Happy Birthday, my Son.
He is 31 years old today.
This photo is from 2017 and is of him and his future girlfriend. It still amazes me that they are making a life together in Michigan.
Good thing I saw them both a few weeks ago, though Covid made the idea of a major celebration impossible. It makes it easier for me to not see him on the day of his birth.
I know, I know, get used to it, Mother. :-)
My number 2 nephew has a 3 month old child!
I am so happy to see the family and how old the baby is getting already.
Social smile, holding his head up on his own.
It is just so cute and reminds me of raising my own.
Next great nephew is coming along toward the end of the year.
A busy year for my family.
I worked in a Tape Library for 8 years and in that time I erased hundreds...if not thousands of videotapes. It was part of my job to do so.
I didn't think much about it, until when I was ready to leave and knew that we had some shows that would be lost forever, if something was not done.
The reason was deteriorating 2" tape. I saved Hollywood Television Theater, "Steambath", due to that problem and I thank my engineer friend, who made the dub to 1" for me.
The fact that WNET has DVD's on Amazon and will sell them to you, is due to this fact. :-)
The attitude of the station I worked for, was going through a similar thought process as the BBC was, in THIS story.
I wanted no part of it and that was one of the reasons I left and moved on to Traffic.
I still cry a little thinking of what might be gone, forever.
I am glad that BBC did find some of their missing Doctor Who shows. It was a start at restitution.
You never know what you are going to see, when it's plant watering time.
I was lucky, I brought my cell phone with me, when I went outside.
It was stunning and worth the effort to capture.
Just over a week more and we change time.
That means sunset at 5PM.
Steely Dan 10-25-21:
Hippodrome Theatre, Baltimore, MD
The only comment I heard was that Donald was very happy to be back performing and it showed.
Set List:
Phantom Raiders
Night By Night
Bodhisattva
Hey Nineteen
Kid Charlemagne
Aja
Home At Last
Janie Runaway
Josie
Time Out of Mind
Dirty Work
Rikki
Let the Good Times Roll (Band Intros)
Peg
Pretzel Logic
Reelin' In the Years
My Old School
A Man Ain't Supposed to Cry (Walk Off)
Concert photo by Maria Byrne
It rained on Monday!
We are over-the-moon happy to see it.
It looks like we got just over a half inch, but when you get nothing, month after month, it is welcome.
I hear Northern California really got socked, which they need (though they don't need the mud slides.
Welcome end of the fire season (hopefully).
My Water Post For Today.
I show off Glacier Bay quite often, but the other day a woman was saying how much she wanted to go to Alaska and I could not resist showing off a photo of the Bay.
It is not the best photo, because it was raining that day, but I love the glass look of the water.
Also the blue color of the glacier itself.
I will not cruise again (at least not in the immediate future) but maybe someday...
I was out on Saturday shooting the sunset and saw our across the street neighbor has quite a set up in front of his house.
You can't see it in the photo, but the pumpkin's eyes turn in circles.
Very weird. :-)
Nice to have some real decorating this year.
Bring on Halloween!
My Husband saw this recipe a few months ago in one of those newspaper pull outs.
He wanted me to make it and finally I decided to do so.
It wanted 3 hot dogs and 3 eggs and that just seemed too many eggs for hot dogs and so I doubled the rest of the ingredients like the hot dogs, the corn dogs and cheese.
So here is a slightly different recipe.
6 Hot dogs sliced in half and then cut in 3 segments.
3 eggs beaten
3 cups of corn flakes crushed
2/3 cup parmesan cheese
Mix the corn flakes and cheese together. Dip the hot dogs in flour then dredge into the eggs.
Finally coat in the corn flakes and cheese. Place on a tray and cook in the oven at 350 degrees for at least 20 minutes.
You can add a bamboo stick if you want, but I did not.
I ended my garden for the 2021 season on Wednesday.
It has been getting colder overnight and I started heating the house on Monday.
All plants (minus the carrots I planted in mid-July) have been tossed and the dirt has been tossed, also.
They always say it is important to start with a fresh amount of dirt next growing season.
Sad to see them go, but happy I don't have much to water in the evening.
"Most people are familiar with the large clumps of lush, grass-like foliage and creamy white feathery plumes of pampas grass. Pampas grass (Cortaderia) is an attractive ornamental grass that is popular in many landscapes. While they’re extremely easy to grow, however, it’s important to know what you’re getting into before planting pampas grass around the home. Don’t be so quick to plant it simply because it looks good. It’s actually a very fast grower and can become quite large, anywhere from 5 and 10 feet (1.5-3 m.) high and wide, and even invasive." (From Gardening Know How website).
I found this lovely Pampas Grass in Jake Kuredjian County Park in Stevenson Ranch.
I personally would have loved to grow some in my yard, but the fact that it is invasive and can grow to 10 feet tall, turned me off to them.
They are beautiful though.
So nice and fluffy and they act like feathers, when the wind blows.
This is Pico Canyon.
It is home to the first commercially successful oil well in California, Pico #4.
It has a marker tree at the entrance to the canyon itself, that the Tataviam Indians used to find the asphaltum that flowed in the stream, coming out of the canyon.
My Husband used to work right there at a point in time, when he worked at Walmart in Stevenson Ranch.
I have wanted to take a photo of the formation itself, for decades and finally got to do so on Sunday.
A beautiful mountain, with so much history.
Back in 2002 a developer wanted to build houses in the Stevenson Ranch area of Santa Clarita.
One of the trees scheduled for destruction, was this one. A heritage tree that was over 400 years old.
A tree hugger, John Quigley, got involved and climbed into the tree and spent 72 days there, to try to save it.
It went viral and finally the developer agreed to move the tree to a park, to save it.
John Quigley was not happy that they were going to move it, but he hoped for the best and against all odds, the tree has not only survived, but thrived.
I have never visited it, but on a day when I had an hour to kill, I did so.
What got me the most upset is that there is no indication that this tree is Old Glory.
You can read an article about the move, HERE.
My Water Post For Today.
It turns up in the news every day. The United States busiest port. The Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro.
The City of Los Angeles annexed (in 1909) the port area via (basically) the future Harbor Freeway area.
Called "The Shoestring", it is 16 miles long so that the City is a contiguous body of land.
It is how we grew to what we are now and as a result, there are a huge amount of ships sitting outside that port.
Enjoy the harbor area from 2019, when there were less ships waiting to unload.
My Magic "Son" is off in South Carolina for a few months. He is part of a crew that is shooting a movie.
It is a big project and we have been worried that the IATSE strike that has been looming in the background, might come to pass.
Thankfully, Saturday word came out that a tentative agreement had been reached for the entire US.
It still needs to be ratified by the rank and file, but from what I can see, they got quite a bit.
More to come, if it is not accepted.
Go IATSE!
