Blue Morning, Blue Morning

I walk along these hillsides

In the summer 'neath the sunshine

I am feathered by the moonlight falling down on me

I said, I walk along these hillsides

In the summer 'neath the sunshine

I am feathered by the moonlight falling down on me

I said, I will walk along these hillsides

In the summer 'neath the sunshine

& I am feathered by the moonlight falling down on me...

How do You EVEN???

A few days back, on my afternoon walk, I was coming home, and came upon this, when I was almost home. I have NO IDEA how anyone could manage this!!!

It was in an area where he would have been having to try and parallel park, but he managed to run up over the curb, as well as running into the back of a parked car!!! If he hadn't hit the parked car, there's a very good chance he would have ended up in the canyon, as has been seen before, only likely it would have been a much messier ending, as it would have been into the basketball court, probably at least 15 feet down, where at the time there were several people playing.

They were high-centered on the frame, and trying to get it out, but the back tire was just spinning. Here's the scrape, and you can see a chunk of cement has been knocked off.

And, on the other end, where the tire had been spinning. Yesterday I saw a guy who was there when the guy was trying to get loose, and I asked him if he knew what happened. Turns out (in addition to finding out he's got the same nickname as me!!!) it was his car that got ran into, of course jamming his properly turned front wheel hard into the curb, likely destroying his alignment. He says it's hard to shift into gear now, in addition to the back end being banged up. Said he smelled no booze or weed on the guy, who claimed "I was taking a drink of water."

Ramble On

Since I've transitioned to working from home, I'm not near as active. I my last position, I would typically walk from five to seven miles a day, sometimes more on weekends. To try to keep some muscle tone, I've been going on walks around the neighborhood most every day. I'm not getting anywhere near the distance I used to, but there's a lot more up and downs around here, and it's working some different sets of muscles, I can tell. Almost always I go solo, but a couple of times I've had someone come along.

My wife made the suggestion that I should take some pictures while out on my walks. Here's a few. To start off, it's a couple weeks late, but something for 512 day!!!

Up next is some slow going construction. This is the site of the house that burned down a few years back.

Here's some of the most artful work I've come across recently.

They've set up Mardi Gras in their yard!!! Pretty cool!!!

The sign says "Please Seat Yourself"

This wall, I've seen for years. It's an awesome wall, makes me think the residence behind it is a compound or a citadel or some such. Of course, with such a wall, you can't really tell.

A block over is a pretty extreme climb to get back to our side, so it's one of those I haven't done in a while. I think it's been over 15 years since I've walked it, but I'm fairly certain I've been that way before. However, I don't remember having seen these before. There's about a dozen houses that are all the same design!!! They may be duplexes, there's an entrance between the garage doors, and then an outside staircase that goes up two flights to an entrance on the side. I don't think I'd much like living on that level!!!

There's a street that turns to a dirt road for a ways that goes behind them I took the other day.There's a half dozen undeveloped lots towards the end.

About halfway down there's a gas meter, got to be at least 100 feet from the nearest structure!!! I wonder if they send someone to read it.

The other day, a chopper came in low over the hills!!!

Halloween: A New Era

Happy upcoming Thanksgiving!!! Before it gets even farther along, figured to to the belated Halloween post!!!

The new era alluded to in the title refers to this being the first year where the older was not in the vicinity, so it was just the younger.

First up is a shot of the Jack-O-Lantern. For a change, they didn't have the carving contest at work this year. Just the one this year, as it seems time always gets tight this time of year. Based on Papyrus from Undertale. The youngest drew it out and I carved it. considering the challenging design, I think it came out quite well. Didn't do it that far in advance, either, so it was in excellent shape for the traditional early November mayhem. You can catch this year's here.

Next up is a construction shot of the most complex portion of the costumes this year, a pair of glasses. Involved was some Plexiglas from the dodecahedron project (worse for time, the protective paper had bonded fairly well onto it!!!), frames from some old sunglasses, much epoxy, and some even older than the Plexiglas window tint film. The black piece was a cardboard mock-up repurposed to hold the bows apart while it was being epoxied.

A couple of new shirts were in order. I did mine with the same technology the the older had previously used for his Vriska costume, a cardboard template and spray paint. The youngers' was made up with an iron on print, on an orange sleeved shirt. I never saw an image of this shirt with the orange sleeves, but hey, artistic license!!!

My costume was yet another Homestuck character, Lil Cal. Also involved was a gold tooth cap I'd had for more than ten years ago. My wife was a huge help locating it. Where is a good place to store such a thing??? An old ball cap and gold chain completed the look. To finish it off, I shaved off my mustache and beard and drew on the cheek spots and jaw opening. I wore it into work, and I think I was the only one in my department this year that dressed up.

The boy had his costume based on Dirk Strider, who of course, is closely linked with Lil Cal, so that is where the inspiration for my costume came from!!! Glasses, shirt, and an old wood sword fresh painted silver on the blade comprise his costume. I'm of the opinion that wanting to have the glasses and an orange shirt were primary motivators to his choice of costume!!!

More of the Jack-O-Lantern, this time on the cat tree. I don't think awesome cat much cares for his heiarchal position at the top of the tree being usurped.

Something cool, I have so many vacation days now, that I happened to see they had a half day available on Halloween, which of course I took. Nice, as they have moved the start and end time of my shift 15 minutes later, and it had already been a late get home time. We trick or treated around the neighborhood, the streets behind our house, then over to what had looked to be a promising area.

One place had this sign up on their gate... I feel vandalism coming on!!!

There!!! Fixed your sign for you, mister!!! No treat, here's your trick!!! Haha!!!

When we had headed over two weekends before, we'd spotted what looked like a walkway at the end of the dead end street we'd walked up. We had walked down it to another cul-de-sac in the valley below. This was the previously alluded to promising area. There were several houses with Halloween decorations, and while we were there we witnessed a mother and child having a Nerf gun war. It was pretty far on in the evening by the time we made it over there, though, and it wasn't as good as it had looked, though there was one guy we caught pulling into his garage who dug out a three year old bag of tootsie rolls and dumped a good quantity into our sacks.

Finally, now that there is one in the neighborhood, no Halloween night would have been complete without a visit to a haunted house...

"And they say the old man's body was NEVER FOUND..."

Fired Up

Last Thursday I was in the front room of our house, and I heard sirens. Getting closer. I sat up and looked out, and up our street came a couple of fire trucks. Hmmm, that doesn't happen very often, and it's always troubling when there's an actual fire going on up here. Of course, fire trucks don't always mean there's a fire, but not too much longer, here comes another pair of fire trucks. Shortly after, another vehicle, the size of a fire truck, but more boxlike with "Urban Search & Rescue" on the side.

None of this sounded good as far as there actually being a fire, and sometime in there, a fire helicopter joined the party. Instead of having a spotlight, it had forward facing lights, and when it circled towards us, you could see billowing smoke. Fortunately, while the area surrounding us were experiencing high winds, it has been calm in our area, so no red flag days for us.

I was curious, and was considering trying to walk to where it was going on, but never did. Fell asleep before the news came on that night, but caught it the next day.

A six room,9,100 square foot house. 10 to 15 people living there. The house was apparently in foreclosure. I've walked by the place before, I remember admiring the octagon turrets. Might even have actual pictures of the place on the hard drive from my old Toshiba laptop. The before pictures are from Google Street View.

After I got home from work on Saturday, the younger and I went over to see what we could see. The street does a loop around, with houses on each end and a wide dirt trail on an undeveloped side of the hill with the namesake Sea View. Not knowing exactly which end of the street it was on, we figured it out in a hurry. Two days later, the street is still blocked off with a lot of the fire trucks, and a mobile command center on the opposite side (which is the same style of vehicle that the Urban Search and Rescue had). Parking enforcement was there, guarding the end. Asked if the street was blocked to pedestrian traffic as well as vehicles, and was answered in the affirmative. I asked how we were supposed to rubberneck then???

We walked back, and took off down the next street over, a dead end that has something of a view across the canyon, and it turns out we were able to see a good amount of the property from there.

Unfortunately, there's one person unaccounted for, an 84 year old man. One story I read said he went back in for a litter of puppies. An old guy died last time there was a structure fire up here, too.

Last stories I read, they still hadn't determined the cause. I'd speculate that with that many people, someone may have been using a hot plate in their room. Could be a smoker, too, or some other reason for all I know.