New York Snow

Snow of a different kind.

My brother in law viewed my pitiful attempt at a snow post last week and decided to show off what a REAL storm puts down. I got a laugh out of it and decided to share it with you all.

Here is my sister's house, full of the snow from the storm last Wednesday. It's not the worst one they have had, but it is definitely snow and they had to do quite a bit of snow removal, to get the car out. I hope he did this by snow blower.

I also hope the snow plows had already gone through the neighborhood, before he did the apron at the front of the driveway. I always hated opening up the driveway and watching the snow plow push the snow right back in.

I am glad you got the snow moved.

I hope it is starting to melt.

Tim Tams

Today's post is brought to you by the Land Down Under. :-)

I have a friend who comes from Australia and even though she has spent the past year or so in England, she is still Aussie through and through. One of the things she does is introduce us to products from Australia and Australian Holidays. I posted about some cookies I bought a while ago, that were baked in Australia.

One of the products I have heard her mention, are Tim Tams. I saw them in the store at Christmastime and I grabbed my cell phone and took a photo. To say the least, my husband thought I was crazy. What I should have done is buy them, but I didn't.
Now that the holiday rush is over, I was thinking that maybe I should look for them again. The wiki page I read mentions that they are sold all over now days, so it shouldn't be too hard.

Through her, know more about where she grew up, then I did 4 years ago. Thanks Suzanne.

Snow On The Mountains

OK, I admit that I didn't expect to have snow at my house, when I took photos of the mountains around the Big Bear area of Los Angeles.
I don't know why we don't do it more often, because the road to Palm Springs is so filled with interesting things to see, this being one of them. These mountains are the ones that people mention when they do ads about you can go from the snow to the sea in 2 hours. It is very true, you can downhill ski or snowboard in the morning and run down to the ocean and surf the afternoon away.

Thankfully for me, I do neither of these activities and never have.

Now viewing the snow vistas...yeah, I do that. :-)

Enjoy.

Windmills!

Today's post is a photo of some the windmills that are built at the mouth of San Gorgonio Pass, just outside Palm Springs. I swear that even on a cloudy day, it always seems that the sky is so blue, in contrast to the blinding white of the windmills themselves. They stretch out for miles, both on the lower elevations and then higher up on the hills surrounding the I-10 Freeway. They are one of the highlights of a trip through that area of California.

Their beauty is amazing and on top of that, they generate electricity. How cool is that?

If you want to read about the wind farm itself, information is HERE.

California Agricultural Inspection Station

You people in the East, just have no idea...

One of the thrills of driving across state lines out here in the land of fruit and nuts, is the fact that when you return, you are stopped at the Agricultural Inspection Station. Similar to the Immigration Inspection Stations, most times they just wave you through...but sometimes they feel ornery and they ask if you have any produce or in the case of the Immigration Station, illegal immigrants.

As we drive up to the Station, I always do a mental check list of what I have in the cooler. Did we bring some fruit across from Arizona or Nevada this trip? Yikes! I think I have an orange in there.
Thankfully, most times we are just fine and they don't even stop us, but you just never know when they will decide that your car is the one carrying all sorts of stuff that you shouldn't have, like med-fly infested produce, or the occasional undocumented worker. :-)

By the way, this particular Station is real cute, with the mission style bell, on top of the station. Most are very nondescript and functional.

It is always an experience, returning to California.

The Fountain At Fountain Hills, Az

My Water Post For Today. (Courtesy of my real son)

While we were in Phoenix, Arizona, our friends decided to drive all the way out to Fountain Hills, because they had heard from their son that I did a water thing here on my blog. Nice...

When they said they were going to take me to a fountain, I thought it would be local, but instead it was up on the far north east end of the Phoenix metro area.

The fountain goes off every hour for exactly 15 minutes. It used to the the tallest fountain, though now days it is only the 4th tallest. Still, it takes 3 pumps to get it to its full height of 560 feet. Normally, it is only run using 2 of the pumps, which is how we saw it. Impressive as all heck though.

The photo was taken with our new camera and my son bracketed the exposures using something called High Dynamic Range (HDR). That is what gives the photo its almost 3D quality.

Arizona Desert

One of my favorite things about visiting Phoenix, Arizona is the incredible beauty of the state. So much better then California, the mountains and deserts there are truly lovely. The saguaro cactus that are especially prevalent around the southern and western end of the state are incredible. I never get tired of seeing them growing out in the middle of nowhere. What totally amazes me is the fact that they are there in profusion in Quartzite and then you cross the Colorado River a few miles later and not a single one is there, on the California side of the river. My Husband and I always wonder, how do they know? LOL

We were glad that we traveled on good days and the rain we had been having recently gave the desert some color. Trust me, summer is just brutal here, so it is nice to see it cooler then that.

By the way, the photo was taken at a rest stop. So that is why I only have one lone saguaro. All the good photo spots were as we were driving almost 80 mph.

I hope you like a glimpse of the desert, Arizona style.


======================
On a sad note, being I had just been in Arizona, I was especially sad to hear about the shooting in Tucson, Arizona just yesterday.
What a senseless thing to do.
My prayers go out to Gabrielle Giffords, who so did not deserve what happened to her and to the others, caught in the rampage.

KCET In The Bullseye, Once Again

It has been a roller coaster week here at the nation's largest Independent PTV Station. I came home on New Year's Eve and watched the last night we were part of the PBS System. I was sad, but resigned that the 11th hour reprieve was not going to come our way. New Year's Day, as I reported, we signed on with our new look and new shows. I was impressed and the more I watched, the more impressed I became. Someone had definitely done a good job on the Rethink TV Campaign. Witty, intelligent spots, on top of the normal promos that a station runs. I had my reservations on the black, white and gray, but overall, it looked GOOD. We had an All Staff meeting on Tuesday and they reported good ratings for the first 3 days. Maybe it was the donuts and coffee, but I was really happy walking out of that meeting, to return to the grind that is my new life. Instead of something like 27 or so feeds a day, that we would turn around for air, we were only dealing with 4 and two of those are shows that we uplink anyway, BBC World News. So my feeds have dramatically dropped. Now days the real story is in the amount of tape that is coming in and going out of my life. In many cases, captioning them just before air. As I have also mentioned on this humble blog, it has been brutal, but I and my coworkers, got through it and we basically have January all here.
On Wednesday, my boss and I took our first calm breath, and we finally got to get some of the clutter on our desks cleared up. The next day, they posted February and off we go again, making that happen, before late booking fee deadlines kick in.

At the end of the week, there was an article in the Los Angeles Times that totally trashed our staff's day. Saying that our ratings dropped 50% over last year. The sample they took was 4 days. Some week, right? I had just looked at the last few days and being people were having to find new stuff, I thought we were doing just fine. Obviously to the Times, I was totally off the mark.
What is their agenda, I keep asking myself. They are truly taking this all too seriously. We are just a TV station...but maybe that is the problem right there. We are in competition with their Tribune TV Station, KTLA. Could that be what is driving this? Really?

Here is a link to the article.

Oh and while on the subject, here is a response by one of our VP's. I don't feel like I am totally off the mark here. There is some funny bookkeeping going on there at the Times, because as Brett mentioned, our ratings were strong during the weekend and yet they chose to totally ignore that fact. They have already made up their minds and nothing, even the facts, is going to change their opinion.

Their loss, because I really enjoyed some of the programs we premiered this week. Wednesday night is especially powerful. Hustle (an Ocean's 11 type show) with Robert Vaughn and Prime Suspect with Helen Miran. They had us viewing the entire evening, which just about never happens.

Onward we go...in spite of the Times.

ZooLights

While we were in Phoenix, Arizona, we went to the Phoenix Zoo's holiday themed event: ZooLights!

It was a cold evening, but we spent something like an hour or so there, walking the paths and enjoying the lights.







The colors were stunning, making the trees so incredibly lovely.

In some cases they used an evergreen tree and made it look like a tree with no leaves. We discussed and admired how they did that.













I love these saguaro cactus', all covered with lights.

The fact that they used different colors, adds to the beauty.












They did, not only the trees, but they had lit animal cut outs, for many of the animal residents at the zoo.
That brought the zoo and the lights together and added interest to it.

All in all, it was well worth the time and money spent and being we had two very young children with us, that added to the level of enjoyment. It was nice to have an activity that both adults and children can take part in equally.


I hope you enjoyed our visit to Zoo Lights.

We Three Kings Of Orient Are

We three kings of orient are, bearing gifts we traveled afar. Field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star.

Yes, today is the final day of the Holiday Season.

I still have my tree up, though I have removed my Christmas Lights, from outside the house. I figure I will take down the tree and put everything away this weekend.

For now though, it is the feast of the Epiphany and time to celebrate the arrival of the 3 Magi, to adore the Christ Child.




This particular season was a bit challenging in that I had the Nativity right under the tree and the cat could get to it.

We had a few wrecks along the way, as you can see here, but I preferred it under the tree, rather then up on a table or something. I think I had it on a box last year and was not totally happy with that compromise.

In spite of the cat knocking them over, once in a while, they all made it through and will be displayed again next year.

Holiday Celebration Photos 2010

Before I totally leave this festive season, I would like to post a few photos of the holidays, as seen from the Angel House.



Christmas Eve and the guests are hanging around my family room.









December 23rd and it is party time at my house.


How does that happen?










My son fooling around with our new digital camera and taking photos of the guests.


All in all, the holidays were (uh) interesting. :-)

A Snowy Holiday Day

This is my house on Sunday January 2, 2011.
As I have mentioned before, we have last had snow in some sort of measurable form 22 years ago. That happened overnight and yet this one came about 1PM in the afternoon. It was a shock to me, because the snow level never gets down to 1500 feet.
It never got more impressive then slushy snow, but still, it made my final Holiday day off feel like Christmas...and that was very nice.

Oh and for any who wonder, it is all gone.

Waterfalls At Vasquez Rocks

My Water Post For Today (a gift from of my Marine Other son).

My Marine Son took his fianceés brother and another friend, over to Vasquez Rocks a week ago.
He wanted to show them what beauty we have here in Santa Clarita. Vasquez is one of the most unusual places on this earth, but I must admit that I have only seen it in the summer, when the chances of seeing water, are almost nil.
We had a week of rain right before they went and so there it is, the beauty of the rocks and a waterfall, too. He immediately knew that he wanted to take photos of the waterfalls, for this blog of mine.

I am truly humbled. :-)


The second photo is obviously much smaller, but I like it a lot, too. Very different feelings come from these two photos.

Thanks so much my other son, for allowing me to post these, for all to see and enjoy.

Presents

I hear it quite often lately. Mostly in the middle of the night. I got Makenna a few soft fabric balls with a bell in them and of course, she decides that after we go to bed is the perfect time to play with them. Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, I hear until I can't stand it anymore and I take them away from her.
Truly, I am glad she loves them...just not at night, baby.



One night right after Christmas I placed them on the tree and that became her favorite thing to do, after annoying Mom and Dad at night. Hitting the balls off the tree and then attacking them. She is a cutie, when she does this. Before the Christmas season is totally gone, I wanted to show her off. I hope you like them.

Tomorrow a guest Water Post from my Marine Son. Stay tuned. :-)

A New Year Begins

1.1.11


Welcome to the other side, the first day of the year 2011.

May it bring good things our way.

I was just thinking this very thing, that each year we say the same thing. That we are glad that (whatever) year is over and are hopeful that the new one is better.

I do indeed hope that 2011 brings us better things. Enriches our lives, increases our wealth, brings us things we have always wanted and yet never got. It's all possible, on that first page. The entire year is there to be lived.

Good luck with yours.