Idle Ramblings of an Itinerant Druid

To the apartment in Baton Rouge that is.  Stopped at my usual halfway point in Sikeston, MO, even got gas at the same place earlier today -- my Michigan-Louisiana commute is becoming mundane.  Mundane is probably a good thing though, especially considering the interesting things my car is doing lately.  :)  Nothing too hazardous... just that my dials are misbehaving... tachometer, temperature gage, spedometer... I don't think the fuel gage is messed up yet though.  So driving up to Michigan earlier this month, I noticed my tachometer needle was pointing straight down and not moving.  Nothing major I thought, I don't really need a tachometer, thought the needle had just come loose.  Then driving to the wedding the tachometer spontaneously decided to start moving again, starting from its position pointing straight down.  I then glanced down at my spedometer and noticed I was going 70 mph on a rural road, I promptly slowed down until the needle pointed to 55, but it seemed much slower than that.  Sure enough, when I came to a dead stop at the next stop sign, my spedometer said I was still going 15mph.  So that was rather interesting, just had to add 15 to the speed I actually wanted to go.  Made it up the wedding fine, and by the time I was driving home everything (exept tachometer, stuck again) was behaving normally and all was well for a few days.  Next, while I was driving to visit a cactus and a cousin I noticed my engine was supposedly overheating as the temperature needle was pointing beyond the red zone...  I figured there would be warning lights and/or smoke coming from the engine if the situation were really so dire and finished my drive.  Sure enough, on the drive home the needles (except tach) were back in their correct position, and Dad checked the fan/coolant level, etc and everything was fine.  All was well for a few more days.  Then, while driving to Detroit to visit dead people, my temperature needle was again beyond the red zone, so far this time that it crossed over into the spedometer area, and, after stopping, my temperature needle pinned the spedometer needle down so it was unable to move beyond 10 mph (Oh, did I mention I had a spedometer on my GPS?  So I wasn't entirely clueless how fast I was going.)  I stopped at the next gas station, and after turning the key off and on repeatedly, was able to get the needles (except tach of course) to reset to their proper position, and had no problems for the rest of the day.  So, anyway, will have that looked at when I get back to the Red Stick.  Today everything started out normal, but the spedometer gradually went off; by the end of the day I was driving 70 miles an hour when the needle pointed to 50.  Well, one more day of driving... 

Wow, the possessed dial post took longer than expected.  All in all, I had a nice relaxing trip back up to Michigan, had fun at the wedding, and it was absolutely great to see the Hit Squad in its entirety again.  :)  My brother's kids kept me busy for a week when they were there, and I also got quite a bit of genealogy research accomplished.  Now its back to grad research, will be taking canopy photos soon, weather permitting...

Yep, that's right, the apartment doesn't echo anymore.  :)  Don & Tracy brought the furniture down from Michigan on Friday night.  So now I've got a real rocking chair, a couch, an actual bed (previous was air mattress), the computer is now set up on a desk instead of boxes, and I've got carpet in the living room!  :)  It makes a big difference.  It's much more liveable, and really helps break up the blank white of the walls, floor, and ceiling.  The only slight drawback, which is gradually working itself out, my allergies have been going crazy after spending much time inside.  I believe the likely culprit would be dust.  I think as I continue to use the furniture the troublesome dust will rise and settle somewhere more inconspicuous.  (Yes, I have vaccuumed, and swept, etc, but that just seems to stir it up.)  As I've said, the allergies do seem to be subsiding, and at least the dust allergies aren't as full-blown as my ragweed allergy, anyway.  So, furniture, yay!  

Of course it was also great to see Don & Tracy again.  I gave them a quick walking tour of campus Saturday morning (they seemed suitably impressed with the live oak growth form :) ), and then off to the Spanish Town parades downtown.  Spanish Town's a good introductory Mardi Gras, lots of beads, and meant to be family friendly.  A couple of the satirical targets for the floats this year were Britney Spears, Governor Blanco, and Coach Saban.  Many LSU fans aren't happy with Saban for taking a higher paying position elsewhere.  ;)  Well, I think that's all the news for now, the break was nice, have one more day tomorrow, and then classes resume Thursday. 

Well, it could have been worse, much, much worse.  I've had my external hard drive for about a month now, and I created a backup from Windows shortly after I got it.  The computer also happened to do an automatic backup the night before, which would be ideal if I could completely restore from it.  And it still should be possible once I get an actual disk for the system restore.  

So Thanksgiving was nice, at Jean's house, she surprised me and cooked a turkey even though she's vegetarian (well except fish).  She and Rae had tofu, but the other 4 of us enjoyed the turkey.  

I've been working as much as possible trying to get in the last of my 600 hours in the last two weeks I thought I'd be here.  I even managed to put in 2 hours on Thanksgiving, a full day that Friday, and 6.5 Saturday until it happened....  Invalid access to memory location... 

But at least nothing was totally lost; I lost 3 and a half days of work, but then I can stay longer now, so I'm not so frantically scrambling for hours.  

And that's what I've been up to lately, besides apartment searching online, which can be a bit difficult without a computer.  :) 

On tree rings.  Inside.  Microscope and computer.  10-9, with a half hour for lunch.  I'm currently having trouble counting, took me awhile to figure out how many hours that was.  Well, the faster I put the hours in the sooner I'll be done.  And Rae was working as well, so it's not like it was all on my own.  We're getting a lot done while she's been here.  We got back from Louisiana last week Monday.  We have the chronology back approximately to 1880 (for around 20 trees anyway).  It's working.  I'd rather be outside more though.  I don't think I'll pursue dendro for my own research.  Too much microscope.  Complex sentences are beyond me right now.  :)  Got the redwood potted yesterday finally.  Had trouble getting soil.  Wal-Mart was closed Sunday, power outage, it's an hour away.  All the small things around were closed Sunday.  I'm pretty much typing whatever pops into my mind right not.  No real news.  This won't be that coherent.  Weather's getting nice, back up to mid 70s today, but really humid.  It's been down to 60s mornings, had to wear a sweater the other day.  It's really nice when it's not this humid.  There's a storm coming, it really needs to rain to condense the humidity.  Right now the air is thick.  Well enough rambling.  I need to see if I can save my orchid.