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!!!

The Fuzz Cometh

It was getting late, and I was thinking of heading off to bed.

I hear a siren approaching, it sounds like a police siren. Moments later, I hear a louder engine climbing the hill, and not long after I see the red and blue light splashes on the windows.

That's unusual around here, but not unheard of. Silence ensues for a while, then here comes the police helicopter, flying low and doing circles.

Not long after, another police car shows up, and pulls into the neighborhood across the canyon.

Of course, by this time it's got my attention. A little after, four more police cars show up. There's now two on the far side of the hillside behind the neighborhood across the street, and two that had headed to the top of the hill come back down. The first one goes past the street across the way, and then is backing up, and the other one comes down and turns into that street. As I figured, the one backing up turns down that street, too.

There's a wild area behind the houses across the canyon, and I imagine that whoever they were after is hiding out over there.

It's been more than an hour. That helicopter is going to have to refuel soon!!! I know how these things go, I'll probably never hear what happened. (I'll post an update in the comments if I actually do)

Anyway, here's some blurry pics for you!!!

Sorry Substitute

The vet's office sent a sympathy card last week. I cried like a baby.

A lot of things will remind me of that boy. Pictures. His things. Sometimes I'll hear a song that will make me think of him.

I had a dream around a week after we'd said good bye. We were vacationing with the extended family up in the mountains, but I wasn't feeling it, and was off by myself. My dad (still around in the dream world, apparently) came out to find me, and was telling me that mom would really appreciate it if I'd spend some time with the family. I was telling him that I wasn't feeling like it, then I told him, “My f'ing cat died!!!”

I've seen a couple of the neighborhood cats since, but they're not sociable. I have been wanting to be around a friendly cat that I could pet and feel the purrs.

A couple years back, my son had seen a stuffed Halloween cat in a claw machine. He like it enough that he took a picture of it, but didn't try and get it. He said, “I should have tried to get it, it was right on the edge, it would have been easy!!!”

A couple of weeks after we said good bye, he located the same stuffed animal that someone was selling on Ebay.

He bought it, and he's pleased with his purchase!!!

Onto an interesting confluence of events: Last week, my wife's car (Kutcher!) was stalling. I've suspected the fuel pump isn't up to the task, it acts like it's fuel starving sometimes under hard acceleration. I ordered a new one from Rock Auto, and in the meantime, we've been rolling in Scruffy.

Of course, it sits a little lower with the whole crew in it. One thing I should have mentioned in the Car Stuff post, I had fabricated a hanger loop – skid plate rig around the end of the tailpipe. It wasn't fully fleshed out, but I had a couple angles screwed to the floor pan, and a flat with the ends bent up. It would scrape occasionally, but if it wasn't that, it would have been the tailpipe!!! Anyway, on Saturday we were out, and came out of a driveway with a scrape... that just kept on going!!! I pulled over, and the front end had come undone, and the plate was vertical to the ground, wedged into the ground, and the tailpipe just hanging (the inside hanger had come off it's hook, too. That always seems to happen when the outside comes loose). Called a tow truck, and located a muffler shop that could take care of us.

They put a mount almost exactly like the one that the very first side exit exhaust I'd had made up had on the outside, and tacked on a couple washers on the inside hooks to keep the hanger in place. It's solid!!! Bonus, they did it for a reasonable price, I think I've finally found a new exhaust shop!!!

While it was up on the lift, I finally got a good shot of a little repair I'd done to the bottom of the front bumper. It was coming to a point in the middle, where it would drag backing out of the driveway, so I drilled a series of holes and tapped a piece of angle aluminum to flatten the whole area. I'd taken a picture of it when I'd done it, but accidentally deleted it.

But this was the highlight of our trip to the muffler shop!!! The dad told my wife that this cat had recently been dropped off by the shop. There's several feral cats around the area, but this one is domesticated. My wife was sitting out back petting him (or maybe her, I didn't even try and find out), and after the car was done, I pulled around and gave him some pets, too. Got my pets and purrs that I've been craving. I'd walked over towards the back of the parked cars there, and he came right over to me!!!

He had the softest, silky fur, and those orange eyes!!! My wife was wondering what you'd name a cat like that, and every time I see a black & white cat like this, I always think “Domino”. My son makes mention of a character from Fallout: New Vegas, Dean Domino, the King of Swing!!! Of course, if you have a pet, you need a one syllable name, so Dean works, or you could call him “D. D.” for brevity's sake. He seemed to have some kind of bump – protrusion on one of his flanks, and when I touched it, he meowed, so he might have some kind of injury.

Later on in the day, when we got home my wife was tidying up and found her cat ears!!!

Farewell, My Friend

“Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” Job 5:7

In this life there will be trouble, but you will overcome. I'm glad for the times when there isn't much trouble, or what I have is minor, and count myself fortunate.

Over the weekend, it seemed like our grandkitten was having problems. I had taken Monday off, and after calling around and finding one that was open and could see him, packed the boy up to go to a veterinarian to get him checked out.

It turns out he was having kidney issues, not a lot different than what Leo had, but instead of his urethra being blocked, the ureters from the kidneys to the bladder seemed to be having trouble. These are very fine, and if that is the case, the surgical fix is to replace them with shunts with a port to clean them out as necessary. Not surprisingly, this is an expensive procedure.

The other option is to hydrate and treat the infection, and perhaps it will clear once the inflammation is reduced, and he could recover.

We decided to give that a chance. He was eating OK, and with the pain medicine he seemed to be doing OK. We visited him at the veterinarian's office a couple times. On Wednesday, his numbers hadn't gone up, but hadn't gone down either. Thursday his numbers were even higher. We had to let him go. We visited him again, taking a little bag of the Temptations dairy treats, the only kind he'll eat, and treated him to a last meal and said our good byes.

We have a lot of good memories of the boy. I remember when he was a kitten, he would eat anything!!! He was always trying to get into your food, and one time after we'd had Tommy Burgers, he got the paper tray that the chili fries came in, and ate about ¼ of it!!!

My wife's favorite was at Christmas a couple years ago. My sister and nephew were over, and they don't have an indoor voice, and kept trying to get him to play. My younger warned them, he said he could see his eyes getting huge, but they kept on, and he attacked them both on their heads!!! I tell people the story and say it was the best Christmas ever!!!

He's gotten a lot mellower as he's aged, and he was very friendly to me, giving me head butt snuggles and curling up on me. Recently, he had started doing the same thing with my younger, and even a few times with my wife.

We will miss you, sweet boy.

Car Stuff '22 Recap

It's been far too long. I've put together this post with a recap of the car stuff that's happened over the last year or so.

Back in December of 2021 the starter had gone out on the Matrix. It had rained, and it went out right after that! Just a little after that, one of the coils went out, also after it had rained. Or maybe it was the other way around, it's been a while. Anyway, it doesn't seem to do well in the rain.

The air conditioning went out on Scruffy back in May or June. I was sitting at a red light with the windows down, when there was a very strong acrid smell. I had no idea what it was, until I tried the AC a bit later, and it didn't work at all. Apparently the line to the condenser blew. Of course, I don't have the equipment to do A/C work, so I had a shop doing it. While everything was being worked on anyway, I bought a new condenser and a seal kit.

In May I took Scruffy back to the shop that I had the tint done at all those years ago to get the two back side windows and the hatch glass tint redone. I had found the receipt when I'd moved my office into the corner a couple years back. The side window tint has been getting wrinkled at the top edge, and the back window had developed a bunch of bubbles. It has been bugging me for a while, and I finally got around to getting it done. They were at a new location. This was while I had been going into work, so it was a bit of a hassle, but got it handled.

Near the beginning of summer, the battery in the Matrix began acting up. This was one of the things I'd had an eye on since we'd bought it. The battery it came with was crusty looking, and one of the battery terminals was breaking apart back when I'd done the starter replacement. I held the terminal on with a C clamp. Had a couple of times where it was low to where it needed a jump start, but it worked OK after that. Also had a few times driving with the A/C running where the radio started acting up. Anyway, bought a new battery, and things went OK for a while, then the battery died again. Got it tested at AutoZone, and they said it was too low to judge the condition, so I charged it up and went back. Everything was working fine, but the guy said we had a bad battery and replaced it. I was suspecting alternator issues, and was wanting to get it checked, too, but they said both times that the battery was too low. Oh yeah, I also replaced the battery terminals while I had the battery out.

The registrations were due to be renewed for both cars in September, and they both needed their smog checks. As is always my custom, I did an oil change for both cars before taking them in to be tested, as well as a new air filter for the Matrix and a cleaning and re-oiling for the K&N filter in Scruffy. Things got interesting on the Matrix, when I went to check the oil level, the dipstick tube was broken!!!

The tube seemed to set back into place, so I tried cleaning both sides off and using some epoxy to stick it back together, but that didn't work. Needless to say, the lower portion that was still attached to the engine wasn't very easy to clean off. RockAuto sells a replacement dipstick tube for a quite reasonable price, so I ordered that. It was still giving charging issues occasionally throughout this time, so I went ahead and bought a replacement alternator, figuring that was the issue. The recommendation for replacing the dipstick tube was to remove the intake manifold. Since I had the alternator off, I went in from the side instead, which to me was a much easier way to go... except for it requires taking the serpentine belt off. Of course, I was putting a new belt on while I had all that apart, and that was honestly the most difficult part of the job!!!

The Matrix passed smog without any issue. I took Scruffy over the next week, and the computer wasn't completely ready. The check engine light that I usually get is for a small evaporative system leak, and I'd reset it not long before I'd taken it in. The tech told me to look up the driving procedure to get all the monitors set.

I looked up the driving procedure to get the monitors ready. Had things like start the car and let it run two minutes, drive for around 5 minutes with no more than half throttle, from a stop accelerate to 50 MPH with ¾ throttle, drive for 10 minutes at 50 MPH, then let off the accelerator and coast to 20 MPH without hitting the brakes or shifting, and things like that. I went out around 2 AM to do the sequence so there wouldn't be much traffic to impede. Did the sequence as best I could (it hardly coasts down to the 20 MPH, it'll stay around 35), turned around and did everything but the warm up on the way back, and checked the computer. It didn't have the monitors ready, so I did it again, out and back. Still wasn't showing ready, so I gave up for the night. Did some normal driving over the next weekend, and after that the monitors were ready. Took it back to the smog place, and finally passed with no issues.

I had the thought that Scruffy may be having coolant temperature issues, which was causing it to idle higher that it should. The engine coolant temperature sensor on S series Saturns can be a sore point, causing all kinds of driveability issues. While I was checking into this as a possibility, I came across several owners who had replaced the factory thermostat with a higher temperature unit, with good effect to their MPG. I went ahead and purchased a higher temperature thermostat and a new engine coolant temperature sensor from RockAuto. I had previously replaced the temperature sensor, but they're cheap. I had bought a new connector for the sensor on 3, which had deteriorated, but never had a chance to install it. I flushed the cooling system and installed everything, and filled the system. The next day, I topped off the coolant. From then on, every time I drove it, it would lose enough coolant that the low coolant light would start flashing. I've seen this before... could the higher temperatures have over stressed somewhere else? It looked like it might be leaking from the water pump and slinging it around the belt, so I took the one I had left from the swap back to the store and exchanged it, with the thought that I'd go ahead and replace it. When I jacked her up to drain the system go to work on it, I crawled under and found the hose to the thermostat was a little wet. I found a different hose clamp, and replaced the one that was on there. Seems to have taken care of it!!! Oh, as far as I can tell, it hasn't improved the mileage at all!!!

A couple months ago I was driving Scruffy on the freeway. It felt like there was a little vibration going on. As we were driving along, there was an under body thump, like I'd run over something. I checked the rear view, but there was nothing to see. I noticed that the vibration had stopped, though. I did an under body inspection when I got home, and the front panel under the radiator and A/C condenser had gone missing. I wonder if it didn't get put back on well when I'd had the A/C work done. I don't miss it, but I think it would probably be a good idea to fabricate something for protection down there!!!

The rear driver's side window on Scruffy has developed an issue. I've got a replacement slider that I suspect is all that needs to be done to get it back in shape, but of course that will require taking it apart.

Just last weekend, I went back to the tire place and bought another front tire for the Matrix, the one opposite the one I'd replaced back in March was getting rounded off on the outside, and it's been raining on and off.

The roof on Scruffy is looking pretty bad. It's losing paint in patches. Of course, a lot of the area around the ribs never got a proper sanding. I'm plannng on repainting the roof, quite possibly with a couple of white stripes, making it into the Skunk Mobile!!!

SpookyTime!!!

Here's the Halloween recap for this year!!!

Trick-or-treating was going on in full force in our neighborhood for a change!!! I don't know if it was pent-up demand after the last couple years of insanity, but it was by far the most I've seen in our area!!! Good to see it!!!

Over the weekend the boy and I carved up our pumpkins. I had a little stream of consciousness that led me to making the eye of providence on mine.

My son had the idea to put eyes with “X” pupils and eyelashes all over his. I think this is the first year he's done his completely!!!

For his costume, he wanted to be Franken Stein from Soul Eater. A major feature of Dr. Stein is a large screw through his head. We had a spare curtain rod with threaded ends that was sacrificed for the shaft, and the head was made of the bottom of a creamer bottle and some cardboard. Also sacrificed was one of my wife's headbands to connect it. A lab coat purchased from my work and some eyebrow pencil rounded things out.

We wandered around the neighborhood, not really trick-or-treating, but if anyone was out there offering, who were we to refuse??? Also took a couple from where people had left bowls out. Came to the place where he'd discovered his love of chili years ago, and made mention to the lady handing out the candy. She tells us, “Oh, we've got a pot going in there, go in and get yourself some!!!” so that was a cool callback!!! It was, once again, very good. Came across a dinosaur lab assistant for Dr. Stein while we were out, too!!!

Oh, we had left a bowl out, too. Didn't look like anyone came by!!!

Tower Trek

I've made mention of the Catalina Chimes Tower a few times here, from it's origin story to it's prevalence over the town of Avalon. But for all the years of seeing and hearing it, I've never seen it up close.

I started checking into going up there and checking it out up close. Several people had posted about taking rented golf carts up there, and several about hiking up to it. There are a few ways up, from taking the road around the back, to taking the stairs that parallel some of the houses along the front of town.

The stairs is the way my son and I opted to go. They look like they go straight up to it, but they only go about halfway, then the foot path takes a left, then there's more stairs. After that, you are out on the streets.

None of the streets from that point are especially steep, so it's a fairly easy walk.

And there it is!!! Actually not much to it, once you get there. It has a nicely tiled roof, nice classic lines, and matching terraces around the front side.

It's closed off for renovations and preservation, but I honestly didn't see much that should really be accessable anyway!!!

You can see the chimes from the front gate. It's pretty impressive looking. We were there as it struck 6:00 PM, and it wasn't nearly as loud as you might think it would be up close.

As I told in the Chime Tower Story post, it's right across from the Zane Grey compound. Finally got a chance to see that up close, too!!! It's been converted into a hotel, and I actually looked into getting our room there, but... it's way up a hill!!!

The forward portion looks fairly original, and the back portion looks like all new construction.

The best part, though, is the views!!! Naturally, it's over it all, and what a panorama!!!

There's looking towards Descanso Beach...

And overlooking the harbor...

The sunlight fading over the hills beyond the town...

And, finally, an overhead shot of the Casino!!!

17 Shots From the Island

We took the longest continuous vacation we've been on in a couple of years last week. Went back to Catalina for the week!!!

We pretty much repeated a lot of the stuff we've done previously there, down to eating at the same restaurants!!!

The first day we went to Antonio's, which I always like because you can eat right out over the water, enjoying the fresh air and views. My son had the most epic meatball sandwich you've ever seen!!!

There's the Chimes Tower in the background!!! I notice that it's in about half of the scenic pictures you take in Avalon!!!

Afterwards we walked on down by the Casino, where I got another shot of the point past Descanso Beach.

The pathway down to Descanso Beach was blocked off with safety tape. What's up with that, we wondered.

Don't think I've ever made mention, but there's a dive park right off the Casino. Stairs lead right down into the water. Back in my younger days I did some Scuba diving. The water is very clear, and it drops off on a slant to pretty deep. There's a shipwreck, the SueJac, which sunk in 1980. The dive park was later expanded to include it. The SueJac had a ferro cement hull, go figure!!!

Another night shot of the Chimes Tower.

Took my wife back to our hotel, then the boy and I set out for an evening walk. Headed back out to Descanso Beach, which we had done last time. Of course, we walked down the street since the walkway was blocked. The place is deserted at night, and you can lay on the lounges that they rent for something like $80 for free. Just as we got to where the lounges are, I saw this deer chilling on the beach!!!

We laid down, and the deer stayed there for several minutes. There was another one in the background when I took the picture, and another one (or the same one returning) came by behind us. On the way back, we took the walkway, and halfway down it there was a small backhoe and much of the walkway was dug up.

Later on that night, I got up and was drawing the drapes so we wouldn't be woke up by the sun in the morning, and there were a couple of deer next door!!!

The next night we went out on another night walk, this time towards the Catalina Express landing, where I got a great shot of the Casino from across the water, and the Chimes Tower glowing up on the hillside.

We came back, and in the lobby the hotel has a huge old safe, with a bunch of games stored in it. We played a game of Battleship, then pulled out the rather elaborate Monopoly game and played for quite a while!!!

The next day the boy and I had gone out to do a raid in Pokemon GO near the Casino. Afterwards we noticed that the walkway to Descanso Beach was open. Took a look, and they had it all patched up!!! Later on in the day we rented stand up paddle boards and paddled around the harbor. Saw a sea lion while we were paddling!!!

Saw this crow down near the beach on Crescent Avenue, wonder if he was our friend from our last visit?

On our last full day, we were having lunch at the fish place out on the Green Pier. They sell clam chowder or chili in sourdough bread bowls, and you know I'm a sucker for those!!! I had the chili, and the fish frying smelled so good I went ahead and got myself a fish taco. While we were out there, the power went out. Apparently, for all of Avalon!!! Other people came up trying to get food, and they couldn't make it. We had been planning to go to an ice cream place, and we headed over and they were able to serve us even without juice. On the way back to our room, my wife wanted to stop in a shop right before our hotel, and she was able to buy what she wanted there, too. I was wondering how things were going to go at the hotel. Almost all the hotels have the rooms above ground level, and we were staying in the only one I'm aware of that has an elevator, since my wife doesn't get up stairs very well. We were staying on the third floor. The power came on just before we got back, but when we got to the elevator the call button only lit up while it was being held.

The elevator is in view of the front desk, and we let them know. The maintenance guy came, and assured us that they should be able to get it running. It was about a half hour later, and the door slid open. Got in, but it didn't go, and the car was riding just a little low in the shaft. They tried a little longer, then the staff told us they were going to take us up in the freight elevator.

Walked us around the outside, and up we went!!! The next morning it still wasn't going, but going down stairs is much easier that up.

It was a great trip!!! More to come...