A New Year

Well, it's about midnight and 2008 begins. Not really a lot has happened since the last posting. My daughter sang her first vocal solo at the choir's coffeehouse this year. But she had to miss the last night because she was getting a cold. Then a few days before Christmas, we went to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra at the FedEx Forum. It was really good. I said after that I don't think I've enjoyed an entertainment event that much in a long time (other than the ones my daughter is in, of course). We had a quiet Christmas. We mostly hung around the house like bums. We got my daughter tickets to see Wicked in St. Louis, which we did a few days after Christmas. Her cold was still hanging on, but she seemed to be feeling better when we left. By the time we got back, she wasn't feeling so good again, and her cough was getting really raspy. So they go to the doctor. When she gets home, my daughter says "guess what I've got---pneumonia." Fortunately, it's a relatively mild case and the doctor seems to think they caught it just about as soon as it could have been seen. So she's been pumping the antibiotics the last several days and sleeping a lot.

Then yesterday was "fun." The power in our bathroom outlet went out, but the breaker wasn't tripped. All the bathroom outlets are on the same circuit and none of them are GFCI outlets; the one in the breaker panel is. After some chasing things down, I found that the front one worked, but the other two bathrooms didn't have power. Well, eventually, I found that there was also an outside outlet that was on the same circuit and it had been affected by weather and such, because the front panel had come off. And there were bad connections that broke the circuit after the front bathroom. So, I got in the Miata to make a Lowe's run to get new panels for a couple of outside outlets. And when I turned the key, nothing happened. It was dead as a doornail. It seems I had accidentally turned on the parking lights when I drove it last and didn't realize it. After I got back from making the run in the van, I put the Miata battery on a charger. It looks like it wasn't permanently damaged. That's good, because Miata batteries aren't the usual ones and are sometimes hard to find.

I can't make an entry without a book update. It's now 10 days until the scheduled BBD. I'm still sitting on pins and needles waiting to see a copy. And the other night I saw the end of Back to the Future again and saw the scene where George's book arrives. In the mean time, I'm still working on the instructor material. I just finished up Ch 11, so I'm basically halfway through. And I've seen the sales ranking on Amazon move up a couple of times, so I guess there have been at least a few more preorders. I just hope they're not disappointed when it comes out.