Snow More

Here's what is apparently a once every 15 years event!!!

This was a couple of days ago. There was a storm system coming in, a cold one with a lot of moisture.

They were saying up to an inch of rain in an hour, and snow levels down to 1,500 feet.

I was telling the family that there was probably a chance of getting a bit of snow in our area. On Thursday, I was making my lunch, and looked out the window, and almost couldn't wrap my head around what I was seeing, even though I'd predicted it myself!!!

My son and I went out and took some pictures. It was pretty wet, and it may have even been sleet, but it sure looked like snow to me!!!

I was out getting some groceries and my son's birthday feast (Oinkster!!!) today, and got a shot of the low snow levels on the mountains!!!

Random Recap

Random Recap... Have I used that title before??? It seems like I may have. A cursory search doesn't show up that exact title, though, so it stays.

Anyway, as usual, a lot happens, so here I'm cramming it all into one post. Of course, Halloween happened. First up is Wilsons' German cousin, Voit, in his costume.

I did the same pumpkin as last year, but got a bit further on the interior. Made up a Charmander out of modeling clay with a candle holder for his tail. The clay was staying a bit pliable, so I stuck it in the oven to try & set it up. That was a mistake, it caved in on itself. Stole a gargoyle statue decoration from the boys' room & stuck it inside instead. It rotted to mush before I could throw it down.

The costumes for this year. My wife stayed with the feline theme. The only child boy went as a security guard from Five Nights at Freddy's, which other kids understood. His badge says "Freddy Fazbears Entertainment". I finally did a costume I've been saying to do for a while, aggressive panhandler. The boy was greatly entertained by my spiel, I'd roll up on people and go, "Hey, can you help me out??? I'm just trying to get a little money together to get some food..." and usually they'd put some candy into my can. I'd look at it, then tell them, "That's no good to me, I can't exchange it for booze or drugs!!!"

Of course, I worked that day, then we went to my parents' to trick or treat. An interesting side note, I've got an app that counts my steps on my phone. On a typical work day, I'll do anywhere from around 15,000 to 20,000 steps. On this Halloween, I ended up with around 28,500 steps, which comes out to about 19.5 miles. It is the highest amount of steps I've done in a day since I got the app.

The Friday before my wife & I made a run up to Magic Mountain again. Got there, and rode the best two rides in the park, then went home. Giant creepy Jack in the Box.

They had done a good amount of theming for the Halloween time.

And, fittingly, the best ride in the park is declared Satan's Domain.

Ever since our anniversary four years back, the wife & I make a long weekend vacation out of it. This year we headed up to Reno!!! It was a good trip, but it was colder than we're used to!!! Saw our quota of snow for the year, none of it actually in Reno.

The first day we headed over to Virginia City, which dates back to the 1800's silver rush, the Comstock Lode. On the way we headed through the state capital, Carson City, just because for all the times we've been in Nevada we've never been there. Rolled through the hilariously named Mound House, and drove past several whorehouses.

There's the pistol packing preacher of Virginia City.

If you make it though there, get lunch or dinner at the Virginia City Jerky Company. We'd already eaten, but stopped in because, who doesn't like jerky??? It smelled amazing in there!!! They had chili on the menu, and I'm always curious to see how other peoples' chili is, so I got a small side. I think it was about the best chili I've ever had that wasn't made in someone's house!!!

The last day we headed over to see Lake Tahoe. It was amazing, but windy and cold!!!

Slots seem looser in Reno than Tahoe. I came up with a fairly profitable method to usually win at roulette.

Just a week ago we headed to the local Slater's 50/50. I like the boy's pose in the background.

And finally, just last night, the boy had heard of this trick. Balancing a fork and spoon on the edge of a glass by a toothpick.

It's an old Jedi center of gravity trick, my boy!!!

Dreaming of a White Christmas

Merry Christmas to all!!! Since I'm not doing a lot, and my internets are going really slow, thought I'd put together the next post of vacation pictures!!!

I thought pictures from the Sawyer glacier would be appropriate. This was the first destination on the cruise, up Tracy Arm. There was one whole day of steaming up the Canada coast and a night of heading up the Alaska coast. When I looked out the porthole of our cabin that morning, I saw icebergs!!!

We never left the ship, but were just positioned off the glacier all day.

I kept looking at the left side all day, see how it looks like it's all an overhanging ice cave???

There went a little, but I was sure there was more in it.

They said that some days they come up here and it doesn't calve off but one or two icebergs. As was typical of our trip, however, it was excellent, and it was calving ALL DAY LONG!!!

I took so many pictures there, and the bulk of them came out quite good!!! There's the wave from just a bit to the right of where I was watching.

If you notice the dark specks on the ice floes, those are seals. Gives you a bit of an idea of the scale. There's a huge hunk of the blue of the glacier iceberg.

There it's going!!!

And to all a good night!!!

Bonus XP Weekend

Last Thursday afternoon the supervisor who does the scheduling comes up to me and asks if I want a middle shift for Friday. "Yea, sure, thanks", I'm usually up for getting out of work an hour 15 minutes earlier than normal, even when it means having to get up earlier, and usually worse traffic too. Then she says, "And you've got Monday off..." Huh??? I do??? Apparently I'd selected it when they were doing the vacation selection at the end of last year, and I was just throwing on random Mondays. Cool.

Saturday and Sunday weren't much different than normal weekend days, although it was wet and rainy most of the first half of the day, and it was pretty cold the rest of the weekend.

I have been doing a little work on the walls in the kitchen, trying to get 'em evened out for fresh paint. Did a bit of sanding on them.

This morning it was bright and sunny, but still chilly. Got the family together and we went up to Mount Baldy!!! It was an awesome day for it!!! Much better than the last two times. The drive out didn't take long at all, and it wasn't crowded.

There was a good amount of snow, around 6 inches most everywhere, and a good 4 inches or so of that was fresh powder. We got to do a bit of sledding, rolled up some snow balls into snowman size balls. A great way to spend the last day of Winter!!!

One of my co-workers had a half day of Friday for his birthday. His wife and him were going to Souplantation. I haven't been there probably more than 20 years, and that got me thinking. On the way home we stopped there.

If you've been following my Twitter feed, you've seen what else I did this weekend. Runescape was having their bonus experience weekend. I did just over 8 hours, racking up about 950,000 experience points. Started off with herblore, which I leveled 3 times, in the first half hour when the bonus factor was 2.7x. Next I did construction for 2 levels. Got 2 levels of agility, and one each in thieving, crafting, fletching, and prayer. Not leveled but heavily trained was smithing, which I did a lot of right after the herblore and construction. Did around 3/4 of the way to the next level, not bad since I'm at 86.

Oh yeah, the first picture is a snow apple core my boy made me!!!

P.S. I Love You

What I did over the Thanksgiving weekend: We all went out to Palm Springs!!!

Like last year, most of the extended family had other plans. My parents actually set this up, it was a time share condo where they give you a few nights of free lodging in exchange for listening to their spiel. It was a really nice place!!! For Thanksgiving dinner, they bought most of the whole thing pre made from a local grocery store, and for all the possible ways it could have failed, only the stuffing was a disappointment!!!

The next day, after swimming in the pool for a fair amount of the morning (while my poor folks attended the spiel), we went to the only actual attraction I was aware of in Palm Springs, the Aerial Tram. It was amazingly crowded there, and a bit spendy for a trip to the top, but well worth it.

The temperature was much lower at the top, and the rain that had come through the Los Angeles area the days before made for a nice layer of snow up there.

I guess this qualifies as our annual snow trip!!! The boys had a lot of fun frolicking in the snow, and would have stayed there much longer, but it was getting dark already.

We came back and went back to the pool area for a session in the jacuzzi. There are two of them there, one outside, the other under a synthetic hill, hidden behind a waterfall.The next day we went out to one of many oases in the area. Apparently the San Andreas fault line going through the aquifer causes the water to make its way to the surface. We hiked from one oasis to another, about a mile each way, with many cool things to see on the way.

Once we got back, we were snacking on some crackers and sodas near the visitors center (which was already closed for the evening), and along wandered this bobcat!!! Of course, I had already stowed my camera, but I managed to get it out and fire off three shots before he disappeared for good. The first two came out the better ones, shooting from the hip, than the third where I framed him up, and the camera failed to auto focus.

There's a shot of the pool in the background (along with the inflatable turkey). Actually, two separate pools. The smaller one has a very shallow large area for small kids, and two different water slides, one straight and rather flat, and the other of a decent height with some nice twists to it. The larger pool has one area with a volleyball net set up over it. The older boy took a Jr. Lifeguard course they offered. I don't know how much they actually taught him.



This was pretty cool, too. The condos, to further sweeten the pot, gave my parents several vouchers for, among other things, the gas station up the street. The day we headed home, they gave us one to use, $20 value. The drive out there is 111 miles, plus some driving around town, plus about 40 miles of to work and back the day before. Now, we'd driven out on Wednesday night. I haven't made mention here, but I bought myself a GPS unit for Christmas already. Figured it made more sense to have it BEFORE I'm in a strange town trying to find my way. On the drive out, it routed us along a couple of small, two lane highways (not what I'd have chosen, but we followed it anyway). It also rained a bit, causing everyone to hit their brakes far too much. The elevation increases quite a bit from home to there, so in other words, it was all uphill, albeit very slightly for most of the drive. In other words, the drive was less than optimal for prime fuel efficiency. However, in spite of that, after driving 168.4 miles, Baby would only take 3.98 gallons of gas!!! That works out to an unprecedented, AMAZING, 42.31 MPG!!! I have to imagine that this is an anomaly, but at any rate, I was quite pleased. The gas station wouldn't give full change for it, so we ended up with two large water bottles, three of the huge slim jims, and five dollars cash.

Good times!!!

Snow Day!!!

I'm still not over this!!! We are in the midst of a storm system here in the southland, unusual that we've actually got weather happening. Funny thing, the talking heads have been saying that it was going to start on Monday, then Tuesday, but it was actually Wednesday before it actually got here. Cut off low, weatherman's woe, I think it was the immortal Dr. George Fischbeck used to say that.



Anyway, I got up a little early this morning on account of all the people who can't drive with a little wetness. It wasn't even raining when I exited the house, the sun was even out. On the way out of the house, I saw this white on the front grass. My first thought, dang, there's a busted drain pipe somewhere and now there's some detergent suds in my yard!!! I took a closer look, and my second thought it was frost. I've seen frost before, I can wrap my mind around frost, and certainly it's cold enough for frost. Still, it didn't look right for that. A closer look, its actually SNOW!!! In L.A.!!! Ha!!! Not a lot of it, but still, the real deal!!! Good thing I was a little ahead of schedule, I ran back in the house, grabbed my camera and told the youngest to get his shoes on, he's gotta see this!!! He scooped some up, and declared, "It's freezing cold!!!" The second picture is after I hit him with a snowball, as you can see it stuck on his shoulder.



Even the car still had some remaining on it, along the wipers and cowl area, and on the back wing.

An interesting footnote: My home is my grandfathers' former home, we bought it from his estate when he passed. My mother grew up here, and back in the 50's it had also snowed here, and she has some old 8mm home movies of them playing in the snow from back then.