Rain and Chai

Time: 2:30 p.m.

Location: Hatti Beaslys Micro Roaster

Weather: Rainy, Grey, Ugh.

Thank the gods and the heroes of caffeine that there's a new coffee place in Portsmouth. The place is located at the corner of the Green Lawn Cemetery so it's not too far from where I live. With the weather so wet and grey today, I knew that if I was going to get anything done, I needed to get out of the house to do it. So, I grabbed my field bag, the Mobile and went in search of Chai.

First problem: The hours of rain had dumped water into my car through the "small" leak in the sun roof.

After running to a car wash to have the water sucked out, I ran over to the coffee place to grab some energy. So here I am, seated at a large glass-topped table and listening to all of the gossip that the women who work here continue to discuss. It's sort of like trying to block out an annoying buzz in the background - just at the edge of your hearing. You continue to distract yourself but every once and a while words like "Bitch" and "Affair" seem to just jump over the counter and grab me by the collar.

The syllabi for my psychology 101 classes are basically done. I need to take them back and dress up their formatting a bit before I email them down to Sandi, but that will take no time at all. The hardest part was adjusting the new course calendar for spring quarter. I'll be posting it on blackboard as well so the students have no excuse for not knowing what's going on in class.

The car port project is about half-way done. The rafters are up and the posts are in the ground but there's no roof. I was tempted to string up a tarp temporarily to stick my car under just to keep the car out of the rain and I might do it depending on the forecast. I don't want the car to be drenched continually and it will take a day or two for the backyard to dry out enough to work in it. I'm sure I can rig something up in the mean time.

Once the roof is up and the panels of plywood and lattice are installed, I'll be working on getting some gravel to lay down in the back yard. Mother and grand dad think that it'll take at least 4 inches of gravel to keep the backyard covered. So 18' x 18' x 4" of gravel is going to be hard to get up into my driveway. I know we can get it from the family but the expense of having it transported is an issue. The driveway is very narrow and short of them dropping off a huge load at the bottom of the drive and me hauling it up with a wheel-barrel, I'm not sure how it will work quite yet.

I can say that the idea of having to haul up a ton of gravel, one barrel-load at a time is not something I'm looking forward to. I'd need to grab as many people as I could, some buckets or something and just start hauling it up to make it work as a weekend project or something like that.

So that phase is still up in the air.

Roofing and guttering is probably going to take a day at least. Hauling the large stones around from the hill to the edge of the drive will be something I'll work on before the walls go up. I think I just talked myself out of going anywhere for the last weekend of break. I'm not sure - I'd like to go visit the Athens bunch at least once over break; maybe Saturday and Sunday.

It's still raining outside.

I saw a few high school kids come in and they are soaked.

Once again, this small NEC Mobile has gotten people's attention. I'm blogging on it now and as people walk by they are entranced by it's compact size yet functionality. The thing they always comment about is the size of the keyboard and the screen. Unlike a pda (which seems to be used by people just to check their calendar or occasionally check on email), this allows someone to actually read through a document without squinting at a 3" x 4" screen.

When I tell them that the model is close to 10 years old and that you can find them for sale on Ebay for around 50 - 100 dollars, they seem interested in finding out the actual name of the model and such. If I was able to get this to recognize a wireless internet PMCIA card, I'd have access to the net when I'm out and about. The University, however, won't accept access from anything short of Windows XP so I wouldn't be able to use it on campus (I don't think), but while I'm at the coffee house it would be nice.

Then again, this system probably couldn't withstand the onslaught of a lot of browsing; there's just not a lot of memory or processor within it. It would be nice to send / check email though.

Hrm. Elderly crowd.

Well, I'm done here - I think. I could just hang out for a while if I wanted to, but I probably need to run back and throw up the tarp while there's a lull in the rain.

Later.

-Tom