Tag Archives: Brighton MI

2014/09/18 (R) Crown Prep Anniversary

I woke up early and got up at 6 AM.  A two hour nap yesterday afternoon meant I was not going to sleep as many hours last night.  I had also set alarms to make sure I got up, which tends to make me wake up earlier than I might otherwise, almost always before the alarms ever activate.  I awoke to find that iOS8 was now available for my iPad2, so I installed six other updates first, some of which emphatically wanted to be installed before the iOS8 update.  I had some raspberry green tea while they uploaded and installed, e-mailed yesterday’s blog post to myself, updated the beginning of this blog post, and then initiated the operating system update.

I suppose “Crown Prep” might be shorthand for “The Royale Preparatory Academy” or some such place and Crown Prep Anniversary might have something to do with an important event at said place but, alas, in my case it meant, more or less, just what it says.  We bought our converted bus five years ago today, a 1991 Prevost H3-40 VIP shell converted by Royale Coach (Monaco) and finished in the fall of 1992.  I also had a dentist appointment today to prepare my recently root-canaled tooth for a permanent crown.  The appointment was at 8:30 AM some 50 miles away in Dearborn, Michigan, which meant I had to be out the door around 7 AM to allow for the heavy traffic inbound to the metro Detroit area from the northwest.  The traffic was even worse than I expected and I pulled into the dental clinic parking lot at 8:29 AM.  I really hate rush hour traffic and avoided it even when I was working full time.  It is such a colossal waste of time.

The U. S. Census Bureau considers Livingston County to be part of the Detroit Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA).  Locally, many people think of Metro Detroit as Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb Counties while the MSA includes Lapeer, Livingston, and St. Clair Counties as well.  Washtenaw County to the south of us, where our children live, is not part of the Detroit MSA but is part of the larger Detroit “Combined Statistical Area” (CSA) along with Genesee and Monroe Counties.  Having been “west siders” since we moved to the area from Missouri in 1976, Lapeer and St. Clair Counties have always seemed far away while the communities in Livingston and Washtenaw Counties were much more accessible to us.  When I was working as an engineer I was employed by a company in Livingston County and by three different companies in Washtenaw County, specifically Ann Arbor.

I am not clear on the point at which communities, and individuals in those communities, do or do not think of themselves as living in the “Detroit Metro Area” (DMA) which is quite a different thing from the official U. S. Census Bureau boundaries.  My guess is that Howell very clearly sees itself as distinct from the DMA.  My suspicion is that folks in Brighton are split on this, although the community would no doubt like to be viewed as outside the DMA.  The western half of Livingston County is certainly much closer to Lansing, the state capital in the heart of Ingham County, both geographically and culturally.  Western Livingston County and most of Ingham County are rural/agricultural, except for the greater Lansing and East Lansing area (home of Michigan State University).  The eastern half of Livingston County has long been a place from which people commute to work in metro Detroit.

The fact is that being associated with Detroit has not been viewed as favorable by many people and communities in southeast Michigan since the riots of the late 1960’s.  Those events left deep scars on the people who were here at the time, and for many those scars remain to this day.  Not for us, of course; we were not even here then.  And we are the wrong people to ask about affiliations anyway.  We lived in an apartment in Westland for our first two years here and then bought the house in Farmington Hills where we lived for the next 35 years before moving to the “Browelland” (Brighton, Howell, Hartland) area.  Westland and Farmington Hills are clearly Detroit suburbs, like it or not.

I took a survey and Linda said she thought we still lived in the Detroit Metro Area.  I suppose I think so too, but you won’t find many five acre parcels zoned RA (agricultural residential) in the true suburbs of the big city, nor the dark skies and bright stars we have out here on a clear night.  No, we are clearly not in a suburb of Detroit, but that was not my question.  We are kind of in the country but only minutes from all three of the aforementioned municipalities.  For that matter we are not actually in the cities of Brighton, Howell, or Hartland.  Even though we have a Howell mailing address we are actually closer to both Brighton and Hartland and if we had school age children they would attend the Hartland schools.  And when we lived in the suburbs I did not have to drive 50 miles to get to the dentist, 30 miles to get to our vet or eye doctor, or 20 miles to get to our family doctor.  Of course the drive is about the same to get to our ham radio breakfasts and meetings in South Lyon as it was before and we do not have to drive 40 miles to get to our bus, which is now parked in front of the house.  We are also trying to “shop local” as much as possible, which means we are shopping at a wide variety of places we never patronized when we lived in the suburbs of Detroit.  But I digress.

After I was done at the dentist’s office I drove to our veterinarian’s office, just a couple of miles from our old house, to pick up flea and heart worm medication for our cats.  I took a quick drive through the old neighborhood.  It was a nice place to live and has not changed, at least in appearance.  I had a good experience with the local endodontist last week, however, and today’s drive reminded me that we should probably switch to service providers much closer to home for most of our medical and veterinary needs.  But that is not a decision to be made simply on convenience.  We have used our current providers for over 35 years and given how infrequently we use them we have not been motivated to change.  We have been to the dentist a lot this summer, however, so that at least has us thinking about it more seriously.

I stopped for fuel and then at Lowe’s for a keyless door latch/knob set for the utility closet.  They did not have distilled water and I tried two other places before ending up finding some at Meijer’s.  Linda was preparing lunch when I finally got home and had sorted through and organized a large stack of installation and user manuals I had pulled out of kitchen drawer this morning.  Some were left for us by the previous owners, some were for things we have bought since we moved here, and some were for things we no longer have, or have but no longer use.  We went through a small stack of items she wasn’t sure about and then stored everything we needed to keep in a drawer in the small bedroom closet organizer.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening, except for dinner, editing photographs for our personal website/blog and the SLAARC website.  I also took a few minutes to enjoy the last of the apple crisp and a glass of Alpha Rose wine with Linda.  It’s been bugging me since yesterday that I could not positively identify the very distinct nose and taste of this wine, so Linda did a little online research on the King of the North grape.  Both the University of Iowa and the University of Minnesota described it as a vine that grows very well in cold northern climates but is very acidic and has a very “grapey” taste that is not really suitable for making wine.  That information helped me figure out the smell/taste.  It was grape soda; really really good grape soda.  Those descriptions did not alter my opinion of the wine.  I like fruit and I like sweet, and I love the nose and the taste as well as the acidic finish is indeed very clean and refreshing.

Linda was watching episode 1 of Ken Burns’ documentary on the Roosevelts when I came up from the basement, so we watched that instead of an episode of Doc Martin.

 

2014/08/02 (S) All Schmoo All Day

Schmoo is one of Madeline’s nicknames.  I don’t know how much her parents still use it, but I thought it was delightfully cute the first time I heard it and I still think of her as Schmoo even though I usually call her Madeline to her face.

As I indicated in yesterday’s post, we have her all day today, overnight, and tomorrow through dinner.  Having Madeline here obviously alters our daily living patterns, which is actually nice for us.  Since she spent last night here we did not go to our usual ham radio club breakfast this morning.  It also meant that we would not get much, if any, work done on our garage project.  Linda is a very good grandmother, and has cared for Madeline by herself for up to five days/nights, so I could get some work done while she is here but I like to interact with her and do not have as many opportunities for that as Linda does.  I managed to do a load a laundry this morning, sneak in a little time to check e-mail, and download photos from Ron & Mary’s Dropbox to our Dropbox, but I did not get to start the Introduction to Linux course.  🙁

Brighton is holding its annual Art and Acoustic Music event this weekend so we decided to check it out after a delicious breakfast of oatmeal with fresh blueberries and red raspberries.  Hacker is closed at Grand River which is down to one lane in each direction for re paving, so we had to negotiate the detour for Hacker Road to Grand River Road via Bendix Road.  We were patient and we eventually got to the heart of downtown Brighton where Main Street was closed from Grand River west for a couple of blocks.  We found a public parking lot south of Main Street that we had not previously been aware of, waited for someone to pull out, and parked.  It was convenient to Hyne Street, which was about the middle of the vendor booths along Main Street.

Madeline takes a stroll at the Brighton at the AAMF.

Madeline takes a stroll at the Brighton at the AAMF.

Madeline was in and out of the stroller for over an hour and got to go for a walk along the Mill Pond where we saw Canadian Geese, Mallard ducks, white ducks, a Great Blue Heron, and Painted Turtles sunning on logs.  We found a very cute sleeveless jumper for Madeline decorated with 3-dimensional Winnie-the-Pooh characters.  It will be her “party dress” for tomorrow.

Madeline on the Brighton Mill Pond boardwalk.

Madeline on the Brighton Mill Pond boardwalk.

We were back at the house by 12:15 PM, had lunch and got Madeline down for her nap at 1 PM.  She normally naps for 2 – 2.5 hours so we used that time to work in garage.

First we finished insulating the back/north wall of the garage.  We then cut two pieces of 4′ x 8′ drywall to a length of 70″ and installed them horizontally.  We put the lower piece on first using a 2″ x 4″ stud and shims to get the bottom edge the required distance off of the floor and secured it with 1.25″ drywall screws.  We set the bottom edge of the second piece on top of the first piece and Linda held it in while I got a few drywall screws into it.  I was then able to screw it to the studs.  It was getting close to the end of Madeline’s nap so Linda got her up and dressed while I continued to work.  I taped the seams, and then applied drywall compound to the seams, screw dimples, and other blemishes on the new drywall and the section of old drywall from there to the utility closet.

I need to sand down all of the drywall compound, apply a second/finish cost, let that dry, sand it down, and then apply primer to all of the new drywall, the plywood platform, and the exposed 2×12 on the front of the base in the utility closet.  But with Schmoo here and family coming that will have to wait until Monday.

We played with Madeline until dinner time and then had a fun meal.  She’s a good eater and really enjoys mealtime.  We played some more after dinner and read books before finally getting her down for the night.  She is a persistently active and inquisitive child but is often calm in her approach to the world around her.  She is delightful and it is a joy to spend time with her.

2014/05/31 (S) End of May

We were both finally feeling well enough to go to our ham radio club breakfast this morning in South Lyon.  We picked up a graduation card at the drug store on the way home and had a quiet late morning and early afternoon that included a light lunch and a nap.  Linda had made a spread earlier from leftover lentils, chilled it, and served it on slices of Italian bread for lunch.

Nickolas, the son of my long-time friend and colleague Kristine, recently graduated from Central Michigan University with a double bachelor’s degree in psychology and family studies.  Today was the backyard party to celebrate this wonderful accomplishment.  Kristine and I first met as doctoral students in the late 1990’s, so Linda and I have watched Nickolas grow up and blossom into a very cool young adult.

On the way home we detoured to downtown Brighton to walk around, absorb the Saturday night Brighton “vibe,” and scope out restaurants for a Tuesday get-together with Kate.  On a Friday or Saturday evening this time of year Downtown Brighton is alive with people, especially if the weather is pleasant.  We photographed various restaurants that looked interesting so we could remember their names once we got home and research their menu options and prices.  We decided to try The Pound, assuming that choice is OK with Kate, based on a couple of interesting full-meal salads and $2 Tuesday appetizers and beers.  They have an open air covered roof deck.  We will try to sit there if the weather is agreeable and seating is available.

Linda has the Amazon Video app on her iPad and we watched Season 1, Episode 2 of Doc Martin.  We (I) “discovered” Doc Martin while we were in Florida and had a good OTA TV signal from the University of Florida Gainesville PBS station.  The series has completed at least six seasons of eight episodes each, so it will take us a while to watch the whole thing, if we ever do.

 

2013_10_23 (W) Williamston MI Bus Garage

Today started out complicated but settled in as it progressed.  Linda had to babysit today as we were still out of town on Monday and our daughter took Monday instead.  Normally Linda would just get up and drive to Ann Arbor, but our son borrowed her car just before we left for Tennessee and still had it.  She could have taken my car had I not needed it.  But I did, so I got up early and drove her to Ann Arbor.  But first I started a load of laundry.  (Even retired people sometimes have to multitask in order to get everything done that needs doing.)

An early morning trip is always an excuse to stop at Panera, especially as we so rarely do this anymore.  Bagels and coffee in hand we were back on the road.  I’m not driving all the way to Ann Arbor and not see my grand-daughter, so stayed for a while and watched her play.  She is a very active 10-month old and was either looking at her book collection or crawling around the living/dining rooms the whole time.

I eventually headed back to the house, put the laundry in the dryer, cleaned the cats’ litter tray (but forgot to feed them), gathered up the various things I needed to take with me, loaded them in the car, and reconnected it go the bus.  The laundry wasn’t dry yet, so I spent some time repositioning the stakes that we placed last evening to mark the outline of the bus barn and driveway.  It took longer than I expected, but that’s almost always the case, so I am used to it, and OK with it.  I hung up the dried clothes and prepared to drive the bus some 40+ miles WNW to Williamston, Michigan.

The reason for the trip to Williamston was that our mobile mechanic, Joe Cannarozzi, was already there working on another customer’s coach.  The customer had a 2-bay bus garage with heat; no small thing given that overnight lows were forecast to hit freezing or below.  Joe had all of his tools unpacked there, and was staying in the customer’s coach, so it was a much better place for him (and me) to work than our driveway.

Joe was wrapping up a conversation with John, one of the seven (7) partners in the partnership that owns the coach, so I unhooked the car while they talked.  I got to meet John and see the coach, a Prevost XL-45 LeMIrage “entertainer” conversion.  It was a nice conversion and they have had Joe do a fair amount of work on it.  John had never seen a motorhome bus conversion, so I gave him a brief tour of ours.  I also showed him the generator bay as they are also facing a soundproofing redo.  As a token of appreciation for letting Joe work on our bus in their garage, I gave John copies of the February and May 2013 issues of Bus Conversions Magazine and the summer issue of The Gypsy Journal.

Joe and John concluded their business and I 3-point turned the bus and pulled it into the left bay of the garage.  I then pulled my car into the other bay.  We unloaded tools and parts, raised the bus high enough to get the stands under it, and set it down on them.  Joe needed food so we went to get lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant.  Joe had a full meal while I had a salad of dark greens (mostly spinach) with sun-dried tomatoes and olives and a homemade Italian dressing.  It was quite good.

Linda called to let me know that two boxes had arrived from Prevost as promised.  I asked her to drive them out to where we were, which she did.  Joe then put me to work removing the “beauty rings” and lug nut bling from the wheels, after which he started removing the outside dual tires/wheels and the tag axle tires/wheels so he could install the Centramatic dynamic wheel balances.

While Joe muscled the tires around I dug out my metric hex wrench set and tightened the outside rear view mirrors.  (Prevost Car, Inc. is located in Saint Claire, Quebec, Canada and their coaches are an interesting mix of U.S. and metric parts.)  The passenger-side mirror, in particular, had been just loose enough for a long time that it vibrated while driving (slightly irritating) and wouldn’t hold its position (very irritating), dropping down beyond the limits of its remote adjustability to the point where I couldn’t use it to see down that side of the coach (dangerous).  Like many “little things”, however, I kept forgetting to fix it once we got home as we are very busy immediately after returning from a trip.

I opened the garage door to call Linda and check on her progress only to discover that it was raining lightly and watched the rain turn to snow right before my eyes.  When I arrived there was a little bit of graupel falling.  Welcome to Michigan in October.

Linda arrived with the parts, visited for a few minutes, and headed back to work on thank you cards for our open house guests.  Joe removed the driver-side outside drive tire, examined the oil leak evidence, and said he thought I only had a gasket leak.  He pulled the axle flange and we discovered that it didn’t have an axle flange gasket.  The last time someone worked on it (before we owned it) they used “form-a-seal”, a thick liquid that you squirt out of a tube like caulk or toothpaste, and it was obvious that there were areas where no effective seal existed.  Joe said that this is a “common” practice, but his preference was to use the appropriate gasket, several of which I now have in stock.

We cleaned off the remnants of the old form-a-seal and then Joe reassembled the hub, installed the wheel balancer, and reinstalled the outer dual tire.  I cleaned the oil from the inside of the beauty ring, as we did not want the old oil residue making us think we still had a leak, and then Joe reinstalled that as well.  We were short one washer, it was late, and Joe was tired, so we called it a day.  I packed up and left, taking one of the washers with me so I could buy more of the correct size.

I stopped at the Home Depot in Brighton, found the split-ring lock washers I needed, and finally got home around 8:30 PM.  Linda had picked up an Amy’s Roasted Vegetable pizza.  It is absolutely the best vegan pizza I have ever had.  It was real treat and a good end to a good day.

2013_09_13 (Fri) Bakery Business, WordPress, And Gutters

Linda left early to drive to the bakery where she put in a long day.  I worked on the CEPI ATR project for a while in the morning.  The mail came around noon and contained the written proposal package for the bus barn from Morton Buildings.  We also received a box from Bus Conversions Magazine containing multiple copies of the issues in which I have had articles published this year (Feb, Mar, May, and July).  We have been distributing sample copies to potential subscribers as we travel to try and help the magazine build its subscriber base.

At 1 PM I met with Mike (W8XH) from SLAARC to work on a new website prototype using WordPress.  On Monday we had been unable to complete the installation of WordPress at Larry’s for lack of the necessary login information, but Mike had obtained that from another club member during the week.  Finishing the installation was more complicated than we anticipated and we ended up on the phone with Larry (K8UT) most of the time.  Our original goal was to investigate themes and plugins but we worked on installation and configuration instead, including figuring out how to set up subdomains through GoDaddy; first things first, after all.

By mid-late afternoon I was back home, the weather was pleasant, and I finally had time to investigate the gutters.  It came as no surprise that the downspouts were all completely clogged.  What did surprise me was the amount of fine gravel in the gutters.  This was material that had washed loose from the surface of the shingles over time and accumulated along the bottom of the gutters to a depth of 1/4 to 1/2 inch in places.  I got out the 8 foot step ladder and the long hose and spray head, switched the outside faucets to direct well water (unfiltered and untreated) and spent a couple of hours on the roof hosing out the gutters and downspouts.

This was only the second time I had been on the roof, and the first time I had inspected the entire surface.  The inspector had dubbed the roof “serviceable” during the purchase inspection, meaning that it probably did not need to be replaced immediately.  My assessment was “marginally serviceable”, meaning that it will probably have to be re-shingled next summer.  It is a relatively low pitch roof, roughly 4-in-12, so I may redo it myself.  I’ve done this work before, and although I was much younger then, I am actually in better shape now.  The key will be getting the shingles delivered to the roof rather that to the driveway.  The bonus to being on the roof was that the views were nice and I had a much better Verizon 4G/LTE signal than I do in the house, so there is still the possibility that I can get a usable signal into the house using some sort of signal booster system.

By the time Linda fought her way home through Friday evening rush hour traffic she was tired and did not feel like cooking.  It was also obvious that we would not be ready to leave for Twelve Mile, Indiana by noon the next day.  We quickly decided to delay our departure until Sunday and, relieved of that pressure, headed off to LaMarsa in Brighton for dinner.  The LaMarsa in Farmington Hills was a favorite of ours before we moved, and the one in Brighton is equally good.  Our favorite dish is Koshary, an Egyptian street food made with rice, legumes, two different pastas, fried onions, pickled beets, and a spicy sauce.  It comes with a salad with a lovely Middle Eastern vinaigrette dressing.  Dinner always comes with fresh pocket pita breads and garlic spread and the whole meal is vegan, served in a nice setting by wonderful wait staff.

 

2013_08_09-12 (F, S, N, M) Odds And Ends

There is a certain routine to being back at the house, and when we are here it feels like we should get back into that routine.  Otherwise, it becomes too easy to sleep in, start slow, and not get around to even thinking about doing things until the afternoon, by which time it is too late to start anything.

Friday we were still unloading a few things from the bus, finishing up laundry (me), weeding the flower beds (Linda), catching up on accounting tasks (Linda), catching up on operating system updates (me), and other such necessities of daily living.  I placed calls to various service providers and filled out an online trouble report to try and get our AT&T phone line back in service.  Based on the missed calls on our answering machine, it appears that the phone line quite working around June 25th.  What I found interesting was that our High Speed Internet (HSI/DSL) worked fine and never went out.

With necessary chores attended to I turned my attention to writing first drafts of articles for Bus Conversions Magazine (BCM).  I had started an article a while back on the exterior makeover so finished a first draft of that and sent it off to Michele Henry of Phoenix Paint for review.  I had six other projects I had worked on the last 11 months that I also thought would make good articles.  Over the course of the weekend I completed first drafts of all six and sent all seven article drafts off to the Publisher (Gary Hall) and Editor (Wendy Crosby) of BCM, sans pictures.

Until today (Monday) the weather has been delightful since we returned, with blue skies, a few puffy white clouds, highs in the low-to-mid 70’s and lows in the upper 50’s.  Friday evening we decided to get out of the house for a while so we drove to downtown Brighton and went for a walk along the Mill Pond.  This is a large pond formed by a small dam in the heart of downtown, and it has a boardwalk that runs along the east side for about 1/2 mile.  Besides people there were ducks and geese, including babies, and a swan.  We also saw bluebirds and two muskrats.  Downtown Brighton is a happening place on a Friday night.  There were lots of people at the many restaurants, but equally many out walking.

Part of our routine is Saturday morning ham radio breakfast, usually with the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC) of which we are members, but occasionally with the Novi Radio Club.  Having been gone for a while we went to the SLAARC breakfast.  It was good to see our ham radio friends and catch up on what everyone has been doing.  Folks were interested in our travels, of course, and we enjoyed sharing a little bit about that.

Back home I decided to run a computer network cable from our AT&T Gateway to my office in the basement so I could connect the computers down there to a hub and and connect it back to the Gateway.  I’ve been trying to accomplish this connectivity with WiFi, but have had limited success.  I ran a small experiment first to make sure it would work, plugging my laptop into the hub and the hub into the Gateway with all of the components in close physical proximity to the Gateway.  It worked, so I proceeded with the larger project.

I had to enlarge a hole from the basement up into the wall cavity behind Linda’s desk, and managed to nick the Cat5 cable that carries the DSL/phone signal to the Gateway.  Naturally the AT&T repair truck showed up a short time later.  That did not turn out to be problem, however, as the technician very quickly determined that the problem was somewhere upstream in their system.  He had our signals restored at the outside junction box long before I was ready to reconnect to them.

I managed to get the Cat6 network cable run through the suspended ceiling in the basement and into the office.  I put the hub in the center of the room and ran the longest cables I had from various devices across the floor and over things.  I would include a picture, but it isn’t a pretty sight.  😉  The hardwired connection isn’t necessarily faster than the wireless one, but it stays connected, which is more important than speed.

While I was at it I decided to run a new, higher quality Cat6 cable from the AT&T junction box (outside) to the AT&T Gateway (inside).  After poking around in the attics above the garage and the house, I decided that this was not a project that had to be done at this time.  As I have worked on projects in the basement I have been removing old telephone wires as we use a cordless phone system and the wiring is obsolete.  I was going to to continue that work, but decided for now to just fix the cable I had damaged and get our phone/DSL connections back on line.

Another part of our routine is the Sunday morning Howell Farmers Market.  The nice weather continued and we enjoyed strolling through the market and talking to the vendors.  We bought some corn and peppers and herbs.  We bought some more coffee beans from Irene’s Beans of Milford, and also from Teeko’s of Howell.  Teeko’s is not far from our house and they keep their beans green until you buy them.  They then roast them to your taste while you wait.  They have a very wide selection of beans, including 100% Kona and Jamaica Blue Mountain.  These are premium coffee beans and are not generally available even at upscale food markets.

On Sunday Linda split her time between weeding, her computer, and just relaxing, which usually involves reading.  Of course she also took time to make meals, which were good, as usual.  I continued working on articles drafts and started updating our GPS units.  I had the docking/update software for both units installed on an older laptop that is not very fast, even with a hardwired network connection.  I replaced the hard disk drive in that laptop some time ago with a solid state drive as I plan to use that computer to run the Silverleaf VMSpc software for monitoring the bus engine while I drive.  I figured the SSD would be more tolerant of bumps and vibrations.  It probably is, but I did not figure on how incredibly slow it would be.

It took quite a while, but I got the Garmin nüvi 465T updated.  This is a nice little GPS unit designed for truckers (the T model) with a 4″ diagonal screen.  Because it is designed for truckers, we can create profiles for different vehicles/combinations, including length, width, height, and weight.  That is very handy when driving a large vehicle.  We use it in the toad, and as a backup for the bus.  I need to move the docking software to my newer laptop if I can figure out how to do it.  Part of the problem is that I also have map subscriptions installed on the old laptop and have to move those as well.

Sunday night was our monthly SLAARC meeting in South Lyon.  Linda opted not to go, but as the Vice-President of the club for this year, I really needed to make an appearance.  Besides, the program was on how to use an oscilloscope.  The presenter was (Dr.) Steve Smith, N8AR, a member of our club and retired electrical/communications engineer who worked on the space program at one point in his career.  Steve has done a number of presentations for our club.  They are always good, and they always draw a crowd, and this was no exception.

This morning (Monday the 12th) we woke to find it very overcast with a high probability of showers for most of the day.  That meant we would not be doing much outside work today.  Our Honda Element (towed vehicle) was overdue for it’s 75,000 mile service, so we took it to Brighton Honda right after breakfast.  While I was getting it written up Linda picked up my favorite Amy’s frozen pizza for dinner as she had plans for dinner and movie with Diane; their belated annual birthday night out.

I planned to continue working on my articles for BCM, selecting, adding, and annotating photos to illustrate them.  But first I decided to install the docking software for our Rand-McNally RVND7710 GPS.  That was easy; the software resides in the non-volatile memory of the unit, which connects to the computer via a USB cable.  I checked for updates; there were some, so I installed them.

I then decided to purchase the Lifetime Map updates, which I had not done previously.  I accomplished that easily enough but had a little trouble getting the docking software to accept the Activation Key.  Closing the software, powering the GPS down, turning it back on, and re-launching the docking software got it to work, but that wasn’t part of the instructions.  Great; time to download and install updated maps, which I did.  It took eight (8) hours!  I know our Internet connection is not very fast, and  I have no idea how much data got downloaded, but 8 hours?!  Unfortunately that tied up my laptop for most of the day, so whatever else I had hoped to accomplish got delayed.  But that was OK; it rained all day, and a slower pace with a subdued tone somehow seemed appropriate.