Spring Break is Over

We had a nice Easter weekend. Elizabeth's friend Dennis was here with three of his children. Nice kids. On Friday evening we cooked hotdogs and roasted marshmallows. It was nice having a fire in the fire pit. E.R. brought the marshmallows and he bought a bag of tiny marshmallows. Six year old Carly thought they were wonderful and just for her. She had a great time putting them on the metal roasting sticks. The children were very well behaved. It was nice having the kids making noise and having fun. On Easter Sunday we had dinner and everyone was invited. David didn't sit with us for dinner though. Sunday the children went home to their mom.

Today Hailey is back to school.

Photoshopping

Stayed up to work on an entry for our little challenge on my Photoshopping board. The theme is movie poster. So I worked on an idea but it wouldn't come together and I was interrupted about a million times...so quit. Tonight managed to do something else. It is not too bad but with the talent already entered...don't stand a chance of winning. Still it is fun to do.

I entered some photos in the MyOlympus Group contest and did dreadfully. One entry got a big fat goose egg on votes. I'm just happy to have gotten a few votes on the other two entries. Next month's themes are birds, trees, and minimalist...whatever that is. Trees is unlimited which means photo manipulations. The other two have to be straight forward photos. Only some croping and brightening etc. I might enter this for April. All photos have to be taken with Olympus cameras listed for the group.

We have a pretty happy group on the Photoshopping board. NIK is running the Movie Poster Challenge. I plan to have a flower theme challenge for April. Hopefully that isn't too early for all the northerners still covered in snow.

Our days have been wonderful. I sat out today and watched the humming birds and enjoyed the fresh air. Tomorrow evening we are going to light up the firepit and let the kids burn marshmallows.

Sunny Days

That's what we are having in So Cal. A beautiful spring. Yesterday Janey and I had lunch at a new Thai resturant in Santee. Jackie and I went there on Friday and the food is wonderful. The lady said that they had only been open six months. They don't have much of a lunch crowd but she said the dinner crowd was very good. The resturant is on Mission Gorge Road almost to the 52. It is in an old strip mall that is almost overlooked when driving by. It was worth going again for the wonderful food. Will for sure go there again. I had the cashew nut. It comes with choices of chicken, beef, pork, or shrimp...I had it with the shrimp. YUM!

Elizabeth and Hailey had a spat the other day and Elizabeth wanted an apology from Hailey after Hailey told her that she never liked Elizabeth...just a kid saying that though when upset. So yesterday Elizabeth was taking Dennis' children to the park and Hailey wanted to go too. She decided to apolige to Elizabeth. She asked me if it was all right to call Elizabeth on the phone because she didn't want to make the apology in front of the other kids. So they went to the park and had a good time. All of Hailey's friends are on a school trip to Washington DC and New York. Hailey could have gone but I couldn't talk her into it. She has talked to her friends on their cell phones. Hailey seems pretty cheerful but I think she is a little sad.

ER is home and said his visit with family was pretty good. He was very tired though. Still he went out yesterday to do some tractor work at a neighbor's place. He keeps busy. We also went to Home Depot yesterday morning to get some metal to fix a broken chair. I just had to go through the garden section and I bought a nice cactus. We also got some tomato plants. Growing a few tomatos is about all the gardening E.R. does.

Another Sunny Day in So Cal

A bit hazy today but gorgeous all the same. A white crane flew down near the wood pile this morning. Than another one flew down too. They must be a pair. The first one seemed like it wasn't doing very well swallowing something. I took some photos and the second crane flew away. I didn't get any photos of it flying. Then the first one seemed to recover and it flew away too.



When I put the card in my computer card reader it wouldn't work...the photos still show when the card is in the camera so need to find another card reader and try again.



With Hailey off to school, E.R. still in KY, and David down the road on his bike, I'm in the house by myself. Doesn't happen very often. It seems so quiet here. Well a cat walks through the house once in awhile but then they are very quiet walkers.



E.R. called me and said he would be headed home on Friday. He has been in the snow storms back there. Had to drive several hundred miles on black ice. On the way to IL His brother said he could drive better being he was a truck driver. So E.R. let him take the wheel and they wound up in a ditch waiting for a tow truck. Someone came by and volunterred to pull them out with a chain and E.R. said OK to that. Paul, his brother, thought they were all going to get killed. It worked out fine though and they were back on the road with E.R. driving. E.R. said it was cold in KY but he is having a nice visit back there with his family.

Cats

We have five cats. Tuffy is a big black shorthaired cat. His fur looks like satin. He is a miniture black panther. Tuffy was purchased at a pet store from an animal rescue group. We got him an his sister at a discount because they were all ready five months old and no one had offered for them. It was late August and they don't like to be selling black cats near Halloween. They were both living in the same cage and were both wary of people.

Hailey renamed them Tuffy and Angel. Their birthdate was listed as March 30, 2005. Not too long after their first birthday Angel followed me outside one evening when I was bringing in things from my car, and was never seen again. Tuffy ran back into the house with his fur standing out like a plush toy. We knew Angel must have crossed paths with a coyote. One sometimes comes through our yard at night.

When I bought this house it came with a gray and white cat named Katy. Katy belonged to my stepmom. My stepmom passed away in 2000. Since E.R. was renting her little house and living with our son David, he stayed on and took care of the property for the trust until I bought it from the trust. We took care of Katy for those years until this place was mine to move into from the storage I used to manage. I had dreamed about going to Arizona or New Mexico, but since it is hard to move David I stayed here. I didn't only get the place I got my ex too. It has been interesting.

David met some people down the road that had to move and couldn't take their cats with them. So I said OK we will take them. They came by soon after and handed us two cats, and mama cat and her six month old son. They didn't even tell us their names. The mama cat was friendly and liked to be petted but she growled at Tuffy and Katy. Hailey was told to leave her alone. To let her get used to our place. Didn't listen and got bit on the arm. Trip to doctor and antibiotics for Hailey. I named the mama cat Stormy. Stormy is a short haired silver colored tabby. She fits her name. Stormy settled in and Katy and Stormy ignored eachother. Not Tuffy. He took all that growling personal and the two have disliked eachother ever since. I named Stormy's son Fluffy Boots. Fluffy is fluffy what else and tabby colored. Tuffy and Fluffy don't get along but mostly stay away from eachother.

In the spring of 2006, Stormy went catting around and got PG. On July 5th she had five kittens. Lots of photo ops. We couldn't keep all those kittens. My daughter and her two children Megan and Cody moved here that spring too. Hailey and Megan both wanted a kitten. So we kept two.

We named the fluffy kittens Tuxie and Smokey. Tuxie is black and white and Smokey is an almost black sooty color. Katy was about eighteen or ninteen and one day went to sleep and she was gone. So we now have five cats. After the experience loosing Tuffy's sister Angel we try to get all the cats inside the house every evening. Once in awhile one will refuse to come in. Then we worry.

Sunny Day

Spring is really here. Every thing is growing and green.

I've been fighting off a cold and lots of coughing and Hailey too is not getting over her cold. This must be the cold that doesn't go away. It starts with a very bad sore throat and then feel bad for a couple of days and then the coughing and sneezing. About the time it seems all over it all starts up again with a head ache, aching bones, and sore eyes that feels like the flu but not quite as bad. Then it goes back to feeling like a chest cold. I once was sick the whole month of December and pretty much missed Christmas because of something like this.

Hailey just talked me in to letting her stay home today. I've been making her go to school all week because she has missed so much. This week end we need to buy her some camouflage pants and a black tank top for her dance class. They wore this costume last year but Hailey has outgrown her stuff. Finding camouflage pants for a teenage girl is not that easy to do.

I titled my blog, "What I Think," but so far haven't put much of that in. I've been thinking about the election. Clinton and Obama are truly fighting it out. I know a lot of people like Obama but I'm not exactly sure he would really be good for the country. I thought Hillary would have an easy time getting the Democratic nomination. Not so. Which ever one does get it I think that if the other would agree to run on the same ticket as vice pres they would have a good chance of going all the way. But I wonder if that could happen with the animosity they are showing to each other. And if they did join up would anyone believe in them. Both have a lot more money than Mc Cain. Though it looks like Mc Cain will get the Rebublican nomination. That will make a big difference in how much Mc Cain will have backing him. I'm thinking now that Huckabee will run as vice pres with Mc Cain. It all comes down to women, race, and white America. And who do you trust? We will just have to see what happens.

So much for political thoughts.

Killed My Board

When I started my Photoshopping board I tried very hard to install phpbb3. I downloaded the program and did everything said to do but nothing would work. Finally I found that a program on my brand new server would install phpbb2. It worked and we were up and running. Many old friends from Janee's joined and some new ones too. The only down side was the spam bots that swarmed like the plague. They can actually join a board. Then later come back and post their muck. Most were pill pushers but one was a hard core porn pusher. I did write about all this. Adding a mod to the board was said to help stop the spam bots from joinning a board. Which I was afraid to do in case I messed everything up. One mod changes the place that the generated letters show for visual conformation. It is said bots are now being programmed to over come this.

So I would check the board several times a day and if I saw a strange new member with jumbled letters for a name and strange hobbies for a graphic board...like camping and skiing instead of working with graphic programs and one other sure sign that I don't want to tell...I knew to delete them. Which I did often. That cut way back on unwanted posts. I read up on these spam bots and they will join a board and then come back later and post. That gives the bots time to check their e-mail and log on. It really seems to me that there might be human hands involved in this process.

My phpbb2 board has a warning in red print that says it needs updating. Dumb me! I tried and killed the board. So had to install a new one in a new directory. I did try to recover the old data but my backup was flawed and the board wouldn't install over itself on my web site. These things are tricky. Anyway many of the members have found their way to my new board and so we are again happy campers to have a place to stay connected. The new board still has that red warning print but I'm going to ignore it for now.

The only good thing is a reprieve from the spam bots. They haven't found us yet. I did make an index page for my site with directions to the new board and after the first day I got a brain storm. I put the link in a graphic.

Another trip over to Borrego Springs

Jackie, Jocelyn, Hailey, and I drove over Saturday morning. Then instead of driving out to the desert through Julian we turned left at Santa Ysabel and drove out past Lake Henshaw. We stopped at the Santa Ysabel mission too. I've been passed there many times but have never stopped before. We looked through the little one room museum and at the artifacts and photographs there. Very interesting.

In Borrego we went to the park visitors center first. Hailey wanted a book "Fossil Treasures of the Anza-Borrego Desert." So got that for her. We walked around there for awhile and then we drove up to Coyote Canyon. Good place to see wildflowers. Then we drove back to a really nice resturant and sat on the terrace for lunch. Lunch was great. We had Chinese food and Hailey enjoyed Broccoli Beef and I had lovely Cashew Chicken with steamed rice. We shared our food around. There was too much for just us. Jackie got pork dumplins and Joyceln a noodle soup with lots of chicken and vegetables. So was glad they ate some of ours.

Then we went to a gift shop...what else?...and looked through the rocks and things. Hailey got a bag of polished rocks and a carved stone butterfly pendant. Jocelyn had spilled some of the liquid from the food Jackie had boxed up on her lap and wouldn't get out of the car. So I bought her some silver earrings. Hailey can't wear earrings now because she let her pierced ears heal closed.

Then we decided to head back out of Borrego a different way than we came in. We went out towards Julian. We stopped at a monument to the Butterfield Stage stop. We talked about maybe driving there on another trip sometime.

This was the view of the mountains from the Monument

Before getting to Julian I had to drive up Banner Grade. That is one winding road. Not as narrow as it used to be but still dangerous to speeders. I took it nice and slow. We stopped in Julian but the wind was so cold that we didn't walk around very long. The town was full of tourists as usual.

We enjoyed seeing the wildflowers too but I got better photos on Monday. Still it was a nice trip over and back.

Just the Middle of the Week

Hailey will be back to school today. We are fighting it out though. She did have a cold and I did let her stay home yesterday, but give a little and then she doesn't want to go back. Her cold is gone, and she has already missed too much school. Like I said before when she was in sixth grade I believed her too much when she said she didn't feel well. She missed so many days the school was ready to turn me over to the sheriff's department. They threatened me with arrest. Even after I kept Hailey from missing any more days the attendance clerk had me scheduled to visit with a deputy. I managed to convince the clerk that I had turned things arround and she could see that Hailey had not missed a single day since. So didn't have to have the meeting with the sheriff deputy. Very scary.

Well that was this morning. Hailey stayed at school and went with her Show Choir class to perform in La Mesa. She still felt under the weather and was coughing when I picked her up from school. I feel really bad about it all. She pretended so much it is hard for me to tell when she is really sick or not.

E.R. and his brother Paul stopped by for a little while before they left to stay over night at Barona. After the races in Las Vegas E.R. is going to drive Paul back to IL.

There used to be a small stock car race track in El Cajon. It was near the airport. In the beginning it was a dirt track and my Dad was the contractor for the original grading. It was one of his first jobs as a grading contractor. The race track was on a long lease from the city of El Cajon and the city was really sorry they had ever leased the land. Over the years the track was paved. Most races were on Saturday evenings and only during the racing season...spring to fall. Then houses were built on the hills. People were not happy about the noise from the track. So all the races had to be over early. The owners would not give up the lease so the track stayed. E.R. used to like to go to the races on Saturday night. On the Fourth of July every year the track had a really good fireworks display. We used to drive over and find a place to park along the road...one year we parked in the parking lot. That year I got some nice fire works photos. Once, Hank Williams Jr. played there though it wasn't a very good place for a concert. Some of the drivers that got their start at Cajon Speedway went on to Nascar racing. The lease was up in 2004. A couple of years before that the owner was shot and killed at his front door by robbers. The killers were caught tried and sent to prison. I have always wondered how some people can think it is all right to harm others and throw their own lives away too. Now the track is gone. Things change.

I've been working on my photos from our quick trip to Borrego on Monday. Will post some tomorrow. Some came out pretty good and I managed to get some flowers I haven't photographed before. I got my CF cards mixed up and thought I had lost all my photos from Monday. It was a sinking feeling when I put the card in the reader and nothing! I found the missing CF card on the floor of my car...but not until after I spent the rest of Monday and part of Tuesday being pretty depressed about it. I've been looking through the book I bought Monday to identify some of the flowers in my photos. I like to shoot raw and that gives a large file size. Which can be a really good thing. In one of my photos a flower was sitting there near the one I was focusing on and it was so different. I'm sure I've never seen that one before. With a big file size it is easy to make a nice size photo out of a small part of the bigger picture.

Borrego Springs

Sunday morning I had breakfast with Sarah from Hemet and her daughter. They were down to spend the weekend at Barona. We planned to take photos around Lakeside but the weather was rainy with low clouds and was totally miserable. Still we had a lovely time talking.

My father used to own property in Hemet and my mother and stepfather at the time, Don Lease, took us past their place to visit on our way to Washington state. My Dad and stepmom lived in a small trailer in the middle of farmland. There was lots of empty space there in 1949. My dad was growing watermellons and also working as a heavy equipment operator.


My stepfather had a job at Hanford and we were going to get a house in Richland Washington. Don had a coupe and he made a place behind the seat for Barb and I to ride. There was no place for us to put our feet down. We pulled a rented trailer with Mama's stuff in it. Don wasn't happy that Mama had agreed to visit my Dad. Then they had a time finding the place. We didn't visit very long. Don drove us up Hwy 395 and since it was March it was cold. We stayed one night at a motel. When we got into Northern California it was snowing. Somewhere Don and Mama stopped and shipped our things and turned in the rented trailer. That took awhile to arrange and the lost time upset Don. We drove through Oregon in the night. It was slow going. Don kept having to stop to wipe the snow off the windshield. Mama kept wanting to find a motel and just stop. Finally in the very early morning before day light we came to the Columbia River and the ferry was not going to open for hours and Mama was angry because Don didn't get us that motel room. So we sat in the cold car waiting for the ferry listening to Mama and Don be mad at each other. My legs and feet cramped up and it was too wet and cold and dark to get out and stretch. I was crying. Then Barb started crying too. Mama made us be quiet.


Hemet doesn't look any thing like it used to look. All the fruit orchids and fields are gone. All Covered with track homes now. Before I left the casino I just had to loose a little money. I seldom play the machines at Barona because I'm not much of a gambler and I usually loose. . . well doesn't everybody? . . . most of the time anyway. So next time Sarah and her daughter are down we will try again on the photo taking. . . and I will stay away from the machines at Barona.


Monday morning E.R. and I drove over to Borrego Springs to see the wildflowers. They are wonderful. First I've never seen the hills around Borrego so green. So there is lots of water. I took lots of photos and will get some posted soon. I will add them to my other wildflower photos from past years. This year saw some flowers we've missed in the past by being just a little to late. The ocotillo isn't blooming yet. That is the way it has always been for me. . . getting over there once or twice during the bloom. There are always some flowers we see every time, but then there are some we only see once. Every year I always wish I lived there.

On the way back we stopped for lunch at Santa Ysabel at the Apple Country Restaurant. They serve pies from the Julian Pie Company. After beef stroganoff for lunch, I had the rhubarb strawberry and E.R. the apple. Yum!

Hailey went to school with a cold and Elizabeth brought her home from the nurse's office. We arranged that before we left for Borrego. In sixth grade, Hailey missed so much school that they threatened me with arrest if I didn't change things. After that unless Hailey has a doctor's note I have to send her to school sick or not and let the nurse send her home. Seems a little hard to me but that's what we do. So even if Hailey says she doesn't feel good I send her off the school.

She stayed home today and is a very crabby girl. I told her if I'd known that was how she would be I would have made her go to school anyway!