After the scan Lou and I stopped by the Country Inn restaurant in Cupertino for breakfast. They make the best omlette souffle and pancakes. It's part of the remains of the old Uncle John's pancake chain that was pretty big 35 years ago here in the west. This small local chain of Country Inn's is owned by one of the former partners of that chain and fortunately the recipes survived.
And now, back to the brick laying. Dawn was off to San Jose about noon. She has a History club meeting.
Tuesday: (09/23) Lou was off to San Jose before I got up. She has her doll classes today and tomorrow. Dawn is working an internship for the City of San Jose archiving a bunch of records.
Breakfast of some of Lou's leftover Sunday potatoes. I then started on the bricks. Unfortunately I didn't get the grade correct so I removed half of what I laid yesterday and regraded then finished laying the rest. I'll do the special pieces on the edge tomorrow.
Dinner was some nachos from our local taqueria.
Wednesday: (09/24) Breakfast was more leftover Lou potatoes from Sunday's breakfast which I changed into corned beef hash for today's breakfast. Fortunately, that stretched it to make breakfast for tomorrow as well. As I'm trying to decide what I'll be doing today, I discovered that I was already late. I intended to attend the Northern California Facilities Expo in Santa Clara today. This is a show for facility (building) maintenance folks. I enjoy seeing whats going on even if I'm no longer involved it such work. I was for 20 years. I wanted to take a tor of the convention center facility but it was already underway. oops. My next item was a session on solar systems. It wasn't too interesting. Since I was out in Santa Clara I stopped by the Micro Center store, a nice technology store, to see what's new. I managed to leave empty handed.
On the way home I picked up lunch at the Hong Kong bakery in Mountain View. I then returned home to work.
I finished the bricks by cutting and filling the odd shaped bricks along the edges then grouted the gaps. I ran out of grout before finishing, darn.The bricks were laid against each other without grout. They were originally connected with 3/4 inch grout lines. They are also now set to a better grade but note all the different levels they needed to meet. That was fun. Enough fun for now.
I then had a over pressure drain pipe to install on the water heater but my torch was bad so off to the hardware store. I stopped for dinner at Chipolte's Mexican grill for a carnitas bowl.
When I returned just as it was getting dark, I finished the pipe and then finished the grouting. Done. The yard is now pretty much back to normal. Now to rebuild the green house and build a shop all before winter comes.
Normally Lou and Dawn would have returned this evening but Dawn has an appointment for Thursday and another on Friday so their both staying there.
Thursday: (09/25) I don't want to make this a habit, really, I don't, but I got up early via the alarm so I could be on the road by 7:30, in the morning! I wanted to go on the tour of the Santa Clara Convention Center facility offered as one of the sessions at the Northern California Plant Engineering show. I missed it yesterday. Breakfast today was the rest of the corned beef hash i made yesterday and therefore the last of Lou's potatoes from Sunday's breakfast. Sort of like Mulligan stew? Today, I made it to the tour. It was very informative. Running a event center like this looks like a lot of work.
I also attended another session on solar systems and then headed on down to San Jose. Dawn's network was having problems so I went down and fixed it then Lou Dawn and I went to lunch at Super Taqueria. I then returned home, for a nap. Getting up early, like before 8:30, is a strain for me. I retired for a reason. I used to get up about 5:30 to get to work by 6:30 then leave work, if it was an easy day, by 6pm. No more!
Lou and Dawn attended a writers lecture at SJSU and then returned home late.
Friday: (09/26) Today was a play day. We enjoyed tea in the back yard, cleaned up and walked down to the bus stop. We bought day passes and headed on down the road to Mountain View for two reasons. We can catch the light rail there and we enjoy breakfast at the Hong Kong bakery on occasion. We rode the trolley down to the Great Mall in Milpitas, a former Ford Motor Company assembly plant. It's a big discount mall, probably the biggest. They also had one of the traveling RV dealer shows there. Lou and I strolled through many of the RV's seeing nothing of interest, mostly junk. We did talk a lot with one of the salesmen there and got a good glimpse of a full timers life. He and his wife do these kind of RV sales gigs and then see the area nearby on long weekends. It sounds like this is a common source of the sales people at these kind of shows, almost retired full timers.
We then met Dawn for tea at the food court. It's always interesting people watching. We then did our examination of the mall stores. When we tired of the Great Mall we hopped on the trolley again and head down into San Jose to the end of the line on our excursion. We then stopped a a strip mall for dinner and shopping. As it turns out i was the big spender of the day making the only purchase of the day. I found two pairs of shorts of the style I like. The total cost, $3 for the two. This wasn't a thrift store purchase of used items, they were new.
Near 8pm we headed toward home. It takes about 1.5 hours to get back. While we were waiting for a bus at the trolley station we had a nice conversation with a student from SJSU that lives at home up here in Los Altos, about a 1 hour trolley trip. He only has to go down three times a week. Interestingly, he's a member of a fraternity near Dawn's apartment there.
It was a long day but fun.
Saturday: (09/27) Lou and Dawn and our neighbor Malie were off to the garage and rummage sales of the week as there first effort. When they returned, breakfast was leftovers. I started by baking an apple pie and some tarts. The rest of the day we all did our own things tinkering and crafting.
Lou fixed stuffed bell peppers for dinner.
Sunday: (09/28) My project for the day was to clean up. I started with a trip to the dump getting rid of another load of dirt and debris.
Next project was to clean Lou's car up, which I've been using for the dump runs. it's the older car so gets the tough jobs. I vacuumed then washed her car, then my car. My final project, and quite a big one was to wash the RV. Wow did it get dirty sitting around these past few months. I did end up doing a little pruning of the tree that's been attacking the RV. Some of the spouts were three feet long and would have gone through the RV's walls if they could. All this cleaning is needed because we plan on actually leaving in the RV for a few days later in the week. Still don't know if it's going North or South?
Lou and Dawn tinkered on crafts, cleaned house, did laundry and cooked.
Dinner was steak and Lou's bleu cheese and bacon potato salad.
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