Great visit w/Old Friends 10-27-08

I had a great visit with old friends last week. It is an easy restful drive, the most traffic was in Sparks/N. Reno, but once I got past that little bit it was smooth sailing. Highway 70 didn’t have any traffic on it and other than having to slow down through the little towns along the way I just cruised along. The trees were really just getting started on their spectacular color change…it looks like they’ll peak in this week or next.

I had a wonderful massage with my favorite therapist Jeff and it was nice catching up on his family. I got a phone call from Larry after my massage…he had gotten the call to go to Marina, Ca with the communications trailer and had to be there the next day. I thought I was going to have to turn around and go back so he could take the truck, but he decided to rent a car and that ended up working the best on quite a few levels!

So I carried on to my friend Vickie’s out in Genessee Valley. She lives way back in the woods a half hour from the highway, but it is so peaceful out there. Passed herds of deer and flocks of turkeys everywhere on the way out. There are some wonderful old ranches and Victorian houses along the way too.

The weather was great and the house is passive solar so it was toasty during the day in the living room, but then we would just go sit out on the deck among the trees and enjoy the day that way too. The first day I was there Vickie & I drove up to Chester, she gave me the tour of town and I saw all the changes in the almost five years we have been gone…no zings of nostalgia or wishes for going back. I ran into most everyone I had been thinking about and wanting to see so that was nice. Vickie and I had lunch with a couple of other good friends, got in a little shopping and then it was back to the “hidden” valley. We took a little different route and that is where I took many of the full shots of trees.

On Thursday we did absolutely nothing besides talk, cruise on the computer and eat. It was a quiet day of recharging. We didn’t get out of our pajamas, we didn’t brush our hair or even wash our faces…it was a wonderful slovenly lazy day. We were recovering from our previous day of visiting…smile!

From the deck I took the close-up pictures of the fall leaves and that crazy lupine flower that doesn’t know that it is autumn yet. I also discovered the most amazing rock on Vickie’s deck given to her by her son from a property further north in California up by Glass Mountain. It was so fascinating, it was a lava cinder rock that had melted way back in its history and while not quite obsidian parts of it were glassy and frothy and it was very light for a rock of that size. I photographed it from every side and angle! I figured Vickie would miss it if it disappeared so pictures would have to do me.

Friday I left around 10:30 from Vickie’s and headed up to Lake Almanor to my friends Mary and Ronnie’s place for a quick visit on the way back to Fallon. Mary fixed us a tasty healthy lunch with fall veggies, turkey meatballs and pasta and a salad…topped off with great coffee and a pumpkin dessert. After catching up and trying to get everything shown and told in a short period of time I headed back to Fallon.

It took three hours and I was back at the house at 6:30. Thanks everyone for a great time.

Oh, almost forgot. Larry left on Wednesday morning, drove seven hours to Marina…Fort Ord burns off a lot of vegetation every year, but by the time everything and everybody was all in place they cancelled the burn because of weather….so on Thursday Larry drove the seven hours back to Fallon.

Yesterday I packed away most of my crackle glass out of my curio cabinet and cleaned and polished what I left in there.

That’s it for now, probably be a few days before you hear from me again ‘cause there is nothing else planned.

A lot of nothing 10-20-08

I was scolded today for not updating my blog for 10 days. There just isn’t much to report when we aren’t on the road.

It was just two days ago that my arm that I got my tetanus shot in quit hurting…ten days after I got the stupid thing. We both got our tetanus boosters on the 8th, they shoot it in the muscle of your upper arm and your arm is sore and doesn’t move so great for at least a week. I am really sensitive to medications so I was lucky enough to have the feverish achy body for three days afterwards also.

It was sadly entertaining during that time…after doing my morning workout I would have to wait for Larry to get home from his walk to get me out of my sports bra so I could take my shower. I couldn’t do the arm across the body and then lift that tight stretchy material up over my head…my arm wouldn’t lift.

The weather here has been lovely, our winter tease was short-lived, thank goodness. There has been no wind, gets into the seventies and mostly sunny.

Other than that we have just been doing the same old, same old. I’ve been messing with my watercolors and these are the two paintings that have resulted from my mess.

Tomorrow I am going to visit friends in Plumas County, Ca. for a few days. I love it over there this time of the year, the fall colors are stunning, my chauffeur is staying here so there won’t be pictures at 60 mph from the windows of the truck. I can multi-task but shooting pictures while driving would be as bad as those MORONS that text while driving. Oh, bad me…a small editorial….tee hee.

Snow Day 10-10-08

The weather changed with a vengeance today! We woke up to snow falling out of the sky and coating everything! We were wearing shorts a week ago. I doubt the high will get much beyond what our low has been, 41-42 degrees. WE should be heading somewhere warmer, but we are in a traveling holding pattern because we haven’t decided what we want to do or where we want to be during the holidays. After the holidays…if not before…we will be heading south for most of the winter, Arizona and New Mexico and the So Calif. Desert to visit friends and to escape the cold and snow.

On Wednesday we had to go over to California and we left Fallon before 6:30. As we hit the top before heading into the eastern Truckee area there was an interesting fog bank lying above the area. I saw part of the river steaming…I thought maybe it was a hot spring, but then I looked at the outside temperature and it was only 34. The water in the river was warmer than the air temperature and the entire river in that very cold valley was steaming. We haven’t seen that through there before. I didn’t get any pictures, they would have been cool.

Here is an update; California is repaving those horrible stretches of highway 80 over the mountains that I complained about last year! You still get the sound and feel of driving over train tracks, thunk, thunking, but the ruts are gone and the road over all is smoother. There are a few sections it doesn’t appear that they will get to this season, but they are getting to the worst. That road would rattle your fillings out of your teeth and if the ruts had gotten any deeper some cars with low undercarriages might have been scraping…unless they rode the edges of the ruts!

Larry has gotten his tooth that was broken all repaired. He has to go in for another minor adjustment but the experience was good. The crown was $824 to the dentist, Larry saw the receipt for just the crown alone from its maker and it cost the dentist $175. Interesting isn’t it? Larry had a crown done in Mexico a couple of years ago and the entire experience cost $180. The dentist was educated in the states and the crown was made right down the street and it was all done in a day.

I am still plugging along slowly…I hate figuring out new programs, trying to find a photo program that works on Vista. I’m thinking I may just go to the old computer to edit and upload photos until I find something that works easily on this one. All of it is a royal pain in the rear!

See you don’t hear from me for awhile and now I don’t quit!

I had blood work done on Wednesday, just routine. First a little background: I hate having my blood drawn, when I was in my early teens I had someone who wasn’t very good at it poke my arm 4 times trying to get blood and I passed out. I have hard to find veins, it takes awhile for people to find my pulse in my wrist, and even when the nurse took my blood pressure this time she couldn’t hear it and had me squeeze my fist a few times…110 over 70 by the way!

So…I always make a point of telling the tech so they can make adjustments…some might choose to use a smaller needle, some take the time to really slap my shy little veins until they engorge enough that they can find them. Some have been sooo good that I have hardly felt anything.

Well, I should have run when the tech asked me which arm do I use. Huh? I said both of them…well come on, I do. He didn’t ask if I was right or left handed. Then I told him my veins were hard to find. He said, a lot of people tell me that…I’ll be the judge of that!

I try to give people the benefit of the doubt…he might be really good, so I didn’t walk out. So he ties the rubber thingy on my arm, pushes around on my arm, finds my vein and shoves in the needle, two seconds go by and he moves the needle, nope nothing, moves it again, (he isn’t taking the needle out of my arm, just scraping around in there looking) I’m getting woozy and cranky and about the time I’m ready to say forget it he pushes again, then again and the blood starts flowing. My mouth is dry and my arm hurts and I don’t feel so good. He pulls the needle out and I say “That was the worst, ever!” To which he says, look at your arms, you have no veins. I wanted to give him a swift kick, but the table was in the way.

As I get older I am getting more able to speak up on my own behalf…I have always been non confrontational, so for me to tell him I thought that was really bad was more than I would have done in the past, but next time I will do as Larry said I should have done, I will speak to his supervisor. He may be that bad with a lot of people and by not speaking up no one knows his weaknesses. A lesson learned.

Ah, how nice, it is 12:45 p.m. and it is snowing again…yuck! “They” say it hardly every snows in Fallon….yeah, right.

Update 10-6-08

Good morning!!! Thought I should check in.

We have this lovely new red Dell laptop that of course came with Microsoft's Vista. Vista is probably great for people getting their first computer, but for those of us who have thousands of files and have been using great software for the past ten years it is a total frustration because nothing works with Vista. We have to learn where our files are now and how to find them and all the software we had been using does NOT work with Vista, so that means getting all new software and gee...who do we have to buy it from....ummmm...Microsoft...what a racket!

The program I have been using to edit and resize my photos for my blog doesn't work and the program that came with Vista keeps throwing up errors so we have downloaded some software that is supposed to work with Vista and now I just have to learn how to use it.... so until I get that figured out no wonderful photos.

Since we are still in Fallon and nothing exciting is going on right now, you aren't really missing anything. Larry has been working on the computers and I have been reading, writing and painting. Autumn is my favorite time of year and I am hoping we get to the mountains to see the leaves before they all blow off the trees.