Getting back to ‘normal’ after New Zealand trip ; visit with Maypo and Orat and family
(posted from home)
(This post covers 3 - 18 April, 2013)
---------------------------
Thursday, 18 April -
Today we had five large trees cut down in the front yard and one in the back yard. They were here when we moved in years ago and provided some privacy. But over the years they had gotten too big and, because the front-yard ones interfered with the power line, they had been cut back oddly at the top. One was in the process of dying (from insects, we now understand) and that pushed us into our decision.
While the tree guy was working Labashi trimmed the other landscape vegetation and I cleared the rain gutters. By day’s end the trees were gone and the stump-grinder had been used on one of the stumps. But then a light rain started and the tree-guy said it would be better to come back another day to finish grinding the others.
I ran into town in Labashi’s car intending to pick up some gutter-foam for the rain gutters I had just cleaned. I took my iPad along, though, and while stopping for my coffee I looked for reviews. I saw enough poor reviews to change my mind. I don’t need them if they have to be periodically removed and cleaned or if they interfere with water flow in higher-flow conditions or if they ice up and might possibly cause an ice-dam to form in winter.
I took my walk at Rudy Park so I’d be within easy walking distance of the car if the rain clouds let loose. I had a bit of very light rain but was able to get in my time.
That evening we watched a DVD about Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and later the pilot for the Sundance TV series ‘Rectify’.
---------------------------
Wednesday, 17 April -
This morning I ran some errands and then drove to Rudy Park to walk. Today I concentrated on getting some time in on the steep hill at the top of the park to (hopefully) improve my tolerance for hills. I tire far too quickly on hills though I noticed an improvement during the New Zealand walks. If you can’t handle hills in New Zealand, there’s nowhere to go!
That evening I blundered into updating the Apple TV. I had been avoiding the update because of reading about people ‘bricking’ their units if they did the update via the Ethernet cable (rather than over wireless). That was several months ago now so the problem may have been resolved but I was purposely avoiding the update until I’d have a chance to look into it further. However, last night I pushed the control button several times before realizing I didn’t have the right input going and started the update inadvertently. It went through fine, though, so at this point I don’t know if it was ever a real concern or just another internet rumor.
After the update, we finished series one of ‘Downton Abbey’ and then learned the second series is only available on DVD, not via Netflix Instant.
-----------------------------
Tuesday, 16 April -
We spent the morning chatting and laughing and headed home from Maypo’s house by mid-afternoon. I mowed the lawn then for my exercise and to get my Fitbit step count for the day up above 10000.
The lawn seems to have responded well to the early-season treatment Labashi had done while we were away.
That evening we watched the last episode of ‘Top of the Lake’, the BBC TV series set in New Zealand’s Lake Wakatipu, Paradise, and Queenstown areas. We loved it for the stunning scenery but the storyline was confusing and sound quality was so poor we felt we were missing a lot of the dialogue. Glad we saw it; glad it’s over.
----------------------------
Monday, 15 April -
Today we helped out Maypo by taking care of two projects he had underway when he broke his leg late last week. Orat and I installed a hand-rail in a basement stairway and installed vent and filler pipes on an oil tank he had replaced.
That evening I was still short on my step-count for the day so walked three miles to catch up.
----------------------------
Sunday, 14 April -
Today we drove to Chambersburg to Maypo’s house, arriving shortly after lunch. When Orat arrived we started the presentation, took a break for supper, then ran on (yeah, those are probably the right words) for another hour or so. The presentation went fine though for some reason the images on the TV seemed to have less ‘pop’ than those on the iPad controlling the show.
We chatted until 2200-ish and then retired to Mocha Joe for a good night’s sleep.
---------------------------
Saturday, 13 April -
Righty-oh, then. We’re finally getting there with the New Zealand presentation. I have 160-plus slides, about a dozen of them leading into small video clips. We are disappointed to see how little high-quality footage we have when it seemed to be going pretty well at the time. I’m thinking the difference is you can’t really tell how good the footage is on the little screen of the camera and we tend to think it’s better than it really is because of your memory of the scene rather than what’s really on the chip.
We do have some interesting material but video clips tend to be too shaky or noisy and my silly camera has an annoying zoom noise at times. Also, we tend to cut off the scene too quickly or pan too quickly. Gotta work on that!
--------------------------
Friday, 12 April -
Another day browsing through photos and video clips with iPhoto. We have a long way to go.
In the afternoons I’ve been walking so I can get my 10k Fitbit step-count in. Today it was the five-miler at Rocky Ridge so that’s getting me into the 15K range when added to my regular day.
‘Downton’ that evening.
---------------------------
Thursday, 11 April -
We spent the day working on our New Zealand presentation. I’m doing photos, Labashi video clips.
We watched a few ‘Top of the Lake’ eps but it’s getting tougher to maintain interest. Subtitles would make a big difference since sound production isn’t the best and the accents play into that.
-------------------------
Wednesday, 10 April -
We made arrangements to visit Maypo this weekend and Orat is coming down for the visit too. We’re just getting started on going through the photos and video clips to put together a presentation.
That evening we watched the second disk of ‘Nurse Jackie’ Season Four. I’m happy to see the quality is still pretty good on this series. We’ve seen others (‘The Closer’ comes to mind. And ‘Lost’, ‘Alias’, ’24’, ‘The United States of Tara’, ‘Damages’, for example, which just seem to lose their way.
---------------------------
Tuesday, 9 April -
Today I caught up the back-leveled software on the laptops and iPad before going for my walk at Rudy Park.
We watched two more eps of ‘Top of the Lake’ that evening. I don’t know about this one. The scenery is extraordinary but the people are nothing like the people we met in these same areas. I get the feeling this one isn’t going to be popular with the Kiwis.
--------------------------
Monday, 8 April -
Today I started up the heat pump. I didn’t want to start it over the weekend in case I had some question for the installer and this was the first time I had started it after a long down-time. It turned out to be a non-event-- just a matter of ensuring the thermostat settings were outside the normal ranges until after I had the breakers turned on for the compressor and air handler.
I also had some maintenance work on Labashi’s PC to get done. She still has her old Windows XP machine and I needed to get the latest Norton Internet Security and install it. I bought a down-load version from Amazon and then simply told the old version on the PC that I wanted to update. During the preparation process it asks if you already have a key. Then it’s just a matter of copying the key from the Amazon library into the activation window and it takes off from there. No de-install/re-install necessary.
In the afternoon we had our tax appointment, basically a matter of signing the papers to extend and sending in a check for estimated taxes. There’s still some paperwork to come in before we can finalize.
I then rode over to Rocky Ridge for my walk after getting the F650GS out of winter storage in the barn.
We watched three ‘Downton Abbey’ Series One episodes that evening.
--------------------------
Sunday, 7 April -
Weather is still on the colder side but Labashi and I went walking today at Rudy Park. The last few times we’ve been there we walked the rail-trail segment but today we walked the 5k cross-country course.
That evening we started ‘Nurse Jackie’ Season Four.
--------------------------
Saturday, 6 April -
I was happy to get the Concours out today and ride down to Starbucks and then to my five-miler at Rocky Ridge. The difference between walking in the heavily-overgrown New Zealand forests and the brown-and-bare Rocky Ridge woods was quite striking to me.
That evening we found a new TV series... and it’s set in New Zealand! Sundance Channel’s ‘Top of the Lake‘ is set in the Glenorchy and Paradise area at the head of Lake Wakatipu and in Queenstown. It was available to us on Blue Ridge Cable’s Free On Demand system.
---------------------------
Friday, 5 April -
During our visit to Labashi’s brother we borrowed the disk sets for ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Downton Abbey’. I tried one last night and was surprised to see I had missed the fact that they are Blu-Ray discs so we can’t watch them. So I spent a few hours looking for a Blu-Ray player. But after seeing complaints of problems during setup I thought better of it... there’s no need to rush into Blu-ray when the trend is switching away from discs to streaming.
That afternoon we visited Mom and Dad and went out to supper at Red Lobster after taking care of a few small items.
That evening we watched the ‘Mad Men’ finale for season 5.
--------------------------
Thursday, 4 April -
Today we drove home from Labashi’s brother’s home in Northern Virginia. We take US15 for much of the way and I had to be extra careful to go around the roundabouts below Leesburg and near the Maryland line the correct way. I also turned on the wipers instead of the turn signal a couple of times.
Staying right was made much easier with the steering wheel on the left side. If I had happened to be in a car with the wheel on the right I’m sure I would have tended to drive left.
We had a pretty sunny day for our drive and it was uneventful. We were a bit surprised that we didn’t yet have more signs of Spring.
At home we held our breath when entering the door, hoping to find everything okay. We once returned to a basement flooded with sewage, once to a ruined refrigerator because of a long-term power outage and last time to an inch of water in the basement due to Tropical Storm Lee. Happily, there were no such problems this time.
Starting up the house systems was a very straightforward process this time. The well-pump tank hadn’t lost pressure so that was a matter of flipping the breakers for the pump and hot-water heater back on. We left the baseboard heat on and set at 50 degrees so that was a matter of turning up the thermostats. The water treatment equipment came right up and all I had to do was set the clocks to the correct time.
The internet connection came up immediately but I had to call the cable company to get the TV signal back. But as soon as they send a signal to the box the service came up.
Shutting down the light-timers was a matter of pulling them out but I did have to replace two light bulbs which had gone bad over the month-and-a-half we were gone.
All in all, the get-back-to-normal process only took an hour.
That evening we watched two ‘Mad Men’ episodes.
--------------------------
Wednesday, 3 April -
We spent the day at Labashi’s brother’s home recovering from our trip. After being up for 36 hours our sleep pattern is disrupted but we’re otherwise fine.
That evening we watched ‘Lincoln’ on the big-screen TV and enjoyed the new home-theater seating. We loved it but want to see it again to take a closer look at the sets and backgrounds.
****************** END OF POST ***************
(posted from home)
(This post covers 3 - 18 April, 2013)
---------------------------
Thursday, 18 April -
Today we had five large trees cut down in the front yard and one in the back yard. They were here when we moved in years ago and provided some privacy. But over the years they had gotten too big and, because the front-yard ones interfered with the power line, they had been cut back oddly at the top. One was in the process of dying (from insects, we now understand) and that pushed us into our decision.
While the tree guy was working Labashi trimmed the other landscape vegetation and I cleared the rain gutters. By day’s end the trees were gone and the stump-grinder had been used on one of the stumps. But then a light rain started and the tree-guy said it would be better to come back another day to finish grinding the others.
I ran into town in Labashi’s car intending to pick up some gutter-foam for the rain gutters I had just cleaned. I took my iPad along, though, and while stopping for my coffee I looked for reviews. I saw enough poor reviews to change my mind. I don’t need them if they have to be periodically removed and cleaned or if they interfere with water flow in higher-flow conditions or if they ice up and might possibly cause an ice-dam to form in winter.
I took my walk at Rudy Park so I’d be within easy walking distance of the car if the rain clouds let loose. I had a bit of very light rain but was able to get in my time.
That evening we watched a DVD about Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and later the pilot for the Sundance TV series ‘Rectify’.
---------------------------
Wednesday, 17 April -
This morning I ran some errands and then drove to Rudy Park to walk. Today I concentrated on getting some time in on the steep hill at the top of the park to (hopefully) improve my tolerance for hills. I tire far too quickly on hills though I noticed an improvement during the New Zealand walks. If you can’t handle hills in New Zealand, there’s nowhere to go!
That evening I blundered into updating the Apple TV. I had been avoiding the update because of reading about people ‘bricking’ their units if they did the update via the Ethernet cable (rather than over wireless). That was several months ago now so the problem may have been resolved but I was purposely avoiding the update until I’d have a chance to look into it further. However, last night I pushed the control button several times before realizing I didn’t have the right input going and started the update inadvertently. It went through fine, though, so at this point I don’t know if it was ever a real concern or just another internet rumor.
After the update, we finished series one of ‘Downton Abbey’ and then learned the second series is only available on DVD, not via Netflix Instant.
-----------------------------
Tuesday, 16 April -
We spent the morning chatting and laughing and headed home from Maypo’s house by mid-afternoon. I mowed the lawn then for my exercise and to get my Fitbit step count for the day up above 10000.
The lawn seems to have responded well to the early-season treatment Labashi had done while we were away.
That evening we watched the last episode of ‘Top of the Lake’, the BBC TV series set in New Zealand’s Lake Wakatipu, Paradise, and Queenstown areas. We loved it for the stunning scenery but the storyline was confusing and sound quality was so poor we felt we were missing a lot of the dialogue. Glad we saw it; glad it’s over.
----------------------------
Monday, 15 April -
Today we helped out Maypo by taking care of two projects he had underway when he broke his leg late last week. Orat and I installed a hand-rail in a basement stairway and installed vent and filler pipes on an oil tank he had replaced.
That evening I was still short on my step-count for the day so walked three miles to catch up.
----------------------------
Sunday, 14 April -
Today we drove to Chambersburg to Maypo’s house, arriving shortly after lunch. When Orat arrived we started the presentation, took a break for supper, then ran on (yeah, those are probably the right words) for another hour or so. The presentation went fine though for some reason the images on the TV seemed to have less ‘pop’ than those on the iPad controlling the show.
We chatted until 2200-ish and then retired to Mocha Joe for a good night’s sleep.
---------------------------
Saturday, 13 April -
Righty-oh, then. We’re finally getting there with the New Zealand presentation. I have 160-plus slides, about a dozen of them leading into small video clips. We are disappointed to see how little high-quality footage we have when it seemed to be going pretty well at the time. I’m thinking the difference is you can’t really tell how good the footage is on the little screen of the camera and we tend to think it’s better than it really is because of your memory of the scene rather than what’s really on the chip.
We do have some interesting material but video clips tend to be too shaky or noisy and my silly camera has an annoying zoom noise at times. Also, we tend to cut off the scene too quickly or pan too quickly. Gotta work on that!
--------------------------
Friday, 12 April -
Another day browsing through photos and video clips with iPhoto. We have a long way to go.
In the afternoons I’ve been walking so I can get my 10k Fitbit step-count in. Today it was the five-miler at Rocky Ridge so that’s getting me into the 15K range when added to my regular day.
‘Downton’ that evening.
---------------------------
Thursday, 11 April -
We spent the day working on our New Zealand presentation. I’m doing photos, Labashi video clips.
We watched a few ‘Top of the Lake’ eps but it’s getting tougher to maintain interest. Subtitles would make a big difference since sound production isn’t the best and the accents play into that.
-------------------------
Wednesday, 10 April -
We made arrangements to visit Maypo this weekend and Orat is coming down for the visit too. We’re just getting started on going through the photos and video clips to put together a presentation.
That evening we watched the second disk of ‘Nurse Jackie’ Season Four. I’m happy to see the quality is still pretty good on this series. We’ve seen others (‘The Closer’ comes to mind. And ‘Lost’, ‘Alias’, ’24’, ‘The United States of Tara’, ‘Damages’, for example, which just seem to lose their way.
---------------------------
Tuesday, 9 April -
Today I caught up the back-leveled software on the laptops and iPad before going for my walk at Rudy Park.
We watched two more eps of ‘Top of the Lake’ that evening. I don’t know about this one. The scenery is extraordinary but the people are nothing like the people we met in these same areas. I get the feeling this one isn’t going to be popular with the Kiwis.
--------------------------
Monday, 8 April -
Today I started up the heat pump. I didn’t want to start it over the weekend in case I had some question for the installer and this was the first time I had started it after a long down-time. It turned out to be a non-event-- just a matter of ensuring the thermostat settings were outside the normal ranges until after I had the breakers turned on for the compressor and air handler.
I also had some maintenance work on Labashi’s PC to get done. She still has her old Windows XP machine and I needed to get the latest Norton Internet Security and install it. I bought a down-load version from Amazon and then simply told the old version on the PC that I wanted to update. During the preparation process it asks if you already have a key. Then it’s just a matter of copying the key from the Amazon library into the activation window and it takes off from there. No de-install/re-install necessary.
In the afternoon we had our tax appointment, basically a matter of signing the papers to extend and sending in a check for estimated taxes. There’s still some paperwork to come in before we can finalize.
I then rode over to Rocky Ridge for my walk after getting the F650GS out of winter storage in the barn.
We watched three ‘Downton Abbey’ Series One episodes that evening.
--------------------------
Sunday, 7 April -
Weather is still on the colder side but Labashi and I went walking today at Rudy Park. The last few times we’ve been there we walked the rail-trail segment but today we walked the 5k cross-country course.
That evening we started ‘Nurse Jackie’ Season Four.
--------------------------
Saturday, 6 April -
I was happy to get the Concours out today and ride down to Starbucks and then to my five-miler at Rocky Ridge. The difference between walking in the heavily-overgrown New Zealand forests and the brown-and-bare Rocky Ridge woods was quite striking to me.
That evening we found a new TV series... and it’s set in New Zealand! Sundance Channel’s ‘Top of the Lake‘ is set in the Glenorchy and Paradise area at the head of Lake Wakatipu and in Queenstown. It was available to us on Blue Ridge Cable’s Free On Demand system.
---------------------------
Friday, 5 April -
During our visit to Labashi’s brother we borrowed the disk sets for ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Downton Abbey’. I tried one last night and was surprised to see I had missed the fact that they are Blu-Ray discs so we can’t watch them. So I spent a few hours looking for a Blu-Ray player. But after seeing complaints of problems during setup I thought better of it... there’s no need to rush into Blu-ray when the trend is switching away from discs to streaming.
That afternoon we visited Mom and Dad and went out to supper at Red Lobster after taking care of a few small items.
That evening we watched the ‘Mad Men’ finale for season 5.
--------------------------
Thursday, 4 April -
Today we drove home from Labashi’s brother’s home in Northern Virginia. We take US15 for much of the way and I had to be extra careful to go around the roundabouts below Leesburg and near the Maryland line the correct way. I also turned on the wipers instead of the turn signal a couple of times.
Staying right was made much easier with the steering wheel on the left side. If I had happened to be in a car with the wheel on the right I’m sure I would have tended to drive left.
We had a pretty sunny day for our drive and it was uneventful. We were a bit surprised that we didn’t yet have more signs of Spring.
At home we held our breath when entering the door, hoping to find everything okay. We once returned to a basement flooded with sewage, once to a ruined refrigerator because of a long-term power outage and last time to an inch of water in the basement due to Tropical Storm Lee. Happily, there were no such problems this time.
Starting up the house systems was a very straightforward process this time. The well-pump tank hadn’t lost pressure so that was a matter of flipping the breakers for the pump and hot-water heater back on. We left the baseboard heat on and set at 50 degrees so that was a matter of turning up the thermostats. The water treatment equipment came right up and all I had to do was set the clocks to the correct time.
The internet connection came up immediately but I had to call the cable company to get the TV signal back. But as soon as they send a signal to the box the service came up.
Shutting down the light-timers was a matter of pulling them out but I did have to replace two light bulbs which had gone bad over the month-and-a-half we were gone.
All in all, the get-back-to-normal process only took an hour.
That evening we watched two ‘Mad Men’ episodes.
--------------------------
Wednesday, 3 April -
We spent the day at Labashi’s brother’s home recovering from our trip. After being up for 36 hours our sleep pattern is disrupted but we’re otherwise fine.
That evening we watched ‘Lincoln’ on the big-screen TV and enjoyed the new home-theater seating. We loved it but want to see it again to take a closer look at the sets and backgrounds.
****************** END OF POST ***************
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
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