Chimneys

My last post brought to remembrance that I still have quite a bit I could blog on about several of our last vacations.

This one is more about our trip to Tennessee a couple years back.

We had found out from some locals about one of the trails out in the Great Smokey Mountains, a hike out to a natural rock formation called The Chimneys. My younger son and I left mom at the trail head with the rental car and started out.

I went back through my pictures and selected several of the good ones from the hike.

Another of those situations where almost all the pictures came out really good!!!

It was only a little over three miles of a hike, but it's upsy most of the way. It gains almost 1,500 feet.

The first part follows along a stream bed, so there were many water shots.

It started out as a bright sunny day with a few clouds, but as the day (and our hike) went on, it became more and more cloudy.

Which was actually pretty nice, otherwise it would have been even more sweaty!!!

It appears that the only actual shot I got of the wood beam steps that were prevalent for the later part of the hike was one of my bad shots, where it blurred.

The main color that we saw was the forest green, which made the red flowers and red leaves we saw stand out all the more.

When we got to the actual Chimneys, the trail ends and you have to scramble up the exposed black rock.

There's not a picture that shows it very well, but it goes up. Almost straight up!!!

There were some other hikers up there to take a shot of both of us.

And the last couple of shots were from my newly acquired smart phone, a selfie of both of us.

And another, attempting to get a shot of the sheer steepness.

Disaster Man

Here's a disturbing trend I've noticed.

Back in 2016 we vacationed down in Tennessee, notably in the Pigeon Forge area, as well as an afternoon in the Great Smoky Mountains just outside Gatlinburg. It was a great vacation, and I could have posted more about it.

A few months after we'd gone, devastating wildfires engulfed the area.

The next year, 2017, we went down to Texas, flying into Houston, and spending some time there, as well as Austin, San Antonio, and Galveston. Another great vacation, and again worthy of more posts than I have done. (This was about the best shot that I have outside in the Houston area.)

Just a couple of months later, Hurricane Harvey blew into town and flooded the area.

Just last November my wife and I traveled up north to the San Jose area for our anniversary.

While we were in the area, the Camp Fire broke out. You could smell smoke in most of the places we were at, and it was smoke hazy the whole time. I took the last picture on the flight out, and you can see the layer of smoke.

I'm taking bids on where not to vacation next year.

Super Blood Wolf

Tonight was the lunar eclipse. I attempted to get a few shots with my phone's camera, and then broke out my Pentax to see how I did with each.

Probably haven't made mention, but that was my Christmas present to myself, stepped my phone game up to the Galaxy S8. Better everything than the S5 I'd had. My younger boy is saving up for the S9, for the improved camera it has. Anyway, the first couple of pictures here are what you can get with that!!!

Next, I got out my DSLR to see what I could do with that. Caught the blood effect much better!!!

I've got a couple of tripods, as well as a remote shutter release. I was going to set it up on one for these pictures, but come to find out, the wing screw I have for them is too long to clamp down the camera!!! I'll be getting a new one of those from my work at some point.

Anyway, I was able to get some fairly plausible pictures with the 300mm lens just resting it on an edge!!!

(The more you crop it, the worse it looks)

More Car Stuff

Here's a couple of the things I've been up to. Finally made some progress on getting a bit more black paint on Scruffy. After I got my gravy (a new record amount!) I went to Home Depot for some interior paint and spray black paint.

I was mostly wanting to get the hood painted, as it was the only panel of a completely different color. There were a few scratches to fill. While I was at it, I did the front bumper and the passenger side fender. I guess the front bumper had some different color, too, where scrapes had been painted over by the previous owner. The first round came out fairly terrible, I got a lot of runs. Lord help me, I'm just not that good at spray painting! The bumper and fender came out pretty good, but the hood didn't get the satin look. Looks like straight flat black. Still better than it was. You can see I had the trim over the window on that side off for painting, but I cracked the plastic on the next one back. I epoxied it back together, and it still needs to be sanded.

Onto Jade, I bought my wife a new stereo for her for Christmas. Tried to get the same one that I'd gotten for Scruffy, but apparently it's no longer available. Had to go up several model numbers, and it seems very similar. A few minor moves of the buttons and a smooth knob are all I can see that's different.

For the first time, I got a plug in wiring harness adapter. I was able to do all my soldering and shrink tubing at the kitchen table, a real plus this time of year with it getting dark so early. Worked flawlessly! All in all, the installation went fairly smoothly.

She loves being able to play music from her phone through it, and the customizable lighting! Purple, of course!

And finally, something my wife got for me for Christmas, new floor mats for Scruffy! They're cut to size, and I think they may be the best I've ever gotten! A few cuts, and they fit right in and lay nice and flat, and stay put!

My Name Is the Knight

There are many influences and inspirations for art. Here's a confluence of a couple.

Some of my favorite new music from last year came from Brian Fallon. In one of the songs, it features the following lyrics:

And it cost me nothing, baby

Nah, nothing more than this

Nothing more than this useless heart in my chest

Nothing that I needed, nothing I regret

Nothing that I needed, and I'd do it all again

I'd do it all again

I thought that was a great lyric, along with the later lines,

Singing, "Ooh, not just yet"

When I go, I'll be going out in flames and fiery wrecks

I decided I would have to come up with some sort of artwork to memorialize it. I didn't have to go far to find it, after all. Don't know how it came to me, but it did.

For as long as I can remember, there's been an oil painting that my dad did back in the late 60's hanging in the living room of their house. A surreal knight from a chess set with a hole broken in the side to reveal his broken heart. I did my take on it on my board at work. I'm pretty pleased with the results. I'll probably eventually add the first set of lyrics to the drawing.

It wasn't until I started adding in the coloring that I realized that the whole thing is heck of a pun.

My Name Is the Knight (Color Me Black)

Meet Virginia

This is most interesting. Around seven years ago, our last outdoor cat passed. In the last few weeks, another cat has shown up in our neighborhood, and, not having seen her in around seven years, she looks almost exactly the same!!! I suppose it's completely possible that this one of her descendants. My younger boy did the same move we'd done with the original, gave her some food. She's been back a few times. She's a little spooky, but kind of a people cat once you get up to her. Entirely possible that she's someone's pet, and thus far she's eluded the coyotes. The original we'd named Shenandoah, and for the last six months or so, the John Denver classic, "Country Road" has been on the boy's list, on account of Fallout 76. Since Shenandoah Valley is mentioned in the song, he thought the new one should have some name also from the song. I suggested "Ridge", short for Blue Ridge mountains, also unique and monosyllabic. That didn't stick. He dubbed her Virginia.

2018: The Year in Food

Welcome to the end of the year!!! It's been a pretty good one, and at this time, there's always a bunch of lists and retrospectives, so here's another!!! A look back at some of the stuff I ate!!!

To start off, I'm always looking for a good Chicago deep dish pizza. There's a few places that are purported to to serve it up, but the only new to me one I tried was a place called Dough Box. It's pretty decent, but not quite as good as the one I had in Chicago.

Next up is a creation of my own. The Woody Show had a segment on the ultimate stoner foods, and one was a grilled bacon cheese peanut butter & jelly sandwich. I think Menace may have cooked some up. Probably on 4-20. I love me a grilled PB&J, it's a meal and dessert in one, so I tried out the embellishments, and it was pretty good. Added in some grilled onions, and if I remember, I had some fancy kind of cheese. When I went to make it, though, there was only one slice each of two different kinds of bread, so it was a real mash up.

I've been going to the Aldi by my work for some time now. they have some of the best prices on most stuffs. One time while I was there, they had Jeno's East Chicago deep dish pizzas for around $6. Had to get one, and while, once again, not as good as Chicago, it was still quite plausible, for a fraction of the price. I think I got one more before they sold out, and they came back later and I got 2 or 3 more.

Next up, Oinkster had their Burger Week again. I skipped last year, but this year they were bringing back a few of my favorites, so I made it a quest again. I think the winner for my favorite was the Thrilla from Manilla. Pork patty with shrimp & mushrooms in a lumpia wrapper, green papaya relish, pork belly, and sweet sweet Thai sauce.

I was looking most forward to the Pantera burger, with grilled mac & cheese, pulled pork, bacon and garlic aioli. Sounded awesome, but for some reason I was underwhelmed.

One of my favorites from my first time was the Bet it All on Black Garlic burger, with a lot of garlic stuff on it, too. When we got there for this one, they told us they were out of the black buns, so it'd be on just a regular bun, but when I got it home, it was black!!! Didn't seem as garlicy as the first one I'd had.

They also had several of their "tribute" burgers, starting with the Big Max, then the Sourdough Josh, and the week ended with the McRibster, which makes the original seem like the ribwich from the gas station!!!

Habit Burger never disappoints, and I made it by for the limited time guacamole crunch burger, and it was well worth it. Later on in the year they had a French Onion burger that was also quite good!!!

Here's one I happened on. For National Donut Day, Burger King came up with the Whopper Donut!!! Only five locations in the country were going to have them, and one was close to where I was going to be, so I was able to get in on it!!!

Really nothing that special, just a Whopper with the middle punched out. Comes with a "mini Whopper slider", which is just the punched out center. Whopper is a pretty good mass-production burger, so I enjoyed it.

As briefly mentioned, we went to the Orange County Fair this year. Always fair food to be had, and here's a few!!! We got some of the Australian Battered Potatoes, which were quite good.

Of course, deep fried stuff had to be consumed. I got some deep fried cheesecake, the younger boy got some deep fried Oreos.

Mom got the deep fried Nutella. Looked bad, tastes good. She also got some pizza on a stick later on.

Of course, they had the Christmas party for my work this year. Seemed like a lot of people weren't going when you'd talk to them, but once we got there, every place you look you see someone. I'm always tempted to get the fish, but I got the filet mignon, and it was good!!! Mine was kind of thin, but that made it nicely cooked throughout. Dessert was these little cakes.

Just the other day I went to Taco Bell and had them try and make a re-creation of Woody's deep dish Mexican pizza!!! He'd gone to their test kitchen and stacked it to where it'd just barely fit in their oven. I basically just had 'em double up everything, and it looks like it could have gone taller, but it was honestly more than enough!!!

Finally, back at the end of August, noted crackpot California Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman was calling for a boycott of In-N-Out Burger. All that made me do is want an In-N-Out Burger. The next night, I went by and got one. The boycott doesn't seem to have done them any harm. It occurred to me just the other day, I can't recall the last time I've had an In-N-Out Burger that wasn't prepared animal style!!!

I took this picture and posted it on Twitter. I think it may have been the most liked and retweeted post I've ever done. For the text, I just did three words.

God bless America.

Flat

It has been a while, yet again. I'd wanted to get more blogging in this year, and may have been somewhat successful. Anyway, last month my wife and I went up to northern California for a anniversary weekend. It was pretty fun.

We flew out of Long Beach, which is always a far superior experience than Los Angeles. The options of the flight were early morning or late evening. To keep from blowing the whole day (and as the day wears on, it seems more likely for a flight delay) we elected the morning flight. Of course, this means arriving well before check in time at our lodging. We got our rental car, one of the style I like where they just point you to the class of car you've rented and tell you to take your pick. I like the hatch style of the Hyundai Accent, so we took that and just started cruising about at random. First city areas, then farmlands, then we were in a forest area.

When I pulled off to take a few pictures, I noticed that the Hyundai is a 512'er!!! Pretty cool. Got to catch the end of The Woody Show on KFOG, and then discovered that our rental had satellite radio, and listened to that some. It was getting towards that time, so we started looking for someplace to eat. Rolling down the freeway, and suddenly the tire pressure light comes on!!! It began making a noise of a flat, and there was an exit coming up, so I kept going along to get off the freeway. The road we exited onto had no shoulder, so I continued to the next cross street and turned onto it, then pulled off to the side.

Yeah, it was flat all right. I moved our luggage out of the trunk into the back seat to get at the spare. Surprise, no spare!!! Just a compressor and a can of sealant. I have heard the sealant can foul the tire pressure sensors, so before I tried it, I called the rental company. They said to give it a try, so I went ahead. Connect the sealant to the line and compressor and let it run for 3 minutes. I did that, and it was as flat as ever. I noticed that there were three of one brand of tire, and a fourth was different, and the one that had gone flat had some cupping on the edge. I suspect that there has been some kind of suspension damage that causes one tire to wear quickly.

Called the rental company back, and they said they would send a truck. Could be an hour and 15 minutes, but it was only about the 15 minute. Back to the rental place, where the tow truck couldn't get into the garage because of the height, so he dropped us outside the structure. Went back, and they said to get another of my choosing, and suggested a Kia Rio S that was almost new, less than 1,000 miles. Also got phenomenal mileage.

Where we'd pulled off the road, there was a dead mouse laying there. Not a great sign, but the rest of the weekend was fine. At first I was thinking that this was the first time I'd had such a problem with a rental, but then I remembered the Mazda that had a window come off it's tracks. Was also thinking it's the first flat I've had in a while, but there was the shanking of Jade from earlier this year, as well as tires on Scruffy that would get low on air. So, this was the first time I've had an automotive incident where I've been stuck on the side of the road since the couple of times where AAA Screwed me over!!!