Ugh! with a capital U

We had today all planned out. Get up, get screws from a auto parts store so we could put license plates on the car, get in line at the DMV, and title and register the new car. Then, we'd come home and get ready to go to the temple, spend the morning there, come back for lunch at home, do some Saturday chores, and get ready for the Ward Primary Talent Show that's tonight. Great plan, right?

It started off fine. Got up and left when we wanted to, stopped by a place we thought might have the screws we needed. They didn't, so we decided to just go wait at the DMV. (Those of you who follow my Twitter had the dubious honor of hearing about the details of my wait.) There were already about 50 people in line by the time we got there. Waited in the cold. Doors opened. Finally made it inside.

Realized that in the midst of our excitement and getting all the papers ready for our trip to the DMV (they were even in the order listed on the "Getting ready" page from the website), we realized that we mistook the CA Vessel Transfer form for the Title. No Title. Ooops. Panicked a little bit, called our seller out in CA. Found a place to get screws. Bought them (all $0.50 worth). Came home and fretted about whether we would be ok driving the car; should we rent a car?; can we get temporary tags while we wait for the title?

Finally got in touch with the seller. Turns out the title is in the mail. Also turns out that we have a (CA) temporary registration already from one of the papers that we both signed. It's a valid temporary registration that he says (and he's a dealer/wholesaler) is valid for up to 6 months.

Phew. So, no rental car necessary.

Jill was a little tired (we had a late dinner at PF Chang's) and decided to lie down for a quick nap. I decided to eat breakfast; she suggested the waffles we had just bought.

Popped two of those suckers in the toaster, got out the butter and grabbed the syrup. Now, we got syrup at Costco - a two-pack of 2 qt. jugs. We were about half-way done with the first bottle. It slipped out of my hands as I was moving it towards the counter. No problem, it's plastic, right?

Wrong.

Apparently the plastic decided it wanted to be brittle, and the bottom and sides of the syrup bottle shattered. In just a few seconds, I had about a quart of syrup on the floor. Now what do I do?

I tried to use a rag and shove the syrup into a plastic cup that we had. Managed to get a few cupfulls, but still had an oozing puddle on the floor. Used several more rags, then tried to clean with soapy water and some other spray stuff that we had. Dried it off. Will have to check on the sticky-factor in a little bit. There's a pile of dishes waiting for me, too.

At least my blueberry waffles were yummy. I decided not to open the second thing of syrup. It can wait for another day. I just had them with Country Crock.

What a morning. It seems like things like this pop up when you're trying to do something good - like going to the temple. It's about time to wake Jill back up so we can get ready. Hopefully there's no more surprises in store for us today.

[UPDATE] Skimmed through my Reader. Jill shared this post from someone about Perspective. I guess the syrup wasn't that bad. But it sure felt like it was ruining my morning.

[update] Spin-offs

Here is first notice relating to my spin-offs. Be sure to add the feeds you want to follow to your RSS feed aggregator, or click Follow, or add to your favorites -- whatever you do to keep track of all the cool people's blogs you read. =)

The Erb Report
* This will continue to be the place that I put news about us: our travels, our special events, random things that happen, and other fun stuff.

The Erb Report - LDS Edition
* I've decided to resurrect an old blog that I started when we were living back in Boston. I enjoyed studying up on these different topics, and thought this would give me some focus for my personal study. Right now, you will find principles of teaching, suggestions for teachers and students, and other thoughts about being a Gospel teacher. I hope to expand on this.

The Erb Report - Politics
* "All politics, all the time."

The Erb Report - Technology & Innovation
* This will be the place for me to share cool new technology and software that I like, my thoughts about innovation, and other posts along these lines.

[[NOTE: These spin-offs contain prior posts from The Erb Report. If you haven't read much before, click around. More will be coming soon. Both Politics and Technology/Innovation have a fresh post, though.]]

Spin-offs

I've decided the time has come. While reviewing my blog posts, I realized that I'm all over the place. I mean, The Erb Report has covered family vacations, tourist trips, must-see YouTube clips, political news, cool technology and tech updates, personal thoughts and musings, comments about books I've read, and just plain random stuff. Basically, there's no focus, except for whatever I happen to be thinking about at the time.

Now, that might be fine for some of you (read: my four followers), who will skim through pretty much anything I throw out there in the blogosphere. But I know there's others of you out there reading this (some of you who comment, many of you who don't) who could probably care less about my night at the symphony, or have no clue what this "crazy" technology is that I'm talking about -- and don't really care.

So where does that leave us? In Clay Christensen's landmark book on innovation, The Innovator's Dilemma, he talks about "giving small opportunities to small organizations," and about "creating capabilities through a spin-out organization." Not that I'm being threatened by some company moving upmarket (or am I? Is something else vying for--and winning--my "customers'" time on the Internet? Will I find myself with no followers?), but I do find that I'm torn with what I should or shouldn't post, and growing more aware of the scattered narrative this haphazard system has provided.

The Innovator's Dilemma tells us that "spin-out organizations are tools for forging new values." To keep my different topics/projects from competing with each other for my resources, I have decided to create some spin-out blogs in areas that I have tended to write about. At this time, only two more blogs will be added, but if I grow more prolific in my writing and broad in my interests there may be others that follow.

A Proclamation Concerning The Erb Report
Whereas, this blog is a way for me to share my thoughts; and
Whereas, my posts have been somewhat chaotic, yet gravitated towards several themes; and
Whereas, I would like to have a dedicated place to gather these thoughts on several themes; and
Whereas, Blogger is user-friendly and free and will allow me to realize these dedicated places;

Now therefore I, JErb, President & CEO of E.R.B., do hereby declare that new blogs shall be established to provide focus to my blogging and allow my "customers" the freedom to choose which subjects they would like to follow. These shall be established at the earliest possible time, and notice shall be made hereupon The Erb Report of such establishment.

So here I go: creating new opportunities in new organizations (read: blogs) and trying to create new capabilities (read: better organization, more followers and more commentors). Wish me luck.

Yuja Wang, and her National Symphony Orchestra debut

On Saturday, Jill and I had the great opportunity to go and hear the National Symphony Orchestra perform at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. And, thanks to a friend, we were able to get really good seats (Prime Orchestra Right).

The Program was as follows:

Charles Dutoit, conductor
Yuja Wang, piano

RAVEL - Le Tombeau de Couperin (orchestrated version)

PROKOFIEV - Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16

STRAVINSKY - The Firebird (complete ballet)

As the title mentions, this was Yuja Wang's debut with the NSO. And boy was it amazing. To be honest, I was not familiar with the first two pieces, and was really only familiar with The Firebird in name only. I was forewarned that the Prokofiev No. 2 was a little "different," and to keep "an open mind." But I found the piece rather fascinating -- accentuated by our great seats with a view of her hands the entire time. Without gushing too much, I'll just say that I was amazed and rather enjoyed the entire evening.

It was a wonderful evening of music. We ended up spending some time that night and the next day looking for YouTube videos of Yuja Wang and other musicians, and stumbled across some pretty cool stuff. (I already posted the supersonic flight of the bumblebee; the related videos can take you wandering through some other musical adventures.)

We hope to have more opportunities to enjoy the arts and appreciate the wonderful talents of others.

Random family activities

Jill got me this gingerbread house kit for my birthday last October. But we never got around to doing it this past Christmas. After dinner today we were talking about what we wanted to do, and we decided that we'd make our house - so we did!

Random, I know. But it was fun. Here's some pics:

in progress

finished product