The Peaceful Gnome

via flickr.com Please, if you are going to make a sign and carry it in public check your spelling and your grammar. If you are not sure, ask someone around you who might know. Of course hanging with this crew of supposed conservatives, who were totally silent through the entire Bush debacle for some reason, might make if difficult to actually find a literate person to ask... Posted via web from The Angry Gnome

My day so far. Got out of bed at 4:10 am, stumbling about in the dark I stubbed the little toe on my left foot, it's still barking at me. :-P Got rained on getting to the car to drive to BART, then missed my train. Checked my bank account via Blackberry while on the train and saw that there were two $45 withdrawals for BART this morning on my auto-load ticket, I thought that was sort of odd and figured I would call them later. Got to SF and my EZ Rider (auto-loading BART ticket) would not let me out of the gate.  I talked to the station agent and they checked my card and said it is inactive.  Though when I checked on their web site they say my card IS active.  I went and bought coffee for Ellard and me at Starbucks, brought it to my desk and turned it upside down dumping the entire cup onto the desk and the floor. Called BART EZ Rider customer service and got told to leave a message... they have never called back. Maybe I should have just stayed in bed...

via theonion.com Heh, so true... especially the last paragraph. Posted via web from The Angry Gnome

See and download the full gallery on posterous Posted via email from Our Family Blog

Our friends Cindy and Mike happen to live in a Yurt up on a hill just out of Livermore and they invited a bunch of people over yesterday for a barbecue. It was a perfect day. There was very little wind unlike the rest of the week when it was sort of cool and breezy and even sprinkled a bit. It was sunny and warm, maybe in the low 70's. Here are some pictures I took with my phone. The trail pictures are when some of us walked up to the pond to look at wildflowers along the way. We had a great time and the food was abundant and yummy as well. See and download the full gallery on posterous Posted via email from Our Family Blog

While we were getting moved in to our new apartment Nicki came over to help out, along with her kids Kaylee and Ryan. We walked over to 1st Street and had lunch at the 1st Street Ale House. It was a nice sunny warm northern California March day so we ate on the sidewalk. I like it here :-) See and download the full gallery on posterous Posted via email from Our Family Blog

Serenity has one of these, I wonder if she'll end up in Carnegie Hall? 8-) Posted via email from The Angry Gnome

The only room that is "finished" is mine so here are photos of my bedroom :-) See and download the full gallery on posterous Posted via email from Our Family Blog

We are now officially living in Livermore California. This is a very nice town and we have a primo location in it from which we can walk pretty much anywhere. Today we are still in the process of unpacking our "stuff" that is sitting about in big piles in the apartment. A great deal of our "stuff" is still sitting in what is now officially "Mike's Garage" back in Pleasanton. We may end up needing a storage locker at one of the local storage places, at least for extra bikes and camping gear. Or maybe we could get rid of some "stuff." What I've learned from this move so far: 1. Going up to the 2nd floor via stairs more than 100 times in one day makes my legs tired. 2. We have way more "stuff" than we really need. 3. Cost estimates from movers mean exactly nothing. Posted via email from The Angry Gnome

Think of it. Today whenever we hear that children aren't learning much of what is taught in school the hue and cry from the educational establishment is that we must therefore teach more of it! If two hundred hours of instruction on subject X does no good, well, let's try four hundred hours. If children aren't learning what is taught to them in first grade, then let's start teaching it in kindergarten. And if they aren't learning it in kindergarten, that could only mean that we need to start them in pre-kindergarten! But Benezet had the opposite opinion. If kids aren't learning much math in the early grades despite considerable time and effort devoted to it, then why waste time and effort on it? Benezet followed his outrageous suggestion with an outrageous experiment. He asked the principals and teachers in some of the schools located in the poorest parts of Manchester to drop the third R from the early grades. They would not teach arithmetic--no adding, s...

Happy Birthday Serenity! See and download the full gallery on posterous Posted via email from Our Family Blog

For those who missed it here is the link to the description of our new apartment.  Our new address is: 1713 Mill Springs Common Apt 209 Livermore, CA 94550 All of our phone numbers and email addresses remain the same.  Our actual physical move is on Tuesday the 23rd, though I've been over there the last two days fighting with the DSL trying to get the internet to work before we move in.  I will be meeting an AT&T tech person tomorrow morning between 8 and noon.  Then, it's back to Pleasanton for Serenity's birthday... busy week.  I'm glad I'm on vacation next week so we can get all this done. Posted via email from The Angry Gnome

So then, we are still in the process of moving to Livermore   View Larger Map right now and very busy so posts are going to be erratic or nonexistent for a little while here.  I spent yesterday chasing down a UPS package from at&t that had gone sideways in the system because it was sent to the new house and there was no one there to accept it and they noticed the apartment was empty.  I finally managed to locate it at the UPS Hub in San Ramon and used that as an excuse to go to Papa Murphy's in San Ramon last night and bring home some take-and-bake Gourmet Vegetarian Pizza , yum :-) Tomorrow is Serenity's 9th birthday!   I can't believe it, time is just flying by so incredibly fast.  She was just 5 when she arrived here to stay with me.  I thank God every day for her and Lora being here, it's just the greatest thing ever as far as I'm concerned.  Woo Hoo!  God is good :-D !  Due to the move going on we are just going to h...

BART train splits in two in Transbay Tube Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, March 16, 2010 (03-16) 09:58 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A BART train split in two this morning as it was traveling west through the Transbay Tube, causing long delays through the morning commute. The nine-car train, bound for San Francisco International Airport from Pittsburg-Bay Point, was just east of San Francisco's Embarcadero Station when two cars came uncoupled at 6:23 a.m., said BART spokesman Linton Johnson. A fail-safe mechanism automatically stopped both sections of the train immediately. The five-car section was moved out of the way at 6:55 a.m. by the operator, but because the rear four-car section no longer had an operator, another employee had to be brought in, Johnson said. The shorter section of the train was finally moved west out of the tube at 7:10 a.m. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f= /c/a/2010/03/16/BAFI1CGHO4.DTL&tsp=1# Posted via email from The Angry G...

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry Posted via email from The Angry Gnome

My 40 minute train ride turned out to be 2 hours long today. First the train ahead of us got stuck in the trans-bay tube for some reason. We sat behind it in the tube for about 20 minutes or so before they gave up and backed us up and back out of the tunnel to West Oakland. Announcements on the public address system advised us to "seek alternate transportation" to the city. Being in West Oakland there was no alternate transportation! So I waited. And waited. And waited. Finally they got the two sections of the broken train out of the tunnel in front of us and we headed into the city. About 1/2 way through the tube the brakes on OUR train locked up, filling the car with foul smelling burnt brake smoke and bringing us to a halt yet again. Eventually the brakes were fixed and we made it into San Francisco. Posted via email from The Angry Gnome

It's cold and rainy outside, what better way to feel all warm and comfy than family and friends baking some cookies? See and download the full gallery on posterous Posted via email from Our Family Blog

Well, since Mike and Maryann are getting married soon, Lora and I have been searching for a new place to live, this is complicated by the fact that we have a large dog and most places don't accept dogs over 25 or 35 pounds. That was why we were excited by the idea of living out in the woods a few weeks ago. It seems God didn't think that was such a great idea. O:-) In the course of our search we found that there is a large apartment complex in the very heart of Livermore called Mill Springs Park that will accept our pets and it's within our budget and it's very nice. We are getting a two bedroom two bathroom place there. It has a small deck, a wood burning fireplace, central heat and air conditioning. It's also one of the newer complexes in the area having been built in 1990 and refurbished in 2000. Of course it has a swimming pool, hot tub, fitness room and club room as well. We will be signing our lease tomorrow morning and the movers will be here ...

047: Everything Is Dangerous The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And all the other stuff. I actually had a song, "Be Afraid", written last week. But it was... preachy. Too preachy. If-you-want-to-send-a-message-use-Western-Union preachy. Wasn't what I wanted. And then I saw this news story , and I knew I'd found my hook. I mean, apparently I must've been vacationing in the Alps when pet turtles were outlawed back in 1975, but I surely remember all of the kids who got salmonella playing with our adorable little buddies. Oh, wait, I don't remember a single one because I never knew a kid who got sick playing with a turtle. Neither did I know a kid who was made prone to violence from watching Road Runner cartoons, but that's neither here nor there. As Lois McMaster Bujold says, you can't make your kids safe -- you can only teach them how to be safe, and hope for the best. Or, as Leslie puts it, you...