It's been a bit of a struggle to find places where I can write undisturbed. I have to have:
- a bit of background noise - I always studied best in the student union, where there was a nice level of white noise from students talking or eating
- a comfortable table, preferably a booth
- a power outlet for my laptop
- a source of food and drink
- a bathroom
And these last two are gravy, really...
- the ability to see my table if I have to get up to get something in the way of food and drink
- wireless connectivity
There's a Starbuck's near my house that I've used a few times. It's not a bad place - there's 2 hours of free wireless if you've loaded one of their gift/drink cards in the last 30 days - except they do that restaurant thing where they jack the cooling up a bit too high, so you start to freeze if you stay there long enough. One would think, wouldn't one, that the pricey drinks and food would allow them to relax a bit about the length of stay their patrons indulge in...
There's also a McDonald's in Milpitas - okay, certainly not the best choice in terms of healthy eating, but it's better, in a lot of ways. The temperature is more securely within the range required for human survival, the food is a LOT cheaper, it's open later, and there's a play-place, the door of which is directly adjacent to my favorite booth. This is where I take the kids most Saturdays - well, by KIDS, I mean Elise and her friend Wynter. It's harder to write with the kids popping out of the play-place every few minutes to tell me something, but still, if i HAVE to bring them, I can get a few things done. They have wireless here as well, but you do have to pay for it. It's something like $2.50 for two hours.
This latter is where I am right now., 06/29/2009. I have a job search workshop on Mondays from 10am-12pm, and I come here after that, get some lunch and spend some time writing. Today it was the blog, and finally working on the video I took at the dog park in Milpitas a week ago:
We've had Charlotte for a week now, and it's been wonderful - she seems to adapt so fast, and she's already fitting in to our lifestyle. Last night, Jeff played with Elise for about half an hour - I could hear her squealing happily from the bedroom - and then he played with Sophie for about 15 minutes, and THEN he played with Charlotte for 15 minutes. With Elise, it's the "rolling around on the bed getting tickled" game. With Sophie, it's the "Papa rolls around on the bed while Sophie tries to give him kisses on his face" game. With Charlotte, it's the "Mine!" game.
Eden left us a huge bag of toys for Charlotte which have, in the course of the last week, become scattered around the house. Charlotte will appear with a randomly selected toy clutched in her gaping jaws, and wave it at someone in the hopes they'll play "tug-of-war", or what Jeff calls the "Mine!" game. Last night it was her teddy bear.
(And yes, there's something rather disturbing about a dog with jaws like a Dire wolf, biting down on a cheery teddy bear as hard as she can. It's even worse when she tugs on it. That poor teddy bear is not long for this world.)
Other Charlotte happenings: I spent the weekend at my in-laws' place in Morgan Hill. On Friday night, I left Charlotte with the in-laws', John and Doris, and my niece Katie, while I went grocery shopping. While I was gone, John found out the hard way that:
#1) Charlotte has a really strong prey drive, and she REALLY wants to play with the cat
#2) The cat does NOT want to play with Charlotte. At all.
When I got back from grocery shopping, I walked into the living room of their house, to find John sitting on the sofa, holding Charlotte's leash, his arm covered in random brightly-colored band-aids. Used to seeing such band-aids adorning my husband's arms - Jeff has a very problematic relationship with Elise's cat Snowshoes - I didn't even bother to ask what happened, but started right in with the apologies. As it happens, John and Doris are experienced animal people. Doris was blaming John for what happened... What a bunch of goofies! I told John I owed him a chore or two to make up for it.
Charlotte did very well in the trailer. Holly the huge Rottweiler puppy was scared to death of her at first, but after an hour or two, they warmed up to each other and were playing in the yard like old buds. When Peggy, Holly's mom, called them, they both came running, only Charlotte took a side trip to go play in the fish pond. Peggy found her standing knee-deep in the water, staring at the fish swimming past with a bemused look on her face. Peggy had to go grab her collar and pull her out, at which point she came willingly enough, but I can just see the look on that dog's face as she stood there staring down at the koi swimming past.
It was way too hot this weekend. My trailer has no insulation whatsoever, so being in it when the temperature is anywhere over 80 degrees, is like sitting in an oven. I don't care how many fans you turn on - I even bought an older air conditioner from our neighbors and plopped it into a window. It worked fine until midday, and then it did barely any good at all as the temperature climbed towards double digits. It was still cooler than outside, but Charlotte got pretty bored with being inside all day, and after a while, I let her outside and just tried to keep an eye on her, make sure she drank enough water, etc.
I usually stay in Morgan Hill until well past dark, leaving sometime around 9pm to get back to our house around 10pm, but this last Sunday, there just came a point at around 6pm when I threw up my hands and gave up, packed up the truck and the dog and came home. I've got two options: I can either renovate the trailer somehow to improve the insulation, or I can decide never to go there if the temp is going to be anyway over 90 degrees.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. I had thought that if I was going to extensively renovate a trailer, I'd rather start with an Airstream body, and have my existing Komfort trailer to use while I do that, but now I'm wondering if there's something simple I can do to make things more livable in the Komfort, since I don't have the money to get an Airstream body to work on.
Dunno. This is going to take some thinking.
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