A long short day

All my plans to stay an extra day at Morro Bay were derailed by the weather report for tomorrow, which was for colder, cloudy, possibly rain along the drive home, coupled by the fact that the grey whales will be migrating for a couple more months, and I can see them from Half Moon Bay just as easily in February.

So I had a lovely breakfast at the motel (Best Western San Marcos), checked out at about 10 after I was sure I didn't need to use the facilities any more, drove down the hill to the parking lot next to my favorite coffee shop "Buns and Sun", walked there but decided I was full from breakfast (four small self-made waffles) and just got in the car and headed up Hwy 1. Got a good view of the ocean for about 20 minutes, then inland over the hills to Paso Robles, and up 101. Stopped after an hour at the rest stop, then again just short of my trip odometer hitting 300, in King City to fill up, then home.

Just in time for email from the mfg rep's office, someone I had not worked with before confirmed which insurance quote I was wanting to switch to, she emailed me the paperwork, I signed and emailed it back, also snailmailed it. The lender will add the difference to my monthly bill (something like $5/month), which may go higher if they have to add flood insurance. I can't really tell from that line item if it is in there or not. Also attached was an offer of CA earthquake coverage, but while the annual premium was half that of the one Allstate quoted, the deductible was twice as high. So no on that.

My Allstate agent emailed that he thinks the reason his insurance partner company wanted to add $200 to a $650 annual premium is there is no full time live-in manager at the mobile home park. That's ridiculous, this isn't an RV park, it's a community of 230+ homes with a manager & staff & community center. Anyhow, I'm done with that partner company, as all of this should have been done two months ago, and giving me what amounted to 4 working days' notice to pay them was vile. It also ignored the fact that the insurance comes out of escrow, not directly from me.

Good thing I came home early. Also, was able to make a coffee/movie date with a friend.

While I was online I had a brainstorm and found a way to fix the fonts in Firefox so they didn't break up in Facebook. Just needed an add-in for fonts, which made the change all by itself. Basically it automatically defaults to a readable font.

And I'm out of egg nog, which I will take care of tomorrow. Also need to go to a hardware store and get some L-brackets, and some fluorescent bulbs.

Domino was sunning herself on the rim of the bathtub when I got home, one of the few places not in view of a webcam. She can't decide if she's mad at me or misses me. On the side stairs was the 10-pack of treats I'd ordered.

Uploaded the photos to the PC, most of them came out well, but none of them are calendar quality whale action pictures. For a change all of them got GPS tagged.
( Photos behind the cut )

Watched the Alamo Bowl until Texas scored, then went to BASFA, which was a longer meeting than usual because of some fun & games around the reading of the minutes, and the fact that for the last several meetings while the secretary was unable to attend the various holographic secretaries had not posted the minutes online. I brought a pair of my calendars, one for artist maurinestarkey and one to auction off. There were actual bids this time, and it went for almost what it cost to make. A nice surprise.

I got a very interesting artsy poster for $1. Things bogged down when someone decided to put about a dozen packages of Christmas cards on the table.

Another good thing is I asked for suggestions for books by James Gunn, and got two good suggestions, plus kproche pointed me to the author's web site, which happens to be the U Kansas sci-fi center. It all makes sense, because the person who saw the article on him and asked me, has a license plate which says JHAWKS.

Home, watched the rest of the game and marveled how badly Oregon crushed Texas when the Ducks only made about 10% of their tackles and kept backing themselves up with penalties which kept them from the end zone. I think they had two offensive TDs and two defensive ones (interceptions run back for TDs). The rest was field goals, including a missed one. But then, Texas was the king of 3&out in the 2nd half.

Plans for tomorrow:
Hardware store
Grocery store
Starbucks
Philomena
Replace burned out bulbs
Install my NOLA art
Install a bracket to hold my 3-tier fruit basket
Maybe install a couple of hummingbird feeders on the front porch
Maybe make pigs n blankets & watch the ball drop on TV

More trip stuff

It was a long drive, and I was surprised that I was wide awake for all of it. I kept myself amused by listening to my comedy playlist on the iPod. Also Dan Fogelberg. Decided that an audio book would probably put me to sleep, so skipped that.

So now I have Tom Lehrer earworms.