Big Spring and New Laptop Fun...

The "Estate" is now officially into Spring. Much time was spent this week getting the lawn tractor ready and doing the first mow and edge of the lawns. I also did both weeding and feeding of the lawn. Its a happy lawn...

There were a few 'issues' with the sprinkler system that had to be repaired and the green house had to be rebuild after it self-destructed over the winter. The back yard fountain is going well and various birds are flocking to it. All, in all, all goes well with the grounds.

The refurbished Dell XPS M140 laptop arrived and we have been playing with it. It is really a very nice machine with lots of good, and unique, features. We are very pleased with it. I got it a 'welcome home' present of a Microsoft GPS unit which should be able to answer that important question I am always asking - Where are we? Actually, I have always known the answer to that question - Its "Right Here!", but now with the GPS unit, we will also know how to get from "Right Here" to somewhere else we want to go to...

Speaking of going, we are going to visit the Bay Area for the first time since we left, to move here about 2 years ago. Pam's daughter Jaz is graduating from Menlo College on Saturday, May 6th, and we are going to go check it out and visit. We are also going to check out our favorite places to shop like Fry's Electronics and Twice-as-Nice-at-Half-the-Price in Half Moon Bay.

Though, I just heard that the famous Devil's Slide road, that runs down the coast from San Francisco to where we use to live in Moss Beach and HMB, AKA The Coastside, has again slide due to all the recent rains. And, will probably be down until they get the proposed tunnel built, which will be years. When we lived there, that happened a few times and is a total buzz kill for all that live on The Coastside. That only leaves one road to be used by everybody, which is a little mountain road out of HMB, and generally takes a couple of hours to get the 10 miles back and forth to the 'real world'. So, to get to the point, if that is as crazy as I think it will be, we might have to hang up going to Twice-as-Nice-at-Half-the-Price on The Coastside, which would be a real bummer. It is a depressed goods store that carries all sorts of great food products and stuff from places like Costco, at really cheap prices. Everything is marked down by 1/2 to start and they negociate from there. Big fun...

While there, we must acquire all the special products that we cannot find here - mainly cooking supplies and sauces that are common in the Bay Area and non-existent here in DaHo.

Pool is going great. I did run into one problem with winning in the new weekly handicap tournament last week. My handicap went up and I had to spot a couple of players, that are better than me, and got beat like a rented mule. But, now they are up with me and that won't happen again for a while, unless I win again before they do. The new 9-ball league is going well. Our team is in first place and I am also the first place player in the league - so far. Last night I won 5 of my 6 games, had a 9-ball break and a break and run, called a table run. Both are noted achievements in the league awards at the end of the year. I should have won all 6 games, but the person I was playing got the 9-ball in on a lucky combo shot...

All the rivers are FULL of water and the Shoshone Falls, that Twin Falls is named for, is going crazy drawing tens of visitors every day. Its quite a scene here in DaHo...