Fishing at Shasta

Last week Dennis, Bob and I spent the week fishing down at Lake Shasta.  I stress the word FISHING because there was little catching going on.  We got rained on a couple of days which seems to be normal for us even though we tried to pick a time when it wasn’t going to rain.  There was one day early in the week that I actually got most of my heavy clothes off and got down to a t-shirt but it was short lived and never happened again the rest of the week. 

One day we stayed in until after 1:00 in the afternoon waiting for the rain to stop, which it finally did.  I didn’t catch a fish that day but both Bob and Dennis did. 

The last evening we were there I added up the number of fish we had caught during the week and to my surprise it really sucked.  I looked back through my fishing log and found a year when I had caught over 180 fish myself and this year I only got 29.  At least we did get some nice ones the day we ate them for dinner so that was good.

One thing about fishing, you just have to love being there and enjoy it for the outing and when fishing with friends enjoy the company and I did both of those.  Catching would have been a good thing too, but then I guess you can’t have everything, can you?

Nice day for a bike ride!

And after I got some chores done, that’s exactly what I did.

I went out Stampfli Lane and up North Arm. It is all flat ground so not much exertion necessary and it was just a lovely day, nice and warm. Things are starting to get real green and the willows are even starting to come out. There is water running just about everywhere and the mosquitos are probably loving it since they are out in numbers.

I found a few little wild flowers but the prettiest ones were growing in our yard. I just love that I have a yard where wild flowers grow naturally. The weather is not going to stay this nice but then who would expect it to in the spring anyway. Next week we are planning on going fishing down at Shasta. Karen has to stay and work but I’m going with Bob and Dennis. So far the weather looks like it will cooperate with us but you never know. We have had to sit in pouring rain under a tarp trying to stay dry on some of our past trips and none of us wants to do that anymore so we are hoping for the best next week… we’ll see.

Happy Spring!

Yeah, first day of spring and you couldn’t tell by the weather.  I have been taking pictures from my deck of the changing of the seasons.  I have a spot marked out so my camera is always pointing exactly the same direction and today was my vernal equinox picture.  As I found out when I looked back through my pictures, it looks very similar to my autumnal equinox picture taken 6 months ago.  It’s been a long winter, to be sure and we don’t see an end in sight yet.

 

Come on spring, we are waiting for you!

Wow! My internet service!

Frontier High Speed Internet!

Winter’s back!

As well it should be this time of year.  Normally if we get weather like we have had this past week I just like to stay home and keep the wood stove stoked up but when your wife works in Quincy, about 20 miles away, you can’t just hole up and stay put.  Last night on the way back from picking her up in Quincy we got stopped when a big rig jack knifed and blocked the road.  We were there for a little over an hour and a half and the snow was just dumping the whole time.  They finally opened the road again and we got home around 9:00 after leaving Quincy a little after 6:00.  Driving conditions were what I like to describe as horrendous and if I didn’t have to be there you couldn’t have made me go no matter what.  So much for my vow to never drive anywhere when the road conditions are that bad.

This morning I went out and took a couple of pictures in the yard so you can see how much it snowed here in the last few days.

We are supposed to have a break today into Monday and Tuesday and then next week about Thursday it’s supposed to come again with a chance of snow even down into the Sacramento Valley.  By that time all of this will be gone and we will be ready for the next batch.  I’m not gonna drive in it!  Yeah, Right!

Coriolis effect

Somewhere in my past training I remember hearing that tree growth is affected by the turning of the earth in what is called the coriolis effect.  My spell checker says it is spelled wrong but I don’t think it is.  If you do a Google search for it you’ll find that it indeed spelled correctly.  Anyway, the other day I was out hiking in the hills around my house and I found this old snag that really shows the coriolis effect.

It is common to see snags with this effect and anyone who has done any amount of firefighting has seen this but this tree had a really tight spiral and I thought it looked cool.  Anyway, when you see this, now you know what it is.

Sunny days

I just love that I can take the dogs for a walk up in the woods so close to home.  There is nothing like a nice walk out in the woods to get the cobwebs out.  I always try to hike to the top of one of the highest points out there but they just aren’t high enough for me.  There are some much higher hills around the valley so I’ll have to vary my routine I guess.  Maybe I should walk up to the cell towers and maybe I can get some decent cell service there.  Probably not since it’s AT&T, no bars in more places, cell service.

I’m sure winter will return before long so I have been trying to get out every day after getting some of my project work done.  I’m working on a remodel of our office.  The office was a bedroom but we wanted to use it for our office.  The problem we had was that the heat from the wood stove didn’t get in there and it was always cold.  It was an easy fix really, I took out a 5 foot section of wall and made an opening between the office and the living room.  Now it’s nice and toasty in here like it is in the other rooms.  I had to move some electrical fixtures and I’m closing off the old doorway and making a linen closet there.  It’s so very nice having your own house so you can make changes like this.  Sure love that!

Surprise at Costco

So I’m down in Chico doing some shopping yesterday. Karen has to work 6 days a week during the peak tax season so I had to go by myself and I just did what we usually do and went straight to Costco first. I was pushing my cart back in the meat department and I hear someone tell me to get a new shirt. When I looked to see why this guy was giving me shit about my old crew shirt, I see this kinda fat faced fellow who I immediately recognize as Scott Grendahl. Wow, the luck of running into someone you know in a big city like Chico.

We blocked the aisle for about ½ hour chatting and catching up a little. He lives in Chester and works in Susanville for Cal Fire as a Crew Captain and does just like we do and comes down to Chico with a big cooler and stocks up on groceries. Anyway what a surprise to run into anyone I know in Chico.

Now what does this have to do with this picture you might ask, well actually nothing. I took this picture today when I took the boys for a walk out on Forgay Point. You can see what a nice day it was, that’s Mt Jura and Taylorsville is just at the foot of it on the right side. The watercourse is Indian Creek. Do you see any snow in the foreground? I thought not. It’s up on the mountains where it belongs and down here it’s been pretty nice indeed. I’m loving this mild weather and even though staying dry is not good for the water situation, I’m happy to enjoy it while I can.

Why did I move back to California?

I had this question recently when I talked to Karen’s boss down in Redding.  He couldn’t believe that we moved from Idaho back to California so here is the reason:

Today, January 22, it was so nice that I got a chance to get some sun when I took the dogs for a walk.  Believe me, you couldn’t do this in Idaho.  Not only are there no mountains or trees near Idaho Falls, but the high for the day there today got up to 24° and there is no way I would be sitting out in the sun in 24° with my shirt off.  Not to mention of course that I had a really nice walk in the woods and didn’t need to drive anywhere.  Ya really gotta love it!

Bait and Switch

Well, let me get on my soapbox.  Yesterday Karen made an order on the Kohls website.  They had a free shipping promotion for orders over $75 and her order came to over $80 so we expected to see  free shipping  when we got to the checkout.  Well, there was none of the sort and try as we might by reading all the fine print we couldn’t understand why.  I told her there must be some sort of glitch in their shopping cart system and suggested that she either call or email them and report it and get it straightened out after she made her order and before she paid off the balance. 

So this morning she gets an email from them explaining that they applied all sorts of smoke and mirror credits to her order and the actual “amount” is under the $75 free shipping limit so she didn’t qualify for it.  Her credit card will be charged for the over $80 amount so what in the hell are they talking about?  When it says that there is free shipping for orders over $75 and your order comes to over $80, then it’s a no brainer, isn’t it?   Like I said, we had gone through their checkout and ordering process looking to see where the loophole was if it existed and we couldn’t find it.

Now I buy quite a bit of stuff online and if I ever had this happen to me, the company in question and I would be permanently parting ways.  A big company like Kohls should not be practicing these bait and switch tactics and it says something about their integrity.  No matter what Karen ends up doing about this, I refuse to do business with a company using these very questionable business practices.

Kohls, YOU SUCK!!!

Small World

So, talk about it being a small world, Karen and I were eating dinner in a restaurant down in Redding the other night and I see this guy who looks like somebody I used to know.  I kept looking at him and the more I did the more he looked like Bill Lachenmyer who was a District Ranger at Laufman way back in the early 80’s.  Low and behold, he and his wife had taken the booth right next to us so I went over and asked him if his name was Bill and of course it was.  I haven’t seen him since well before I retired but he really looked the same.  We met his wife and talked about old times and had a nice impromptu visit pretty much blocking the aisle.  Anyway what were the chances we would run into anyone we knew who worked in Milford back when we did?  Who woulda thunk?

Yesterday Karen was in her H&R Block meeting so I decided to take a walk over in Jones Valley on the Clickapudi Trail.  It was all foggy and cold but I walked at a brisk pace and kept fairly warm.  It was nice to get out and stretch my legs and see what the lake was looking like.  Here’s a couple of pictures I took back in the head of Clickapudi creek canyon.

  

It never got all that warm down there in Redding yesterday and there was a high fog layer over the whole valley that we didn’t get out of until we drove back up Highway 36 out of Red Bluff.  Still it was nice for a change of pace and I had a great walk out on that trail.  And getting to see an old colleague was icing on the cake.

New Phone

I got this interesting browser for my phone, it's a sort of 3-D kind of interface, check out this video.


It's a little jerky but this is a 2X version of the original video so it's running twice as fast as real time. I really like this phone I have to say, more of a mini computer than a phone since we have AT&T at our house or as I like to refer to them, "No Bars in More Places" phone service, so using a phone for talking isn't all that easy. Since this phone is wifi connected I can use it around the house running off of our wireless system. I just love technology!

Computer age

Yep, we are in the computer age.  When you can make a cryptic representation of your personal data that looks like this

you know you are playing with electrons.  This thing is called a QR code.  If you have a program that reads these things they will tell you what data they hold.  In this case this graphic has all my personal contact information and I made it so I could play around with a new app I got for my phone called a tag reader but unfortunately I have only been able to read one tag and not this one.  I do happen to know what kind of information is in this but not because I saw it on this new app.  Anyway, I just think this stuff is way cool.