New reference points

It comes to something when the most exciting news I can think of is that I located the interactive inking tutorial on my new tablet laptop! However, to balance this exitement, I spent a long time trying to follow the instructions in the email from HP support on how to load my printer "solution center" so I can scan documents. The instructions didn't make sense, so I called computer science professor son-in-law. "That doesn't sound right," he said, and went on to say that it may be Vista -- he can't scan either and he has a much newer printer. I'm glad I didn't do what I was told!

I have a new postcard -- it's "Big John and party shooting the Lachine Rapids, Montreal." Everyone is wearing a dress shirt, waistcoat, and trilby hat! Thank you, Lynda, it's really great.

The picture (top left) inspired a collection of "rough water postcards" -- but I could only find five. At first I thought I would leave the other two pockets blank, but then I found two pictures related to rough waters in a symbolic way. One was of the ornate stern of the Vasa -- the ship built to convey the prestige of the Swedish King Vasa II that overturned in Stockholm harbor on its maiden voyage, and lay protected in the mud for 333 years until 1962. The other is a collection of carved wooden figure-heads at Mystic Seaport -- a reminder of what every ship going into rough waters needs! I enjoyed the collection so much today that I will keep it up tomorrow.

I didn't get much further on the text of the irony chapter, though Ulla and I Skyped to check on the other's progress. I did teach myself how to insert a slide into the text and make the text flow around it -- the process was much different from the way I had previously approached the task, so I'm glad I've conquered that part of the submission. It needs to be camera ready, and I was beginning to think that we were doing all the writing for naught. I really don't have that much more to do, at least for this draft, so I hope that college affairs will stay quiet tomorrow and let me finish!

There's a new addition to the neighborhood! The Orrs have a new, huge flagpole on the rocks. It's just what we need for gauging wind speed and direction before going sailing. Jack has already started calibrating the angle and working surface area of the flag against wind speeds reported on the weather channel! But today it didn't tell us anything we didn't know already -- not enough wind for a sail!