It's raining!

Location, at Home, CA

It’s raining here in Sunny Southern California!

Overnight there is 1.3 inches in our rain gauge. The timing is perfect as I had spread mulch over all the flower beds and fruit trees earlier this week. A neighbor down the street had 2 dump trucks of mulch dropped in his driveway which was way more than he could use. A “Free Mulch” sign on the pile caught my attention so I persuaded Craig and a friend to help me load a pickup bed full.

I could have used a little more but the neighbors also saw the sign and the pile rapidly disappeared.

I went to lunch yesterday with a couple of friends. It was good Mexican food but too much as usual. I had a plate of Tacos Baja with battered fish in the tacos with a chipotle slaw, a small salad, and rice. Very good! The food lines were long all during the lunch hour. Clyda had gone out to lunch also so neither of us wanted dinner last night. We had popcorn later instead.

I have had an electrical problem in the kitchen dating from the remodel in 2005. If a vacuum cleaner is plugged into a certain outlet and the refrigerator is running, the GFCI outlet pops and the refrigerator stops working. I looked back at my original wiring diagram and wondered why I ever wired it that way. I guess it seemed logical at the time.

 

 This is the junction box I need to get to. I took this photo during construction just for times like this.

This morning I checked the wiring again and determined that I can fix it but it requires a trip to the attic to move a wire from one point over to a junction box. This sounds easy but in reality is not as the attic has a layer of loose insulation covering this area. I need to first find the wire and then determine if the junction box has room for another wire in it. I don’t want to do this while it is raining as I need to get out my ladder, gather all my tools, etc. Just an excuse I guess.

A wonderful cruise.

Location, at Home, CA

We had way too much fun on our cruise to Hawaii!

We were greeted in our cabin by a bottle of champagne on ice, two red roses, a plate of chocolate covered strawberries, and a gift card for a free photo and frame. We also had a gift card from Mark and Candi for a bottle of wine.

It really was fun and relaxing with almost 5 days at sea before stopping for the day at Hilo on the big island. While there we took a tour to the top of Mauna Kea by special 4 x4 vans equipped to make the almost 14,00 foot ascent. We stopped for an hour at 9,000 feet at the visitor center to get acclimated to the altitude before driving to the top.

I’m glad I never tried this in a rental car as several rentals had problems with the climb on this day. A tow costs $1200 according to our tour guide.

It was COLD and WINDY at the top. Fortunately we had taken jackets just for this trip.

There a dozen or so observatories at the top, most hidden in valleys so they are unseen from below. The workers live down at the 9,000 foot level but many of the observations are done from sites around the world linked by the internet to the observatories.

The buildings are kept cool to the nightly expected temperature so no condensation forms when the observing window is opened. We did go into the Keck observatory but didn’t remain long as it was very cold in the building.

Our total time at the top was less than an hour and we were glad to get back into the van and drop back down to the visitor center for a lunch provided by the tour operator.

This tour took most of the day and only 20 people from the ship or 2 van loads made the trip.

Our second stop was at Honolulu where we took a tour to the North end of the island. Even though we had done this route on our own before, we had never done it with a tour. A delicious lunch of shrimp was served as part of the tour. Clyda had coconut shrimp and I had ginger shrimp. I was the only one in the whole bus load that ordered ginger shrimp and it was good.

We made several stops including one at Sunset Beach to see the big waves and green sea turtles. A final stop was to the Dole Pineapple Plantation where we had pineapple and vanilla ice cream swirls.

Our next port was Kauai which Clyda and I had been to in February with friends. We took a local trolley to a shopping center and walked to the Marriott Hotel and lay on the beach in the morning. We returned to the ship for lunch.

Our final stop was Maui where the ship anchored off Lahaina and we tendered in for a few hours of t-shirt buying. Again, we had been here before so nothing was really new to us.

 A single Banyon tree which covers a large area at the water front in Lahaina.

From Maui we sailed for home with again 5 days of relaxation to look forward to.

I have only hit the high spots here as our days were filled with events on the ship while at sea. We attended lectures, saw movies, ate, read, listened to music, ate, played in the casino a little, ate, saw Broadway type shows, laid around the pool ate, you get the picture.

On our first morning at home I lamented to Clyda that we had to make our own bed again. It is easy to get spoiled.

Our 50th wedding celebration weekend!

Location, at Home, CA

What a weekend!

We celebrated our 50^th wedding anniversary on Saturday Oct 20^th which was our actual wedding day 50 years ago.

Our son Tim came from Houston on Wednesday evening and we had a nice visit before all the other activity started. Clyda’s sister Candi and husband Mark arrived Thursday afternoon as well as Tim’s and our friends Thomas and Debbie who are staying with other mutual friends.

Meanwhile, very early Thursday morning Tim and Craig drove to Morrow Bay for a day of deep sea fishing on a charter boat.

 

Tim and his Jackpot winning Ling Cod.

 Tim and Craig above and Tim with bags of fish to freeze.

Friday morning Mark and I made a champagne run to the new local Bev-Mo liquor store. I had preordered magnums of champagne for a toast at the party. The reason for the magnums was to reduce the corkage fee. J

However, we were told that the champagne was on back order. Can you imagine that? The final agreement was that the store would send someone to all the local Bev-Mo’s in nearby cities and collect the required amount for the party. This was done by 1:30 in the afternoon and the champagne was delivered to the restaurant and placed in the liquor cooler to chill.

Friday Clyda, Candi and a neighbor Sharon spent most of the day doing decorations for the party on Saturday. By the amount of the bills I believe we now own part of Michael’s craft store.

While they were getting all the table decorations done, Debbie and Claralyn worked on steaming Clyda’s wedding dress to get all the wrinkles out so it could be display at the party. Claralyn had worn it for her wedding and it had been stored for the last 45 years in a cedar chest.  

Friday evening Tim and Thomas BBQ’ed, baked, and fried a delicious fish dinner caught by Craig and Tim on Thursday with dill-lemon-butter sauce and wild rice-orzo salad followed by a boysenberry cobbler for dessert. Outstanding dinner!

Saturday morning the ladies left for the restaurant to decorate while Mark, Tim, and I drove to a local store to pick up a pre-ordered sheet cake before also going to the restaurant.

All the decorations were done in time for the first guest to arrive by noon.

At 1 pm lunch was served followed by a champagne toast followed by cake for dessert.

All who attended said they had a great time. By 4 pm we started to clean up the room and were home by 5 pm.

Thomas and Tim again cooked a dinner of BBQ’ed Tri-Tip, beans, bread, and salad followed by a trifle made by Candi for dessert.

Sunday after church several of us were invited to Don and Bev’s for breakfast so we could spend some time with friends Cindy and Gary who came for the weekend.

Sunday dinner was leftovers.

For the Thursday through Sunday dinners we had between 12 and 14 people here. Lots of wine was consumed.

On Monday morning our niece Chelsea brought her 22 month old twins for a visit. Oh my goodness, are those babies active! It keeps 2 people busy following them as our house is not BABY PROOF by any means.

Later, Mark and Candi left for the airport and home. Tim’s flight was delayed but eventually he got home late last night. Thomas and Debbie’s flight was also delayed but we haven’t heard how late they got home.

Yesterday afternoon and this morning we did laundry, tried to pack our suitcases, and get all the other things done for our cruise tomorrow to Hawaii and back.

I think most of the items are done on my to-do-list and we are looking forward to the trip.

It was a marvelous weekend with time well spent with friends and relative to help us celebrate 50 years of marriage.

To all our friends and family who sent greetings and to all those who came for the party to help us celebrate we thank you.

A special thanks to all those who helped with decorations, cooking, etc.

Two photo albums of the weekend can be viewed at

http://clydanadeds50th.shutterfly.com

We only go around once, but boy, we did it in style!!!!!!

Working with Picasa.

Location, at Home, CA

On Monday I took the truck in for the smog test. It only took about a half hour to complete the test and cost $72.

Tuesday I had a follow up appointment with the surgeon who did my gall bladder surgery. I was in his office all of 2 minutes. He looked at my scars and pronounced me “good to go” with no restrictions.

So with that behind me I came home and started moving some dirt Craig had piled up in the back yard. I just wanted to get that one area cleaned up. I still have more to do in the area and will slowly peck away at it.

Today we had the carpets cleaned in the house as well as the carpet in the RV. All of them needed to be cleaned especially where the dog lays. Even though we have a rug for her to lie on in her favorite spot between the living and dining room she doesn’t always stay on it. Consequently, that area was the dirtiest.

Recently, Clyda had a bunch of photos printed for her scrap book and some she wanted to use as greeting cards, however, the colors were just not correct. Using some hints I picked up on a couple of RV blogs I played with each photo in Picasa, Googles free photo software. I straightened, sharpened, and color balanced all the photos then took them to Costco for printing. At Costco I used their software to select which area of each photo I wanted printed and declined to use their “color correction” software. The results were much improved over the first prints. It took me most of the morning to correct 20 photos but now that I have done it I believe I can whip through most photos fairly quickly.

Photo before enhancement.

 

Photo after straighening, sharpening, and color balancing.

Some of the changes are subtle but they all improve the quality of the photo.