A Day at the Beach in January

(Just a quick note:  If you are landed here because of a comment I left on your book blog, you might be more interested in my review blog, Carstairs Considers.  But you are very welcome to stick around here, too.)

At the end of January, we had some very nice weather.  We're talking mid-70's.  Yes, we can get that in Southern California in the winter, usually at least once, but it isn't the kind of thing we always have.  It's been mostly cool and raining the last couple of weeks, for example.

So I had to take advantage of that.  So I went down to the beach in Santa Monica.  I parked where I also do these days, and then walked along the beach.  I'd just set out to walk, but I wound up walking down to the Santa Monica pier.  It's been years since I was there, so I had some fun playing tourist and wandering around to see what I could see.

It was a quiet, relaxing day.  And the weather really was so wonderful.

Lunch with College Friends

About a month ago, I met up with a couple of friends from college for lunch.

It started because Brian is getting married this summer, and he asked John and I to be in the wedding.  He was about to move to be closer to his fiancee, so this was the only chance to hang out and see him before we go back for the wedding.

To my surprise, they both came up here.  In fact, we wound up not that far from my place.  I feel a little guilty about that, but neither one of them seem to mind.

We sat around and talked for several hours, sharing memories and catching up.  Yes, we talked a little about the wedding as well.  It was just a nice, pleasant afternoon.

February 19th's Pun

A three-legged dog walks into a frontier saloon, sidles up to the bar, and announces, “I’m looking for the man who shot my paw.”

Jury Duty 2024

(Just a quick note:  If you are landed here because of a comment I left on your book blog, you might be more interested in my review blog, Carstairs Considers.  But you are very welcome to stick around here, too.)

I had jury duty again the third week of January.

I'd had Federal jury duty in October of 2022, and I had to actually show up.  And it was in downtown LA, which wasn't fun.  This was back to LA County.  Fortunately, that meant I was going to be going to a more local courthouse.  Still not the one in down, but closer than downtown.

They'd originally called me for the week of Christmas.  Since I was out of town with my family for Christmas, I postponed.  I couldn't have showed up if called to show up.  But I wanted to get it over with, so I just postponed by a couple of weeks.

What I didn't like?  I couldn't call in until after 7 PM.

But I did pick the week of Martin Luther King weekend, so I only had to call in for four days instead of a full week.

And I never had to report.  It was so great every night hearing "You don't have to report tomorrow."

My boss was on call that week, too.  At the same court house.  She never had to show up either, but we were checking in with each other first thing in the morning each morning.

Hopefully, it will be several years before I have to go through that again in either location.

Master's University Winter Classic 5K - 2024

(Just a quick note:  If you are landed here because of a comment I left on your book blog, you might be more interested in my review blog, Carstairs Considers.  But you are very welcome to stick around here, too.)

Well, you can see how good a job I've been doing at keeping up with this blog this year.  So much for my once a week life updates, right?

Almost a month ago now, I took part in the Master's University Winter Classic 5K.  Last year, it was cold and threatening rain, with a little bit of sprinkles on us.  This year?  It was cold, but not nearly as cold.  But the sun was out.  Once we started running, I warmed up pretty quickly.  I finished in a little over 36 minutes (like 36:10 or something), which I was happy about.  I took a couple of weeks off from running in December because of my cough, so the last couple of weeks before the run were a struggle.  I took a couple of walk breaks, but did better than expect overall.  (And I generally walk at some point during my runs, even before I took the break in December.)

As always, I saw a couple of friends there, which isn't a surprise after attending school there and then my time working there.  However, it wasn't the friends I normally see.  Still, it was nice to say hi really fast to them.

February 4th's Pun

A rancher counted 196 head of cattle when they were out on the range, but when he rounded them up he had 200.

January 27th's Pun

“But why?” the man exclaimed to the vet when she insisted she had to put his dog down.  “Because he’s heavy,” the vet explained.

January 11th's Pun of the Week

I went to the butcher’s the other day, and I bet him fifty bucks that he couldn’t reach the meat on the top shelf.  He said, “No, the steaks are too high.”

Starting 2024

I finally did it!  I got all caught up.  I'm hoping now that I'm caught up to stay that way.  As part of that, I'm going to be using the beginnings of my Sunday/Monday posts over on Carstairs Considers over here, too.  I might pop in with other things as well.  We'll see.  But at least I want to keep that much on top of things here.

(And a reminder that if you landed here after I left a comment on your book blog, you probably want Carstairs Considers.)

I had a quiet New Year.  Church Sunday morning, and then a quiet day at home.  Yes, I stayed up until midnight.  Actually, I stayed up until about 1 AM.  There were some fireworks, but none of the pot banging and yelling that we often have.  I was awake in time to watch the Rose Parade live, too, which doesn't usually happen since it is so early here in California.  And you tell I'm not a morning person?

No, I haven't started undecorating from Christmas yet.  That was on my agenda for the weekend, but it just isn't going to happen.  Honestly, I think I'm going to struggle to get the two reviews written I need to write and the others edited.  All I really want to do is curl up and veg.

Let's see, what else?  We got the month closed at work without too much in the way of surprises.  It's nice that it wasn't fiscal year end this month.  As much as I had having to deal with that around Thanksgiving and then into December, it's nice that the December close is fairly quiet.

My cough is getting much better.  It's still there sometimes, but not nearly as bad as it was even a week ago.

My life group at church met Saturday morning to clean the church.  After that, I stopped at a local nursery and picked up some pansies for my planters.  Hopefully the wire I have in them know will keep the squirrels from digging them up, although I did see one sniffing around the box a couple of hours ago.

December 2023 - I Was Home for Christmas

(Just a quick note:  If you are landed here because of a comment I left on your book blog, you might be more interested in my review blog, Carstairs Considers.  But you are very welcome to stick around here, too.)

Naturally, I went north again for Christmas.  This time, the complication was my health.  I got what I thought was a mild cold, but developed into a low fever and cough.  The fever only lasted three days or so, but the cough is still hanging on, even now (as of when I'm tying this on New Year's Day).

But my family said to come on up, and I wasn't about to argue.  For one thing, I don't think I'm contagious.  And it's more annoying than anything else.  (If I had tested positive for Covid or the flu, it would have been different, but I was negative for both.)

And I had a great time.  I didn't have any repeats of the traffic drama on the way up, although it was sluggish on the drive back on the 26th.  Still nothing like it was going.

I was there for three full days.  And they were pretty chill.  We all went out looking at Christmas lights one night, which was great.  My brother had mapped out a plan of attack, and he did a great job leading up to some fun displays.  Sunday was Christmas Eve, which meant a morning and evening service this year instead of just the Christmas Eve evening service.  And I loved how they rearranged things for the evening service with us around the instruments and improvised stage in the middle.

Christmas Day, we were at my parents' all day.  My uncle and aunt came over for a while.  We opened presents and had a great meal.

As I said, it was chill.  Which was wonderful.

November 2023 - Thanksgiving

(Just a quick note:  If you are landed here because of a comment I left on your book blog, you might be more interested in my review blog, Carstairs Considers.  But you are very welcome to stick around here, too.)

In November, I went home for Thanksgiving like always, despite the traffic.

Seriously, I wish I had paid attention to a traffic report before I left because I got stuck in some of the worst traffic I've ever been in.  What should have taken me one hour took me give hours.  The traffic heading north the Wednesday before Thanksgiving can be bad/sluggish, but it's never that bad.  Once I got past the slow down, things were fine.

What I've heard is that a track carrying pipes lost it's load on the freeway.  Everything was cleared up by the time I got to it.

What's frustrating is, had I known, I could have easily avoided it.  There were a couple of alternatives I could have taken.  I just assumed things would be fine.

The bad part is that I missed seeing my friend and his family on the way up.  By the time I made it past the traffic, I just had to drive.  As it was, it was after midnight by the time I got home.

But the rest of the weekend was great.  My brother hosted as always, and his in-laws were visiting.  It was fun to see them.  Friday, we went to see my uncle and aunt plus my cousin and his family were down.  Saturday and Sunday were just quiet days.

Fortunately, I took Monday off so I could drive home that way.  I would not have bene happy having to fight traffic on the way back on Sunday.  But the traffic was much better on Monday.  I did drive through Fresno and see my friend and his wife, which was great.  I just missed seeing their kids.

October 2023 - Universal Studios

 My brother and his family were down in Orange County at the beginning of October to visit some family.  They were planning on one day in Universal Studios during that time, and invited me to join them.  At first, I didn't think it would work, but then I thought about it some more and decided to ask for the day off, which I got.

I'm so glad I went.

I hadn't been there sine 2007 or so, and I had been there most recently of everyone.  And we had a blast.  The Harry Potter world was fabulous, and the main attraction there was a ton of fun.  Super Nintendo World looked amazing as well, although we didn't like that ride quite as much.  The other rides were fun.  I feel like the backlot tour used to be better, but it was still fun.

And we had a great time together.  I think that was the most fun, just hanging out together in line.

September 2023 - Computer Issues of Some Kind

In September, I had a computer meltdown of some kind.  My laptop just shut down on my and it had to wait for the battery to drain itself to be able to turn it on again, a process that took several days.  Fortunately, I have my old laptops, so I was still able to have access to some stuff, although my old laptop is really, really slow.  And a friend at least helped me a little diagnosis the problem.

Both times it happened, I had plugged in my external hard drive to run a backup.  I started plugging it in after the computer had been on for a bit so it had time to warm up, and everything has been fine since then.

Until this last Sunday, when it did it again even though I thought I'd given it long enough to warm up.

I bought a new laptop, although I haven't even taken it out of the box yet.  I'm wondering if it is the laptop or the extern hard drive.  And wondering how I can even go about testing that out.  But I should try to figure it out sooner rather than later, I know.

Got to love technology.  That is, when it is working well.