Unlike Yesterday

After a lackadaisical day yesterday I manned up and went to Rose Canyon today for some geocaching.  I found sixteen caches, didn't find three, and spotted a LOT of poison oak.  Really, they must plant the stuff here, it is EVERYWHERE.

Pretty much.

A flock of helicopters passes by in the distance.

I drove home on the back roads because I didn't want to deal with the freeway during rush hour.

I am a little sunburnt.  My knee hurt for a bit while hiking about but it has stopped now.

Friday, and a couple of other days, too!

First to clear up a couple of things:

I see a lot of complaints about bicycle riders, and one is when they ride against traffic.  That really irks me, too. But the other day at Costco I observed a person in a car driving the wrong way against traffic.  Fortunately, there wasn't any traffic but me, and I am a forgiving soul, am I not?

You will want to click the pic to see the larger image, the one that is also much higher quality.

Nextly, I posted this pic on the FB, so it is a repost for those of you who have not seen it yet.

I took a vacation day on Friday, we went to Mt. Laguna for some hiking, plant observing, and geocaching.  You get to see the pics.

Matt at the picnic bench where we had lunch. The Pacific Crest Trail is about thirty feet to the right. I am taking pictures of the ring around the sun.

Here is the ring around the sun.

I'm DNFing a geocache here, but I don't know it yet, hence the smile. Monument Peak Road, Mt. Laguna. This one will also be a repeat if you are on the FB.

A panorama of the slopes'n'desert view from Monument  Peak Road at Mt. Laguna.

Down there at the end of the firebreak is where we was. Lookin' at the view, and lookin' for the cache.

Matt left his coffee cup so we had to drive a couple of miles back up here to retrieve it.  I looked for the cache again, but still no luck.

Driving home on the 94 we observed the panicked denizens of San Diego fleeing what is obviously the beginning of an attack by the alien's orbiting weapons platform. Or a meteor strike. Or not.

We found nine geocaches, and did not find two.  We ate take-out from the Carl's Jr. in Alpine.  Neither of us observed any ticks today (so far!), but Matt, unbeknownst to him, transported some very confused ants a LONG way from their home.

Inside And Out

On Sunday I and visiting Phil went down to the sea to see the salt.  Phil had never seen the salt before, and he knows salt, having been on and in the GSL.

Here is Phil's rental. I thought it was very cute, so I took a picture.  It does not compare, of course, to the MG he had, back in the day, of which no pictures seem to exist.

Here we see the result of many years of salt on steel rain. And so much for narrative sequence.

And this nearby part was even worse.

More rusty rail.

A big pile of salt.

Phil heading down the tracks to take picture of salt. Between the set of rails on the left, the "ties" you see are really something "oozing" up from the actual wood ties which are under a layer of dirt and salt. Maybe creosote?

I do not know where that black square came from. This space for rent?

A panorama of South Bay Salt Works.

We drove up a bit to a spot I've been before for a closer look at the salt.  Footprints and shopping cart in the salt show that people are ignoring the Protected Habitat (as I remember them) signs.

Across the bay you can see the Navy Radio Receiving Facility Wullenweber AN/FRD-10 antenna. I told Phil that there were only two of these antennas in the world, but I was wrong. Well, not completely wrong. There are quite a number of these interesting antennas.  The one at Imperial Beach was built in 1964. They are planning on demolishing it soon.

Yesterday I went, in quite a panic, to the Urgent Care because stuff was coming out of places I didn't care to see said stuff coming out of.  My arms beat the best efforts of the first person to try to place an IV in, but the second person got it done.  Then, after waiting for quite a long time for lab results, they found that the blood had coagulated before it got to the lab. Why, I know not.  So they had to take more blood.  Unfortunately they had removed the thing in my arm that would have allowed that easily. So he (the first person from the time before) decided to go in the left arm.  And that went OK.

A warm blanket and dim lights let me nap a bit during the long wait, which was very nice.

So the upshot is that I am not dying.  I have to do another invasive examination, but the doc thought it was an unremarkable thing that caused my panic.  Although, with my luck, who knows that they will come up with!

Today went OK.

I had a report that one of my geocaches was not found, so I went to make sure it was there.  It was.

No, not the cup, you goose!

It was cloudy today. It was also about nine AM, maybe not the optimum power-producing time.

That is about all I got. How did YOUR day go?

Sat Day

I see I have read five books this month, so far, which puts me two ahead of last year. Imagine that.  But I'm still fifteen behind March of 2012.

So far I have read 16 books this year, compared to 27 for the first three months of 2013, and 48 46 for the same time period in 2012.

Data for March 2014 not entered, 'cause it's still March.

I washed the clothes today, messed around on the computer most of the day, and went for a walk around the city this afternoon.

And that is about it.

EDIT: Added Books Read spreadsheet image.
EDIT: Corrected total books read in first three months of 2012.
EDIT: Added data not entered sentence.

On Thursday

Jets kept flying over work today, probably because of the fogginess to the west. I am sad that this is the best picture I could get.

Remember, you can click on the Giant Thumbnail to see the Hi-Kwality Original Image!

Another tulip flowered up in our backyard.  The Giant Thumbnail is certainly blurry, but the original is a bit out of focus too.

That is all I got for today!

Sunday At The Lake

The tulip that I posted a picture of previously has bloomed itself nearly completely. A spot of bright colour in the garden.

Several pictures from Lake Murray, Cowles Point to be precise, where we ate lunch. It was 94 degrees in the general area today, but not unpleasant. If one was sitting around in the shade not doing anything!

I had a California Quesadilla. The wind was blowing the box up like that.

Some fishing boaters came drifting by.

A tree of several colours.

That is all!

How Many Days In A Year?

I needed a cache for the 15th so I headed out this morning to find me a cache or two. I only have one more empty spot on the calendar, so everyone remind me on or before July 2nd of what I have to do!

A lizard in Sweetwater River Regional Park, not too far from Morrison Pond.

And in other news...

Students who have neglected to get or bring a Library Lunch Pass® have to option of picking five dandelion flowers from the lawn.

This is the most successful bulletin board I never put up.  The Med. Ex. students in Period 2 did it a few months ago.  It gets the most comments from visitors, and several have taken pictures of it.

That is about all I can think of at the moment.

Thursday Thursday

So the song The Lows Spark Of High-Heeled Boys, by Traffic, has been the ear worm of the week.  I heard it on KRNN (Juneau, Alaska) Saturday night.  It sounded rather familiar, so I looked it up and found that Stevie Winwood was in Traffic. Camellia just love that Winwood guy, while I did not care particularly, but I do like this song a lot.

You can click the thumbnail to see the more better image. Which not preloaded. Because of people who have slower internet than I do.

A Concours d'Elegance at the old homestead. No, I didn't cover up the front license plate. It didn't have one.  Maybe it is from another state, I didn't bother to look. There are enough scofflaws are there to make a sweeping generalization.

I don't remember what kind of flower this is.  I got it at work last year.  After wintering (Ha!) it is now putting out flowers again.

I forget where these lilies came from. I think it was from the memorial. I forget a lot of stuff. It is very depressing. This one seems to be flowering, too!

The last pepper, it is very small, but I think it is ready to pick.

I knocked over and out another troll today while cleaning the birdbath.  More gluing to do!

A geocache popped up this evening near BevMore, I worked up the courage to pop over there myself to get first Did Not Find.  I bought three bottles of beer, too, which is only fair since I stepped on their plants a bit.

What else...I went to Staples today and bought yet another date stamp for work. I got groceries, including Hostess Fruit Pies, in two flavours, to share out for Pi Day tomorrow.

That truly is it for the day!

Sessions

I just thought I would sneak down to false bay and see if I could knock off some of those pesky degrees for the 360 Degree Challenge geocache.

I woke up at five this morning,New Time, and spent an hour figuring seven caches that I need the degrees for, and that were relatively close together and, most importantly perhaps, easy to find!

The first cache was in a palm tree hollow at a parking lot at the edge of Mission Bay.
The second cache was along the old bike path that snakes around the tennis courts.
The third cache was in the middle of the alternate main drag to Pacific Beach. On the sign.  Probably only thirty or fifty cars saw me molesting the sign on this sunny Sunday morning!
The fourth cache was at a nature kiosk near Crown Point.
The fifth was NOT at a nearby nature kiosk, as I thought, but instead down in the bushes, and actually buried in sand from the recent rains.
The six was said to be easy to find in palm tree, but I didn't find it.
And the seventh was in Kate Sessions Park. I made that one more difficult than it was.

I also found three more at Kate Sessions, and DNFed one.

I was looking at another website with pictures and that guy put the picture captions under the image. I'm gonna try that today.

A speed boat in Mission Bay. Several were zooming around, some throwing up quite a rooster tail.

The same boat passing in front of  West Ski Island.  Lucked out getting him right in the middle!

The Inner Crown Point pile of sand and whatnot, possibly the site of the great Crown Point Disaster of 1969, I believe it was.  If so, it is quite possible the Phil's MG-TD keys are still out there. Somewhere.

Why is the handlebar stem on that bike pointing the wrong way?  'Cause, the wheel is flopped backwards, so the stem should be pointing backwards too! That must make for weird steering.

These flower, on a tree, should come before the bicycle picture. I saw them at Crown Point Park.

 From high on the hill north of the "green" area of Kate Sessions Park there is a splendid view of the Mission Bay area. There is one of the Coronado Islands, in Mexico, peaking around the corner of Pt. Loma.

And a little to the left we can see all the way to the blowing sand of Imperial Beach, and beyond to Mexico.

 

That lizard was posed nicely on top of the rock, but he moved before I could get the camera out.

Panorama taken from way up there in Kate Sessions Park.  One would have thought I would have sense enough to take this from on the OTHER side of that big bush!

OK, that is all from the geocaching adventure at Mission Bay.  When I got home I saw there were TWO poppies, and they were open, so...PICTURE TIME!

One poppy good.

Two poppies better!

I COULD post a picture of the car parked on the apartment building lawn, but I'm better than that.

A Canyon On Saturday

I went to the Pancake Breakfast & Rummage Sale fundraiser at work today.  I bought a breakfast, graciously telling to, as I put it, "Keep the change!" (a buck).  And then I ate it.  I looked at the rummage, but I really got enough stuff already.

We went out to Los Peñasquitos Canyon today for to do some geocaching.  The plan was to knock a few degrees off the 360 challenge.

I reconnoitered the Camino Ruiz Park trail to the canyon, but I found the gate was locked and posted. So much for parking a vehicle at one end and walking the five miles from the park to the vehicle. No, we got to do half  the proposed walk in an out-and-back, parking at the other trailhead (west) on Sorrento Valley Blvd.

I'll give you the highlights:

The third cache we found was FULL OF ANTS!  Argentine ants.

I saw my first rattlesnake that wasn't in a house or on a road.  Matt was not all that far from stepping on it (he was heading towards an interesting plant) when I told him to "STOP!!"  I was so rattled (heh heh) that I forgot about the nearby geocache until we were five hundred feet down the trail. We got it on the way back. No sign of the snake then!

BEES!!  Matt yelled "BEEEESSSSS!!!!!"  I ran, practically screaming. Or not. Well, I certainly moved quickly! It was a big swarm just passing through, not disturbed bees, so they quickly left and we went back to the cache we were looking for.

Waterfall!  Adobe Falls has the only practically year-round water fall in the San Diego city limits, I read, but this one is not too shabby!

Remember these are just thumbnails, click on the image to load the bigger version!

Matt taking pictures of the water below.

Matt looking over the cliff at the pool and falls below.

I don't know who this guy is, but he is now on my world-famous blog!

Zoomed in a bit for a more compressed look.

Lots of rocks. Too bad I didn't take more note of them, there is an Earth Cache here, all about the rocks.

The actual falls. Not how I visualated this picture.

The pool below the falls.

The map showing which "degrees" I still have to do on the 360 Degree Geocaching Challege cache. Knocked off seven degrees today.

We walked about five miles today, and found twelve caches.  We only DNFed one. We could SEE it, but neither of us were able to climb up to it.  And it only counts if you sign the log... and I should probably add, put it back where you found it!