Our updates for all of you

Seems like the weather is the talk of the towns in all the areas that I check up on! Here it has 'warmed up' to be staying in the 30's most of the time during the day and 20's at night. It started out sunny this AM but now the next storm expected tonight is working its way in as cloud cover. Yesterday though, snowed all day long and we got over 7 inches of new snow during the day! There hasn't been any reports yet of local snowfall but in Spokane, over 56 inches broke the records there for this time of year. We're supposed to get another 5 to 8 inches tonight and tomorrow. At our house we have over 3 feet of snow so far. Christmas was really great this year. I got the things I'd been really wanting without too much begging, the new XM radio that records up to 5 channels at once, stores up to 100 hours of programing, gets a program guide in the radio so you can see whats coming up on that channel for 3 days ahead. And it can pause and rewind live radio for u...

I had started to wonder about that after I finished the last post. So I'd checked and yes, it had been just a little over a year since I started doing these. I'd hoped that Stacy would be able to add her thoughts, and she has on occasion. But these have mainly been my view of things in our world. So I'm listening to SiriusXm as always, and on Radio Classics it is Christmas week shows so all programs are of that theme. A radio show from 12/25/1958 called "The Couple Next Door" is helping me recall Christmas's of my own past. Things I remember most from being a kid at Christmas time was the anticipation of Christmas Eve to Christmas Day. We were never allowed to open any gifts until THE morning. All the 'Santa gifts' and the stockings were set out after us kids were in bed. We'd go up to go to bed and that's when my 'vigil' started. I remember many of those Eve's where I was so excited about what to expect the next day that I'd l...

It's been a busy few weeks. I've been working on some video projects so I haven't had too much extra time to add a post. Most of today I've been going over the contract for our monitoring company here at work. We use the cell and satellite ankle monitors for our "clients" that need them. It IS winter! We'd not had any snow before last weekend. Got 16 inches overnight then. Started snowing again on Wednesday and snowed over 24 hours straight for another almost 12 inches of snow. Between the storms it was an arctic blast that got the area down to between 10 to 25 BELOW zero. Warmed up to teens yesterday and is 14 right now. Its going to get cold again though. Expected to be 5 to 10 below tonight, only up to 3 or 4 tomorrow. So winter is here. It really is too, on Saturday! Last weekends Christmas add at Best Buy got my attention. If you really looked at it, it was a lot of Sales, and Free, things that were far from it! The one I was talking to Stacy about ...

After no snow so far all fall, fall/winter made up for it by snowing over a foot and a half of snow from about 2 PM yesterday to early this AM. Part two as predicted has been the morning temp of 20 that during the day has gotten colder to the current 13. While no more snow is predicted for the next few days, its supposed to get colder than its been since 2004. How does a low of 3 above tonight with a high of 6 tomorrow sound? By Monday, a bit nippy at 8 to 15 BELOW zero with a high of 3 above and with the winds of the approaching front, wind chill temps of 40 below zero are expected. It isn't supposed to 'warm up' until late next week when a "warmer" cold front moves in and with it the next chance of snow. Already just today, there are several inch to over a foot long ice sickles hanging off the roof line. I like the ones that look clear but with speckles from other water drops that have frozen on the main ice sickle. They look pretty cool to me. No pun intended! ...

More actually, some memories of my career in Animal Control. I had experience with both kinds of those guns, shotguns were experienced as a sender and almost reciever from one! A T-gun or 'Tranquilizer' gun is a gun that can be either a sci- fi looking handgun style CO2 cartridge fired pistol. Or it could be a 22 caliber blank fired rifle. Both types used the same kind of hollow aluminum tube as the dart/syringe for the tranquilizing drug. The front of the dart was a barbed injector, in the early days we used to use the non-barbed kind but they were too often lost. With the barbed kind of tip they were usually stuck in the dog, or tree, or dirt if you missed, if you could actually find the dart again! When fired, the dart had a low power gunpowder cartridge inside that went off to push a plunger that started to inject the solution as the dart traveled to the target/animal. One thing that was forever a problem was the public perception of how the tranquilizer actually worked....

Today I had part one of a three part plan to replace all the fillings I've had since I was a kid. A couple of weeks ago I thought I ought to use my dental plan, better than my old one, and go have a check up. I decided to try a new dentist in town because the one I'd been to before, while he was OK, his hygienist would never be called painless! Just too many slips of those sharp pointy things to stab me in my mouth. So I went in and had two sessions to bring my teeth up to snuff, but I was also told that my silver fillings should have been replaced 'decades' ago. Did you know that fillings are only supposed to last about 10 to 15 years? I didn't, and none of the dentists I've had over the years back in California must not have know that either. Must be like how almost everything has an expiration date on it now. Didn't when I was a kid. You kept it in the fridge until it almost crawled out on it own power in those days. I'm still alive after all of it to...

For us, this year is so much better than last with Stacy no longer at a job where she was on forever graveyard shift! Stacy even ventured out and became a "Wal-Mart Warrior" and did battle with the "Black Friday" crowd at our local Wal-Mart Super Center as well as the little mall we have in that same area. A scratch on her hand and a broken fingernail where the only injuries she suffered from all the shoppers at Wal- Mart! No one was trampled as was reported at other stores, but Stacy did say how rude a lot of people were there. I guess the area motto of 'friendliest city' goes out the window on Black Friday! I personally think its because of that 5 am start time. Stacy got up a little before 4 am to wake up and make the 30 minute drive to the store. She told me that the only cars out that morning were all going to Wal-Mart. An almost 25 mile long line of cars and trucks all going south to shop. And when there the line was most of the way around the store, ...

"The only constant in life is change, right?" That was a question I heard the other day on a radio show. Of course there's the change I'm not to happy with, Sirius satellite radio taking over XM and going through and changing channels or channel formats that I'd come to really like. The programing changes happened at 9 Pm (pacific) on Tuesday the 11th and some channels 'poof disappeared' and others became more like subscription FM stations with all the annoyingly "cute" canned DJ stuff, everything wrong with regular radio just short of having blocks of commercials added. Got me thinking though about change in general, what do you think? It sure doesn't seem like that would be a truism normally, but then thinking back to what Stacy, the kids and myself were doing three years ago and what we're all doing today, lives I would never have imagined and where all our lives would be and what we'd be doing now! So really think about it. It is ...

Yes we're sure glad the elections are over, that is a really good thing. But we're even more happy that they're over because of the CONSTANT commercials on TV and the, seemed like, every night calls at home. With the stretched out length of this election "season" (as it was referred to on many programs!), and with those increasingly annoying TV adds and calls to sway votes, we quit answering the phone all together, were really bad and lasted so much longer this time around. And with our ability to see regional TV from other locations in the US and Canada, what we didn't see for more local stuff, we saw the same kinds of things for those areas instead. It was interesting at times, and thoughts of how things could have changed if the actual election had been held earlier with the rush of pro Palin, or if Obama had chosen Hillary instead of Biden, just so many things this time around had potential for some serious changes to the outcome! But we've got what ...

Yes I forgot while working on the last post. And I've even been listening to the "Scarefest" on XM 27, Cinemagic and sometimes to the Halloween only channel for this 'holiday', GORE 134 also on XM. Interesting, but I've not been a fan of this date for decades. It was Wednesday October 30th, 1973 and I was on my way home from High School on my little 300 dollar Honda 175, my first motorcycle. Around 4 in the afternoon and as I'm going up the hill on the road into the main part of town and towards home in Yucaipa, at the top of the hill is a cross intersection, seventh street. Now it's all widened, has stoplights and everything, back then it was a blind cross way stop. In front of me appears a car, scoots across no problem, but right behind it was a white station wagon. That driver either didn't see me or misjudged my closeness, in any event, it ran the stop and pulled out right on the tail of the front car and I hit the wagon broadside. I hit just ...

First off, even you don't like to ride motorcycles, go out and get the December 2008 issue of "Rider" magazine. Then after you look the magazine over a bit, check out the story that starts on page 46. Titled "To Yaak and Back", it describes the writer and his wife's travels around and through our area. Stacy and I have been on several of the roads he talks about and rode himself. The road that gives the story it's title, the Yaak River road, is as good a motorcycle road as any I rode back in California. And when that road winds down and then follows Lake Koocanusa, a very large lake in Montana, you'll get to see how this truly is some beautiful country around here! Weather wise, well, no snow before Halloween this year for our area. Out in Iowa Laura said they've had some there, and we're expected to have our first dusting by Monday. The long range forecast for this winter is still less snow but colder temps. We'll see!! Back in the '...

Tad was in taking a shower, so I thought I'd read through some of the blogs he had typed. Who would have known I married such a interesting and prolific writer? I enjoyed the time I spent with Laura, Russell and Tyler. Tyler is so fun to play with and talk to. He is such a good boy and tried so hard to entertain Grandma Stacy. Laura is working long hours, and Russell is taking care of Tyler and working on his on-line classes. When I returned home Tad had really surprised me with the work he had done downstairs where we store the dvd's, cd's and video tapes. I should go visit Tyler more often and give Tad a chance to surprise me again!!! Well, it's time to go to bed and start another day tomorrow. Take care all. Love Stacy

Stacy got back from Iowa on last Saturday (10/18). It took her about 5 days to get used to our pacific time zone again from Iowa's central time, but she's pretty well back to normal on her sleep time. It is hard getting up at 6 am when it stays dark till almost 8 am! Dark by 5:20 which will be 4:20 in a little over a week! Just 4 months ago, it was light by 3:30 am and staying that way until almost 10 pm! She had a lot of fun with the grand baby Tyler. We watched all her video on Saturday evening then all over again on Sunday so her father could see it too. This weekend we'll be putting scenes from all the mini-DVD's to a standard DVD, then copy and send them out so all can see how Tyler is progressing at almost three years old. Stacy with Laura and Tyler did drive up to Missouri to visit with my parents. They didn't get to meet brother Daryl and his wife as they were on vacation. It was a spur of the moment trip anyway since it wasn't known if Laura could get t...

I was on the Internet watching with interest about the annual firestorms that have become as normal down in our old area of Southern California, as the leaves turning gold up here. Rewind to November 1981 and I was a new employee of San Bernardino County Animal Control, and just a little over a year before there had been the devastating Little Mountain fire that had taken out most of the homes in the North end of San Bernardino. So most of the people working there then had their stories of all seen and done during those fires. For many it had been the biggest event to be involved with in their entire lives. Back then and for many years, fires happened in the late summer and while most were quick brush fires, seldom did the fires just keep coming with the mass devastation to San Bernardino County that there has been since the summer of 2003. Of course many things have changed to make it to get to where it is now. Whether it is due to global warming or the continued evolving of t...

For me personally, not much going on. I've just been working on the firewood situation with the weather getting colder. And doing what I can on the weekend days without rain in them. Hope to get a lot more done this weekend since it will be a three day one, and other than cool, highs in the 40's, its supposed to stay dry until next week. I'd wanted to go flying on Saturday or Monday and get some new aerial pictures with the trees turning fall colors. I had some running around to do on Wednesday while at work so I stopped by to schedule the plane. BIG disappointment! Their ONLY rental is out of service for who knows how long with the entire engine firewall needing to be replaced. They were doing the required annual inspection and found that an unknown renter pilot had hit so hard with the nose wheel on a landing that it pretty well tweaked a good portion of the the lower firewall where the nose gear mounts. It had to have happened in the past 100 hours of service, but whoeve...

Yup, many of the trees are turning the golds, oranges, and reds of fall. The Canadian Geese are back, the flocks of Turkeys are out and about, the leaves falling and rainy cooler weather is here. Wednesday Stacy is flying out to Iowa and visit with Laura and her husband and grand baby Tyler. She'll be there eight days with two travel days going and coming back. She hasn't been able to see Tyler since last October when Sandy got married. Stacy's looking forward to seeing them. She's just stressing about her job. I keep telling her that just like in the animal control days, everything will still be here when she gets back and the job will still go on with her gone. I know because I'm covering for her while she's off. Sandy is working long days and still teaching her class on Thursdays at USC. Sean says all is well and he can't wait to get out of San Diego. He REALLY doesn't like the crowds and traffic of that area. A few months back, I'd talked about s...

If you had a kid, they could go on a goat pulled wagon tour of the grounds. The teams in the big barn had to hitch up out in this area. Some of those expensive wagons wait. I wish I had taken my better camera. I will next year. But I did get some interesting shots like these two. Like I'd said in a previous post, this little camera usually takes good pictures, and in the view screen everything looked like it would be okay. Surprise when I took a look the next day! Kinda, sci-fi huh? Type later, Tad

This photo on right shows a large team of Belgium's in one of the barn areas. They were munching after the noon performance and still all decked out in their show harness. Next phot shows a couple of harnessed mules waitng for their turn at the ring. Stacy spent a lot of time at this corral. Can't see it to well but a Norweigan Fjord is in this corral and for sale. Stacy asked a lot of questions and pet the horse quite a bit. This "Doctor's Cart" was for sale. In nice shape it was 'only' $2,500. The black horse in the background is actually a mule you could buy a raffle ticket for. Stacy had her hopes up, but we never got the call on Sunday. You had your choice of the mule or $400. Heck yeah! We'll go again next September! It was fun!

First is a few years ago at our Phelan property. The corrals before we got the 6 stall mare motel. Laura with one of the two Morgan horses we had then. Stacy's mom had gotten them for Sandy and Laura as colts. Ultimately Sandy had to stop riding and stay away due to severe allergies. Both horses were trained to ride and one, Pet was trained to pull a cart. To give an idea of size, these next two photos were taken at Larry's place while we were learning what we'd be doing on the Draft Show circuit. Stacy and Laura were washing one of the Percheron horses. Stacy in just under 6 feet tall and is not standing in a dip. See how tall this horse is compared to the Morgan horse above? Another shot while at Larry's. Same horse, walking him back to the barn. Stacy on left, Laura on right. The 'training' wagon in the background on left. Next post will have some pictures from last weekend.