Honda redux...

By the time I got myself organized yesterday, it was time to leave for Farmington. Drew decided to take Hwy 151 down past Navajo Lake and Ignacio to Hwy 550, which turns out to be a "long" cut, but may have saved us some time as there is a considerable amount of construction going on over an 11-mile stretch between Durango and Bayfield.

Getting the car took a lot longer than I expected. After signing off on the financial paperwork (oh, the joys of being a co-signer!), the manager handed us off to the salesman, who was new and tried very conscientiously to go through the whole bit of explaining all the manuals, the warranties, etc. and then going on to give a tour of the vehicle, including how everything works. Part of me wanted to scream "Get on with it, already!" but I figured it was rare enough to get this kind of attention at a car dealer (first time, in my experience), so I played along without saying anything or trying to give off vibes of impatience.

We got home pretty late. Galina was already asleep, and I joined her as Drew showed off the car to Shannon and his friend Sean, who's visiting for a few days. This morning, the three of them took off for Durango so Drew can register at Ft. Lewis College. I understand it'll be an all-day affair, since Drew is going to have to take some placement tests before they set up a schedule for him.

In the odd moments during the morning's rush, I fired up the Linux box and set about installing Win4Lin. The process is fairly straightforward, and it's something of a (pleasant) shock to see Windows running in a separate window under X. So far, I haven't been able to do anything other than install Windows, and the only thing so far that I don't like is the occasional slow (I mean s-l-o-w) rendering of graphics - and here I'm referring to the "Welcome to Windows 98" screen that pops up by default when you boot a fresh installation - but we'll see where this goes later.

Meanwhile, I have to get cracking on the ethnographic translation, as the client called about it. We agreed I'd send him the first half, and I just want to make sure it's all there before I e-mail the thing to him... maybe even get a couple more pages done.

Cheers...

Happiness is...

Elusive.

Drew came home from Ft. Lewis with a schedule that pretty much precludes him from working more than two half days plus Saturdays, assuming he'll otherwise have enough free time to study. Most of the courses are, IMHO, not that demanding (Western Civilization, Issues in Economics), but that doesn't mean he can skate his way through them.

I'm just trying to figure out how to fill the hole he'll leave because he has to attend school, and secondarily, how he'll manage to make payments on the car that I/we signed for yesterday.

Happy thoughts, all around.

I sent a partial translation to my ethnographic client and managed to do another 15 pages or so of the text, so I think I am pretty much on track to complete the work soon... maybe Monday or Tuesday.

I will make the time this weekend to take some time off and go mushroooming. My time in Houston and the few weeks previous to that put me through the wringer, and I need to clear my mind of everything except telling the difference between Boletus edulis and Amanita muscaria.

No additional news on the Win4Lin front. I'm going to try to find my full-up version of Office 97, so as to avoid the complexities of installing Office 95 for the purpose of then installing the Office 97 upgrade. In theory, I ought to be able to copy some "key" file that the upgrade looks for, but I don't know what that file is.

Galina and I just spent about an hour on the porch talking. It was fun, until she started to talk about the shop and what needs to be done in that direction. That kind of talk depresses me, and I need to learn to ignore the depression and start both reacting and proacting appropriately.

It's not even 9 pm, and I feel completely tired. I think I shall turn off all my computers and go vegetate somewhere.

Cheers...