A Small College Shrine

I don't have the Certificate yet, but I do have the frame for it.

I ordered one photo from my Graduation and when it arrived, I went to buy a frame to put it in. Since I wanted the two frames to match, I bought one for the Certificate, that I think will be coming soon. Hopefully, it will be an 8 X 10 frame, because that's what I bought.

I have a print of Sheldon Hall that hangs in my living room and so I decided to put the photo up there and the Certificate, too.

Yeah, pretty proud. Now to pay off that loan. :-)

The Kings Are On Top!

I had no doubt. The Kings won the Stanley Cup!

I am not a hockey fan, but I do care about the Kings. It is nice to see LA rally around them.

We were switching back and forth between commercials, last night and the game just went on and on. As did much of the playoff series. But as the Kings have proven time and time again, they don't give up!

Being a basic worrier that I will jinx them if I watch, we would just check in and then leave again. I just can't stand to watch something when it is so important. :-)

Glad they won, once again.

By the way, this photo was taken the other day, at North Hollywood Metro Station. As I said, we rally around our own.

EcoCar 2 Competition Ends

The EcoCar2 Competition is finally over. The awards ceremony lasted over 2 1/2 hours on Thursday evening. My son had told me the bad news a week ago, so I was not surprised when they didn't win a thing. I had actually been down this road before...last year, as a matter of fact.

The difference last year is that it was only year 2 and no car was in its final form. This time was the last time and having a car in competition that is not brought to the competition as designed, is a major no-no.

How did that happen? Well I know some of the story, but not all.

Basically they did not have the car mechanically finished until day 4. That was great that they did finally get it together, but they had another problem, the controls needed to be added. The controls are what would tell the car when to switch between the electric drive train, over to the E85 Gas drive train. Obviously, the controls do much more than that, but this is the main hang up. If it does not do the switching, you can't have both drive trains going.

So on Friday morning, they came to the heartbreaking decision that they had to disconnect the electrical system, that my son had worked so hard on. It was an 11th hour attempt to stay in the competition. They just barely passed inspection, with 5 minutes to go. So they were now capable of getting the car tested, but it could not win awards.

As it ended up, they would have won the fastest breaking (but they were only acknowledged, since they could not win the award for it.)

Out of 15 schools, they ended up 9th. About right in the middle. Considering all, they did OK. I was so worried they would be dead last.

I just feel so bad for my son, who spent an entire year wiring that car up.

One thought I have is: I wonder if they can finish the job, when they are back at home? Or will it always be just a half designed car?

On to EcoCar 3, which begins in September with a 2016 Chevy Camaro...with my son as Team Lead.

The Last Confession

My friend who traveled Across the Country with me, 35 years ago, is in town. We made last minute plans to see each other on Wednesday and she asked if I wanted to go to see a play at the Ahmanson Theater. It is called The Last Confession and stars David Suchet (who is best known as Hercule Poirot) as the lead character. Being we aired those shows with him back when KCET was part of PBS, I jumped at the chance.

The scope of the play is the time from shortly before the death of Pope Paul IV and the election of Pope John Paul I and then Pope John Paul II, just 33 days later. The play draws attention to the fact that there was never an autopsy to find out what caused the death of John Paul I. A heart attack was the stated cause, but the David Suchet character, believes it may have been foul play. No real cause was ever conclusively found and the mystery remains, to this day.

Pope John Paul I was a modern pope who wanted to bring about liberal change (very similar to what we are seeing today, with Pope Francis). Some Cardinals were not happy with this line of thought and so when they had to choose another Pope, just 33 days later, they went with someone more in line with traditional thinking...Pope John Paul II.

It was fascinating seeing something you have lived, placed in a very different light.

Magnificent job, Mr. Suchet.

Regina's Butter Biscuits

I monitor my station and so P. Allen Smith turns up every day. I personally would not watch the show, but since it is there, sometimes there are recipes that I care enough to try. This was one of them:

Regina's Butter Biscuits

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups buttermilk
1/4 lb. butter, salted
3/4 lb. margarine, salted
1/4 cup baking powder
4 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar

Instructions

In metal mixing bowl add flour, baking powder and sugar. Blend with wire whisk.

Cut margarine and butter into small cubes about 1/2 inch thick.

Using a pastry cutter or a fork combine butter and margarine with dry ingredients until mixture is mealy.

Add buttermilk and mix into a dough. Do not over mix, there should be visible pieces of butter and margarine, that is what makes these biscuits flaky.

Flour a work space and roll dough out to 3/4 inch thick, fold and roll again. Repeat this process two to three times until you have a smooth dough. The dough will be speckled with butter and margarine. Cut into rounds, whichever size you prefer. Regina suggests two inches in diameter. Not mentioned in this recipe, but shown on the program was the fact that she placed the biscuits into cupcake tins. (I may try that next time.)

Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Makes two dozen large or three dozen small biscuits.

Here It Comes Again - A Blogoversary

Here it is, once again. June 10, 2007 was my first post and so this makes today the beginning of my 8th year blogging.

A couple of links to the past, via other anniversaries. Here is last year's post and this other one is my 4th anniversary post. Both of them bring you into the past and on this day, I like that.

Well, the big news of the past year was leaving my home and family and going to school for a semester. I managed to survive that entire time and in spite of all the work I did, I managed to get a small blog post up each day. A major victory for me!
By the way it is up to 2,574 different posts.

I also created 2 new blogs, the infamous Steely Dan, Steely Dan blog that finally brought all my concert reviews together in one place and also gave me a place to put Steely Dan news, when I have it. It was my final project for one of my classes.

The third blog that I created was to hold all posts that I wrote for my final project in Integrated Media. It is the KCET 50th Anniversary blog. You can click the photo I posted up above and see the stats on all three blogs, if you care.

Where do I go with this blog, over the next 12 months. Well, I am waiting to see what direction my employer goes, as they choose a new President for KCET. I am sure that will have an effect on my work and workplace.

What do I hope to do with my Integrated Media Masters Certificate? I am personally open to anything that wants to come my way. I hope to at least take on some projects for people, to help them grow their business or personal life, via social media. We will see how that goes.

My son is finishing up EcoCar 2 and will soon begin EcoCar 3. I am sure that will end up being talked about in the future. He wants me to talk to his Communications team regarding Social Media and how they can use it to their advantage. I was quite surprised to be asked to do this and I am honored. I hope I can teach them something.

Makenna and my wonderful Hubby will continue to hold down the fort here at the Angel house and of course, if we can get past being in the poor house, we hope to travel at some time.

Bring on Year 8!

Minetto In The Spring

My Water Post For Today.

The bridge at Minetto is today's subject. If you remember, I posted one of my favorite Water Wednesday posts about this bridge. You can revisit it, HERE.

I was not sure I would have time to stop and visit my favorite bridge in the Oswego area, but on our way to the Torchlight Ceremony, I crossed a bridge in Fulton and drove down the other side of the river. When I got to Minetto, I parked the car and I am sure my Husband thought I was crazy. I got my photos and we continued with our evening.

So this is Minetto bridge in the Springtime. Not as dramatic as my Fall photo, but still beautiful.

This second photo is of a monument to their war dead and since I had not seen it, my last visit to the bridge, I include it today.

It had been raining most of the day and you can see that fact, in these photos.

Thankfully for me, the sun did come out at the end of the day and gave me a sunset. I showed you a few of those photos HERE.

Enjoy.

The California Zephyr - Part 2

This is part 2 of our trip back to California on the California Zephyr. Part 1 can be found HERE.

When last we had seen our intrepid travelers, they were buffalo watching at the north east corner of Colorado. Shortly thereafter, we crossed into Wyoming. This area of the state was just beautiful and I will have to update my memories of this state. I remember driving through it in 1974 with my family and it was just miles and miles of dead grass. Well, yes, there is grass (which was still alive at this point) but the big thing that made Wyoming so spectacular, were the rock outcropings. I couldn't stop watching the scenery going by our window. Look at this photo of the Table Rock Wyoming area. Doesn't it look like a painting? It was truly so beautiful.

As we found out from the staff, this area was where the original Transcontinental Railroad tracks were laid. There are still some right of way areas where you can see the old track relics. I did not see any, but we were pointed in the direction of a hill just to the south of us and told that is where some relics were. As we got closer to the Nevada area of the journey, we ended up traveling right on it, so I wasn't too upset that I couldn't see what the man was talking about on the loud speaker, the day before.

Night came as we crossed into Utah and so I totally missed Salt Lake City, The Great Salt Lake and just about everything Utah is known for. Oh well, I slept and that was good. So I wake up and we are in Nevada. This will be our last day on the train. Most of the day we will be traveling in California...but first up, Reno, Nevada. We actually were able to get off the train in Reno and so even though it was drizzling, we took a tiny walk around the platform. We were cautioned that since we were still running about 1 1/2 hours behind, to keep close to the train. A kind of interesting thing about Reno, is that it is bisected by the Truckee River. We would end up becoming close friends with the river, over the next 50 or so miles.

So it begins, we start to climb into the Sierras and follow the route of the infamous Donner Party. The trees were beautiful and so were the mountains themselves. There were things called Snow Sheds which are tunnels made of timbers that keep the tracks clear in large snowfalls. I actually happened to get a blury photo of one of them and my Husband explained what they were. It was definitely interesting to see. This photo is one of the better curves we traveled over and if you look close, you can see an Interstate 80 bridge above the train.

We finally broke through on the other side and began our descent into the town called Roseville. This was the last stop, before our station. Sacramento was not far now.

The big question on our mind was, will we make it before our connecting train left the station. I could just envision me and my Husband running between trains with all our luggage. Thankfully we had over an hour between trains, so we parked ourselves in the station and took turns looking around Downtown Sacramento. May I state for the record that even though I have been there multiple times, you can see the changes that have come to the City. I wish I had time to explore, because there is a lot of new stuff there. Was this from the days of the Governator? I have no idea.

So our hour passes and we get brought over to our next train, The San Joaquin. It passes stations like Stockton, Modesto, and Fresno.

In good news, the train brings us down the San Joaquin Valley to Bakersfield. In the bad news, the train brings us down to Bakersfield and then we have to board a bus, for our final connection to home. I have seen them stop at our train station at Newhall and so we are happy that we can get within 4 miles of our house, but sad that we need to do it by bus. Our train was running late, what a surprise! I don't think we have gotten to a station on time, this entire trip. Our son is waiting for us to let him know we are on the bus, so he did have a hint that we were running late. We board the bus and promptly fall asleep. It is almost 11 and past our bedtime. :-)

Thankfully, I wake up just in time to text my son that we are in Castaic. He drives to Newhall and gets there just before us. An easy "On Time" transfer.

We were home by just after midnight. We were totally exhausted and all of us just jumped into bed. The shower will just have to wait til morning. Unfortunately for me, I worked the next day. I had lots to do before the Memorial Day weekend and was glad I went, but would have loved a day or two to get my house and life back into shape.

I hope you enjoyed the journey.

In spite of the delays and things, I love train travel!

The California Zephyr - Part 1

Here we are, the intrepid travelers.

We flew over to Syracuse, NY for my Graduation from college.

We had decided that after all the things that we had to do in New York, we would take a leisurely journey back to our home and for the 4th time in our married life, we decided to pass through the wild west via the road less traveled. We were going to take Amtrak.

It was Saturday night and we drove over to Syracuse after we spent the day at my Oswego gradution. We decided to have dinner in route, at the Outback Steakhouse in Clay New York. A good choice, in my humble opinion. I had salmon and my Husband had steak.

Happily filled up, we got to the station and waited for the train, The Amtrak Lakeshore Limited, which ended up about a half hour late getting to us. No big deal at this point, because we have a 4 hour layover in Chicago.

We had decided since this trip was basically an overnight journey, we would suffer with the coach seating.

At this point I would like to state for the record that the coach seating truly sucks, for many reasons. Your fellow passengers, for one. Your less than stellar seats (my Husband's was broken) and they don't give you a blanket or a pillow. Probably a good thing, but I wish I had remembered this fact. No meals is another issue, but this time we were right next to the cafe car and got something to tide us over, so that we would be hungry when we got to Chicago.

So moving on from our accommodations, the morning broke in Cedar Point, Ohio. We saw half of Ohio (we missed Cleveland, which we had spent a few days in), but oh well, we had to sleep sometime. Indiana we got to see and I caught a few photos in Elkhart, including some Amish passengers, who happened to be getting on the train.

We continued to lose time along the way, but finally we arrived in the Chicago area about 1 1/2 hours late. I have no idea why and I don't really care, since as I said, we had time.

We stashed our luggage in the waiting area reserved for the passengers who have booked rooms on the train and off we went to have another Chicago adventure.

Our time in Chicago ended up being about 2 hours, but that did give us time to walk around the Chicago Loop a bit, right in the Willis (formally Sears) Tower area of town. It was Sunday at 11AM and we realized that the Downtown area restaurants don't care about tourists and so they are all closed. As we have found out in the past, Giordano's Pizza on Jackson Street is always open and so they got our business for the third time in 3 trips.

We had a nice leisurely lunch and then took a few more photos of the area. We shopped for more batteries for my camera and then returned to Union Station. It was a gorgeous day and from what I heard from a resident, we lucked out, big time.

Back at Union Station, we board our train The California Zephyr and check out our Roomette. It is just fine, this trip. We are just feet from the Dining car and so we had no trouble getting to the car, when they called us for our meals. The service was excellent and much appreciated by us.

Something that the staff working on the train had no control over, was the fact that the connection between cars came off, almost immediately. We heard that someone had to walk down the track and get the part that had fallen off. They reconnected the air hose and off we went again. Unfortunately for us, about an hour late. We only have a two and a half hour window between our trains in Sacramento, so this is already a slightly stressful situation for us.

We traveled through Illinois, Iowa and then night falls. We miss most of Nebraska (a new state for me) but I do watch the last hour of the state, before we cross over into Colorado. I had never seen the eastern side of Colorado and things were quite flat and nice looking. We cross into Denver and then pull into the new Union Station. It is quite beautiful and will be even better, when they finish it. One of the people who boarded the train in Denver, informed us that there is nothing much open for business in the station yet.

They took a sleeper car off our train and then added this private car onto the end of our train. Click the photo, to see the car better. I love the Chessie the cat symbol in the back of the C and O car.

We were running behind and we now had to make a detour up to Wyoming, because of a rock slide up ahead. We had been warned about it and the crew told us that they do it all the time and it is actually a shorter route. So off we go up to Wyoming.

Along the way, we saw these buffalo and I was just totally excited to see an animal I had never seen before. It was The WEST! Woot!

Another passenger mentioned that these buffalo are probably bred for meat and are not wild buffalo, but I like to think they are wild.

Note, there was snow on the ground occasionally.

Part 2 has the conclusion of our journey.

Shave And A Haircut - Two Bits

If my son saw this photo posted on my blog, he would probably kill me...but since he is in Detroit, no worries there. :-)

I was looking for a photo from the summer of 1994. Early June to be exact. We were down in Florida on vacation and our friends from Phoenix stayed with us in our Timeshare (don't ever purchase a timeshare, seriously a word to the wise).

So this photo was right around the one I found and so I figure it for late Spring of 1994. My son had obviously been watching his father shave and decided to give it a try. He did a good job, too.

I personally think the photo is priceless.

Anislie At Two & A Half

Our friend, who we visited while in New York City, has a young daughter. She is coming up on her 3rd Birthday soon, but even though we have met her twice, this is the first time we really got to interact with her. The place where we spent the most time, was in the playground at Fort Totten.

The first photo is of the two guys watching the goings on and Shawn taking Ainslie onto his lap, for a quick photo op. Trust me, minus eating her lunch and needing a diaper change, she was not sitting around.

Instead, what she did was climb absolutely everything. I thought she would stick with the little kids area, but nooooo!

She gave it a once over and then ran over to the big kids area of the playground. This second photo is taken on that jungle gym. The height of the jungle gym was well beyond what I could reach, let alone see. This meant that when she would get up there, I would follow her around (from the ground) and try to keep her out of trouble. Easier thought of then carried out, but I did my best.

I did manage to keep her off one or two climbing ladders, when it was totally obvious that her little legs were just NOT going to be able to make it happen. Anything else, was fair game to her. I think she takes after her mother, the dancer. :-)

This final photo was taken during our walk. She is eating strawberries and when I decided to try to get a photo of her, this is the look I got. I was totally laughing when I saw the photo.

She has the haughty look of a movie star down pat already and she is only 2 1/2. It amazed and pleased me to see her in her various moods.

I watched her father grow up and now I am honored to see his daughter do the same.

Magic Mountain Is Closing Colossus In August

Our local amusement park is Six Flags Magic Mountain. Before the trees matured in our development, we used to be able to see the park from the front of our house. That is how close it is to us...maybe 5 miles as the crow flies. The park has been here since before we moved up to Santa Clarita, 1971 to be exact. In interesting trivia, our friend from Phoenix worked there, back in the beginning.

For the most part, rides do come and go, but the one that has withstood the test of time, has been the wooden roller coaster that dominates the park...Colossus!

It opened in 1978 and minus the times that they run the cars backward, it has basically stayed the same. I have rode the coaster a number of times and the feel of and old wooden coaster is a totally different experience, than the metal ones.

The big announcement today says that as of mid August, Colossus will be no more. Please click the story and then play the video of the ride, which is embedded in the story. If you have ever been on Colossus, it will bring back memories. I know it did to me.

It is a truly sad day here in the Angel house.

Fort Totten, New York

Fort Totten dates back to the Civil War. Part of a pair of Forts (with batteries) that were on either side of the entrance to the East River, from the much wider Long Island Sound. Fort Schuyler is located in the Bronx, on Throggs Neck. (If you wondered, I learned that the area is called Throggs Neck and the Bridge is called Throgs Neck. Robert Moses shortened it, so the name fit on the road signs.)

The fort was decommissioned and a large part of it is now a park that is owned by the City of New York.

We took a walk all around the property, which reminded me a lot of my old college campus, Nassau Community College. You had a quad area (known as the parade grounds) with housing surrounding it.

One of the buildings is now occupied by the Bayside Historical Society and so it has been completely restored.

I had to take a photo of it, because it was so wonderful looking. What I didn't realize, until I was doing the research on the property, is the fact that this building is the symbol of the Army Corps of Engineers! Click the link to see the symbol of the Corps.

My son has had their patch on his cammies (BDU's) for years now. So that was a nice piece of serendipity and I am glad I took the photo.

I liked this last building (which was right at the entrance to the property) because it had all those lovely tulips planted in front of it. A lovely start to our tour of the property. There was a non-denominational Church down the street, but they were filming there and so we could not poke our heads into it, to check it out. There were also restored buildings for the Fire Department, Coast Guard and other things.

Being we are right across from Throggs Neck, New York, the Throgs Neck Bridge dominated every view we had in Fort Totten.

After we finished our walk around the park, we stopped at a playground and let our friend's daughter play for a bit (photos of her, will come another day). A happy end to a wonderful interlude. We learned a lot and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

So we got to Oswego late, who cares. :-)

Lake Ontario In The Spring

My Water Post For Today.

You knew that Lake Ontario would take center stage, when I finally got my photos uploaded onto my computer and here are two of them. They were both taken on the Friday evening before the Torchlight Ceremony.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the sun was still fairly high up in the sky, when we were doing our photographing and so it was a challenge to get decent photos...but I think I met the challenge well.

This first photo was taken looking into the sun. I used a tree to shield the sun a bit and I thought the waves and water came out wonderful.

This second photo was taken by looking away from the sun and so everything around me, all turned golden. I love how the leaves on the trees and the top of the waves all carry that golden hue. It also made the water a more turquoise color, then in the first photo.

The photos were taken within minutes of each other, the only difference was the direction the sun was.

I am proud of both of them and I hope you enjoy.

Senior Design Ends And Now Off To Michigan

Things have been gearing up here in the angel house. My son is not only at the end of his semester (actually his quarter of 10 weeks), he is going off to Michigan to deal with the final competition for EcoCar2. To compensate for the fact that many of the students will be in Michigan, the teacher had a final presentation day for the Senior Design team. Senior Design, in the Engineering area of college, is sort of like what a Capstone presentation is to the rest of college students. Being I have no real idea about Capstones, here is something I found on the Internet.

"In higher education, capstone courses, also known as senior seminars, offer undergraduate students nearing graduation the opportunity to summarize, evaluate, and integrate some or all of their college experience. The First National Survey of Senior Seminars and Capstone Courses conducted in 1999 suggested that these courses place the highest priority on culminating learning in the academic major. Enrollments in sections of senior seminars and capstone courses are most often kept at fewer than thirty students. These courses are generally treated as academic major or core requirements, most are at least one academic term in length, and most require a major project or presentation."

My son, though not quite a Senior, has used his experience in EcoCar2, as his Senior Design project. I knew he was on a team for that, since he was the one who seemed to be getting the other students to submit their parts of the project, in a timely fashion. A good thing for him to learn, managing a team and getting work assembled, under deadlines.

So he sends a photo to my Husband and I on Friday afternoon. It is some sort of award that was given to the top 5 students in Senior Design (as chosen by their peers). My son was one of the 5. I was impressed and thankful.

Now, he is in Milford, Michigan, to see what he can do for EcoCar2.

Things are finally coming together for him.