1025

Our new house number is 1025 and back in late December I found some steel circles with three of the four numbers cut out of them on a shelf in the garage. We wondered what happened to the #1? Thinking that these looked a lot better than the generic bought at Walmart house numbers that already adorned the place, and after an extensive search didn’t turn it up, we set out to find someone in town that could make a matching number one.

Our first stop told us that it looked like it was made using a plasma cutter and he didn’t have one. He thought for sure he could make something just like it, but it would be expensive in both time and materials. So he directed us to a place he thought could do it a lot cheaper. “Heck,” he said, “They might have even made these existing numbers.”

Stop number two was a heating and air condition business. They had a plasma cutter, plenty of material, and said they thought they could do it for on the cheap. They didn’t do the ones I had in hand, so the fellow asked if I knew what the font was. I told him no, but I bet if I searched on the Internet I could find a font that looked very similar with a little research.

I called him back the next day and gave him the names of about 4 fonts that I thought would be good enough. He told me it would a quick job to do, but it it had to come after all the other jobs on hand or that came up that profited the company a heck of a lot more that the sawbuck I was willing to pay for my #1. I told him I understood and that I’d give him a call once a week to check in.

Last Monday, after around four weeks he called and said that I could come get my number one. I’ve have painted them in the same red color as we painted our plain front door and will mount them just above the garage door on the next nice afternoon.

Track 02 – Run-Around

When I started posting YouTube videos from my December 2004 Quintessential Burn mix CD in 2013, I posted five videos. Then in 2015 I posted just one. In 2019 I posted another. Out of the 19 songs on the list this will the be eighth. And the only reason it surfaced into my consciousness is I was going through my hundreds of burned CDs full of MP3s and found the Quintessential Mix one. This is a catchy tune that put Blues Traveler on the map with its just as catchy video:

Happy Anniversary RP

I was listening to my favorite Internet radio station, Radio Paradise, the other day and when they finally got around to interrupting the music for a station promo, a somewhat rare occurrence, Bill mentioned that this is their 20th anniversary. Wow, I know I’ve been listening to the station for quite a while, but I didn’t think it had been a whole twenty years.

I used to rip the stream and then put the MP3s on a CD to play in the Miata. I had a CD changer in the trunk so I could load 10 discs, each holding around a 165 tracks (650 Meg limit), and listen for days before I had to burn more music. Sometimes it would be months, because, let’s be realistic, after listening to around 1,700 songs, would you realize when you were starting over?

I still have a little over 40 of these CDs, so I went and looked at the first couple and they are from April of 2003. So I wasn’t there at the very beginning, but I have been a listener for almost 17 years now. The station is listener supported and I been a supporter for around 15 of those years. At first it was sporadically, whenever I had some money left over in PayPal at the end of a month, but after a couple years I just signed up for a reoccurring donation and gave them a charge card number.

While the mix of songs is almost always perfect for my listening pleasure while driving around in a car, sometimes the harder edges rock, blues, world songs wouldn’t fit my mood on a quiet Sunday morning or later in evenings. Bill and Rebecca have even met those needs, there is now a dedicated Mellow Mix stream available. They have also added a Rock Mix and a World/Etc Mix to go along with the original Main Mix. Something for most anybody. You can also get smartphone apps and TV apps that play the main mix and add a slideshow of listener photos that are matched thematically with the music. Go check them out – Listening Options

We Are True Oregonians Now

Not long after we got here we went to the local DMV office to pick up info on getting a driver’s licenses and registering a car in the Beaver State. We both studied the driver’s manual so we would be ready to take the knowledge test. Of course there would be a quick vision test, but what worried us was on the website one of the listed items said: Pass the drive test;. And on the back side of the application PDF was the Driver Test Score Sheet. But, when looking at the requirements for taking a drive test, near the bottom was this caveat: You may not have to take a drive test if you’re new to Oregon and give us your out-of-state license. It can be expired up to 1 year. The words may not were still slightly ominous…

To get a license we needed a permanent address, so we had to wait at least until we closed on the house. By then it was the holidays, so we waited until January. Then we had a big snowstorm. Then pretty soon it was the end of January. By this time we were pretty sure we wouldn’t have to do Drive Test and vowed to go get our licenses in February. Early this week we read through the driver knowledge test booklet again figuring on going Wednesday. We found another excuse not to go then, but today was the day.

Donna was worried about the knowledge test, she was confident she knew the stuff, but she is terrible test taker. Me, I was not worried at all, most of it is common sense and you could miss seven out of the 35 total questions. When Donna came out of the booth she wasn’t sure she passed. She lost track of how many she missed, but the machine didn’t throw any red X’s on the screen. Well, she did pass and got her driver’s license. Me, I had my confidence shaken from the git go, I missed the first two questions! Then I aced a few sign recognition ones, before missing another one. I had now used up almost half my allowed misses in the first 6 questions, yikes. I tiptoed through the rest of the test and I passed missing 5 questions. Comparing notes afterwards we both had the same sort of experience, acing the signs and lane marking stuff, missing questions we were sure we knew and getting lucky on ones we guessed at.

Sixty-five dollars each later, we are proud owners of a gray scale temporary paper Oregon driver’s license. The real one comes in the mail in about a week.

Garage Flooring Part 2B

I didn’t hear from RaceDeck for a full week, so I called the 1-800-NUMBER again this last Monday. When a person answered I told them I placed an order a week ago, but have yet to be contacted by a Sales Rep. She said, “Hmmm. I don’t know what happened, but I can transfer you to someone that can help you right now.” Next thing I know I’m placing my order.

This afternoon the UPS man dropped off 4 big boxes. I managed to get the second half of the floor down in a couple hours. All except for the last 4 tiles by the door into the laundry room. I will need to trim about and inch and a half off the left edge to get them down to lay down flat because of the threshold.

Because the garage entry is flat, unlike Aiken, I bought the small leading edge pieces to finish off the front of the floor. When I got through, I thought that maybe I should buy them for the other end facing the “shop area” as well, so I wouldn’t trip on 1/2″ elevation gain. What’s another thirty bucks? Not going to get finish edges for the sides as they are close enough to the walls that it isn’t really that noticeable.

Truck Day +1

The truck left Boston,MA yesterday and is headed for Fort Meyers, FL.
Inside is:
20,400 baseballs
1,100 bats
200 batting gloves
200 batting helmets
320 BP tops
160 jerseys
300 pairs of pants
400 t-shirts
400 pairs of socks
20 cases of bubble gum
60 cases of sunflower seeds

I hope none of that belongs to Mookie Betts or David Price, that stuff needs to go to Glendale, AZ.