January 4, 2013
Dear Everyone:
Happy New Year to All.
I had a lovely extended week off from work.
“Jeannie” and I drove up to
Oregon on the Sunday before
Christmas,
breaking it into two shorter trips instead of one very long trip.
Our main concern was, of course, getting through the
Siskiyou
Mountains while it was still light out and, hopefully, without having to
drive through any snow.
To facilitate this intention, I had gone to an auto supply store on my
lunch break the week before and purchased
snow chains for my car’s
tires.
“What size tires?” asked the helpful auto supply man.
“Honda.” I replied.
He went out to the car, inspected the tires, then produced the necessary
“chains”. (They aren’t
really chains, anymore. More
like linked sections of plastic.
But they would do the job.)
When we approached
Redding, the “last” large city before the mountains
began, we kept seeing roadside signs warning that “all vehicles will be
screened”. We took that to
mean we would have to “prove” that we had “chains” to go any further.
And, indeed, traffic north of Redding slowed to a crawl.
But there never was any screening.
Nor was there any snow on the roads.
The “magic chains” did their job.
We got through the highest part of the mountains and pulled into
Grants Pass around dinner time.
I had taken the precaution of making a hotel reservation the day before
we left, “just in case”, which turned out to be a good idea.
There had been a “big storm” a few days earlier, knocking out
electricity to many of the denizens of Grants Pass and its immediate
surroundings. Some people
opted to forego “roughing it” in the dark, without heat, and took rooms
at local hotels.
Monday morning was cold, but clear.
We had an easy final drive up to “Marge” and “Richard’s” place in
West Linn. The only problem
was: “Jeannie” doesn’t like
any of my music.
Christmas was delightful, with lots of brothers and sisters (“Marshall”
flew up from Fresno), nieces and nephews, and plenty of “old” friends to
visit with. We had
“Marshall’s” “traditional” wooden jigsaw puzzle, and I got the Family
Circulating Stocking Stuffer, still in relatively good shape after over
30 years of being passed from one family member to another.
On the return trip, we spent the night in
Ashland and stopped at the
Factory Outlets in
Vacaville for some post-Christmas bargain-hunting.
The “magic chains” kept the snow at bay again.
I’m back in the office now.
But “Ludmilla” is out sick and “Babette” got roped into reporting for
possible jury duty. There
isn’t any testing to do for weeks, at least, so “Ludmilla” has been
scouring the Internet for information about something called “Agile”,
some kind of “software development” philosophy, which the
IT people seem
to think will be the answer to all their troubles.
And I’m cobbling together some “How To…” documentation for the
system
administrators, whoever they may be.
In other words:
Situation Normal. And so it
goes...
Love, as always,
Pete
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