Kala arrives tomorrow evening. Then we will crash and Chris' place then head to Eugene on Saturday morning for a party and depending on how early we get started there may be a stop over in Salem. Then Sunday back to Portland to drop her off for her flight back to Sacramento, then I drive back to Eugene.
We also are also planning to take some time out to take some photos so that I can have some Album/Cover art for the play lists Kala has made for me over the past few months. Cause I don't like things in iTunes with out Cover Art so we are going to try to make some.
Perhaps I will call in exhausted on Monday.
I did get my car back on Friday. It was a bit strange to get back into my car which feels much tighter and almost high strung compared to the Malibu which felt very lose and lazy. But the strange didn't last more than a few seconds then it was like home or an extension of me again. As a sort of celebration of the reuniting of man and his machine I opened the windows and sunroof all the way up and turned up the music then had some fun on the windy roads that would take me back home.
I almost want to go back out to the shop and just hang out and talk with Steve (guy who did the work). Each time I was out there either for the estimate, drop off or pick up we talked for a while about cars, car care and such. He's the kind of guy you just want to sit down and have a beer or two with. He also shared a couple tips for washing the car. He also saved me around a hundred dollars on my deductible as the way the insurance guy wrote it up was more than it was going to actually cost and he was able to pass it along to me.
So its been 3 full days with the Chevy Malibu. I've gotten a bit more used to it so it is no longer as scary to set sail on the roads. The only other time I had a rental it was a Chevy Impala and I only drove to the hotel on a Sunday night then the airport on the following Friday evening so I never got the hang of the thing. The Malibu feels quite similar in many respects. The Malibu has a huge huge trunk at least big enough to fit at least three bodies into it. It also has numerous compartments for storage of what ever people keep in their cars. The stereo does have an aux in for my ipod, but I haven't used it despite having tracked down cord that I needed to do so. Though it does leave much to be desired in the get up and go department, the 4 cylinders producing 169 HP just doesn't make the 3,400 pound beast move quickly. While the car isn't with out its plus points I still miss mine, which I should get back tomorrow afternoon.
While it has been fairly painless to drop my car off and get things scheduled and what have you. My rental car sucks. I am to spend the next few days driving a Chevy Malibu. I've been toying calling it the SS Malibooooo or something along those lines. It is nearly two feet longer than my car, feels way slower, and well it feels like a its not attached to the road or even touching the road. I also can't tell where the back wheels are nor where the front wheels are all of which making the whole experience a bit scary. I'm sure by the end of the week I will have figured some of that out and it will be a less scary thing but I still doubt I will be finding it a pleasurable one.
I look forward to getting my car back later this week or early next week.
Kala's cat Coco seems to have gotten into something poisonous today. She has been to two vets and tests have been taken but as its Sunday there won't be any results tomorrow. It's been touch and go for Coco today so if you would pray to what ever deity(s) or powers you do for her if you would. Coco is a very sweet cat not too unlike my Murray, very friendly and likes hands.
Update Monday 8:00ish pm: Coco seems to be recovering quite well.
Went to the 2nd meeting/gathering of the Baker Boulevard Geographic Society last night. I didn't attend the first one last week because Kala was visiting and we were staying at Chris' place, in Vancouver.
Joel Johnson from BoingBoing Gadgets is the organizer of the events. Last night the topic was home brewing beer so Joel walked us through the starting a batch of Kolsh from sanitizing everything to getting it into a carboy for fermentation.
There was also the trio who are self publishing a zombie comic called Night Zero. Which is actually a photocomic shot in HDR. Most of the time HDR photos annoy me, but I think it works in the context of a comic book.
Porter, Joel's dog is awesome.
While we were looking at a reconnaissance plane the museum photographer came by and told us that the plane we were looking had a body oder sensor to help find enemy combatants in hiding the thick tree cover of Vietnam. Kala had mentioned how she was still drolling over the DC-3 we saw earlier and told him of her history with the DC-3 while growing up. So he asked us to follow him back to the DC-3 and wait. He got us into the DC-3 which was nearly completely restored. It was waiting new carpet but the seats inside where all fresh, it smelled new. Kala got her photo taken in the cockpit and I got a few shots of the plane's interior and exterior that otherwise wouldn't have been had.
My jaw dropped and I gasped a bit when I saw the SR-71 blackbird in the space portion of the museum. I had no idea we had one in Oregon let alone at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum. They also had a D-21 which just looks like a single engine baby SR-71.
Saturday was a pretty good day, except for the jackass who hit my car while Kala and I were getting breakfast. It appears to have been someone getting into or out of a parking spot. No they did not leave any insurance information. I cursed at any white cars I saw for the rest of the day. Today I've got to call my insurance people and get the fix all worked out.
So I've got this junky pair of head phones at work. The foam is coming off one of the ears and the sound was starting to cut out from time to time.
Yesterday I saw a pair of nifty bluetooth headphones for $30 at best buy. So I picked em up at lunch time yesterday.
So while at lunch I pair them with my phone and check my voice mail, everything sounds fine so far and I'd have to wait to get back to my desk to try them for music as my phone does quite yet do A2DP. So I get back to my desk and get them paired with my desktop. Great except I can't set them as a play back device. After a bit of google-foo I found windows XP doesn't naively support A2DP, and most suggestions were to get another dongle or use another OS. Both of which I wasn't about to do, my work laptop won't be going to Vista anytime soon nor do I want an external bluetooth dongle hanging off my USB ports to listen to music, when the laptop has a built in bluetooth radio. I ponder and poke about and google some more and eventually decide to check with IBM/Lenovo and find they have released an updated set of bluetooth drivers. I grab it and after what seems like hours of downloading, I install it and re-pair the new headphones with the laptop. Now I can listen to music with no wires. Horay.
Sunday we checked out The Exploratorium in San Francisco before we pressed on to Santa Cruz for some wine tasting and a bite to eat. Then we pressed on to Monterey.
Monday after a morning soak in the roof top hot tub at the hotel and a walk we visited Carmel, The Carmel Mission, and did the 17mile drive in Pacific Grove. Then returned to the room to relax for a while longer before getting a banana split in the evening at Ghirardelli and getting some more candy to satisfy our sweet teeth.
Tuesday we grabbed breakfast and took another soak before packing up and driving back to Sacramento.