New Shoes

Bought some new shoes at Target, Thursday.  Because, you know, the old ones STINK so much. And I was going to a party last night.  And, last year's shoes STUNK so much at the party (same place) I was MORTIFIED! But, apparently, I do not wear a twelve. So now my right toe is sore. Are my feet growing?  While my spine shrinks? What madness is this?

Monday Hot Cheese

Did NOT ride to work again today, as it, thankfully, was rainy.  Might have to ride Tuesday, though!




How is THAT for holding the camera reasonbly steady in a low-light situation, eh?

I had at least five patrons ask about the Flaming Hot Cheetos today.



That's about it for now!

On The Shelves

I was going to post the we are probably the only middle school in California with a copy of The Teahouse Of The August Moon on the shelves, but I find we are not even the only middle school in the district to have it!

Friday Saturday Sunday

A foggy Pearl Harbor Day at work.



The bear rides in the backpack.



Saturday afternoon I forced myself to go geocaching, three DNFs, but finally one reluctant Find, two blocks from home.  I coulda walked there!

Sunday I headed out early to a little canyon off Fairmont for my annual DNF on Shiny, but I found another one in the canyon, so it was all right.

There's a spot just north of the interchange of Fairmont and Montezuma where the creek/drain is allowed to surface, where shopping carts go to die.  This ones been there awhile!



There are several abandoned homeless encampments along the creek.  I call this one "Beauty".



That's all for today!

A Rave, A Rant, And An Experiment

Zooomr 7th anniversary re-tooling.  How about bringing back all the images I've uploaded over the years, eh?

One of the orchestra students sent me this invitation to their winter concert.  I am quite overcome.  How can I explain my reluctance (FEAR?) to drive at night?



Someone has been eating PIE in the stacks!!  Found one of these a year ago in nearly the same spot. Guess it's time to clean and inventory that section!



Test End Test   Nothing to see here, move along..
Huh.  Thought the NAME text would show upon mouse over.

My rant for the day is about the television show Two Broke Girls.  It's just one smutty "joke" after another.  Very unfunny, with the usual idiotic laugh track. It makes Two And A Half Men look like the 500 Club, I swear! Why do I watch it? It comes on before Mike & Molly. That's it. My only excuse! M & M, while not the pinnacle of television programming, at least has some funny banter.  One measure of a television program might be if I will watch its repeat.  Seinfeld? Over and over. New Adventures Of Old Christine?  Every lunch, it's my go-to show!  Two And A Half Men? Love it, except when I'm cringing. Two Broke Girls? I think I'll go pull some weeds.

It's Tuesday!

Not much going on lately, so here's a bear that I eventually got in the mail from a far away place.




Big science fair push at work this week, I had just over a hundred visitors sign in the library today.  One of which stole a Nisse I had stuck up on a ceiling light.

Fortunately, there are more of them around...

Seniliating

I was just thinking, some day they're gonna find an elderly man wandering around, on the far edge of senility, with a GPS receiver in his hand, and it's going to be ME!

Here's a nice conduit bend that made me feel better about the world.  Ain't it sweet that they bothered to make the little kick up to the LB?  and the other end has the offset in the box, unlike that other one I mentioned last month.



There don't seem to be any conduit bending jokes out there, so here is an electrician funny:

After an electrician apprentice finished repairing some faulty wiring in an attorney’s home he handed him the the bill. ”Four hundred dollars! For an hour’s work?” cried the attorney, ”That’s ridiculous! Why I’m an attorney and I don’t charge that much.” To which the electrician replied, ”Funny, when I was an attorney I didn’t either!”

Reading a lot this (mostly unpaid) vacation week.  Just finished The Slave Dancer (Paula Fox), and working on The New Space Opera 2 anthology, How To Be An American Housewife (Margaret Dilloway), and The War That Came Early: The Big Switch (Harry Turtledove).

Well, that's about all I have for you today!

Now to think of a title for this post...

Election Day

Well, I voted, how about you?

I don't know what the deal is with other places, but MY polling place had about twenty people marking their ballots, and I only had to wait about thirty seconds in line before it was my turn.  Maybe California is just more organized than some of them other states.  Or maybe it gets busier as more people get off work.

I DO miss have the polling place right across the street, though, now I have to drive a couple of miles to get there!

  Saw an opportunity to get a First To Find geocaching today, so I went for it.  Here's the log I wrote:

Well, how many times can one give up on one cache? I parked at the end of Lake Murray Blvd. and walked down the dirt road to the little bridge, and so up the hill. Having looked at the aerial, I knew it was right on the trail. Didn't bother to put the coordinates into the GPSr. Fired it up at the top of the hill and watched the satellite coordinates progress. Closer and closer. Oh, wait, I'm getting farther away! Which way is north, anyway? I'm sure the trail will turn back. Oh, no, there's a sign, Big Rock Trail. I know THAT is way too far! Turn around, put the coordinates in the GPSr, and follow the arrow. Now it's pointing down the hillside! Is there a trail? No, there is not! Keep walking, I'm getting FARTHER away. Keep looking for a trail. Maybe the coordinates are wrong? Or maybe I've written them down wrong? I've done it before! Keep walking... I think I'm giving up, I must have mussed it. Oh, wait, what's that over there? Looks like a trail. But how to get to it? Keep walking. Well, I can't find it, I'm going home. Keep walking... Oh, THAT looks like it's doable. And it goes in right direction! Yippee, I'm on the right track! Get to the GZ. Of course I can't spot it. Look up and down the trail, do not see nothing. Sit down, eat a granola bar, drink some water. Look some more. Oh, there it is, right on the money!  

Here's a view towards the east from the cache area.



Well, if the goal was to catch my eye, I guess it did.



Bought a new car today.  At Albertsons. Probably the closet I'll ever get to owning one.  Don't I have a Lotus Super Seven model kit out in the workshop?  I ought to build that some day!



That about all I have for today!

Down To The Tidelands

Lots of pictures today!

I went down to the Sweetwater Marsh/National City Tidelands area to geocache.  Found nine, didn't find five.

Here are the pics!

Well, someone's love is eternal, at least until this rail is removed! Please notice how nicely ballasted the track is...



And where does it go?  Pretty much nowhere!


Dawn over the Sweetwater Marsh area.  That's the 5 freeway.



A big boat was docked.  It's a car carrier.  That ramp lowers, as we shall see, to load and unload cars.  All that orange on the ground is guys in their reflective safety vests waiting, I suppose to board and drive the cars down.



It's name is Tancred.



Here I am, taking it easy in Pepper Park, waiting for the ramp to lower.  I had to take this three times to get a good pic!



The ramp is starting to come down!



Closeup, almost down!



Wait a minute, should not this pic have been before the previous one?



Most of these shots are in order of when I took them, walking around the area.  This one is not.



I guess they need big tires and four wheel drive in Washington. All that rain, I suppose.



Oh, wait, there's no drive shaft to the front differential!!



Nice classic T Bird, early60s, with only a little rust just in front of the rear wheel well.  Well, it's always raining in Washington!



Hmmm, Washington plate on rear, California plate on the front.



OMG, it's a RAT!!



I like train tracks.  Disconnected switches, from the south.



Disconnected switches, from the north.



My favorite image from the set.  Rusty America, I call it!



This track is depressed.



More switches.  Or are they called turnouts?  I can't remember!



The marsh, looking south, from near the Best Western.  Small trestle to the center right, over which I will later walk.



No sooner said, then done!  Not as nicely ballasted as farther down the track.



Side view #1.



Side view #2.



This one is to remind me that the tie over the pilings is much wider that the rest.



Some of the ties are not in too good of shape.  Step carefully!



Obligatory birdies.  Possibly they are Avocets.  Probably not.




The End!

The Years, Oh, The Years!

Well, another anniversary has come and gone.  Forty years, can you imagine?  Our daughter send us these pretty flowers! Twice!



In the library today we had a couple of visitors... I recognize the grasshopper, but what the heck is that other thing?



I won a free car wash at the finale of the La Mesa Amazing Geocache Challenge today.  I don't know how they knew, but I really need it.  I hope it includes a wax!  I also managed to score a tee shirt!

Mileage

Hit 15,000 miles on the odometer Friday morning, on the way to work!



Ran across this quote on the 'net:

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.  ~Dinah Craik

I ran across someone using the word "gorey". It looked wrong, so I tried looking it up on the internet and in an unabridged dictionary.  I found no help  I figured it wasn't a word.  Today, I'm reading The Scarlet Pimpernel, and I see "gory".  Doh!

At the grocery store today a cashier holding up a plastic bag with a white thing in it called over to my cashier asking "What kind of carrot is this?"  She replied, "It's a turnip." "A what?" says he.

That is all!

Get Bent

I noticed this conduit this afternoon.  Looks like the connector isn't quite screwed together all the way. The should have put a little bend in the pipe, because of the kick at the edge of the roof, so the pipe would go straight into the connector.



Closeup of the connector in question, taken from the other side, just to confuse you. I guess I COULD have reversed the image...



At the wall the conduit enters this LB Condulet.  I was taught to make two little bends (an offset) to get it in line with the connector in the opening.  The word "Condulet" is a trademark of the Cooper Crouse-Hinds company. I have no idea what the generic term is! (I looked it up, it's a conduit body!) And, I have no idea if that is one of their products.  We just called the various basic types LL, LB, and LR.



That's about all for today!

Rainy Weather

Yesterday it was supposed to rain, so I drove to work.  Around one it stated raining really hard, with hail.  Everyone ran outside to dance around in the rain.  I saw a very confused-looking bee, she seemed lost in all the big drops and hail!  We are the red area in the image below.



I picked up some of these erasers at the book faire last month.  They will make great swag for geocaches, I think.  That blue thing is a plunger.  They came in a assortment of plunger colors!



Yesterday's rain was just for a few minutes, so I felt bad about not biking.  The real reason I didn't bike was because I was reading the last Harry Potter book until 6:30 AM.  I had to see Harry's victory over Valdemort.  I finished the last chapter last night.  Finally!

Today, on the other hand, it was raining so hard on the way to work that I could barely see, what with the glare and the flare from traffic lights and headlights.  Very unsafe I am!