Whatta day

Today is one of those days we will look back on in July-August and remember how beautiful the weather can be. It was in the 50's  this morning and the 70's today. Not a cloud in the sky and very low humidity. All of God's creatures must be enjoying the day, because there is 8 deer feeding 30 feet from where i am at. I think i will go enjoy the sunset my friends.

holy cow

What is up with the gas prices? I put $100 diesel in my truck today and it is still not full!  $5 dollar gas is just a couple of months away and where is the outcry? I have not heard a word on the network news about this, only crap about the royal wedding. Who gives a rats-ass. Ok thats  my rant for the day. Friday and Saturday i helped the youngest son move down to Dilly, Texas. Ever heard of it? Me neither  until he was assigned there. Its near Laredo. Pretty much in the middle of nowhere.   Had to go to the coast friday and pick up his stuff, Come back here and spend the night and then head to Dilly saturday. Of course, his apartment  is on the second floor. But everything went smoothly. Only problem is, he still has a couch and a bunch of other stuff to get. Hopefully it will be a few weeks before he wants to move those items. Heading to Coopers BBQ in Llano tomorrow.. Can not wait  P.S.! i do not miss this

Gee, its great to be back home......or is it?

1:30 am last night im standing on my front steps talking to a county sheriff and a city policeman about the drunken little aholes next door. As a life-long drunkard nothing irritates me more than some punks who gets all loud and bad after a beer or two. It all started around 11pm with the slamming of their front door every few seconds. Then you could  hear them fighting or wrestling inside their trailer. Next thing you know, they are outside arguing.Thats when i went over and yelled at them to shut up. They all ran back inside. Then one comes out muttering something about someone was hitting him. At this point i decided im to old to be getting my ass whipped by a couple of young guys so i said, "to hell with them lets call the police". The cops were here within 3 minutes and quitened them down. Tonight im not waiting until 0130 im calling them at 10:01pm. Ok, lets talk baseball. My son, who know more about baseball  than anyone i know, has made his predictions so i thought i  would give it a try. Im just doing the national league because i dont know diddly about that other so-called league. Ok, NL west...San Fran repeats..NL central...the big red machine is back.NL east....braves...and NL wildcard.... Rockies...There it is carved in stone.. Now we will see who is the master and who is the student....

gee, its great to be back home

We made it! Escaped from California, of course, in the middle of a blizzard and then a deluge of biblical size. Once we got east of L.A. the skies cleared up the sun came out and it was smooth sailing from then on. We are back in our  hometown working at a rv park. Things have been real hectic but will eventually settle down. I hope, im too old to do hectic.As most of you know i  love baseball and im really trying to stay a Astro fan, but damn its hard to do. They were swept this weekend by the Phillies. Opening weekend and swept. Things can not get much worse, can they? Well i just ate 4 slices of pizza and now i need to veg awhile. Hope everyone is well. Gee, its great to be back home again!

Its almost time

Wow, Its been a while since i have posted a blog.The weather has been so bad the internet has not worked much the last week or so. And it was next to impossible to get out of the park. We had one  snow storm after the other the last couple of weeks. Nothing real serious. The power has managed to stay on, but the office  phones have not worked. We disconnected our phone line several weeks ago and the satellite tv also. No  beer no tv make Homer go something something! Go crazy? don't mind if i do!! Sorry, that was a line from one of my favorite Simpson's episodes," The Shinning". Its monday and we are supposed to leave friday. We have gotten everything done that can be done in advance so now its just hurry up and wait. And pray it dont snow any mo.

Its pizza time again

Tuesdays we are usually at the pizza parlor. Great pizza and our good friend Amy works on Tuesday. So its a win-win. Finally a day without rain and it was sorta warm also. I took some pics of the Ford Explorer with the tree off of it. I will download them tonight and put them on a future post. Probably 70% of the snow is gone but there is still limbs and trees everywhere. Tomorrow I'm going to start clearing a path so i will be able to get the 36 ft long monster trailer out on time. We had another screaming match between a manager and a tenent this afternoon. It's a very common thing.  Thats one of the many reasons we are soooo ready to leave. Okay, that was my daily venting. The only thing else i have to say is: 2 weeks 2days! :)

time flys,but not fast enough

Its  a warm sunny Monday....somewhere..but not here. It rained all weekend, and i thought it would melt all of the snow  but no such luck. It was 32 degrees when we left this morning and still drizzling. remember those rubber boots i bought to gold pan in? Well, they have became standard footwear.Can't walk to the office without them.  The snow freezes over at night so its got a hard crust  in the mornings. Most, but not all has melted. Im going to start working on the  downed trees getting them out of the roads so i wont have any trouble getting out in 18 days. We are at Starbuck today. Needed a  trip to Walmart  and Home depot. Several months ago we  bought a roll of cat-5 wire to try and get the internet at home. Our plan was to move the router closer to the middle of the park. We paid $65.00 for this roll of wire, out of our on pockets. Of course, the managers talked the owner out of letting us do it. Saying, that everyone could get and mis-use the internet? Hell, the park advertises free internet.  So we returned the wire today and got our money back. No good deed goes unpunished..

3 weeks and counting

Three more weeks!   I know it looks beautiful but its really a pain to deal with. If you look real  close at the second picture there is a ford Explorer buried under the trunk of a 200 ft tall tree! It wasn't licensed, registered or insured. The huge tree uprooted and fell over.  Today officially starts the count down. 3 weeks or 21 days, however you do the math, we are outta here. It will be good to be back home. Its 79 degrees there and 34 here. Not just the weather, we miss the people, and our friends. Well got to cut this short, had alot more to say but duty calls. more later

What a difference a week makes

A week and a couple of hundred miles! This place has  very diverse climate. Right now id rather be on that beach than freezing my nads off up here in the mountains.. More later

Library and home

Wow,  The Reagan library  was great. Im not sentimental by nature but i had tears in my eyes more than once. If you ever get a chance please go its worth the time and effort. We were there Monday which was Valentines Day and while we were there someone brought a large bunch of flowers and placed them on his grave.I also included a picture of the Gipper and one of his desk aboard Air Force One. They say it should take 2 hours to view the entire place, well it took us close to 4 hours. We left there around 4:45 and drove straight back home arriving around 1am. My butt was dragging. Some observations, the traffic is L.A. isnt as bad as i expected. Atlanta, Houston, San fransico are all worse. And southern California is georgous. Our time here is growing short and we dont have a job lined up for the  summer. Gotta get on the ball cause i dont want to spend the summer sweating in Texas..

Hooray for Hollywood

Day 2 of the road trip and here are some pictures.The first pic is a beach at Carmel. Nice town, but like i said yesterday, very crowded. The next one is" Roxanne The Wonder Dog", attempting a 1,000 ft cliff dive into the Pacific Ocean. She shows "no fear"! Please don't try this at home kids. She is a trained professional. But since the winds were coming from the wrong direction she had to pospone the event. Ok. Next is the huge freaking rock out in middle of Morro Bay. That thing is huge.....  And anytime you come this far you have to get the Hollywood sign.From this vantage point the sign is one way and if you turn 180 degrees you can look out over the L.A. basin. But it was late in the day and very smoggy so we couldn't get a good picture.So just imagine a bunch of tall buildings, a thousand roads and a million or two cars. Tomorrow is the Reagan Library. Im really excited. Ed i wish you  Sean and Richard were going with me.I will send you guys alot of pictures..

road trip !!!!!

After  a hard two and a half days of work, us old farts needed some down time. so the solution was: ROAD TRIP! We left home this morning heading for Los Angeles...eventually. First we drove over to Carmel-by-the sea. Beautiful  little town but man was it crowded from there we got onto the  Pacific Coast Hi way. Probably the most georgous  drive in the world. We must of stopped 20 times to take pictures and just stand there, all slack-jawed, gazing at the beauty. Of, course there is always a hitch in the program. When we left Carmel we had  a little less than half a tank of diesel. well guess what, there ain't a filling station for the next 150 miles that sells diesel!  We just barely made it and it was close. We are in for tonight at a little town called Morro Bay. The room has a fireplace and a Jacuzzi tub. We have to run the A.C. to keep it cool enough to run the fireplace. Tomorrow on to Simi Valley and a visit to the Ronald Reagan library! Im excited

super sunday

I know, I  know, I haven't been blogging much the last couple of weeks but work or goldmining keep getting in the way. show of hands, how many of you watched the entire superbowl without dozing off? Come on, that 3rd quarter was boring. Especially after a couple of mixed drinks and a humongous pizza. But the Packers won and thats good. Pittsburg has won enough recently. This is gonna be a short one (thats what she said) gotta get up early and head to out new super secret gold mine.. I will include some pics of it next time. Everybody try  and stay warm.

more pics

Before i get started i want to say that we lost a very special and dear friend Friday. Jane Hattenbach passed away in her sleep. She was 87 years old. She will be missed by many friends, children ,and grandchildren.Ok, Last week we stumbled onto a Eden hidden in plain sight. Less than 50 feet from a hiway is a old dam built by Chinese miners sometime during the 1850's. The dam has long since filled in with debris,sand, and rocks but the creek found a way around it and now there are two beautiful waterfalls on each side of the old dam. At the bottom of the dam is a sunny place covered in ferns, moss and massive old toppled trees. I  made it half way down and by then i was sweating like a fat man jumping rope in a attic in August! I stopped at that point and started wondering how am i going to get back up. My better half made it down with no problems and even helped me get back to the top! Gotta love that! We walked down the road a piece and found a way to walk right out on top of the dam. Its probably 60 ft long 30 ft high and about 3 feet thick. Its amazing to think of the labor that went into building this thing out in the middle of nowhere. We panned for several hours but didn't find any gold :(  This morning  we got up and drove to Reno, Its like Vegas only better in my opinion.We had 3 things on our minds, Gambling (of course) Mexican food, and a good scalding hot bath. So far ive had the Mexican food and in a few minutes comes the bath. One thing before i go, we talked to Big Ed and beautiful Jena today. Two of the nicest people ive ever met. hope to see them soon...

old age

Got a story we need to share with everybody. We went to Wal-mart today to get a pair of rubber boots. We need them to walk down the middle of the creeks while we are gold panning. Its way too cold to just step  into the water. The water temp is just above freezing. And sometimes the banks are so steep its almost impossible to scramble down the bank and totally impossible to drag my butt back up it. Ok,back to the boots. We drove 40 miles one way to get these and when we got to Walmart we bought lettuce, tomatoes,wine (lots of wine),chips, and walked out without even thinking about those damn boots!  Can you believe! Im getting in the truck when Susan starts laughing her head off. I cant imagine whats causing the hysterical laughter until she stops and says " What did we come here for?" Of course, ive got  a blank stare i still dont have a clue..At this point she says "boots?" D'ooh! So we go back in and find out that Wal-mart is out of boots anyway. Are we dealing with senility,old age,too much wine or what? someone give me the answer quickly, before i forget the question.

Another day in paradise

After a fruitless day of gold panning its time for pizza and beer. Beer, proof God loves us! We went to K-mart this morning to buy some rubber boots. It would be easier to walk in the water while panning instead of trying to walk down the creek banks. Well, the boots were $25 a pair!  No-way, that's highway robbery.So we blew off the boots and did it the way we had been doing it. Earlier i said a "fruitless day". That's not true, we had fun. It was a warm sunny day and it was good to get out and enjoy the scenery. No big plans for tomorrow. Did i mention that our neighbors had left and went to Brazil? This is the French-Canadians  who  lived right across the road from us. We miss them. They left their cat (Macha) here. She's staying up in the office  until April.  That's when they will  be back. Can you imagine, backpacking in Brazil  for 3 months with 2 small kids? I will attach a photo of Macha on my next blog. Oh yeah, pizza's here!!

Finally a warm day

I guess the title says it all. A warm day. Its hard to express how good it feels. Sunny and warm is good. The term "warm"  is probably relative. Is 55 degrees warm? After days and days in the 30's 20's and even teens, 55 feels great. Its Saturday  and we are back in town. Lunch was, as always, In-out burger. If  you ever get the chance get  the double-double burger. OMG! Double meat, double cheese and afterwards a double heart by-pass. Somethings are worth the price. We are at Starbucks using the internet. Im too full to order anything. But that will wear off soon im sure. It always does. The internet situation at the park has improved a little. We were allowed  to move the  wireless router a little so we now get a signal at home. A weak ragged signal. But at least we can now use our computer at home but only when the manager decides to turn the internet on. Only took 3 months to move it 10 feet. Maybe by the end of our 6 month contract we can move it 10 more. Yep, we are outta here in April! It wont be directly home, we will be making a stop in Denver for awhile and then home. After that we have some plans in the works that will blow your mind, if they come to fruition. all i can say is: E probabile che noi stiamo muovendoic.

More Golden Stories

Instead of sitting in front of the television and watching football games all day Sunday(which is what  i wanted to do) we went to Oregon Creek  and panned for gold.(Actually i was dragged kicking and screaming like a 10 year old girl) There is a state park there but its closed for the winter. We had the place to ourselves except for one other couple. And they were in a mild state of panic trying to find a restroom that wasn't locked. Another reason we had the place to ourselves is the temp. It was 33 degrees. and the water was even colder! The sun was shining very brightly and that made it very easy to see the gold in the sand. We got down on all fours(not a pretty sight) and picked up around 100 pieces of gold! Man, this is easy. We will be rich in no time.. i thought..Well, im sure you can guess the outcome of this story. I know that big Ed already guessed.  99 out of the 100 pieces was fools gold. And the one piece of real gold we found was about the size of this period . ok,maybe a little bigger. Fools gold shines like the real stuff but its flakey. And if you place a piece in your hand and mash down on it with your thumb it will smear as you move your thumb. Even though we froze our noo-nooies off and didn't find much it was still fun. In fact, im getting gold fever right now... gotta go...

There's Gold in them thar hills....i mean river

Finally a sunny day.. We got out and went to the longest single span bridge in America or maybe even the world.It was built in 1862 and is still very sound. Even my fat ass couldn't make it bounce when i jumped up and down...Yeah, like i can still jump up and down..The park is only open thurs, fri, sat, and sunday probably due  to budget cuts.Being, today is tuesday we had the entire place to ourselves.Thats the good side, the bad side is since the park is closed so were the bathrooms! Nough said about that.The next pic is of a flake of gold we found in the river. All of this area is gold country and they says the majority of gold  is still un-discovered. We saw hundreds of flakes in the sand but most were no bigger than a pinhead so it was next to impossible to pick them up. This one was large enough pickup and hold. We have found us a new passtime. Panning. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we will be at work so its going to be hard to blog. Will write more soon

Hanging out

As i promised yesterday here is the painting our neighbor did for us. I think its really cool. She also does carvings. She will take a hickory nut and carve all kinds of stuff in it.. We finally got the chance to see True Grit. Its almost a word for word remake of the Duke's classic, except for the ending. I would recommend it to all of you. Also got the oil change in Marge and a transmission servicing.. Cost a fortune.. Little Roxanne got a grooming and bath at Petsmart today. As you can see we have been busy.. Need to head back to the hills. Oh,one more thing. How many Bowl games were on t.v.? We only had one game on New Years Day! Is that right? And it wasn't the Rose bowl, which i  would have bet money would be on.No, it was the Outback Bowl! How messed up is that!

Buying in Italy

Buying in Italy

Its 2011

Hope all you had a Happy  New Year.. We sure did. We woke up new years day to about 3 inches of snow on the ground. It was really pretty. No one had plowed the roads or even drive over the road in the park yet.  Nothing is as beautiful as pristine un-spoiled snow, Especially if your inside looking out.It snowed on and off all day. We visited with our French-Canadian neighbors for a long time and she gave us a hand-painted picture.  Is about the harmony of life on earth  or some crap like that. Im kidding its a real cool picture and i will show it to yall the next time i blog. Im having a tough time writing this, first my computer battery came unplugged and i lost my witty and extremely funny first blog. I finally figured out what happened and plugged it back in but by then i had forgotten and of the witty things i had said the first time.. Just as its all coming back to me the coffee shop im at  closes! So we packed up and headed all the way across town (2-3 miles) to another place we like. Tomorrow is a trip into the big city of Yuba City to get the oil changed in Marge. Marge is our 2011 chevy pickup. And just maybe, if there is time we will go see True Grit. wish us luck.. 

Its 2011

Hey, Happy New Year to everybody. Hope all of y'all ate some greens and black eyed peas new years day. supposed to bring you good luck and lots of money, well ive had the good luck now im ready for the money! show me the money. We had our white new years day. When i woke up the snow was about 2 inches deep. It snowed on and off all day. A  total of around 4-5 inches. We went out and played in it some. Visited with  the neighbors and just had a great time. It was 35 when we left home at 2pm to come down  to the coffee shop in the valley and it must  be 50 here.. And sunshine