Our updates for all of you

I came across this the other day in a box of some of my 'old tech'.  How many people reading this post used something like this?  "Back in the day", the 1990s I'm talking about here.  It doesn't seem like a long time ago just thinking about it, but it sure was! 20 years ago now!  This was an era that can't be hardly remembered on calling people because everybody has cell phones, but still, this was quite a while before everybody started to use cellphones.  Pay phones were the rule back then and pay phone gadgets like this one became available to help you 'speed dial' your way to a phone call.  For me, I found and bought, I think it was around $15.00 for this device, because quite often when I was out at night and 'on-call' I'd get a page (with the on call "beeping" pager) and had to go find a pay phone and call in to get the new call, it was a lot of phone numbers! This was several years before everyone ...

Some photos from the last few weeks starting with Christmas Eve with the presents all set for the next morning.  Below our holiday dinner  Below, my best present from Stacy and a gift and for both of us,  a water dispenser just like Sean has at his place in Hawaii.  Hot, room temperature, and cold water from a 3 to 5 gallon container inside the body.  We love it!  Below,  every year the Courthouse has a employees breakfast for the holidays.  This year's was another good one!  The photo below is part of our driveway showing the small amount of snow we've had so far. It has been cold and there was a good sized snowfall in October that had many long time locals saying it is going to be a bad winter!  Well, so far it has turned out to be not so much.  We had a week of near and below zero temps,  but almost no snow yet. And it was the first Christmas that it didn't snow at all in the last few years.  We'll see tho...

In our Christmas letter this year Stacy had made a point to mention this Blog page, so I have to get on it and get back to posting! So, with Stacy throwing down the Gauntlet that this Blog exists I'd better get some current stuff posted! With today being the 19th of December, we are happy that all of our gifts to send are on their way or have arrived. DONE! We did cards differently this year and used the Android/Apple application called Sincerely Ink to create and send out cards. I took some photos last Saturday and we picked the one we liked, then Stacy wrote the great poem and assembled on the iPad then it's just add recipients, billing info, and send! They do the rest including telling you when the cards are sent out and then again notification on the day they'll arrive at their destinations. A really great app, yes these are more post card style then card in envelope style, but completely customizable and for about $2.00 a card, including the postage, we think it is ...

On Tuesday it was what was going on in our life 10 years ago, today it's what happened to me 39 years ago the very date and day of the week of Wednesday, October 30th, 1974, in that I probably came as close as ever to dying because of a motorcycle against a car accident. I was in High School way back then, a fairly new car driver and motorcycle rider and I was on my way home in Yucaipa, California, from the school on my few months old, new to me, 1970 Honda CB175. Back in those days Yucaipa was not much more than a retirement community with a relatively small population and almost no stoplights throughout the town or in the entire area in general. Mostly then it was lots of stop signs with that old 'right of way' problem of who goes first? An exception to the above was "Yucaipa Boulevard", back then the only two lane road at that part had no stops on the blvd, just side streets, from the off ramp of I-10 all the way up to the plateau of the bulk of the commun...

I was searching online to see what was still available to be seen from what was posted about the events of 10 years ago today! I know that for it's time this event was of an incredible magnitude, the first time the entire population of the San Bernardino mountains was ordered evacuated, but even this fire event has since been eclipsed buy more recent, and increasingly worse, events due to the continuing drought conditions in Southern California.  Back in 2003 I was a shift Supervisor Lieutenant in San Bernardino County Animal Control. And Stacy was working in the Field as an Animal Control Officer. Our daughter Laura, again in the Animal Control field now in Texas, was at that time working at the County run Animal Shelter in the City of Rancho Cucamonga. This fire event stretched our department beyond it's ability to respond to the public concerns. Many, many, residents were caught off guard by the sudden closure due to the very fast spreading of the fire because...

So I just reread what I had written in the last post and other then a few things I pretty well covered Thetbroth was very good he trip to Hawaii with that post. I was going to post some photos here but I created an online album of the photos I'd taken with my Galaxy Note II as with my phone all photos and videos get automatically uploaded, and backed up! But already being online makes arranging an album so much easier. I think I had sent a link to just about everyone but if I missed you just send me a note and I'll get you hooked up!  So, back to the story.  One of the evenings on Oahu we decided to try the public transit to travel to Waikiki as Sean doesn't like to go there very often because traffic is a BIG problem, parking the WORST! Stacy and I, on many trips, have tried out the area transit to get around, some have been great, some not so much.  Taking the bus from Sean's place wasn't too bad, a lot of local residents utilize the system which is good...

Stacy and I, after getting back from the conference trip in Boise in August, still had a lot to do and not much time!  We had been planning a trip, a kind of family reunion for our little family, and used the combination of events like my birthday, new grand baby Justine's 1 year birthday, our wedding anniversary, our son Sean's wedding anniversary, and an early birthday present for him by all of us, Sandy and family, Laura and family and me and Stacy all getting together in Hawaii where Sean lives and loves living!  At least that was the original plan.  Then, as things like this must be, arrangements had to start early and when started early things change! We wanted to make the trip more towards October at first and closer to Sean's birthday as it was going to be his 30th, but Sean, who is going to night school as well as working full time, decided he wanted to have the trip during his break from school and just take two weeks off from work too. So it was moved up to mid...