The Vacation Where Everything Broke

Back from this year's epic vacation, and it was (for the most part) excellent!!! We spent 4 nights on Catalina Island, two nights in Carlsbad (for the Lego parks) and 3 nights in San Diego. My logic in planning this year's trip was that usually we spend a few thousand just getting where we're going, as well as a day on each end in airports and flying, then spend a lot of the day just playing at the beach. Might as well stay semi-local and spend the extra money on better food & lodging!!! I think this worked out very well!!!




To get the part where everything broke out of the way, I'll lead off with that part. Once we returned from Catalina we were heading down to Carlsbad, and on the way there stopping in Oceanside to pick up these passes I'd gotten, good for admission to dozens of San Diego area attractions. We were travelling in Janice for the trunk space. As we were driving down a side street, the hangers for the muffler gave out and it started dragging!!! I had just replaced the hangers probably only 6 months ago. There was a parking lot right there, so I pulled off into it and stopped. As luck would have it, there was a Auto Club truck there already. Unfortunately, he didn't have any wire to hang it back up with, so we ended up having to get a flat bed out to haul her to a muffler shop. They didn't have the right hangers in stock, and didn't have time to fabricate new ones, so the guy did a very effective job of wiring up the tailpipe.



It was fairly late by the time we got out of there, so we headed back to the same parking lot we'd been towed from. There's a Joe's Crab Shack in that lot, and while waiting there we'd been discussing eating there, so we did. Cracking crabs takes a while!!! Headed out, and went to start the car, and nothing!!! I've seen this before, bad starter in the most inopportune time. Looked for a lug wrench to bang on the starter with, because that's worked before, and discovered that there is none in that car. Good to know before I have a flat!!! Called AAA again, and the guy had a jack handle that fit the bill. Got her fired up, and I'd been on the phone with my parents. They were good enough to let me borrow one of their cars for the remainder of our trip.



Didn't want to shut the car off again, so we drove down to our next hotel, and left the car running while I checked in and unloaded the trunk. Left the rest of the family, and did the night run back north then back. Made for a late night, but better than the other alternatives.



The next day we went to Legoland for the day. Afterwards, we went to the TGIF on the opposite side of the hotel. On the way back, we spotted a bunny rabbit. Of course, the boys are off chasing it. Unbeknownst to the older boy, there was an edge border by one part of the sidewalk, and he went down, hard. His ankle swelled up fairly nice (funny how you don't know how lumpy ankles are until you're inspecting them...) so I got ice and made up an ice pack. Ended up taking him to the Scripps emergency room, for my second late night in a row. I would have posted his X-ray, but I left the CD with those in my parent's car. Not much to see anyway, it wasn't broken, just a sprain. They splinted him up, and gave him a pair of crutches.



That's almost all that broke, if you don't count the rental wheelchair we got for him the next day at the San Diego Zoo's Safari Park. The screws were coming out of the wheel handles, and they'd click on the side. When they found out, though, they refunded the price of the rental, so it's all good.



Other than that, it was great!!! The zip line course in Catalina is the one thing that everyone says was the best part. The older boy & I went parasailing. The younger boy had wanted to go when we were in Hawaii, but we didn't end up having time, so I was doing that mostly for his benefit, but he chickened out.



Didn't make it to the new Lego water park or sea life aquarium, because the boy's foot was bandaged up for the former, and figured we'd see sea life at Sea World when we made it there. On the big breakdown day, we'd been planning on going to a paintball park, but that got scrubbed. The actual San Diego Zoo we missed, too, as well as Belmont Park.

I'll go into more depth-things we actually did!!!-in further posts!!!

This is me Tomorrow...

Soooo much!!! We went up to the mountains again a couple weeks back, last weekend had the celebration of my sister & my birthdays, took several pictures worthy of sharing...

So what do I end up sharing??? Another cat picture!!! This was so cute, he was being his lazy self, and then he went & covered his eyes with his paw!!! Not real easy to see with the black on black furs, but there it is.



In other news, I've finally upgraded my laptop. Bought some memory to bring it up to 4gb, bought a hard drive twice the size and faster, and (the finally part) installed Windows 7, up from Vista. So far, I'm reasonably pleased. I have yet to try and install my favorite imaging software, PaintShop Pro (don't even know if I'll be able to, it's an older version), but instead used MS Paint to work on this picture.

Oh, and I seem to have lost the little round ball off the end of the ring in my piercing. One day after the cat tried using it as a play toy. Hmmmm...

Mysteries of the Deep

As mentioned in my previous post, when we visited Leo Carrillo State Beach last week, we'd found the lid to a baby grand piano. It worked as an incredibly effective, if somewhat cumbersome and heavy, skim board. I got fairly winded dragging it back to a good start point over and over,



Of course, the underlying question is how did it get there to begin with???
Was it on a ship from whatever the country of origin was that was caught in a storm??? The piano from the Titanic??? (Not likely on that one, I suspect it had a concert grand) A wild party at someone's beach house??? Being an affluent area most anywhere along the beach, could it have been a mishap while a piano was being delivered??? Insurance fraud, disposed of the evidence in the murky depths??? One of the images I found was actually of a mystery piano that appeared in Biscayne bay... I notice the lid is absent in that picture, could it have come loose there and migrated to the West coast???



Since this encounter, I've been considering making a smaller skim board for next time...

The Dyson Sphere

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure originally described by Freeman Dyson. Such a "sphere" would be a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to completely encompass a star and capture most or all of its energy output. I was going to put those first two introductory sentences in my own words, but Wikipedia did such a fine and succinct job that I thought I could do no better.

After the completion of my last creation while I was killing labels, I was at a loss for what to make next. My older boy told me I should make a Dyson sphere. I responded, "everyone makes a sphere while they're killing labels." He counters with, "A hollow sphere???" Hmmm... once again, I was presented with a challenge. Could it be done??? Well, why not??? It started out looking like a chip bowl, then it started looking like a big 'ole dinosaur egg. (this didn't happen all in one day, so I was punching a hole in the edge and hanging it from the hook in my locker. That is what caused the distortion visible in the second picture.)



It came out WAY huger than I'd intended, but yes, that is a hollow shell of labels!!! It has that odd taper to the one end, but it's still pretty cool.



Looks a little bit like a giant pear, huh??? Second shot my boy is pantomiming that he's eating it.

In other somewhat related news, here's a picture of my son's MP3 player. He went on a weekend with one of his friends, and their dog got a hold of it for just a few seconds, ate the part where the headphones plug in off of it!!! I believe that you can still plug it in and access the files, so it can be used as a storage device. Terrible picture, I used my old camera for the shot. If I'd been using my new one, I'd have been sorely disappointed by the results.



Today we made a return trip to Leo Carrillo beach. It was cloudy down there, where it was nice and sunny at our house on both ends of our trip. Didn't get started as early as I'd wanted to, but did get there sooner and left home sooner, so the drive wasn't quite as bad as last time. Once again, I kinda wished I'd brought my camera with me. Saw porpoises by the dozens, and cool pelicans and even ducks. My younger boy chased a duck into the water, and it went submarine on him. He thought that was cheating. We dug a tunnel through a little cliff of sand, probably around four feet of digging through sand. The coolest thing, though, was we found the lid to a baby grand piano. Used it as a skim board, it was incredibly effective!!!

Carmogedden??? Not Quite

This was the weekend of the dreaded 405 closure. I almost never go over to that part of town because 1. I have no business over there 2. Every time I go over that way, the traffic really sucks!!! I have a feeling the extra capacity they've added will do nothing to improve the situation!!! The predictions had been dire, and the warnings have been going on for more than a month. Guess everyone got the message, because there were no real problems!!! In honor, I made up a little thing on CoMixed. Feel free to click on the image and vote it up!!!



The "Everything went better than expected" guy is one of my favorites!!! It shall be my theme...

The Random & Shirt Post

I've had these shirt pictures for quite a while. I've been meaning to make some kind of post of 'em, and finally here it is, along with a bit o random!!!



I'm up in the middle of the night after having gotten up early for the Saturday shift this morning. Hadn't planned on it, but here's how it worked out: I took an energy drink to have with my lunch today. When I got home this afternoon, my wife made me a delicious iced coffee. That would have been plenty enough, but we went to Big Lots in the evening. They were having an extra 20% off, and I bought a few more random energy drinks, as well as almost $100 worth of other sugary beverages and salty crunchy snacks, as well as some school supplies (in early July??? Blasphemy!!!). When I went to put them away, discovered some of the energy drinks I had stashed had corroded through!!! One of my my favorite kinds, Monster Mixxed, was just starting to leak, so I opened it and tried it. Tasted fine, so I iced it down and drank it. I think that was too much.



I bookended the normal work week (as abnormally normal as it was) with a couple of ironic shirts. On Tuesday (1st work day this week...) I wore one not pictured here, from the first year we did the Christmas-goody day shirt exchange at work. It merely has the words, "Don't rush me, I get paid by the hour" on the front, so it's not especially photogenic, but it is pretty amusing. All my co-workers love it, because doing what we do you won't be there long if you're not at least kinda rushing. The irony was double that day, as I was working an hour early for overtime, and I ended up killing labels, one of the few tasks where you're not quite as rushed!!!



Since I worked today (yesterday now, but doesn't seem like it to me) I was able to have one of the weekdays off. Usually it's Friday, but when I signed up I was offered Thursday or Friday. I opted for Thursday, so I worked two days, had a day off, worked two more days, have a day off. Friday they had this coming Saturday available. I can choose any day but Monday for off this coming week. Think I'll take Wednesday so I'll have another two days then a day off. Unfortunately, that will leave three at the end of the week.



On Thursday I took the family to Leo Carrillo State Beach. It's a bit of a drive, but a couple of my friends at work always go there and say how nice it is. It was pretty good, but lots of rocks. I think we spent almost as much time driving as we did at the beach. I think it was around 60 miles each way. I didn't take my camera, but wising I had did some searching for a web image. The one I've got here is from the Virtual Tourist website. The first one that really got me was from Craig Wolf's blog. I didn't feel right about borrowing his AMAZING image, but I did set it as my computer's wallpaper!!!



On the other end of the regular week, I wore my "Weekdays-Weekends" shirt. The irony here was I wore it on Friday, and I was coming in the next day. At morning break, I noticed one of the girls who used to be in our department sitting outside with a girl who looked a lot like another girl who left the company a few years back. As I was heading back from break, I got a better look at her, and it was who I'd thought, only with her hair darker. I stepped out to say hey, and remembered that she'd always gotten great amusement from my shirts. She'd already seen the front of the shirt, so after I asked her if she'd seen this one, I showed her the back. She LOLed heartily, and fived me!!!



I had a strange dream this morning. I'll not relate all of it here, but at the end of it I was bitching out a little kid, and was hailed as a hero for having done so. I woke up (like one minute before my alarm went off) and was laughing and wondering where that came from!!!



A recap of the unmentioned shirts here, the second down is called 3037, and it's my most recent acquisition (with the exception of the Old Navy flag T-shirt I bought on July 4th. My oldest got the exact same one, and my wife got a red tank with the exact same print. Youngest got the coolest of the lot, a Captain America shirt). Can you make out the writing hidden it that shirt??? Also represented it the Filthy Hippies, one of my favorites that always gets comments. The blurry question mark I don't actually have, it's the icon Woot has when they're doing a random shirt. They actually came out with a shirt like that!!!


Missing from the mix is my Schrödinger's Cat shirt. It's another amazing shirt, but every time I wear it I seem to end up having to explain who Schrödinger was & his experiment. One of my friends at work, after having heard the story, commented, "Wow, he was like, a mad scientist!!!"

Down the Drain

As I made mention of in his introductory post, our cat is fond of curling up in the sink. This seems to be even more the case as the weather warms up.







The other day I finally took a few pictures of him doing so, and I've spent the last hour messing around with all the different effects in PaintShop Pro. Initially I was just looking to black & white them (to go along with his color scheme) but did several other cool tricks, of which a few were worthy of saving!!!







The first shot is my favorite, although I only had five shots to choose from.







Final shot is one of my favorite effects of the batch!!!

Quick CupDate

Here's a little artwork I did on the rim of my cup last week. Started out with just the blocky colorful one, and I expanded as the week went on.



And that is all for now.

Queen for a Day

Yesterday was the observance of my wife's birthday. Good times!!!



The cake turned out to be something of a challenge. I had a can of frosting in the fridge that I'd thought was about 1/3 full still, but when I opened it turns out all that was left in there was colors I'd had mixed for the last cake!!! There was just enough of the frosting this one'd been iced with to do most of the color, and the portal orange worked out for a crown.



We celebrated at my parents' house. It was overcast, typical June gloom all morning, with no sign that it would burn off, but no sooner than we got ready to go into the pool out came the sun!!!



Don't know if my slide animation will work on here. Try clicking on the pic if it's not moving.



It was the first time I've made it in the pool since the slide has been installed. It's quite cool!!!








OM NOM NOM!!!




And there's the Birthday Girl!!! A queen every day, truth be known!!!





Last shot is my dad & I, I was showing him the remote control I picked up for my camera. If you look closely you can actually see it.

Because It's There

Over the weekend we celebrated my dad's 70th birthday. For a momentous occasion, he had something a bit unusual in mind.



He wanted to backpack into an area he'd been to around 20 years ago, Fish Fork on the back side of Mount Baldy. It's a bit more than five miles, but gains & loses a lot of altitude on the way.



Unfortunately, that area is currently closed down. As an alternate, we selected the hike into Upper Bear. It's about the same distance and similar altitude gain & loss. I think this is my 5th time hiking back there, although it's probably been around 20 years since I've been to there, too!!! Once you get off the highway, there's really nothing developed except the trail (to varying degrees) and mile markers, so you have to take anything that you want to have with you.



He'd been training, hiking up and down a fairly steep hill in his neighborhood. I thought he'd be in the best shape for it of the three of us (myself & my oldest).



I'd forgotten how steeply it climbs at the start!!! In the first 1/3 mile or so, he was considering wrapping it up. I wasn't doing a lot better, but I was going to stick it out. We all continued on, though, and made it to Smith Saddle, the 3 mile mark, at the juncture between two peaks.



At that point, it was fairly late in the afternoon, and we decided to camp out right there with the plan of continuing on the next day. I'd remembered several large boulders in that area good for resting on, but none are there now.



The next morning we decided to leave our tent set up and our full frame packs and take my son's two day packs and do a day trip down to the actual creek. A short ways in, though, the trail was very loose and eroded, with a nasty looking slide down from there. My dad considered briefly, and decided to turn back. Not worried so much about crossing it going in as heading back with wobbly legs from the climb up.



My boy and I continued on, and there were a couple more slidy spots, then several small stream crossings, and we made it there in fairly short order. After a couple hours we headed back, which took considerably longer. Around 1000 feet of elevation change!!!

I took along my GPS to see what the distance traveled and altitude changes were, as well as to get the coordinates of the various points. The only one that seems to show properly on maps is the start, n34°17.243' w117°50.574'. If you check out the Google map of it on the satellite view zoomed in, you can see the parking area and the trail.



While we were camped, only saw three other people hiked in, a couple who were leaving when we arrived (thanks for taking the first picture!) and a guy by himself the next morning who went up to one of the peaks. No one at all while we were headed down to the creek.

I'd taken my old camera along, and got several good pictures, not all of which seem to want to post here currently. Blogger does seem to have picked the good ones to keep, though. On the way down to the creek there were some areas with many butterflies. Actually got a picture of a couple of them mating, and a short video of the same that I may post on YouTube.



The tent we had seemed too short to stretch out all the way in, and there were many flies and bitey insects, and it got quite cool at night. We all had a great time!!!

Orbs

While I was out walking & photographing last weekend







I saw three different orbs.



Here they are, for your perusal.

Everybody's Heard...

About the bird!!!



Went for a walk on Saturday around the neighborhood, with my camera. I got a few decent shots, but these were the ones that made it all worth it!!!

I spotted the hummingbird up on a wire, and it took off then returned to wire. Another one joined him briefly, so I'm guessing it's the season.



I had to pull the zoom out when it took off, and it wasn't too easy to get it lined up and zoomed back in again, but I did it!!! The pictures have been cropped down to just the bird.

Now You're Baking With Portals

Last weekend was the observance of my firstborn's Birthday. He didn't have any specific idea what he wanted for his cake, but on his wish list was the Portal 2 video game. Oh, and he wanted two cakes.



This is what I came up with.

In case you're not familiar, that's Long Cat going through a portal!!!



The party was pretty low key. The boy & his friends mostly played video games & watched videos (a little clip of them singing along to one is here, the first vid from my new camera I've posted) The part I found most amusing was when they got on a kick where they were watching "My Little Pony" videos!!! That just says Happy Birthday!!!

More Fun with Labels

Since the last time I made mention of killing labels, I haven't made a single ball of bar codes since!!! The next thing I made was a pyramid. It came out kind of irregular, not a single side the same as the other. It was too strange, so I didn't do any pictures of it. The next time, I started out trying to make a cylinder. It was coming out very oval. I joked that I could go to the bank and get a $100 and wrap it around the outside. At any rate, I wasn't terribly pleased with the way it was coming out.

Then I remembered something my younger boy had made mention of a few weeks before. He'd been saying he would like a sword made of wood to play medieval hero or something. Hmmm, could this be done??? Why not??? I started adding length to it, folding the labels around the edges much like the artisans of old crafting Samurai swords. It gained length, and I got several admiring comments from my co-workers.



Brought it home and gave it to the boy. He was impressed.

Oh, and that shirt he's wearing is another one I got him from Woot! I think he'd wear it every day if he had his way!!! Check out here for the fairly amusing write up on the shirt!!!

Just today I finished the latest creation. Came out pretty nice, perhaps it will make an appearance here later!!!

Chicken Boy!!!

Haha, I was looking on Google Maps at a place near my home, and happened on Chicken Boy again!!!



Not as good a shot as the one I got, but it's always good to see him!!! Every time we drive by him, we shout out his name!!!

Great Expectations

Lyrics | Great Expectations lyrics

Apropos of nothing, just really like the song...

Momentous Update II

A month or so ago our longtime animal companion went missing. We all wondered what happened to her. She had been getting girthy around the sides, actually looking quite a bit like she had kittens in there. After her disappearance I wondered if she'd hatched 'em, or if she might have had some sort of blockage. A week or so later I found her remains, in surprisingly advanced decomposition.

My younger boy wanted to get another cat from the pound, but he's also often expressed interest in getting a dog. I liked the idea, and was going to look into putting up a fence around our yard to accommodate a dog.

However, when I got home Monday, there was a surprise!!! Someone at my wife's work had a teenage cat, and just had a baby and didn't want to have the two together (guess they were afraid of the cat sucking the baby's breath out...), so they'd brought him to work. My wife took that action!!!



He's the first tom cat we've ever had, and he's quite a character!!! As you can see, he's mostly black, but he's got a white milk mustache!!! White whiskers & eyebrows, too. Nice, long tail on him, usually straight up with the tip flopping over to the side. He's characteristically curious, and still has the playfulness of a kitten. He's plenty sociable, and enjoys curling up in the bathroom sink, or even taking a drink from it, if you'll turn it on for him.



He's got a nice, noisy purr, which he always seems to do when we're getting up in the morning. Everyone really likes him, and he seems to be fitting in quite nicely!!!