Piano

You may have noticed my pictures lately and seen a picture of my latest purchase (reproduced below for your viewing convenience):

This was sold for an INCREDIBLE discount on craigslist.  As I was playing it with some of the music I have, I realized I’m not terrible.  It takes me a second to pick up songs, but I can usually force my way through them with only moderate pain and suffering.

The weather here has been atrocious.  We’ve had snow, a lot of hail and more than our fair share of rain.  The road we drive to work on (a dirt detour around a bridge they blew up) has become one giant pothole.  On of my roommates will no longer drive his car to work because the giant ruts the tires make on the road cause the bottom of this car to scrape the dirt for much of the drive out there.  I would like to meet the person from Civil Engineering who drives that every day and thinks, “Yeah, this should be good.”

That’s really the only big things that happened this week.  I’m going to start posting videos online showing where we work and where we live.  Keep your eyes peeled.

They have made a laundry folding robot.  I want one.  As two tech journalists so eloquently put it, “If in between filing your nails, getting your hair did and lunching you just don’t have the time, this robot will do you laundry.  Why don’t I have one of these?  The laundry is killing me.  You are going to find me one day in my house, an otherwise perfectly competent person able to handle most of my life, buried … dead … under a pile of laundry.”

Rafting

On our day off this week, we thought we would go rafting.  When I heard the word rafting, I assumed it would be much the same as the whitewater rafting I’ve done in the past.  Quick-paced, constantly getting wet and generally entertaining watching the other people in the raft.  How wrong I was.  First, the water was just about frozen solid.  I understand the concept that water in winter is cold, but it’s a controlled release river so I figured the dam and plant that are controlling the water release would use the water for some process that would make it less cold.  In the end, I just didn’t realize how far above where I am the water was released.  It has a LOT of miles to go and cool off before it ever even came near the part of the river we were on.  Second, the water was moving at 200 cumecs which is a virtual standstill.  Third, only the rafting guide paddled.  The four people riding in each raft were just along for the ride.  It was a nice trip with a great view of some cool scenery, it was just a little different than what I had envisioned in my head.

I’ve been looking online for a stage piano on craigslist.  Apparently that’s where to get EVERYTHING in this town.  You can’t talk to a single person here who didn’t get their house, apartment, car or other large item in the veritable onslaught of online classified ads.  There is one that I’m looking into that I hope I can get (it being sold at a 65% discount) so I’ll keep you posted on that one.

When we moved into the house we’re staying in, we were excited and relieved to have Internet speeds that were approximately 100 times faster than it was in the places we were staying earlier.  Then, we realized that putting three people with at least six computers on the same (moderately quick) Internet isn’t as fast as we would like.  We called the Internet provider to see if we could get an upgrade on speed and found that the area we are in is limited to 1.5Mbps.  You all know my built-in rage for slow Internet speeds.

There was an update to the Kindle software a few months ago that was supposed to increase the battery life of the Kindle and I would like to report that it has done that in spades.  Now, I have to charge it about every third week instead of every week and a half and I don’t think I’ve really changed my reading habits.  Anything that gets me two times as many hours from the same battery is okay in my book (no pun intended).

Concussion

On our day off this week we decided we would go skiing.  We didn’t really plan this until Friday afternoon around two in the afternoon, but thirty five minutes later we had nine people going.  It was kind of fun to have people so ready to go out for a weekend without having to think about it or plan around other things.  That is partially due to the fact that we’re all around the same age and in much the same situation and partially due to the fact that our jobs tend to attract pretty similar people.

While a couple of us were skiing down one of the runs, one of the guys stopped, started talking to himself and took off his skis.  I looked at one of the other people and we exchanged this look that said we both thought he had gone crazy.  It was then we realized he was talking to a guy who got stuck in a group of trees when he went off the side of the path.  We sent two of the people down the run to get ski patrol and two of us stayed with the guy to make sure they could find him.  He was in a bad way and couldn’t remember what state he was in, what his name was or why he was out on a mountain.

When we got back, I ordered a ski helmet on REI.  I’ve seen concussions before, but this guy was in a bad way from a sharp jolt to the noggin.

We finally moved into a house here to reduce the living cost for the customer.  The place is fully furnished and is owned by a really nice older couple who live right down the street.  That’s kind of convenient because they said if we ever lock ourselves out, just give them a call and they can be there in less than five minutes to let us in.

The neighborhood has a lot of rules about what you can and can’t do, so we’re all trying to get used to that.  You can’t have garage doors open unless you’re actively coming in and parking.  Cars can be on the driveway (which is very short and doesn’t fit a car unless it’s parallel the garage door) but not on the road.  You can have lights, but there are certain rules about when they can be on and how bright they can be.  And each of these rules is accompanied with a fine.  I’m all for keeping a place nice looking, but wow.

The house is great though and I think it’s going to work out really well for us.  Plus, the yard is zeroscaped which means we don’t have to do anything to it!

New Year’s

I got to spend New Year’s with some friends that are stationed here and we had a great time.  I was in charge of bringing the champagne which was a little more difficult than I had anticipated.  It turns out I’ve never had champagne and there are an enormous amount of choices when you go to the Class Six to pick some up.  When you get to the store, no one wants to be that person who doesn’t know anything about what they are buying; that will just suck all the cool right out of you.  First, I didn’t know where the champagne was in the store.  I figured it would be near the wines because it’s just a bubbly wine and the only way I found it was I knew they had a foil wrap on the top that covered the wire that holds the cork in place.

Once I found it, I found that I had no idea what I was looking at.  There were champagnes from $11 to much more than that.  I figured I’d follow the age-old mantra: “if it costs more, it’s bound to be higher quality”.  It worked out pretty well.  I also found out I’m not really a champagne partisan.

The days after New Year’s were spent just doing the normal.  Work, reading, running and hanging out with friends.

I have had to tape up three of my fingers because the dry air combined with sports in the cold have split the ends of a few of my fingers open.  It turns out that makes it significantly more difficult to write with pen/pencil and paper as the writing utensil keeps slipping.  If there was only some sort of way I could injure less critical fingers.  It only seems to happen to my thumb and forefinger; my theory is it’s because those are the fingers that most actively attempt to catch basketballs, volleyballs or other sports items.

Every weekend, I make a silent promise to myself that I will not not shave; every weekend I decide it would be much easier just to wait until Sunday morning to give it a go.  I have GOT to break this cycle at some point.

Everyone have a happy New Year!