Waiting for Skordy

When I joined the Rock Babes tour group on the Guitar Hero site, Skordy was the first person to befriend me. We added each other as friends on our wiis, but she's always been offline when I was playing. But tonight she was online so I tried to create a match with her so we can play together. But I've never done this before so I'm not sure if I'm doing it right. I'm just hanging out waiting but I don't even know if she gets a notification right in her game or if I was supposed to set up a meeting time in advance or what.

JW Marriott Cancun

Terry and I stayed at the Marriott when we were in Cancun for Sungard's 100% Club. I can recommend it. The room was spacious, well-decorated, with a large and spotless bath. There were a few pools, and the beach. All were well-stocked with chairs, towels, and umbrellas. The food wasn't great, and the Margaritas were pre-mixed, but room service was prompt and reasonably priced. We had a nice time.

Vacuum-Packed Luggage

I impressed even myself when I was able to pack for 5 days at the beach (including formalwear and a cocktail dress) and 3 days at a ski resort in just one carry-on bag. I did it by compressing my snowboarding outfit in a luggage ziplock bag. It doesn't require a vacuum, just stuff it with bulky clothes, partially seal the top, then press out all the air and finish sealing the bag. I do this by putting the bag on the floor and kneeling on it to use my legs to get it as flat as possible while sealing it up. It doesn't help to reduce the weight of clothes, of course, so it's a relatively heavy thin package. And it doesn't help particularly much with already-thin clothes. But I almost always use it in winter with sweaters, ski jackets, etc. I got mine at LLBean and have been using the same bags for years, although there are other brands available in stores.

Lang vs. Calto

I can't believe I'm having this text. But Terry took me home tonite hours after Calto was falling asleep on the couch. I turned on the TV when I got home and saw KD Lang. She's looking far too much like Joe.

Standing on the Dock of the Bay

Well, perhaps a bit of overstatement in the title. But this is a picture of me standing atop my homemade pier. You can see through the branches that I am standing over the water, yet keeping dry.

Building My Pier

This photo was taken back on 3/13, I'm catching up on posts while I'm on the bus. I started building a pier last year during the drought when the water was too low to launch my raft from the shore. It's completely rudimentary, but I gets the job done. I just place downed tree limbs out into the water until I can walk out over the mud.

Ikea Food

I took a break from shopping for lunch, and was happy that the Ikea was so close. I had intended to it the meatball platter, but saw a picture of salmon with an apple glaze and impetuously ordered that. And I was delighted to find that it looked even better than the photo. This was juxtaposed against my recent memory of the travesty at the Hardees. There I saw a photo of bacon cheese fries that looked so delectable I ordered them. But when they arrived, they look nothing like the photo. I mean, there is no way that photo could have been recreated using the ingredients served to me. What's worse is that they tasted as bad as they looked. I was going to return them uneaten and exchange them for curly fries (which actually were good). But Terry, ever anxious to avoid conflict offered of his curly fries in exchange I let it go. And I, ever eager to enjoy some fries, obliged.

So Bad!

Terry mistakenly ended our computer-TV watching right when Conan was about to start. I stayed up to watch it on ';the big screen';, aka the wall. It was a rerun, but one I hadn't seen. And it was fine until the band. These losers were so bad. I don't remember their name now; I'd say it was Cemetary Texas if I had to guess, but I don't think that's it. It was some guy wearing a baby-blue cape who pressed buttons to play loops, and the male singer wore sunglasses and long braids. They really seemed like they don't have friends and they're a couple of misfits who will probably in play dungeons and dragons after the show. Poor Conan. He deserves better. The sooner Leno drops out, the better.

Beavers!

The beavers had gnawed through most of this sycamore when I checked on it go the fall, but the tree was still standing. I see the beavers finished the job. I'm sorry they targeted this otherwise healthy tree, but since I didn't catch the damage in time to save it, I'm glad it's finally down. It was very dangerous when it was mostly gnawed through but hadn't yet fallen. I intentionally didn't check on it over the winter since I was afraid I'd take one wrong step and it would topple and crush me.

This one I'll have to move.

This tree, while down over a fence that merely separates property and not cattle, nevertheless has squashed a portion of the fence. I'll try to fix it this spring before stuff starts growing up through the downed section and it becomes very hard to right.