Out With The Old

I finally loaded the disintegrating box of electronic/electrical/one ringer (the Purity water filter) into the back of the truck, along with the microwave (for luck!) and hauled it up to the local e-recycling event.  They took it all, even the water filter!  The guy wanted five bucks to take the microwave. I gave it to him, no problemo.  'Cause I didn't think he would take it, and it saved me having to drive it who-knows-where? 

It was a little weepy going through the box, though.

I headed over to Home Depot for yet another item I apparently dreamed I saw there, to wit:  round particle board, uh, circles.  For the "lazy susan" antenna rotator. And I don't know why spell check doesn't like "rotator".  In a sort of preemptive strike I priced portable jig saws (what I call a sabre saw) before hand, but did not buy one. Yet. 

In The Parking Lot

OK, I remembered the camera, the memory card, and to go grocery shopping.  Behold the mini shopping carts at Albertsons!

And that is it for today.

TV Or Not TV?

From the article at Popular Mechanics I finally built the D*I*G*T*A*L television antenna (although I don't really understand the difference between an analog antenna and a digital one. ELI5)

Here we are loading the channels.

Now THAT'S wide screen!

Whoops, wrong picture, that was an editing misteak. Try this one!

I bought a lazy susan mechanism at Home Depot, but I haven't installed it yet.  It will make the antenna a little more stable, and easier to rotate for directional fine tuning.

So you see seventeen channels there, not all of them have enough signal for a picture.  I think they were all Mexican stations that weren't strong enough.

On reviewing the plans I see I connected the cable/impedance-matching transformer to the wrong spot on the phasing bars, and in turn did not construct the phasing bars in the correct pattern.

But hey, I got thirteen or so good stations. and that is better than the five I got before!


I also bought a cheap LED headlamp setup, goes on my head.  Only eighteen bucks, and eighty claimed lumens!   Also two sad little succulents for the bird bath perimeter.

Out In The Noonday Sun

I woke up early, ate breakfast, and decided to go for a bike ride after reading a bit of The Hobbit.  A couple of hours later the book was finished, the sun was out, and that was that.

Spent a couple of hours making this stand for the solar cell out of scrap wood.

I REALLY must take that pile of electronics to a recycling event.

No birds to speak of.

A song I recently become enamored with is Jettison, by Neko Case & Her Boyfriends.

It's A Minimum Day

I was at the grocery store the other day and remember I was out of tea.  I usually use tea bags, it is so much easier and less messy.  But I DO have a giant lucite tea thing (I think it is an ingenuiTEA, I'm borrowing it from my son) that uses  loose tea.  Being cheap, I thought I would get a box of Albertson's loose tea, and a big box of Albertson's tea bags, and compare them.

Heated up the water, found the box of loose tea is actually a small box of tea bags.  How clever of them to place it on the shelf right next to the name brand of loose tea!


Finally got a pic of a bird on the bird bath!!

Yes, it is blurry.  It was surprisingly un-light outside.  Telephoto, no flash.


"Trolley" going by.

I was waiting for a geocacher to help him find a cache, but he didn't show.


I'm painting a couple of gnomes.

But will the paint last in the fiery furnace of Our Mr. Sun?


I hear Jerry G. Bishop passed away Sunday.  A very nice man.  I learned he was something of a legend in Chicago as host of the monster movies on television there;

An Inventor Am I

I just invented something today.

You get all the wonderful chocolatey aroma of a Hershey bar without the calories or carbs!


My book order from Amazon was returned by the shipper (possibly Fed Ex) as "undeliverable to this address", apparently because I entered the wrong zip code.  Or rather, more probably, because I didn't UPDATE the ZIP code since it changed in  2009.  Funny, the USPS delivered a letter yesterday with the old ZIP code on it.

I still don't have any pics of birds in the bird bath.  A bird poop has appeared, though.

Monday

I thought I had a picture of a bird at the new bird bath, but twasn't there when I went to download it. So I have no proof that a bird has actually visited it.  There ARE a couple of feathers in the bowl, though.

I finally figured the gas mileage of the truck. 15.4 miles per gallon.  Zikes!

Dave is back on the DSC, but I didn't hear where he has been, I had to go to WORK!

I started dripping sweat in the afternoon, thought maybe I was dying, but a student said it was just hotter all of a sudden.

I got some paint at Michael's to redo the gnomes.

I also bought groceries today.  They now have these REALLY cute mini-carts, quite maneuverable, and fun to drive.  I would have take a pic for you but I left camera at home, I found.

I was at at staff meeting today.  At the end we had "compliments".  Someone thanked me for helping them.  I turned to the guy next to me and whispered, "See, I don't yell at EVERYONE."  The principal gave me a Starbuck's card.  It pays to be nice!

EDIT WORD:  Not "complements".

Dirty Birds

I went straight home and got the solar-powered bird bath running.  There was just barely enough sun to power it up by the time I was through.

Something bit me under my armpit while I was doing this, I haven't a clue what, though.  I have small welt there.  Otherwise I seem ok.

That platter I'm using for the bird bath is, on reflection, WAY too big.  It overpowers everything.  I shall have to get a smaller one sometime.

I found that the pots my California native plants are in do not drain well.  They were FULL of water, even though I haven't water them for a couple of days.  I pried off the bottom and TONS of water cascaded out.  Well, they will drain NOW, with no bottoms!  I hope the plants recover.

Links To This & That

An album of decorated mint tins.

An island off the coast of Japan.

A book I'd like to read.

Citadel of Titania. 

Nifty Snap-On utility cabinet.

Now, isn't this more interesting than Facebook?

Reading Again

I am reading Tisha, the story of a young woman who traveled to Chicken, Alaska, to be the school teacher there.  In the 1920s.  Good story, so far.

I was looking up the town on Google Maps, as is my wont.  The aerial views are just awful, but Streetview is just fine.

There is also an unofficial webpage that is fun.  I wouldn't say no to the suspenders...

UPDATED:  Here an image from Streetview (in Chicken) I just discovered:

Journey To The Forbidden Forest

To mutilate a song by Spirit:

Woke up this Saturday morning / Went and saw Mr. Geocache man / And the many magic presents / That he keeps inside his head and his hands / Geocache man ...

Yah, that doesn't work too well.

Woke up at 3:30 AM this morning and decided to hit the Forbidden Forest at UCSD to find that darn geocache.  Followed the trail to the Temple Of Transition, but did not interpret the "clues" properly, and so was in the wrong location for the final cache.  Read the instructions again, backtracked a bit and found the correct trail, and made the find.  Very nice!

After savoring that victory I headed south and east to another cache, which turned out to be across the canyon from where I was, so I had to backtrack and go down a different trail, and made the find.  Here are a couple of pics I took there.

Looking towards the east.  I'm hoping that is Cowles Mt. out there.

The tippy-top of the library at UCSD.

Don't forget you can click on the pictures to see the desktop-size image!

Stay cool today, people, and stay hydrated!



 

Look! Up in the sky!

There was a rainbow in the sky this morning as I drove to work.  I could have chosen a better spot to take a picture, but this is what you get...

The first pic I took had the wires, but no bird, so don't complain.

Mrs. R. said, "A rainbow, but no rain."

It was 85 degrees, again, when I arrived in the library office this morning.  It was a 100 degrees when I left.   At home, the outside thermo-probe in the back bedroom says it is a 104 outside, and inside it is 93 degrees.

One of the two nearest Wunderground weather stations says it is 103, that one is down by 70th street and Sunshine Park.  The other says 97 degrees, and it is only a couple of blocks away.

Wunderground also says it is going to be down to 72 by Tuesday.  I can't imagine.

Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative. -- Oscar Wilde

I Am So Upset!!

I'm looking at my FB, one person posted THIRTY-FOUR separate items today, not one of them original content, just links.  Ain't nobody got time to wade through that! And that is not even what I wanted to complain about.  What I wanted to say was that people who post stuff like "I just hate it when that happens", so you gotta ASK them what happened.  Except I don't, 'cause I don't care.  Maybe I would care if they didn't post it like that.  This ain't no guessing game.

Got the solar bird bath pump in the mail today.  You are all relieved, I am sure.

It was 85 in the ol' library at seven this morning.  It's 90 outside (at 5:37 P.M.), according to the Weather Underground......Sorry, I went off to Google "Weather Underground", to see where the name came from.

It is 97 outside, according to the probe, and 93 inside, in the hot back bedroom.  It is somewhat cooler in the living room.

Any questions?

Dinner And A Cache

I needed a cache for the day, so I headed out to El Cajon.  It's not that there aren't un-found caches nearby, it is that I can't find them. That is why they are un-found.  See?  It's simple!

I went to one cache, a lady was smoking and she wasn't going away.  So I did.  Parking was a little dubious at the next one, but I quickly made the find, thanks to the excellent hint, and skedaddled outta  there. 

I wanted to check on my cache at Costco because someone had a DNF there.  So I decided to treat myself to dinner!  I had a Polish dog and a soda.  With LOTS of onions.

Dinner!

Dinner and a Cache (Can you see the cache?)

Just eating

The last two pics I posted on the cache page as clues.

As for yesterday, I bought a fake half of an oak barrel and two paint buckets for the bird bath project.  Have NOT received the pump as of yet, though...  I also bought a hot pepper plant for the upside-down planter thing. 

It was a hundred outside and ninety-one in the hot back bedroom when I got home. The sun may have been shining on the sensor, however.

We're done here.

Day Of Un-Labor

I have not been outside more than five feet, and only to water the plants on the front porch.  I spent a goodly part of the morning reading.

The temperature at this moment is 80 and the humidity is around 60 percent.  Very humid for here. Is 90 degrees in the back bedroom! And only 48 percent humidity in there.

Yesterday, Saturday the 31st, I went over to Lemon Grove for my cache-for-the-day in the quest to complete The 31 Days Of Geocaching. I chose a multistage tour of Lemon Grove cache to complete the month. Due to a couple of problems I was not able to locate the final location. So now I had no cache for the day!

M. came over and we decided to head up to Rose Canyon and UCSD.  First the canyon, where M. wanted to check out a California Black Walnut (Juglans californica) tree. He is interested in California native plants. And there was a cache (A Rose Is A Rose Is A Rose) nearby.  I found the cache, so I got my 31 days complete.  Yippee!

He located the tree, there were a number of them.  I had no idea those were Black Walnuts.  Now I know.

We headed towards  UCSD, checked out an interesting little road along the way, which may have a new geocache placed there one of these days.  There two caches in the med-student area.  We looked pretty good, but did not find either one.  Too clever for us!  I was glad I got the one in Rose Canyon!

We headed over to the last cache.  It was a puzzle cache, and it was very puzzling. We stopped by M.'s office.  I see five screens, how many do you see?

He certainly keeps a neater work area than I do!

The starting point of the cache was this tree.  Actually, under the tree.  One had to find the "secret entrance" to the underworld.

We actually skipped this step until later, as M. INSTANTLY understood where to go.  And if I had remembered, I might have too, as I visited there once, several years ago.

So he took me to the location, I spotted the cache, he retrieved it, and I dutifully noted the coordinates for the final.  Although M. knew where that was, too.

We headed over there, it was several buildings away.  Saw some BMXers filming each other as they bounced off the benches.

It took a couple of looks, but we finally spotted the entrance.  The area was completely different from the description, someone has been painting over the graffiti. This stairwell is famous for its graffiti.  The smell of paint was almost overpowering.  M. spotted the cache, and directed my hand towards it.  I signed the log, and we got out of there before we passed out!

So that was a very cool cache and we enjoyed it very much.  I would probably still be wandering (sometimes those who wander ARE lost!)  around if not for M.s knowledge!

M. drove over to see the sunset view from the big field on La Jolla Shores Drive.  He took a bunch of pics, and I took a bunch of pics.

I took this one.

He took this one.

And this one, too.

There were a lot of people out watching the sun go down.

Afterwards we drove over to Five Guys and ate some delicious burgers.  I had a cheeseburger.  M. also got Cajun fries.  I thought they were too salty, but I ate five, or maybe ten.  I like the peanuts they give you to munch on while you are waiting.  We didn't have drinks so I didn't get to try out the nifty soda machine.

Well, that was about it for Saturday.  I slept pretty well all through the night!  Sunday morning I finished read Jasper Fforde's Lost In A Good Book, which brings us back to where we started, I guess.

Last Friday

It's been a week.  School starts this coming Tuesday. The weather, she is warm and humid.  It got up to 90 degrees today, which isn't real bad, I know, but the humidity has been floating around in the 57+  neighborhood, and is in fact 74 percent right this second!  I am dripping!

At work it got up 93.5 degrees, with a heat index of 101. The humidity was in the high seventies.  I remember it was 84 degrees in the library when I turned on the light this morning at seven A.M.

A friend's husband passed away a couple days ago.  He was declining, but I don't think anyone expected it to happen this soon.  It was very sudden.  Our hearts go out to her!

I STILL have not received my bird bath pump!

I have completed thirty days of The 31 Days Of Geocaching event.  I had to range to distant El Cajon to grab an easy one today.  Traffic was awful, especially around Parkway Plaza.  I got lost several times, despite having a GPSr and a map.  Found the cache quite easily, though.  I was fortunate to have my CD carrier-thingie with me. I was able to relax to the sound of  Silver Screen... cranked the window down, cranked it up, shared it with my fellow travelers.

Quote from yesterday's Reddit:

JimmyHavok

  You do what you can, but every once in a while a big [freak]ing rock falls down out of the sky and it doesn't matter.

B. sent me a nice card for Veteran's Day.

That is about all I can share today.  Thanks for reading!

Above

SPOILER ALERT!  This monument is was the first stage of a multicache.  I had to calculate the final waypoint using the numbers on that little tag.  I had to take a picture of it so I could see the numbers!
When I got to the final cache it was missing.  I found a part of the container about thirty feet away.  I notified the owner of the cache so he could fix it up.

Can you see where I parked the vehicle?  Right at that red arrow!

And here we have El Cajon Mountain, often called "El Cap".  Shouldn't that be "El Caj"?

That's a Vons down there!Behind that rather unattractive plant.

I found five caches today, one monument, and very nice views.  Didn't SEE any ticks, and didn't SEE or HEAR any snakes, which is more than previous cachers on this hillside can say!

Foiled Again

I thought I would combine trips and visit the Fletcher Hills library for a book, then on to El Cajon for a couple of geocaches.  Nope, library closed on Monday.  It didn't occur to me it might be closed, because, you know, it's MONDAY!!  And I had just come from dropping off books at the La Mesa branch!

I headed over to El Cajon and started driving up the rather steep hills of Rattlesnake Mountain, a place I don't remember ever being before.  Parking is rather restricted, I finally found a place near where I wanted to go, but it was on the wrong side of a construction gate that was across the road.  The gate was open, though.  As I was walking up the hill a big truck and a Bobcat (or something like) exited the gate, but they didn't close it, so I figured I was good for at least a few minutes.  I found the caches relatively quickly, for me, took a couple of pictures from the view point (but it's not the peak, more of a demi-peak), got back to the vehicle, put it in 2nd gear, and SLOWLY went back down the hill.  There is a 25 mph zone on the flats at the bottom, the policia were waving the cars over.  There were at least three police (or sheriff, I didn't notice) cars there.  I cruised by very virtuously at 25 mph.

This is looking to the west-ish, with Cowles Mountain on the left, and the 52 on the right heading up the grade towards Serra Mesa.

And this would be looking to the south-ish, with big ol' Mt. Miguel looming up there. The long street on the center-right is Mollison.  The blue is not a lake, it is the roof of Senior Aerospace Ketema

I stopped by Dixieline on the way home.  They said they had no hardware for cafe curtains, and recommended Target.  I went to Walmart, ended up buying a whole new rod.  And some bread.

And that is about all I can think of for today!

Slough Ride

This morning I made pancakes for breakfast.  With coffee (instant). I think I am getting better at this!

This afternoon Matt and I went down to check out the Famosa Slough, off of West Point Loma Boulevard.  There are a few geocaches there, we found all five, plus there are a LOT of birds..

By the way, some of these pictures are over 200KB, so the big version may take a while to load if you are on dial up.

Don't know what they are, but there are two of them. They may be Yellow-Breasted Chats.

Besides the geocaches, my main interest was the old railroad trestle.  I read it dates back to 1924, and was for the streetcars that ran out to Ocean Beach.  I wonder if the rail service to La Jolla came this way?

Same kind of bird that was on the wire, I think. This one is backlit for your artistic appreciartion.

This bird seemed to have no head. We thought it was dead.

Then it moved, but it didn't run away.  This is NOT zoomed, the birdie was about ten feet from us. That is my shadow being cast over it!

Airplanes were going over every few minutes, taking off from Lindbergh Field.

Very colorful, Matt said they were nasturtiums. They are an invasive species, having escaped from gardens. They crowd out native plants.  But they are very pretty!

Guy Wire Guy is surprised.  

We didn't see but two non-bird animals, a squirrel, and this wild creature.  It just stood there staring at us.

I saw a bunch of little tiny arms waving from the mud as the tide went down.  I guess they were crabs in the mud. We couldn't get any closer.

We were pretty hungry by the time we got out of there, so we stopped by In-N-Out Burger.  My cheeseburger was excellent.  Matt's Animal Style Fries were excellent, too!



Out In The Eastlake Again Again

Today being the tenth day of the  31 Days Of Geocaching, I was impelled to Get That Cache!  So I took a list of geocaches, including one solved puzzle cache.  I parked by some very busy little park and walked in a big circle looking for caches.  I found some, didn't find some, including the puzzle cache which was my primary focus.  Everything else was a back up.  Well, I looked and looked for that one, but no joy.  I email the cache owner, they said they were going to check on it for someone else, and so would let me know.

Surreptitious parking is so ridiculously difficult in Eastlake!

After that jaunt I parked on a turnout down by the lake and hiked on down to the water's edge to find a cache, a cache covered with ANTS!!  Zillions and zillions of ANTS!  Yikes!  Not biters, fortunately!

Getting back to the vehicle I moved on down the road a ways, hiked back down to the lake edge and found some more caches.  More success down here than up on the hill.  Less people, too!  More ants, though!!

One cache, the last one, I was kind of nervous about.  It was advertised as an "evil nano".  "Nano" is the size.  Very small.  And "Evil" means, well, EVIL!

So you can see the jug was full of little canisters, only one of which contained the log sheet.  All the rest say "Keep looking"!  I lucked out and found on the fourth one, as you can see.

Well, that was the last one, and I headed back to the vehicle.  I walked a total of about 3.07 miles, and found eight caches, but didn't find four.

Since I was in the area (And didn't need to go on the freeway!), I drove a few miles over to REI in one of them giant Eastlake malls.  It is a smaller REI.  I looked at the hiking shoes, the GoPro cameras (I need one!), but what I bought was a carabiner.  Two, in fact.  You are wondering why, is he going rock climbing?  Ha ha, not I!  But I use carabiners to secure my water bottles to my backpack, and the wimpy little key chain ones just do not do the job.  I didn't realized just how wimpy they are till I saw a real climbing 'biner!  The key chain carabiners have inferior gates, in my opinion, and the springs quickly fail so the gate does not close.  The Black Diamond (On the bottom, below) brand I bought feels extremely solid, as well it might!  Certainly heavier than the others, but I'm willing to tote them.

Plus, I could actually used them for rope work.  Again, ha ha!

That is all for today!