Wednesday/Thursday

Today I slept in as much as I could. The city came and finally chopped up the curb in front of our house. They used a bobcat with something that looked like a giant tattoo needle over the top of it.




I've seen these before, probably during the years that I took the bus, and had nothing better to do than stare at road crews for hours. It took them 5 minutes and it shook the whole house.

Then the phone rang all day. My aunt says she is going to take her nursing equipment and look at my uncle, even though he hasn't taken even an aspirin in 50 years (and won't) and wants to die.

Work was nice, not many people showed up, nothing was stolen and I was able to paint in my sketchbook.

Yesterday I went to start the TA and it finally wouldn't. So I will have to tow it to the mechanic, whenever that is. At least, it didn't seem to sieze up this time. It's either out of fuel or battery.

I am getting used to driving the Toyota, I can take it almost everywhere I used to go with the TA and not be embarrassed to be seen in it. (Unlike the Corsica.) The one place I am NOT going to take it is the next Club meeting on Feb. 6.
Or to work, where it could be stolen...

It's not quite Tuesday, yet.

Sunday, continued:
















What did I find down in the ravine? No snow, (I heard today that it all melted on Saturday.)








Instead, a huge, amazing waterfall. The biggest I had ever seen.

The waterfall was divided into three sections of about 15 to 20 feet. I kept hearing water from somewhere else and hiking upward to find another waterfall!




I ended up staying an hour or two. I got a parking ticket for $5, something about a Forest Adventure Pass that I never knew they enforced. But easy to fix, and if I am going back like I plan to, I definitely need one of those passes.

















I can't believe it had been there all along. That explains the huge turnouts on both sides of the highway, which always have people parked on them.


















On Monday I was very sore from hiking.
The city came and noisily mulched the tree that was in front of the house. I eventually went to the barn and moved dirt around: filling sandbags, digging trenches, and trying to iron out the driveway only to have people drive on it again.
Today the city will start taking apart the sidewalks again. I might have to drive the Uncle somewhere.

Fear Of Boredom

The fear of boredom is called Thaasophobia.
The fear of the sea is called Thalassophobia.
Anyway.

On Sunday I got up early due to a wayward alarm clock and then accidently drank caffinated coffee, and after that there was no chance of sleeping in.
I found out that two cars got their windows smashed either Saturday night or Sunday morning. One belongs to the "security guard" and the other belongs to my main "boss."



Around noon I went to the barn. The drive had become a quagmire again so I had to park down the street.








Denise was at a tack sale, but another boarder was there to fill me in. Even though they'd had 8 inches of rain, there was a large dry spot in the arena, so the tarps worked.













I knew if I stayed, I would become obsessed with ironing out the driveway again, and it was just too bright and sunny to work, so I left.
I had seen snow on the local mountains and I was determined I could drive to it!

Unfortunately, the snow was on Santiago Peak, which seems to be accessible only after a long, long hike. The only highway going through the mountain range, Ortega, is farther south. The veiw from the Lookout was boring, it was a boring kind of day. There were only a handful of cars and bikes, which was unusual for a Sunday. I had never taken the Toyota so far or on such roads, but it did OK.















On the way back down, I noticed a lot of cars parked in the turnout next to a canyon. I had seen ice on some of the road sides that get no sunlight, so I stopped to see if maybe they had found snow. I could hear the loud sound of water, and people having a good time, so I found a parking space and hiked down to see...

The usual suspects

Today was the usual thrills and chills at work.
A car was stolen from the parking lot last night, and the police arrived just as I was leaving. The family asked me to translate so I did. The policeman said, "Quick and easy," and I wished I'd said "That's what the thief said."

Here are some funny web sites.
(darn the links don't work - need to figure that out. Well, cut and paste then.)

Funny:
Death Metal Rooster:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A43JOxLa5MM&feature=topvideos

Funnier:
Heavy Metal Farmer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jag7oTemldY&feature=related

I used to HATE Jack Black. I thought he was an obnoxious imitation of Chris Farley, and refused to see ANY movie he was in, and really NEVER saw any of them. Until last year when I heard he made a video game about heavy metal, and you throw the chick at the enemy to gain points, and the soundtrack was all Scorpions, Ozzy, and Lita Ford. From what I could tell, it actually was cool. Then I went back and saw all the movies he made and decided he was obnoxious, but rocks.

edit: Jack Black on LSD= NSFW.

Jack Black on Millionaire.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPBpxd6Lmfo&feature=related

Biblical Proportions

The storm was everything they predicted it to be. Basically it was one fast moving storm cell after another, all day long, all week long. The last time we had an El Nino, it was about 15 years ago, so there wasn't all that awesome satellite technology! It took the storms about an hour to get from Sta Barbara to San Bernardino.

On Tuesday there was a tornado at some beach, and it flipped a Ford Explorer, and trees. There were alot of tornados, and water spouts, everywhere, all week long, just small ones. (They actually admit that they are tornados now, mostly because people catch them on film!)

A huge lightning bolt hit somewhere near my work, and knocked out the power to the signal and my building, but not much else! It happened at 2pm. There was a meeting scheduled and we couldn't call everyone so we just kept on going. I didn't get to go home early. Luckily there was no shortage of candles... The custodian reported that the power was eventually restored at 6:30 am.

The next day I went to the pier where I take all my pictures. None of the other piers were open. (The last time I took pictures there in a storm, it was raining and that was painful.) Luckily there was a dry spot, we got alot of dry spots in between the storm cells. No tornados, though. The most dramatic thing about the waves was not how tall each individual wave was, but just that the water was almost up to the end of the pier! It's usually a 30 foot drop. I guess that's why they call them "high seas."

This view is from the End of the pier, past Ruby's restaurant. The waves were not crashing onto the pier but almost.







The wind was 50mph and the air smelled worse than just salt. It smelled like a vaccuum cleaner bag.















After work that day I came home and there was part of my tree in my parking space. It's still there.













They just said on the news that Big Bear has gotten snow non-stop since Monday, and it's 7-8 feet.

My ipod has become sentient

(I wish)

It refuses to obey.

I got tired of taking it to the techs at the Apple store. All it needed was the wires jiggled, because the hard drive gets loose. Actually the techs aren't supposed to do that but they did, at least until lately. The last time they said I could recycle it for 15% off a new one, and that's cool because now I can get 140 more gigabytes and VIDEO for what the old one cost 5 years ago.

I swore the last time would really be the last, but not before I tried to fix it myself. I used a butter knife and took it apart and put it back together again, and for now, it works. I was scared of the almighty silver obelisk but not anymore. It really is just a hard drive in a can!
Anyway, the warrantee expired years ago, and if I mess up, I can still recycle it for 15% off.

Today it rained A LOT and I stayed home and didn't answer my phone.

Winter storm

There wasn't much going on today, except the rain, which started at 2pm, and is expected to continue until Saturday.

I dreamed that the reason my car (the TA) wouldn't work is because of a fan belt, and I was so happy that it was an easy fix. In the dream, I kept driving in the wrong direction to get to the mechanic.
In real life, it's not the fan belt. Anyway, that one is new... Maybe the Toyota? The TA once had trouble stalling like that, among all the 1001 things I had fixed on it. I just can't remember why. I think it is something to do with smog equipment.

It was a strange feeling to have the front tires break loose in the rain instead of the rears. I miss having those hair raising moments with the TA.

I also did go to the barn. Denise had put up tarps everywhere.














There's a large public arena in a park on the other side of the dry lake bed.
(This is facing the dry lake and mostly land the city might use to make their arena.) A week of rain means a month of mud at the big arena. For some people who keep their horses in their backyard, it is all they have to turn out their horses for excercise.

If this tarp works, it'll be the largest dry turn out space all around. People are already bugging to use it, but it's private property. Since Denise moved here last year has been unable to give lessons due to a lack of permit, or something, mostly because the place was built fairly recently. If that changes she will be happy to give lessons here at last.

The property owner has a deal with a tree man, who dumps extra wood chips and they get spread around like mulch. Most of the property and driveway are covered with this mulch. Only the finest chips can be mixed with dirt in the arena. Larger chips float to the top and make the dirt slippery. Because it may contain toxic plants it is not used as bedding in the stalls.
(Because of pollution laws, horse poo can't be composted and the city has to take it away in trash cans.)


Here are some old mulched christmas trees that they dumped earlier this week, turning into compost. We were sitting around in the rain, and all of a sudden they just started to smell, and steam was rising up. Compost can get up to 170 degrees, and everyone came around to see how hot the piles were! With the rain there shouldn't be a fire danger. The heat helps turn the wood chips into dirt.

Another Saturday Night

It was a very long day at work.
At home we put up sand bags around the back door.
Here's a picture I painted in my sketchbook the other day, of a bee's nest at the barn.

I don't go there every day, usually Monday or Tuesday. I might go tomorrow. It's not supposed to rain until evening.

They announced the schedule for the next LA Invasion on Memorial day! There will be the drive up and BBQ at Big Bear, then two days of racing, with bracket racing on the last day. I am usually good at bracket racing, and this time they have money prizes! But I don't even know if my car will be in shape by then. I'm pretty sure I can get it fixed before May, but if it's bad, it will be a LONG time until I save up for a new motor.

Friday, still waiting for the storm

Well, the city ran around in a hurry and laid down new cement curbs all over! They did the ones across the street but they haven't removed our curb yet, they just sawed it. I will have picture up, hopefully before and after...

It turned out that the uncle wanted to give me money to fix the Toyota, but I told him to wait because we don't know what's wrong with it yet. I drove him to the grocery store and he gave me some post cards from Mike's trip to Europe.

Old Navy had a huge sale! I found it by accident, I have a gift card from Xmas and went in to see if they had anything new. They were giving 50% off of their clearance items. Everything at Old Navy looks exactly alike, so the new spring stuff wasn't that different from the clearance stuff. I got a few pairs of cargo pants for $5 and $6 and shirts for as little as $1.50. That's cheaper than Goodwill, who sells any and all items for $2 and up. (I know because I went there in the summer to find T-shirts when I was trying to tie-dye.)

I visited Don the mechanic, and he is still sick. Exactly everything in his area of the garage has not moved an inch.

The import-exporters had some neat cars. The 57 buick (or chevy?) had a funny name for the kind of motor it has. Something about the pistons being vertical...






























And I love disco 70's style stingray Vettes! But apparently there is no love for them in the US, because they are all going overseas. I have seen a million of them go through here, in every color.

It's really Thursday!

All day yesterday I kept thinking it was Thursday.
Today was actually Thursday, which means this crappy week is almost over!
(I'm talking about work of course, not the fun stuff like taking pictures and all that.)

Tomorrow I get to take the uncle somewhere, but he wouldn't say what. Yay!

The city has finally decided to re-pave this street. I woke up every day this week to the sound of machines chopping cement. Yay!
Although I never actually got up, from the sound of it, they used saws and then jack hammers and then apparently threw chunks of cement into metal bins.

They are cutting up the curbs where the trees have lifted them up, in order to make the water run smoothly. There used to be a big cesspool where everyone's water would gather in the gutter front of our house, and even the neighbors would take turns sweeping it, because it stinks. Eventually they will grind up the asphalt and recycle it into a new street.

The city is cutting out the curbs and leaving big huge chunks of lawn and dirt hanging. There will be a big storm next week. I wonder what will happen?

Stormy weather ahead

Where did my post go???
Wow this sucks, everything I worked for has disappeared. I don't recommend this blog site at all.
Plus, I uploaded my pictures, which has a limited space, and they don't seem to like Photobucket. And now I have to upload them again.
OK here it goes again.


(Pictures are from Yesterday.)
Today was slightly rainy. We have 3 more large storms headed this way next week.
The panels arrived at the ________'s ranch and we got rid of a huge root, which was great exercise.


Wow. It ate two more pictures.
I'm pissed.








This is Hoss, another one of Denise's horses. He is a paint, 14.3 almost 5 yrs old. She got him for her dad, to replace a good horse that died, Penny who I also used to ride. Hoss is very mild mannered. They would like me to ride him too, but for awhile he didn't have much training, so I have only once. He's not psycho like Jessie just lazy.

Almost a sunset

On sunday I went back to the beach. I got there earlier than last week, but the sun had already set. It looked OK. Anyway, there is a long line of storms headed this way, so I'll have to find a different subject.

Dawn Patrol

After posting on Saturday, I went to the beach. I kept leaving the house too late to get a nice picture of the sunset, so I thought I could catch the sunrise.
Well, I missed the sunrise, too, but I got better pictures.



I don't know why I'm obsessed with the beach, lately. I sometimes go all month and never stop there. I think it's because of the nice weather. My brain must be in vacation mode.

Just visiting

Don was feeling under the weather, and working on A_____'s car, a long term project.
It will be at least another week...

Don works out of a shop that exports classic and sports cars and bikes to NZ.
Friday, for instance I saw a really great white firebird. They said it was fast but I didn't get to see under the hood. The cars usually stay for a week and then a big shipping container comes to pick them up. It's kind of sad to see all these cars leaving the country...

After that I visited Denise at the ranch again.














(Jessie reared up and tried to eat the tree, but I didn't catch a picture of it.)
The area to the right is what was cleared out for the new fence panels. The turnout will be square instead of round. The only problem is a huge root of the pepper tree, which is about 4 feet long and 1 foot around. We took turns chopping at it with an axe which was fun but not effective. The grandfather came out to visit and said he knew someone with a machine that takes out stumps. I'm going back on Monday to see them put the fence up.

While hanging out, I saw what looked like a rainbow, but in fact it was an ice ring around the sun. After that it was time for work.

White Horse

I painted this in my sketchbook at work on Wednesday.


I was stuck at home yesterday before work, so I didn't do anything interesting.
Mike's toyota was getting a tune up, (so it doesn't stall anymore!) and smogged.


I dreamed that I was hanging around with a friend, and we were going some place. I accidentally started up the TA, and because I wasn't sure if I could ever get it to run again, I told her I had to go to the mechanic instead of hanging out.
When I got there somebody was working on a motorcycle, and started it up and blew exhaust in my face. When I described the car's problem, _____ criticized me for being ungrateful and said maybe he should take the car from me because at least HE appreciated it.

Later I dreamed I was with other friends at the grade school. We were using a classroom for a meeting. I was making a mess, writing on the chalkboard and snooping in the coat closet to see what was in there, and there were books and rats, and it was dark.


I've been making up every excuse not to see Don (the mechanic) about the GTA, mostly because I have been in a rotten mood, and that won't help.
I haven't even tried to start it in at least 2 weeks now. I'm afraid because it feels like it's going to sieze up at any time. I don't want to do a leakdown test myself, because if it DOES have a leak, I'm afraid I'll make a bigger mess.

If I use my favorite carrier, it's $60 to tow it there.

Today, I think I'll stop by...
At least, I know I'll see some interesting cars there!

Visiting the barn

Today I went to visit my friend Denise who keeps her horses at a really neat barn.
(She has her own blog at www.horsesdiy.com)
Jessie (the horse) was very friendly and came right up to see me when I got there. I haven't been there since before christmas so maybe she just forgot me, but at least she was pretending to be nice!

There's always something to do there, usually involving dirt and sweat, but it's always fun. Today I helped dig out a dead tree stump. Denise got new panels for the arena for Christmas, and they will arrive soon so she is making room.

Later we had an interesting conversation about the public boarding facility that the city will be building in one of two places. One of the places is the city land that we borrow to make an arena! It's kind of sad because they would have to grade a lot of the dry lake bed, but it would be neat to have a new, public facility right in the back yard! On the other hand the people who board at this barn are trying to get away from the kind of bad horse people that public stables tend to attract.
This has been in planning for a long time and it looks like it will happen this year, so it will be interesting!

Fata Morgana

I was thinking about going to the beach to take pictures yesterday, but as it turned out I had errands to do. See previous.
This is the time of year for really great sunsets. I try to go whenever I have a day off. I went on Sunday and also last week on Sunday and Monday, but all three times I had too many things to do beforehand, and got there after dark!

I was really disappointed to hear that I missed a rare event, a type of mirage that makes wierd shapes of the horizon. I've seen some dramatic videos from a mirage in Japan, and I also saw the effect in the distance while travelling through Arizona two years ago. (I took pictures then, but it was so far away it was just fuzzy blurs.) The effect is also known as fata morgana. The one I saw in the desert was a mirage of a row of distant mountains. The mirror image floated above it, so the peaks were touching. It made the effect of a bunch of balancing rocks, or mushrooms or space ships.
It would have been neat to see a local landmark like Catalina look that way!

Here is a link from the local paper, with a picture.
http://sciencedude.freedomblogging.com/2010/01/04/odd-weather-turns-catalina-into-a-mirage/75983/

There must be something in the air

Today was my day off so I tried to sleep in, but my nutty uncle kept calling. Finally I had to see what he wanted. As usual it wasn't an emergency. I keep telling him if he wants me to take him shopping, he should let me know at least a day ahead of time, so I don't stay up until 4 am working on a new project, like this blog. He wanted to go to the shoe store too, I told him it was still open but he doesn't like to go out after dark. He had quite a lot to say...

At least, there was an interesting sunset.

(When I go to put a title for the post in the Title box, it autocompletes it! It comes up will ALL the titles to ALL the posts and private messages I've ever posted in the different message boards, since the beginning of time!
Some of them bring back memories and some of them I can't explain, like the title of this one.)

My Green Kitt

I'd like to dedicate this blog to my car, (R.I.P. once again,) without which many interesting adventures would not have been possible.

(I'm also testing out the photo uploading options. I wonder what the limits are?)
Edit: Wow! That's huge. Cool. I wonder what my bandwith limits are for the day?

Let's get this show on the road!

I'm starting this blog mostly because my friends at work want to see what I'm writing and drawing in my notebook all the time! After looking at a few other blog sites, I picked this one because it seemed to be the easiest to set up.
I've really hesitated to start a blog... I tend to be very uncensored in my journal and I am afraid of publishing something that could come back to haunt me in my professional life. On the other hand I got tired of "not existing" in the digital world.
It can't be any worse than posting to a message board. That stuff can't be erased, either.