White Christmas--Belatedly

The mid-day sunshine in Grass Valley, CA, 12/28/07

This is the same view, roughly, on a pleasant Fall afternoon.

Our holiday visit with our Daughter Laurie and Granddaughter Danielle has come to an end. Their flight left Sacramento at 0600 hours this morning and they were in Nashville when they called just before 1300 hours. They then had the six-hour drive to Hickory, NC, and home ahead of them but they planned to visit friends for a day or two before doing that.

For them, one of the things that would have made their trip west even better was a white Christmas but, unfortunately, that just wasn’t in the cards. Christmas was cool with some clouds but no rain or snow.

Last night, when their hours here were at an end it began to snow and, by 0200 hours had built up to about 3” on the ground. That’s certainly not a major snowstorm for here; we’ve had as much as 33” overnight. Our home rests at 3000’ above sea level at the very top of a small mountain.

Except for the snow that could be seen in the headlights of the car the world was a black void. Driving through downtown Grass Valley on our way to the freeway revealed what looked like a Kinkaid painting with thesnow-covered roofs and lawns of the old Victorian homes glowing in the street lights.
It was very pretty but the roads were white and big fluffy white flakes fell rapidly.

Swimsuits may not be required but a wetsuit might be in order. We set our Softub spa up indoors for this trip home and it has been very popular with everyone.

We were amazed that the road remained white down to about 1300’ above sea level and there were still snowflakes in the light rain all of the way down to near 1000’.

The trip to the airport was uneventful and we got them off on their way home. Going home could have been a different story if the snow had continued to coat the roads but, by the time we got near Grass Valley it was clear the temperature had climbed enough and enough traffic had been out to clear the paved roads. The private road with 11% grade up to our home was a different story but the Jeep did just fine.

The Azalea will have to wait for the warmer days of early spring. In the meantime, BRRRRRRRR!

It has stayed cold all day with the high being around 36degrees so there has not been a lot of melting going on. Another very small weather system is due to move through tonight bringing a bit more snow before fair weather returns for our trip back to the desert.

It was a MERRY CHRISTMAS in Grass Valley

Happy New Year from me to all of you who read these words.
Sometimes plans do work out and, so far, our whole family Christmas gathering has been just wonderful. Laurie and granddaughter Dani arrived on the 23rd, Kevin the firefighter was not on shift Christmas Eve, and UPS, FedEX, and DHL had all done their jobs in getting the gifts here on time.

Because Kevin worked on Christmas Day and the day following, we had all of our Christmas on Christmas Eve. Judy, Laurie, and Dani prepared the turkey and stuffing, the wonderful green Jello mold, the candied yams, mashed potatoes, exquisitely smooth gravy, and the Swedish Meatballs (without which Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas according to Kev)

Our family gathers round the Christmas table

No one, except Alex, left the table the least bit hungry. Alex declared, “I don’t like anything on the table except the dinner rolls.” That’s what he ate. Little Andrew, on the other hand, ate like a lumberjack who didn’t know when he’d see another meal. He valiantly tried everything, liking most, and rejecting a few. He loved cranberry sauce (red) and the Jello (green) especially.

Everyone seemed pleased with their gifts. For the first time this blog article includes photos I didn’t take as Laurie took a few with her new digital camera.

Andrew says, "Give me some more green please.

This one is called "Hedwig's Hide" and is found in Memorial Park, Grass Valley, CA

We’ve been out geocaching, having fun and frustration introducing Laurie and Dani to our delightful new activity. They look forward to getting involved in it when they return to North Carolina. While hunting yesterday we found two and failed to

This one is "Go Bearcats" and is located near Union Hill School, home of the Bearcats. The cache is hidden in the basketball hidden at the left rear of the photo.

find another—even though the gps and Kevin confirmed that we were in the right spot. In one cache Laurie found a “travel coin”; a coin with a serial number on it that is traveling around the world with its travels available for viewing online. Laurie and Dani will move it a big jump by placing it in a North Carolina cache after returning home.

We’ll go out hunting again this afternoon and Laurie and Dani will go out with Kevin and the boys tomorrow. Kevin and the boys are much more experienced than we are and can teach them some of the tricks to finding these elusive hides. "Bennett's Easy Find" is another cache located along Bennett Road in Grass, Valley. Laurie is holding the cache which is actually an automobile gas cap with the "log" rolled up inside of it.

Geocaching is a lot of fun. It gets your mind working trying to solve the puzzle of the hidden “treasure” once at its location, it gets you outdoors, it provides as much exercise as you desire (there are geocaches on Mt. Everest) and, best of all, it’s free.

All good things must come to an end and Laurie and Dani leave at 0600 hours on Friday. Judy and I will return to the Desert Southwest on Sunday, in time for New Years with friends there. The Christmas decorations in the house will have to wait until May to be taken down and stored away for next Christmas.

Dani got all dolled up for Christmas. She's doing "Goth" right now. The blue hair is actually quite pretty.

I’ve given up preaching minimalism in the decoration department as many of the things we display have been around for all of our Christmas celebrations and are therefore, family traditions. Judy is going to decorate as she always have and, I must admit, I do enjoy seeing them.

We wish all of you a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR in 2008. Good health, good friends, family, and fun.

Today, December 16, 2007 is our 44th wedding anniversary. About 400 of our closest friends joined us and a 26 voice choir to get the job done that evening in 1963.

In celebration of that amazing achievement we're putting stuff away in the motorhome preparing to put it in storage tomorrow. We're also packing the car so it too will be ready to head out early tomorrow morning for a return to home for the Christmas Holiday with the whole family.

We're just a couple of hopeless romantics. For supper tonight we'll continue emptying the refrigerator and freezer to minimize the stuff that has to go in the dumpster before we leave for two weeks. Maybe we'll put a candle on the table next to the tupperware container. The best part is we'll be together.

Happy 44th Anniversary Judy. I love you with all my heart.

Ron

You're definitely OLD if you REMEMBER...

My two wonderful Pug dogs have suddenly developed knock-you-over, put you down for the count, send you reeling breath. It's confusing because their diet is exactly the same as it's always been. I'm not suggesting their breath has ever been kissably sweet, they're dogs afterall.

But living in the confined space of our motorhome, has made it a problem that has caused discussion, action, and upset. The dogs don't seem to mind that I don't look them squarely in the face anymore, though.

I tried a breath spray on them but you'd think they'd been hit with pepper spray or mace. The saliva that flowed in each case was amazing. They even foamed at the mouth.

Everyone says it's their food (see first paragraph). Could it be the desert water? It actually seems to be pretty good tasting water so I don't know.

All of this discussion of halitosis caused my confused brain to go on a reverie of its own back down memory lane--every year I do more of such mental meandering. Ah yes, the joys and pleasures of boyhood in the 40's. This is where the remembering

mentioned in the title comes in. I suddenly remembered a product that I lusted after as a kid and maybe you did too: Sen-Sen. It was the early 20th century version of Mentos and other breath mints found today. It seemed one or more of my relatives, probably hiding a halitosis condition caused by improper oral hygiene, had a small packet of this stuff in his or her pocket. It was a licoricey-minty powder made up of tiny black squares and you tipped the whole thing in your mouth at once. Oh, the flavor rush was fabulous. Did you know they still make the stuff? Not only do they still make it using the original recipe but on the same machines that produced it in the late 1800's. You can buy it online, go to Amazon.com and search in their candies and there it is.

While we're remembering do you remember "Black Jack" or "Fan-Tan" gum? Well, I could go on and on but thanks to foul dog breath I've had a little fun on the internet and shared it with you.

More Wonderful Rain--AND SNOW!

Mt San Jacinto as seen through our windshield this morning, Monday, 10 December 2007

For the second weekend in a row, blessed desperately needed precipitation fell over Southern California. It brought rain to the lowlands and snow above 5000'. Even though we're here in the desert hoping for warm and fair weather, we're very happy to see some rain come to this over parched region. The rain a week ago was the first precipitation in Palm Springs in 26 months.

The Windmills beneath Mt. San Jacinto. The snow line is at about 5,000' above sea level on this nearly 11,000' high peak that towers over Palm Springs, CA.

As usual, the rain was followed by a gusty windstorm that came raging through the Banning Pass. The pass is full of wind generators for good reason--it's the third consistently windy place in the whole world. One old person we heard of believed the hundreds of huge windmills in the pass were fans to help cool the place in summer and she couldn't understand why they rain them on cold days. I still think she was kidding but she professed to not know what they actually were.

Tortured pictures on a Rainy Sunday.

Those of you who use a satellite dish to receive your programming will fully understand the problem we have when heavy rains fall. It's actually worse than it would be if the dish were exposed because on the motorhome it's located inside a fiberglass dome. The dome gets wet and the picture tears or goes away. RainX actually helps a lot but needs to be applied quite regularly.

It's Christmas time on the desert

Okay, okay, okay! I know it’s been a long time since my last post but, as the gist of that post implied, we’re really not doing much here in the Desert Southwest other than enjoying the mostly marvelous weather.

Last weekend a marvelous, refreshing, nourishing rain fell on the area. It rained almost continuously for about 23 hours resulting in a total of nearly 2.4”. The intense day of wind that followed caused us to “hunker in our bunker” for another 24 hours. When the gusty winds blow we do a bit of rocking and rolling in the motorhome. It’s nothing alarming but, like the boat, you get rocked to sleep at night. Beautiful sunsets over Mt. San Jacinto are a wonderful benefit of enduring the storm’s passage.

That event, although significant, was the first time the weather had forced us indoors since our arrival back at the beginning of November.

We’ve had another very pleasant week with temps in the mid 70’s but now expect another weather event for this weekend with the possibility of more rain and wind. It’s a pretty good schedule because I do enjoy watching the football games on TV. We are heartbroken over the deadly weather in the Northwest and hope and pray all of our friends and acquaintances there were not badly impacted by the storms.

We’ve been decorating for the holidays. We erected and decorated our Christmas Tree last week. It’s a new tree this year and we decided to be “green” and purchased a string of the new LED lights. We pondered whether to buy the “clear” or “colored” variety and finally settled on “colored”. If you’re considering such a purchase and are as uninformed as we were, do some research. If nothing else, look for a lighted display. The colors of these new lights are so intense that it’s more like carnival lighting than holiday. The blue color especially overwhelms the other colors. We have a neon-looking Christmas Tree. Forest, our Alaska stuffed bear, graces the display garbed in his Santa Claus House tee shirt from North Pole Alaska, and a Santa hat originally purchased for a Pug dog who probably refused to wear it or just looked too stupid.

A stop at a Jack-in-the-Box netted a new antenna ball that came with a suction cup attachment and it is stuck in the center of our kitchen wall clock. Christmas music on the XM Satellite radio rounds out the holiday scene. It’s not Currier and Ives but it proves we’re in the spirit and ready for celebrating to begin.

In my last posting I talked about all of the things to do in the area, but neglected to mention one that is not to be missed. The weekly flea-market at the College of the Desert in Cathedral City, is an event that draws us

there at least twice a winter. It’s a upscale flea market where one can purchase stuff ranging from the common tee shirt vendors wares to tuxedos, or evening wear and diamond jewelry to Croc shoes. Heck, you can even buy a very pricey “water feature” for your patio or garden.

“People watching” here is right up near the top of the scale as you mix with the gentry who arrived in their Rolls Royce or Bentley’s and the college student in a 70’s VW bug.

There are no "starving artist" deals from this fine art dealer at the Flea Market.

An interesting sight was the bagged dates on the palms that line the streets at the College of the Desert. They bag the young dates to keep the birds from stealing all of the fruit before they can harvest it.

It’s a fascinating experience that occasionally produces some little gem we can’t resist buying.

Today was also our turn to attend “The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies,” and the name says it all. It was fabulous, though a bit on the long side at 3.5 hours but fabulous never-the-less. The Guiness Book of World Records includes the “Oldest active performing Showgirl in the World” who trips the light fantastic at 84 years old and has the body of someone about 20. All of the showgirls have shapes that rival hers. The vaudeville-type comedians were funny and Kaye Ballard (the guest headliner) did a great job at more than 70 years old. Their patriotic tribute last number was very nice and recognized all of our services including the U.S. Coast Guard and the Merchant Marine Service. Ron’s friend Ken Blue would have really appreciated the latter.

We went to the show in the company of our friends, Bob and Cheryl, Rvers from Illinois that we’ve known since our Mexico sojourn. They too enjoyed the show.

We bought a new GPS unit and have done our first GeoCaching. In case you’re unfamiliar with the activity it’s a new-age, hi-tech, treasure or scavenger hunt. There are hundreds of thousands of little treasures hidden around the world (maybe millions if the number in our immediate area are indicative of other places) and with the help of a GPS unit you too can find them. The fun here is mostly in the finding rather than the treasure in the cache though there are items there for the taking. When a cache is discovered you look at the stuff

(called “SWAG” in the hobby), take some if you wish, and always record your visit in the log book provided by the person who hid the cache. If you take an item you should also leave an item. Some of the Swag is sort of official and known as “Travel Bugs”. These articles have a metal tag attached to them and are meant to be sent on in another cache as soon as possible. They take a journey like “go around the world” and return to the originator when the journey is complete. They may come with instructions such as “move further east” requiring a person who takes such a bug to do as instructed. I’m holding a cache in the photo.


Lists of the caches can be found online at http://www.geocache.com/ and then the coordinates can be transferred into your GPS for later searching.

It’s an interesting experience with the main benefit of getting you out of the house and going to places you probably would never have gone before.

We leave the motorhome in storage and drive home on December 17. We’re looking forward to getting home so Judy can spend four hectic days decorating for the holidays, wrapping gifts, baking cookies, and shopping for all of the food we’ll need for the two weeks were home with our anxiously anticipated houseguests, Laurie and Dani, who arrive on December 23. I think this will be our first Christmas together since we all traveled to Boise to be with her some years ago and will be Laurie’s first visit with her two nephews. It should be lots of fun.

We hope your Christmas is blessed, happy, and filled with family, friends, good food, and joy. We wish you all a very happy New Year with hopes for good health, prosperity, and happiness for all of you.

Here’s another Geocache after removal of the rocks that covered it. It contained a log book and some little plastic creatures.