Another catching up episode
I've been a bad LJ poster again -- often lurking and reading other posts, but infrequently commenting or posting myself. The last two items here should help and hurt my posting frequency, so we'll see how they balance each other out. Now, onward to the summary:
Home projects: We had some major enhancements done to the house over the summer. We had the front brick porch and steps replaced with fresh brick, added central air-conditioning and heating (we just had hot water heat before), had a patio added in the back yard, and landscaped the entire property. Whew. But the house is much nicer inside and out now.
Dragon*con: We made it down to Dragon*con again this year and a good time was had by all. I was very happy to see David Gareth-Lloyd, the actor who plays Ianto on BBC's Torchwood, and the parties were fun and naughty as usual. A nice change this year is that a friend of ours is now a pilot, so he flew us down to Atlanta.
Circle of Life: The day after I got home from Atlanta, I found out my grandmother had become gravely ill and was being moved to a hospice; she passed away a couple weeks later. Fortunately I was able to arrange things with work so I could visit her over a couple days while she was in the hospice. She had quite a long life -- nearly making it to 100 -- and was sharp right up to the end. If we can't live forever, that's about as good as we can hope to get.
Computing: I'm now the proud owner of a Dell Mini 9 netbook; in other words, a super-portable, low-cost laptop computer. This one weighs about two pounds and has a 9" screen and no moving parts. Storage is a solid state drive instead of a spinning hard drive, and it doesn't even need a fan. It's the perfect computer to take on trips or off to Panera.
Flying: Our pilot friend will also soon be a Certified Flight Instructor (CFI), so I'm taking the opportunity to get pilot training! It's going to be pretty time consuming to get my Pilot Certificate -- at least 50-70 hours of flight time alone -- but hopefully I'll be a pilot myself by next summer.
So yes, hopefully the Mini 9 will make it easier for me to LJ on the go, and the pilot training won't consume so much time that I don't have any left for blogging.
Home projects: We had some major enhancements done to the house over the summer. We had the front brick porch and steps replaced with fresh brick, added central air-conditioning and heating (we just had hot water heat before), had a patio added in the back yard, and landscaped the entire property. Whew. But the house is much nicer inside and out now.
Dragon*con: We made it down to Dragon*con again this year and a good time was had by all. I was very happy to see David Gareth-Lloyd, the actor who plays Ianto on BBC's Torchwood, and the parties were fun and naughty as usual. A nice change this year is that a friend of ours is now a pilot, so he flew us down to Atlanta.
Circle of Life: The day after I got home from Atlanta, I found out my grandmother had become gravely ill and was being moved to a hospice; she passed away a couple weeks later. Fortunately I was able to arrange things with work so I could visit her over a couple days while she was in the hospice. She had quite a long life -- nearly making it to 100 -- and was sharp right up to the end. If we can't live forever, that's about as good as we can hope to get.
Computing: I'm now the proud owner of a Dell Mini 9 netbook; in other words, a super-portable, low-cost laptop computer. This one weighs about two pounds and has a 9" screen and no moving parts. Storage is a solid state drive instead of a spinning hard drive, and it doesn't even need a fan. It's the perfect computer to take on trips or off to Panera.
Flying: Our pilot friend will also soon be a Certified Flight Instructor (CFI), so I'm taking the opportunity to get pilot training! It's going to be pretty time consuming to get my Pilot Certificate -- at least 50-70 hours of flight time alone -- but hopefully I'll be a pilot myself by next summer.
So yes, hopefully the Mini 9 will make it easier for me to LJ on the go, and the pilot training won't consume so much time that I don't have any left for blogging.