Category Archives: Beware of Leopard

More like: The Last Week. I finished up all of this week’s work yesterday, and did a big hunk of the final week’s worth of schoolwork today. So close I can taste it, this school thing, it will be done. I also did a bit of cleaning here and there, and tidied up the woodshop.

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

• Lance Cpl. Anthony J. Denier, 26, of Mechanicville, New York, died Dec. 2, while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
• Sgt. 1st Class. Darren M. Linde, 41, of Sidney, Montana, died Dec. 3, in Lashkar Gah City, Helmand province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.
• Spc. Tyler J. Orgaard, 20, of Bismarck, North Dakota, died Dec. 3, in Lashkar Gah City, Helmand province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

Winds ebb and flow, with the gusts a bit stronger, hour by hour. Light rain and drizzle overnight lead to 0.6 ” of rain by the time I left for work this morning. I came home shortly after noon, and it’s been raining gangbusters all day. The 24 hour total for Sandy in our back yard is 3.3″. I stand ready to fire up the generator when the power fails, which I expect this evening or overnight. Once gone, it’s likely to be days before it’s back. Right now, BG&E has 44K outages, and the others are likely following suit.

Sandy’s making landfall at the southern-most end of New Jersey right now, and will spend a bunch of hours dumping hurricane-force winds over several hundred (mental math problems, sorry) a couple of hundred thousand square miles of eastern seaboard, including us. After that, it should start tapering off for us, say by midday tomorrow, as life starts to really suck for Pennsylvania for a day or two.

So this happened:

My new ride

Frankly, I’ve been tempted by BMW ever since I spent a few days driving a 325 while visiting with my folks a couple of years back. But it took this long to execute on the temptation. The Prius was such a sane, safe choice: great gas mileage, some fun bits of technology built in, and … great gas mileage. But while it is only three years old, it was starting to get rattly and junky – primarily plastic things on the interior failing. The driver’s seat starting to come apart. Stuff like that. And frankly, it’s not a fun car to drive.

The ’12 BMW 328i seems to be pretty good on the mileage front (nowhere near the Prius, but I’m gunning for high 20’s/low 30’s), it’s a solidly Munich-built F30 sedan with the Premium package. Marcia thinks it’s boring because it’s white, but I like white because it’s understated, it doesn’t look dirty 10 minutes after washing the way a dark color does, and better visibility – other drivers can see me better.

I got the model with the premium package for but one reason: The way the seat cushions sat in the shell of the manual seats was immediately uncomfortable and painful for me to sit in, digging into my left thigh. Probably just an interaction between me, my height and weight, and that particular seat design. The same model year car with the power seats was comfortable. And to the eye, they looked identical in the areas that bothered me. Weird. Still, didn’t pay for navigation. There’s bluetooth integration for the phone (but to use the iPod features of the phone, I have to plug in).

The car is seriously fun to drive, even sedately. Marcia drove it home from the restaurant the other night, and she enjoys the car, too. She thinks it’s a very grown-up car for us to have. Oh, yeah … and I have a sunroof again. What will I miss from the Prius? The gas consumption, surely, and the backup camera.

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In other news, I get to keep my job. Yeah, also understated. I just had my annual review, and the company seems pleased with my continued dedication to and quality of work. It’s nice that I got a little bump in the paycheck, but as I told Russ, it’s really all about the facts that I enjoy my work and the people that I work with immensely. And that’s what it’s really all about, folks.

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In other, other news, class starts tomorrow. All things being equal, unless I screw something up or the school’s computer systems go insane and decide I need more classes: I’ll be finished on 16 December, and graduating with a 4.0 (at least as far as all the classes I’ve taken since I started at UMUC in 2008 are concerned). Hooraw! Wish me luck.

Well, not anymore, just back to HOT. It was 104°F according to my car, on the drive home yesterday just after 1600 EDT. By 2130, the lightning was lighting up the sky in the west. Fast moving storms with big winds, shedloads of lightning, and hail plowed through here. Maybe half an inch of rain, too, much of that within a 15 minute period.

The good news, from my perspective, is that other than a few blips, we kept our power, both here and at work. More than a million other folks in the greater Metro DC area … not so much. They’re talking about several days to get everyone restored, and it’s supposed to stay hot.

We have some plant damage, and fence damage, but nothing major, and the veggie garden came through unscathed, best I can tell. I’ll wander out that way very shortly. But my focus is on the schoolwork, which I need to get to right now. Ciao!

Just to be clear, here at the beginning, Carolina Chair rocks! As an anniversary present to each other, Marcia and I purchased a few weeks ago a new Crawford sectional from Carolina Chair, after I’d done considerable online research about Made in the USA furniture, and reliable vendors, etc. Marcia worked by phone and email and mailed fabric samples with Cathy Fry and the rest of the team down there to get the right design, etc.

Carolina Chair got the furniture built and shipped before we even expected it to be fit into the manufacturing schedule! Then, we got the furniture a week into a two-to-three week likely delivery schedule. So, while your mileage may vary (that is, they may take as long as quoted, depending on how busy they are, etc.), the time to furniture in the house for us was simply stellar. And the quality of build and upholstering is superb. I’m very happy, and Marcia is wowed!

So, before I started clearing the living room last night, it looked like this:

Living room before clearing

I got the room cleared, leading to yesterdays antics with dogs and tables. I cleaned the floor fully, then we laid down the new carpet pad and rug, and hauled the recliner and a side table back into rough position so that someone could watch some TV last night.

Living room stands ready

This morning, I was at work at 0710, and bailed out at 0930, to get home before our 1000-1400 delivery window opened up. I needed to do this so that Marcia could focus on work, which is always hectic as the end of each month approaches (and triply so at end of quarter, but that’s not this time).

The delivery company called just before 10 and said they’d be here no later than 11 (yay!), then turned up at 1010. The good news is that I’d made it home in time to inspect and provide guidance (there’s some assembly steps explained on the website that the local, very pleasant delivery guys don’t grok, but that’s cool). The delivery of the new sectional and ottoman was uneventful and no furniture or walls were harmed during the unpack or load-in. Once that was done, the new sectional in place looks like this:

The new sectional from Carolina Chair.

And after I loaded back in all of the things that make this our living room, it looks like this:

Living Room, Rebooted

Awesome. Thanks again to the Fry’s and the whole team at Carolina Chair for taking such good care of us, and producing such a fine product!