Strike Up The Band

Having missed the orchestra concert last night, due to memory lapse, I suppose, I left early for the band concert tonight at seven. Upon arriving I discovered that instead of being fifteen minutes early, I was in forty-five minutes late.  So I only got to listen to the last half-hour., which was nice.  Said "Hi!" to several of the band members I know.

Didn't have any moola on me, so could not get a raffle ticket for a gift basket.  Just my luck!

The ever-helpful Steve the M. gave me his personal copy of the program, right out of his pocket, on the condition I stop lambasting him in this blog.  Or the other one, whichever, or both.  Hey, when have I EVER said anything that was not complementary, to the max!

Next year I will try to be on time!

Memorial Day

Did not do anything all morning but play Desktop Tower Defense.  Talked to M. for a while, then I went outside and redid the rocks around the accursed palm tree.  Also filled the trash can the most of the what is left of the Little House.

Here's the patio from the south.  Lots more room without the Little House..



Here's the patio from the, um, west, I guess.  Oh, look, there's a sidewalk there!




All that is left -- a few boards, and the plywood door and window cover (window cover is under the door plywood. Not those yellow things on the trash can.  Those were snail boards to catch snails. Didn't work.




That is about it for Memorial Day!

Off To The South This May Morning

Went geocaching this Sunday morning, south of the Eastlake subdivisions, then west, then east, then north back to the vehicle.

Probably the more interesting cache was this little guy, what we call a nano in the trade. I needed the tweezers to snag it, then I needed the tweezers again to get the tiny little log sheet out.  I also needed the hint, or I would never have persevered enough to spot it in there! Don't be fooled by the size of them tweezers, they are BIG bigger ones, five inches long.



View to the west-ish from the nano spot. That's the toll road 125 South.



View to the east-ish from the nano spot.  Approximately at 32.604289, -116.948943



I don't know what this cement thing was for, but I felt it should be recorded for posterity. It was a few feet away from the cow watering trough.



The water regulator for a watering trough that cows used, back when there were cows here. I guess.



The whole trough.  The toll road 125 in the background left.  Wait, is that a bone??



Why, yes, it is a bone!  Yikes!



Walked about five miles today, I am told, and found all seventeen caches I looked for. Eventually, as one of them took about an hour to finally locate, and another took probably a half-hour.  Both of them were in giant bushes.  Bushes!!  I hate bush-hides! At least there weren't any rock-hides.  I hate them even more!

New, Old, & Fish

TEST RESULTS

From The Christian Science Monitor

Are you as well-read as a 10th grader? Take our quiz.

Quiz results are tabulated by assigning a score to each answer and then adding the scores up. Your final score determines which of our five categories you fall into.

Disagree with the results? Take the quiz again!

Your results

You're sort of well read You could probably hold your own in a literary conversation, but perhaps not with today's 15-year-olds.

Ouch...

 Matt's new car, a hybrid Ford.

The dashboard?  Mission Control, more like!

Here's an Old Motorcycle we saw while driving about in the New Car.

After driving around for a while we headed over to the Saigon Restaurant (near Hoover High) and ate our fills. They have pretty fish in a giant tank.

Adventures In Antenna Design

Controller and such for the new solar panels at work.



Closeup of the label on that one label.



The antenna I'm using on my newly installed digital convertor box.  Is that a long-wire antenna? Eh? It actually picks up six channels, none of them well.




That is NOT dust, the lens is fogged up from being in the backpack all day.  Or lens flare. Sunspots?

Of Little Houses & Sparkly Things

The Little House this evening after I hacked off some pieces for the garbage.



Also filled up the greens bin with that rotten honey suckle bush, at least some of the parts that were hanging over the fence.

Very nice picture M. took yesterday at the Tijuana Estuary.  But what is it?  I thought, at first, it was a train trestle.  But when we got closer, that is, from the image POV (We were at the other end, before), we could see it was too small.  More likely it carried a pipe.  A pipe into the estuary?

I like this one too.  I gotta get me some of that fancy sparkly ice plant!

Here & There

NO PED CROSSING BEYOND THIS POINT.  Huh?



Sidewalk ends?  No, it just makes a big circle and keeps on going.



Tijuana estuary, the hills of Mexico in the distance.



Tijuana estuary, hills of Mexico, a bit to the left of the image above.



Tijuana estuary, waves of the Pacific Ocean breaking on the beach.


YOUR ATTENTION, PEOPLE!! -- My new favorite radio station is KRNN in Juneau Alaska.  There is a great little music show on Saturday night at 9 PM, it is called Livingston Stapler Company.  I highly recommend it.

What's For Dinner?

Honestly, how hard can it BE to make pancakes?




I see my pancake-making skills have not improved since the great WeBeLoS father-son outing at Green Valley Falls in what, '63??  Sheeesh!

At least they were buttery!

Yesterday

Went to the dentist yesterday to get my teeth cleaned, six months late.  I had a weepy incident, had to ask for a tissue.  Got a hug from the technician.

Today & Yesteday

Yesterday, Mothers' Day, I went to the south of the Big Bay to do a little geocaching.  Got to see a view of the salt works I had not seen before.

Yup, that's pretty darn concentrated salt water.



And them is big piles of salt. What do they do when it rains?



Further documenting the dismantling of the Little House, we have the East Wall bare studs.

Took that one in the practically dark, had to tweek it a little in IrfanView.

And that is about that!

Out & About

I went to a social gathering tonight, well, it's after midnight now, I guess it was yesterday?  We played a game very much like Celebrity, except we wrote phrases or words on our slips of paper instead of celebrity names.  I forget what it was called.  One of my words was "chessmen", for the cookies I brought.  Another was "Blues Clues".  There was some discussion about the missing apostrophe, and several people had never heard of it.  On the other hand, I had never heard of Equatorial Chemistry something-or-other.  But I really should have remembered what is inscribed on the One Ring!!

I was near hysterical with fright at the beginning, but by the end I was relaxing, and even came up with a couple of answers.

I got to meet Aaron Linsdau, who is an excellent player of this game, by the way, and hear some fascinating stories of his exploits in Antarctica.  The weather, the cold, the HEAT. Just amazing!

Uncracked

The cracks in the windshield, as one might expect, are growing longer.  The arrows point to the marks I made yesterday at the ends of the cracks.



The windshield guy came to my work today and replaced the windshield, and for only a hundred and ninety-nine dollars, too!  Only twenty more than replacing a door window cost.  How caaaaan they do it??

Remember, folks, do not attempt books repairs at home!  I are a perfusshional, am ever-so-highly trained, and use materials you do not have access to.




Unless it is your own book.  Then I don't care so much.  But this is a library book.  That page to the left? That's the back flyleaf, which they managed to fold so it's now the front flyleaf. Or something.

Went to put on my name badge at work this morning.  Guess what?  Yup, still stuck on the door.  I forgot to take it down when I took the photo yesterday...


Went to Target this afternoon to buy Cheap Shoes for Social Occasions, as mine, well, stink.

Quote for the day, heard at work:  The crap always rolls down hill.

Little House In The Trash Can

The second thing to go, last week, was the back wall.



This week, I pried off the front half of the roof.



Next week?  Who knows!!

Saw this in the office as I was leaving, made by a student who is rather artistic.  I have save a couple of her invitations and thank-you notes before, as they are so pretty!



Driving to a meeting at the IMC today, on the 395, I saw a couple of white things that looked like Styrofoam fly away from a vehicle.  That's ok, I thought, it's just Styrofoam.  Then something small and black and HARD hit the windshield pillar, and just barely on the windshield, of course.  I am so happy!



Came home, took off my name badge, then went to take it out to the vehicle so I wouldn't forget it tomorrow.  Got the to vehicle, it was GONE!  The magnetic part!  Spent thirty minutes looking for it.  Dumped out the whole backpack, checked the inside of my shoes, went outside twice.   Finally spotted it.



Oh, that reminds me, 0 for 2 on geocaches today, if I'm stating that correctly.

Thank you to Newish Reader Mumbles who leaves nice comments, and has a much more interesting and well-written blog of her own, I see.

My mouse died the other evening, in mid-use, the left button.  I KNOW you can navigate Windows without a mouse, but you DO have to remember the key combinations.  And I don't remember very many!

I bought a new mouse at Staples, it works great.  Now, as soon as I press "Publish" here, I'm gonna fire up the soldering iron for a little melting of lead.  With shorts on, and sans goggles.  Should be great!

EDIT:  The splicing is complete, the mouse works, but the button still doesn't, so I think it is probably the switch, not a broken spot where the cable enters the mouse, as is usual.  At any rate, it is in the trash can now.

Eating An Apple On Mt. Miguel

Headed over to Mt. Miguel this morning.  It was all cloudy.  I was afraid it might rain, and me without any rain gear!  Coming down there were a few, just few, drops of water, but it was ok.  The wind, though, was quite breezy, and my ears were bothered.  I tucked a pair of handkerchiefs under my hat brim to cover my ears.  You can see them in some of the photos!

I'm not sure where all the photos were taken, exactly. Sorry about that!

This one covers the very tail-end of Sweetwater Reservoir, with La Presa and Dictionary Hill in the middle.




This one is from the same spot, I THINK, looking to the south over the Otay Lakes.  Did I mention it was cloudy?



Possibly Proctor Valley Road down there, or maybe not.  I took the pic because of: Sunbeams!



A bit higher up we can now see more of the Sweetwater reservoir.



Getting closer to Mt. Miguel, but not as close as one might think.  There is still some up hill, then some down hill, then a WHOLE LOT OF UP HILL to get there!



Higher up and a big farther along, we have La Presa and Dictionary Hill again.  Hey, I've been on that road down there.  No, I was wrong, it's posted No Trespassing, I was on the legal trail on the other side of the fence.




And there's them Otay Lakes again. So much for the much-vaunted views!



Gosh, I gotta go UP that??


\
The rock lies!



NOW I'm almost there!



A kindly man offered to take a couple of pics of me at the top.



Gazing off into the future, I mean, distance.



Otay Lakes from the top of Mt. Miguel, while getting radiated from all them antennas.



See that trail down there?  Yeah, gotta get back down there.



This flag is at the second "peak" in the picture above.



And looking out again at those Otay Lakes again.



From some place on that hill I took this pic, at max telephoto, of the vehicle parked.  And you can see the trail heading up the hill.  All the other vehicles near mine are hiker's.



Planes were constantly passing overhead, unseen.  As the overcast cleared a bit I began to see them. This aircraft appears to be disappearing into the Twilight Zone.



Found fifteen out of sixteen caches.  The one I did not find was OF COURSE the last one, at the top of Mt. Miguel.  Round trip distance was either 4.5 or 5.5 miles, I forget which.

I got home around 12:30 PM.  Took a shower and washed the clothes.  And the my shoes. Which stink. 

Then my son came over and we went to the local Thai restaurant and had a very nice lunch.  Then he took me grocery shopping, and I bought some jasmine tea.

Then I came home and fell asleep.