A big buffet of blog.

Here is a veritable smorgasbord of Goolsbee news, and a heap of excuses why I haven’t been posting much since my return from the GTTSR (besides my backfilling those pages when I have had the time)…

That is 90% of Christopher’s worldly possessions stuffed into the trunk of his mother’s Jeep. Yep, weekend before last we ferried the elder Goolsbee child off to college. The Evergreen State College to be exact. The trip to Olympia was a traffic-choked adventure in and of itself, but I’ll spare you the boring details.

Upon arrival there was endless queuing and parking lot trauma, but eventually we managed to get Chris into his living space for his Freshman year. His dorm room is quite nice, on the top floor with skylights.

His mother was horrified, but I pronounced it “good.” He has this space to himself, but shares a bathroom with three suite-mates. The campus is nice, and we a few of the parent things, as well as paid tuition, room & board of course. We also made a run to some nearby stores (once the Jeep was emptied of Chris Crap) and stocked his supplies, desk, etc. Chris made a list for me of things he forgot over the next week and I’ll be visiting him later this week with that stuff, along with his bicycle, which we didn’t have room for on this trip.

Last weekend Nicholas attended a big dance at his high school. This required a clothing run, as he has outgrown just about everything. I swear he’s three inches taller than he was a month ago! Here he models his new threads:

Pretty studly eh?

His mom gave him a big hug and I shuttled him off to the dance in the Jaguar. That was my contribution.

Speaking of the Jag, I finally got around to giving it a good wash and wax this past weekend. The weather was glorious… a sort of Indian Summer after a few weeks of rain & cold. Sue & I took a drive as she had an errand to run down in Snohomish and actually suggested we take the E-type. I was planning to relocate it from the barn to the garage for the winter so it was a good excuse to take it out. As I was waiting for her to complete the task we drove to Snohomish for, I noted the car was seriously grimy from the long rain & bug filled road trip to Montana & back. When we arrived back home I washed it and pulled out the Meguairs wax and gave it a good rubdown.

Wax On!

Wax Off!

Pretty soon the rains will return in force and the car will go into hibernation until spring. I have a few projects to complete with it, but it will have to sleep in the garage as our damn cats have manifestly failed in the ONE real job they have, namely keeping mice out of the barn and therefore my car. Last winter I found signs of the damn thing all over the engine bay. Oh well.

So all this, along with some projects at work (involving more time with my nose in spreadsheets than I care to ever do) have kept me away from here for a while. Hopefully I can return to regular posting soon.

11 thoughts on “A big buffet of blog.”

  1. so what degree is he doing then? and how far is that drive from home?

    good luck with the mice…. we had rats in the roof of our house when we bought it… took a while to deal to them as we couldn’t really work out where they were getting in… very noisy attic neighbours they were for awhile!

    Jerome

  2. Strawberry baskets, Chuck. Filled with napthalene [nee moth] balls!

    Place those all around the engine compartment, under the dash, on both floors, in the boot. It’ll smell a little funny, but I *promise* you it will dissapate rapidly, once exposed to sun and fresh air next spring and will keep ‘rodentia’ and ‘lagomorphs’ at bay!

  4. So is that for a BA I guess? 120 miles is enough to keep the parents at bay a bit I expect! 🙂

    your house dynamics will change a lot – been through a few of those with last one in little over a year..

    Jerome

  5. “Paul, as for moth balls, I tried that. Didn’t work. =\”

    Well, maybe Pacific Nor’west mice are tougher lil’ buggers than our wimpy mountain mice!

    On the supposition that that may not be the case, try LOTS more moth balls. I used 10 POUNDS of them, all over the car (or cars) and nary a mouse nibble or pooplets. In the engine compartment, I’d park two baskets in the plug valley, one each on the ledges by the battery/fuel sediment bowl, two in each footwell, two in the boot area, then a basket behind each wheel, or on top of the tires. I’d put one on top of the picture frame, just inboard of the shocks, two on the dash (when Tweety *had* a dash!) and one each in the seat squabs.

    Failing that…a Model T coil wired to the car, with BEEG signs on it so humans don’t get zapped!

  6. Yes Jerome, a BA. He is only about 45 minutes away from my office (which is a tad past halfway there.) I ran down there Wednesday night to bring him his bicycle and a few other things. I took him out to dinner and made a grocery store run.

  7. Although I’ve only known you and your family for a little over 5 years, it’s been simply ASTONISHING to me to see them grow up! I would like to keep in touch w/Chris, since we’re both reactionary left-wingers..would you forward my email to him?

    Congrats..and Nick..NICK!! He’s a young man, now! And with that 100,000 volt smile!

    Guess this is how I be a ‘dad, through others….:) Thanks for including me, Chuck!

  9. That’s an awesome dorm room. My son Daniel shares one about that size with 2 other guys.

    As for mice, mousetraps with peanut butter always worked well for me. I had mice colonize my old Passat one winter, when it got warmer the black snakes moved in and that took care of the mice. Quite a shock to open the hood one day and see 2 rather large black snakes. The mice managed to make a mess before they became dinner though.

  10. Well Mark, those dorm shots are a tad skewed, as they are taken from opposite corners and with my REALLY wide angle lens. It is smaller than the room I had in college. The high ceiling helps with the perception of space though.

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