball tradition even if it is not one of the marquee basketball names. According the National College Athletic Association [NCAA], Utah is ranked tenth nationally with a historic winning percentage of .656. Being ranked tenth in the nation certainly is respectable and there are a lot of other good college programs that are no where near as good as Utah. The school regularly wins conference championships and goes on to play in the March Madness tournament.
I felt much better now.
Then, I read more about the announcement on the hiring. It turned out that nine of the thirteen players on the team were either freshmen or sophomores. They were not as experienced this year but they will be next year. Eleven of the thirteen players on the team will be returning; one player used up his academic eligibility and one player will be gone for two years while he is on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints [Mormons].
All of a sudden, the 2007 – 2008 basketball season looks much better for our Utes.
That was my weekend. I hope you had a great weekend gentle readers.
Be well and stay happy.
posted by Chuck Reinhardt at 3:36 PM
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