Searching for the Big One - again...

All is great here. I have been getting ready for a great fishing trip. I am leaving Friday morning for another trip up to the Columbia River with my fishing friend Don Rock. He is a retired engineer, gourmet chief and currently designer and cabinet builder of high end kitchens. He is one of the few people I have met that actually knows as much about fishing as I think I do. He lives about 2 hours from here, which is about how far most things seem to be here in DaHo. He has a 21’ jet boat and fishes about 1/3 of the time. I also met this guide from up there in a fishing forum that Don runs and he is going to show us all about catching keeper and BIG sturgeon up there. I am expecting to be bringing back a lot of great sturgeon meat and memories and pictures of catching a few 'Big Ones' in the 10’ and up size range. I know this may sound eerily like the other trip I took up there earlier this year, but that was the wrong time of year, wrong place and with the wrong guide. I have been doing a lot of research on this stuff and now is the time, below Bonneville Dam is the place and Paul is the guide.This is the chance to catch those big ones I have been searching for over the last couple of years. Watch this blog for BIG News next week...

Also, I have been going to the dentist to get my teeth repaired as I broke my front lower bridge on a great rack of lamb that Pam made a few days ago. I went to get it wrapped up today and my dentist said if I wanted to do a good Halloween costume, he could leave the bridge out for a day, and I could take my shirt off and go get some coveralls and a straw hat – just like in Deliverance… Ha, Ha...

The back is doing better. I have been taking different meds and all seems to be good so far. We shall see how it lasts. If I have any more trouble with it I am going to do another epidural shot with the new pain doctor.

I brought Pam back a little Air Hog R/C helicopter from Frys Electronics when I went to Kalifornia. She has been playing with it and even took it to work and ended up getting a bunch more of them online.

Pool has been going well. My new Wednesday night team is not doing well, but I am, so far. We shall see how it goes tonight and tomorrow.

O, speaking of Halloween, I went to the bank and they had a big sign posted on the outer doors asking people that were in costume to please be sure and remove their masks before entering the bank. With all the places I have been, with all the weird costumes (like San Francisco), I have never seen that sign in a bank before - Another 'Only in DaHo I guess'.

Back in DaHo - Ho, Ho, Ho...

I didn't share one little bit of Kalifornia humor yet. When I got hung up in traffic and missed my plane and had to stay in LAX for the day, I was in the bathroom at LAX, and there was this janitor type in there washing down the floors. I was at the urinal and being a bored and friendly guy, he asked where I was from. I told him Idaho and he started going off – That son of a bitch, that a**hole, etc. etc. I looked around and saw that there was new stall wall extensions to the floor which was making the job of moping the floors much more difficult and he was not happy about it at all - Idaho is now famous all over...

I guess I got out of there just in time. The Kalifornia fire thing really sounds ugly and scary. I remember about 20 years ago, watching the Berkley hills fire, where over 3,000 custom houses burnt up in one day. I watched it on TV and you could see the houses explode with little poofs of light in the darkness. Ugly stuff. I guess it will resolve the over supply of houses for sales there though - proving once again that there really is a 'pony in every haystack'...

Speaking of fires, the BLM folks are coming to drill seed all the land around DaHouse that burnt a few months ago. They did a controlled burn a couple of years ago and planted their fire resistant plants - which are the ones that burnt so well and fast this year...

The winter pool leagues have started and I am in two of them. Both are going well so far. Tonight, I won all 4 games and in three weeks, I have done two table runs which is good. I get to visit all the sleazy local bars playing in the leagues which is always 'interesting'.

Today, they came and blew out the sprinklers. They have this large air compressor on the back of a truck and hook it up to the sprinkler lines and, using the high pressure air, blow out all the water/moisture, so they won't freeze and break during the cold winter.

So, in the next few days, I will be doing all the 'get ready for winter estate grounds' stuff - the final mow, prepping all the plants, general cleanup, and other yet-to-be-determined fun.

Dell is having a "Trick or Trunk" event for Halloween that Pam is involved in. I am not quite sure what it is, but it involves decorating car trunks and candy for the kids. I will report more about it when it happens. It is one of those 'only in DaHo' things, I guess...

I haven't been fishing in a long while now. The weather, trips and not being ready for winter have kept me home. Soon, it will be too cold to fish or do much of anything outside. I haven't gotten my winter 'blood' yet, I guess. It seems like only yesterday I was waiting for warm weather and now its time to do it again, Grumble, Grumble...

I'm Back from Kalifornia and Almost Recovered...

My visit to Kalifornia was quite a trip. That was the first time I have been away from DaHo for over a year and it seems to be getting crazier and crazier or I am becoming less tolerant of the speed of life out there. I am thinking its 'them' but I could be wrong...

It took me a while to get use to the LA freeway traffic and general crazyness - longer than last time. So, it is definitely part my 'problem' I guess. You get use to the lack of such intensity here in DaHo. Here is a picture of Tara and Aaron and Ryan. Aaron is giving me directions on the 'details' of how to get somewhere...




I spent my first four days of the trip staying at Aaron and Tara's place in lower Orange County. We had great fun cooking, eating at lots of great restaurants and playing with the granddaughter Alana and granddog Kosmo. Here is a picture of Alana's ballet class...



And one on her new custom bike...




In my spare time I worked on getting their new Sony Media Center Computer hooked up and working and got them going with a new Logitech Harmony remote control. They are great and replace all the other remotes and are programmed online so you can change and tweek them to do everything you ever need done. They have this new HDTV and had a new cabinet built for it. Nice stuff...



They had done some serious remodeling on their house, enclosing a high open ceiling above the living room, creating a new second floor loft that really turned out great. Tara is a wonderful designer and creator of interior glamour, and this new addition just added to her resume of qualifications, IMHO. It all started by them finding a very large chandler and not having any roof to hang it from - It is now called the 'World’s Most Expensive Chandler'...



And, here is a bad picture of the great new loft above...




Then, on Sunday, Nephew Michael and his two kids, Sophie and Nick, and my other son, Ryan, and Chris and grandson Oliver all came to visit. We had a great day and I truly appreciate them all taking the time to drive though all that mess to visit. Here is a picture of Michael and the kids...




Tara made these 'beer can' chickens that were wonderful. Ryan brought down his Dell laptop that was having some hard disk problems, and I reloaded all the drivers on it that Pam had sent me with to get it all back up and working like a good little Dell.

On Tuesday, I left Orange County and went up to visit my brother Don and wife Linda above LA. I am not sure what the name of their town is, but is about an hour above LA and is a wonderful place. We watched some of the old Keithley family videos and tried to figure out who some of the people were we didn't recognize.

Due to the alarm not working right, and some very crazy LA traffic, I missed my 9am plane and ended up having to wait at the LAX airport all day for a 4pm plane. You can only have sooo much fun in LAX for that long.

I had a great time on the trip and was very glad to be back home in DaHo. Pam and both kitties were glad to see me and I was very glad to see all of them. I guess I am just not use to all that Kalifornia Krazyness any more in my 'later years'...

The Computer Doctor is on the way...

Oldest son Aaron finally got his Sony HTPC working, more or less, so I am going to Kalifornia to visit and help him get it up and running. I am also looking foreword to seeing granddaughter Alana, who is growing up so fast, and all the family I mostly haven't seen for over a year. So, I will be leaving on Friday and returning next Wednesday on the big bird from Bozo, er probably sorta small bird from Boise.

My email access will be sporadic during that time, so leave a message and I will try and get back to you. I will have my cell phone, so you can call me on it, but I will sound the same there on it as I do here...

Felix, the new cat, is growing about an inch a day, it seems. Last night, Pam was saying that he is twice as big as when he adopted us a couple of weeks ago. He is all over the 'medical adjustments' and is as frisky as ever. He is a welcomed addition to DaHouse. I am not sure Cali would totally agree with that, but they have fun most of the time and she is getting use to his speed and antics.

We got a new Dell 948 printer/copier/fax/scanner/... today in the mail. Its list of features is pretty amazing with a 25 page auto document feeder, two sided printing and great color photo capabilities. The old Epson photo printer finally is croaking and beyond repair. It was retired once before, years ago, but its HP replacement didn't last too long and it was restored to service. Its been a good printer, but its been hard to even find cartridges for it lately. Long live the new Dell...

Well, I have lots of stuff to do and places to go to get ready for the trip. That's about all that is happening here in DaHo...

And The Chili Contest Winner Is, er Was...

Dell had their First Annual Chili and Chouder Cookoff last week. Pam is on the committee that created this event. It is a knock-off of the Chili and Chouder Cookoff Event that is held on the Coastside in Kalifornia that we use to go to all the time when we lived there.

There were 27 contestants and all the entries were unnamed during the competition. The judges were the managers there at Dell.

I shopped for all the ingedirents and cut up the over 4lbs of good sirloin steak that went into the entry. Then, I went to play pool and Pam did her special, "I don't use no Recipe" thing with it. I tried it when I got home and didn't like it at all. I thought it had way too much salt/spice in it. SO, she was a little depressed but she liked it and took it into the contest in the morning.

Well, to make a long story shorter, she ended up winning the contest and got a $80 gift certificate to the only gormet cooking store in DaHo. So, Horray for Pam!!

I have no idea what was so wrong with my tasters that night, but it was just overwhelmingly salty to me - what to I know, I guess...

The Cat Summit...

Well, Felix had his day at the "Spa" and has recovered to his full strength. While he was gone, Cali, our other cat, seemed to mope around and was looking a little lost. Then, when Felix returned but was still tranquilized, she was quite concerned about him being so sore and slow. So, she gave him a full CAT scan with her nose. After a couple of days, he was back to acting normal and they are getting along amazingly well. I am thinking that Felix is sorta like the kitten she never had. They had a summit meeting and worked it all out as you can see below...



Since then, they have been playing chase the kitty a lot. That is where Felix runs around and plays with Cali and Cali chases him but doesn't attack or kill him. She is even letting Felix play with her most prized toy now. It is a feathery thing attached via an elastic cord to a plastic stick. She has been playing with it for a year or more now. Before Pam built that one, Cali use to go through them every week or so, chewing them to shreds when she ever got her teeth on it, but she really likes this one. Anyway, Felix has been playing with it and so it would stay up for him to play with, I clamped it to the chair. Within a couple of hours, Felix figured out what was going on with it and learned how to use his weight or paw to bend down the stick so he could jump onto the top and play with it. I cannot remember ever seeing a cat do such a thing before and he will do it for hours. In the picture below, you can see him thinking about how to keep the stick down so he can get it before it jumps up in the air again. He is a very smart kitty...




Besides playing with Felix, we have been continuing to manage all the yard work and doing little things around the house. I have also been working on figuring out better ways to build the fishing line needles I am thinking about starting to produce. With the weather and all this going on, I haven't been fishing for over a week.

On Friday night, we had dinner with some good friends and neighbors, Boyd and Annette. The told us they are probably going to move to Arizona to be with his mother, which saddened us a lot. They are great people.

I went to a pool tournament on Saturday. It was a memorial tournament for a player that died a few weeks ago. It was nice to see everybody, but quite sad as all the family was there and they were auctioning off all his pool stuff.

Last night, Pam fixed a wonderful dinner of Rack of Lamb in a new way. She did some type of red wine reduction with nuts, Chipolta and raspberries that was awesome. It was truly the best meal I have had in a long time...

Well, that is about all the news that is 'print to fit' here in DaHo...

Festivals, Birthdays and a New Kitten...

Yesterday, we went to the Thousand Springs Festival. The festival was held at a new state park and was quite an event, with good local music, and lots of vendor and food booths. It was the first good weather day for a week or so.

One of the booths was a sculptor that had this awesome motorized and mechanized salmon that was one of the greatest things I have ever seen. Unfortunately, it was $3500, but it was neat. It was like a skeleton sort of sculpture that was very lifelike on the head and tail, with a really nasty set of teeth made out of a commercial chain saw chain. It had a complete motorized power system, with a gasoline engine, driveshaft with two “U” joints in it, and a propeller in the tail. It actually looked like it would work, but didn’t. It was about 4 feet long and 2 feet high. We were amazed at all the great crafts booths there. I have never seen most of them anywhere around here before, and we try to get to most such things.

Yesterday also was Granddaughter Alana's third birthday. She just had her first fishing trip and caught the only fish on the trip - a nice Pacific Ocean Bonita. Below is a picture of her and her dad with the first fish...

Then, today is Ryan's birthday. He is my youngest son at only 36 years old. I don't have any recent pictures of him, but will post one when available...

So, happy birthday to both Alana and Ryan!!

Last Wednesday I was going fishing and there was this real friendly little kitten outside and came into the garage. I was going in and out and kept shooing him out, but he kept coming back in. I finally had to hold him and close the garage door before I left at 6am. Then, later on in the day after I returned, the high school student we have doing yard work said there was this cat bothering him and he wanted to know if it was ours. I told Pam about it and she wanted to feed it and, well..., meet Felix the Cat...

After checking with all the neighbors and seeing if our cat Cali would totally freak about this new addition, we have accepted being adopted by Felix. Tomorrow he goes for a day at the 'spa' to get all his shots, get fixed and his nails done. He is driving Cali a little crazy right now, but it will be a good thing in the long run. He is really very cuddly and a good lap cat, which Cali hates so he will be a welcome addition to DaHouse in DaHo...