Well, that was a trip.

We managed to get everything (including the Dodeka cart) to fit into the back of the Edge without blocking any of the windows, so I took that as a major success. We headed out at 6:15 AM, which was close enough to my intended window of departure that we managed to miss all of the congestion on the way out of town. With one stop to grab breakfast at a McDonald's and one to buy gas, we made it to Muncie in 4:15, which was *excellent* time. We got there early enough to be able to stop at a Bob Evans in town and have lunch.

Then it was off to load in. We got there a little bit early. The nice policeman who was directing traffic was explaining to us how there was a waiting list for luggage carts and I interrupted him and told him that we'd brought our own cart. He looked very pleased. Because of some good planning between K and Gretchen, almost everything K brought was packed into four giant rectangular bags that stacked neatly on the cart. I dropped the ottoman, the duffel bag, and the arm pillow onto the top of this and left K to carry the monitor and her backpack separately. I parked the car across the street in the garage, came back, and we rolled directly in and to the kids' room.

The Midkiffs were running a little late, which turned out to combine nicely with our a little early. This gave us time to use my big rubber mallet to knock the bed apart so that we could move it to the height that K wanted. Then we pulled out the bedding and made the bed. We also moved all of the furniture in the room to the "place where it belongs". More unpacking followed. By the time Phil and Max arrived with the Midkiff wagon, we were pretty much done and putting the giant rectangular bags away.

Jen was waiting downstairs for a luggage cart and I suggested that they could expedite the process by borrowing our now empty cart. Off they went and a bit later, we had three Midkiffs and a metric ton of additional stuff. :) More unpacking followed. I practiced staying out of the way and assembling bits for K's desk.

After everything was assembled, we headed over to the food service a couple of buildings over and had some additional lunch (for us; first lunch for Midkiffs). Then I abandoned the party as they headed for the tech store to grab computers, because I had a longer drive home.

Traffic was a bit congested in a few places, but I still made the return trip in 4:30. Yay, me!

Meanwhile, Julie had a successful first day of her senior year in high school.

And Ruby and Calvin continue to try to figure out how to get along. Progress is being made. *Slow* progress...

Anyway, I am very tired and am going to head toward bed.

I am going to miss K coming in to chat every evening. :)

I am getting up at 5:30 in the morning tomorrow in the hope of leaving with K for college in time to get her there by 1 PM. If I do this correctly, there will be slack. If not, well...

Two more good nights' sleep (I hope) before departing to take K to college.

Tonight's adventure was taking her over to Mariano's to acquire "snacks". And powdered coffee creamer, because half-and-half is going to become a lot harder to stock in the dorm.

There is a ginormous pile of stuff to go in the car tomorrow night, but it should all fit.

Whee!

We are getting closer and closer to K's departure for college on Thursday -- as well as Julie's return to Maine West on the same day. To say that the tide of chaos is rising from these events is to completely ignore the puppy in the room.

There is *no* way to ignore the puppy in the room.

Just ask Ruby.

One of these things is not at all like the others.

I woke up this morning to find out that Tom Jeffers had died. Tom is an old friend of mine. When K was around a year old and Gretchen was recovering from her hysterectomy for endometrial cancer, Tom and Sue were good enough to come down and stay with us and help keep the household together. Tom was one of the nicest guys on the planet which just makes this seem much more unfair. And he and Sue had a lot of happy years together and should have had more. I'm going to miss him.

You hate to move on from something like that to common goings on, but it was a busy day here. I have finished my entry for the OVFF songwriting contest, for which the theme is "Steer by the Stars". I have checked this theme numerous times at this point to make sure that I have not repeated my error from FKO long ago, when I thought that the theme was "The End of the World" and it was actually "The End of Time". Oops. I ended up writing two songs that year; one for the wrong theme and one for the correct one. But this year's song is to the correct theme and no longer on my list of things to do.

Calvin the Puppy has decided that I am the Food God. He may be correct. In any case, he is a very hungry puppy. We have had a few housebreaking accidents, but this is mostly due to a failure to communicate. Ruby goes to the back door and complains when she needs to go out. Calvin just complains, leaving us unsure of what he wants, although food is frequently a good bet. But so is access to the great outdoors...

I continue to learn more about DisplayPort cables than I ever wanted to know. The new DisplayPort cables that I bought were to a new, faster standard. They were not, however, VESA certified, nor did they come with a latch that engages when they are fully pushed in. Today, two replacement cables arrived that are for DisplayPort 1.4, an older version of the standard, but which are VESA certified and have the latching feature. I've plugged them in and the monitors have only blinked once while I've been downstairs.

This is, of course, one time too many. More research followed. The long cable from the computer to the MST hub turns out to be a DisplayPort 1.2 cable, which is theoretically sufficient for MST, but the instructions for the hub say to use a minimum of a DisplayPort 1.4 cable. They also say that the cable should be shorter, but the computer needs to be on the opposite end of the console so that the Thunderbolt cable (which is *highly* length constrained) can reach from the computer to the Apollo unit.

I have now ordered *another* cable (stop laughing, Gretchen!) which is long enough to reach, has latches, and is both VESA certified and DisplayPort 1.4 compatible. It should arrive tomorrow.

And then we will see how it works.

Some projects get closer to done than others.

Yesterday, I assembled the desktop dual monitor stand and put the two new/refurb monitors on it, one on top of the other. Today, the Amazon shipment arrived with the missing cables and I figured I'd take a few minutes, run down to the basement and hook everything up. Getting the power cords into the monitors was a bit more challenging than I'd hoped, but by picking the tower up and putting it in my lap, I managed to get that done. All I had to do was to plug in the display port cables. I had ordered one with the monitors and another from Amazon last night when I realized that these monitors do not have a display port passthrough.

The cable from Amazon is fine. The cable from the refurb place is an HDMI to display port cable. Since these monitors do not have an HDMI port, that's sort of useless.

I have sent a complaint off to the refurb place. In the meantime, I have ordered yet another display port cable from Amazon which should arrive tomorrow.

*sigh*

In other news, the monitors on my desk are a slightly newer version. They have display port passthrough *and* an HDMI port. And they are going to stay *exactly* where they are. :)

It was a beautiful night for tonight's Cubs vs. Reds game. Sam came to join me and we spent a lot of time chatting, certainly more time chatting than the Cubs did scoring. But it was a good game, even if the Cubs lost 3-2.

I'm going to the Cubs vs. Reds game tomorrow night and decided that I could skip today's game against the Orioles, which meant that I missed a great ending, but how can you know?

What I *did* know was that there were a lot of things that needed to be done around the house. Gretchen and Julie spent several hours straightening things up in the dining room. There are *still* a lot of things in there that need to be dealt with, but I was able to put the table back in the useful position for a table with chairs around it for the first time since the COVID pandemic. We will take this as a win.

I also got two more loads of laundry done, took the two new monitors down to the basement to be installed later this week, cleaned the air filters on the A/C system, dispatched a mountain of bubble wrap in the living room that the monitors had been wrapped in for shipping, threw out a bunch of trash, and threw the ball for Ruby the Dog.

The last was the activity that probably made me and the dog happiest. :) Although there's a *lot* to be said for the dining room cleanup...

It was eighty degrees downstairs despite my best efforts as of a few minutes ago, so I have given up and buttoned the house back up with the A/C turned on. I need to be in the office working tomorrow and I would *much* rather be comfortable.