Monday, May 9, 2011

Backyard Fever

Monday: (05/09) Lou make French toast with sausage for breakfast. We enjoyed it in the back yard. I was busy cleaning leaves from the back yard and moving some plants around. For lunch we went to Costco. We picked up a few things after lunch. Why does it cost so much to leave a discount store? A little rest and a little more yard work finished the day. Lou fixed couscous with salmon and peas for dinner.

Tuesday:
(05/10) Today I treated my backyard fever the easy way. I headed up to San Francisco for the day and evening. I had a computer club meeting and spent much of the rest of the day there as well. It's been so cool and cold lately here in Palo Alto that I had to retire my short pants, again. I took my heavy shirt up to San Francisco as well. And this is almost summer?
I took the Caltrain up. I had some dim sum for lunch in Chinatown. and a slice of pizza in North Beach (actually 3 blocks from each other. I took a good walk about town ending up back at my meeting site.
The meeting at Adobe's offices there in SF was a about using Google's App Engine with Flex applications. In other words, about cloud computing. I haven't been to any meetings for several months and wanted to learn something. Very informative but probably not good for my interests. Of course they had some good pizza for dinner at the meeting. I walked the couple of blocks from the meeting to the train station and returned home by 11pm.

Wednesday: (05/11) Lou baked some scones for breakfast.

TSA Meeting Attendees
I had a meeting this morning with my Traffic Signal Association. I get to keep up a little on new traffic signal products by attending the meeting. I learned all about vehicle tracking for travel time studies using Bluetooth devices like cell phones. Neat new use of technology. I also learned all about new and upcoming adaptive pedestrian technologies. Now I know more about stuff I no longer need to know. Nice to visit with old friends.

For lunch I had the usual chow fun noodles and an avocado smoothie. I tinkered around updating the drivers on my big laptop. For dinner we had leftover BBQ ribs, baked potatoes or sweet potatoes of choice and a green salad. Lou was busy with Courtney with a vet visit for Spunky the kitten.

Thursday: (05/12) Ham, eggs, and home fried potatoes for breakfast. Today was house cleaning day. I was busy in my study. Dawn and Lou worked on Dawn's room. Dinner was leftover soup and oven bread.

Bol Park Sign Bol Park Bike Path
We did enjoy a walk at Bol Park nearby. The park is famous for it's donkeys, one of which was the inspiration for Shrek's donkey.

Spunky The Kitten
We also paid a visit to Courtney's to visit Spunky the kitten.

Friday: (05/13) Lou fixed Bacon, eggs, and home fried potatoes for breakfast. She took Dawn to a doctors appoint and then they played in San Jose. For lunch they stopped at the house of Pizza. I rode the bus down latter and stopped at McDonald's for a chipolata wrap for lunch. Dawn's house phone wasn't working so I was down to fix it. Turns out that ATT evidently has a problem because there is no dial tone. Also, someone also messed with the wiring so even when we get the dial tone I'll still have to straighten out the wiring. We all went to our friends Connie and Terry's house for dinner. Lou catered artichoke chicken and brown rice. After dinner we went over to San Jose State university to the Kaucher/Mitchell Event. They present awards for the best story telling and oral interpretation. There were some excellent participants this year. Dawn was a participant several years ago.

Saturday: (05/14) Lou and I went to Subway sandwich shop for breakfast. Lou and Dawn were off early to the library book sale and rummage sales. I tinkered with the drip watering system. For some reason it always needs reconfiguration when the plants return from the green house. Lunch was leftover pizza. Lou made tofu and mushroom salads for dinner. After dinner we went out to a Bluegrass concert. We won a couple of tickets and  bought another and we all enjoyed the David Grisman Bluegrass Experience. If you listen to public radio you probably heard his music before. He did the theme to the Car Talk show on NPR. Great music. All five musicians were outstanding in their own right. It started raining just before the end of the show and was doing pretty good and wetting things.

Sunday: (05/15) I had considered going up to San Francisco to see the Bay To Breakers Race. I got as far as setting the alarm. I looked outside at 0430 to see what the weather was like and it was still fully overcast and the ground was wet. I decided it might not be a great day to watch a parade or I was just to lazy to get up and didn't get up to catch the 05:46 train that would make the 7am start of the race. Those racers sure start their days early.

I fixed bacon eggs and potatoes for breakfast. I spent some time out in the greenhouse plucking and pruning plants and repotting some. I made a run to Home Depot to get some steel to make the rock guard for th RV. Lou was busy doing the wash. Lunch was Swedish meat balls form Ikea with baked potatoes, gravy and some lingonberry compote. I worked at the computer in the afternoon. It drizzled much of the day, not much but the lawn liked it. Dinner was leftover pizza.

Monday: (05/16) Lou's homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast. I fought with Ebay to get it to let me login to place an order for Lou's replacement Roomba batteries. Either the way one logs in or their idea of what my account username and password are has changed from what I used just a month ago. Moreover their method of recovering a passwod has to be the worst example online. It just said my email had an account and wouldn't let me get a new password sent to it. The end result is I have a new account though I won't be in a hurry to use it.

Of course that wasn't enough to make a bad day. Our tenant in San Jose called to complain about a water leak of some sort in the front yard so I was off to take a look. Turned out to be a bad water main valve. It needs to be replaced but I replaced the valve stem winding for now. I also was given a small piece of rain gutter that had come off. It reattached easily. Easily, that is, after I remove about half the lemon tree below it.

On the way by, I also stopped by Big O Tires and checked on alignment capabilities and cost and jeep tires prices. I stopped for lunch at Hometown buffet.

Dawn was busy with another job interview in Redwood City and Lou took her and got some shopping time as well.

Tuesday: (05/17) Not an exciting day. I worked in the office all day doing some cleanup. Lou took Dawn to the dentist and they played in San Jose the rest of the day. Cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Ham sandwich for lunch. Lou's slow cooked roast beef with baked potatoes and broccoli.

Wednesday: (05/18) I made some of my famous breakfast potatoes with red and yellow peppers, onions, and mushrooms served with eggs and sausage. I worked on the computer all day. Ham sandwiches for lunch. Leftovers for dinner.

Thursday: (05/19) Leftovers for breakfast. I had breakfast potatoes and a sausage and Lou had pot roast and potatoes. The neighbor having the house spray painted today so I moved the RV out of its home in the driveway. I was busy all day working on the computer. Lou was busy organizing and cleaning the house. In addition to collecting sewing machines, Lou also collects Roomba vacuum robots. She needed new batteries so I ordered some online a couple of days ago and they arrived today. Now they have some zip. Lunch was unusual, chocolate fondue with fruit and cheese. For dinner we went to the New Tung Kee noodle house for chow fun noodles and avocado smoothies.

Friday: (05/20) No breakfast for me and Lou had cereal. I had a doctors appointment this morning. After the appointment Lou and I went to lunch at the Country Inn in Cupertino. I had my usual chicken fried steak with Swedish pancakes. Lou had Swedish pancakes. The pancakes are extremely good. We relaxed the rest of the day. Nice way to finish a week. Dinner was Lou's lima beans and ham.

Saturday: (05/21) A day to relax and play on the computer. Steak and eggs for breakfast. Beef stroganoff for dinner.

Sunday: (05/22) Strayberry waffles with sausage for breakfast. Another nice day. I'm still relaxing. We did go over to the IKEA store to take a walk and look around. I want to rework my computer desk in the study so we looked over their displays. Now that monitors are flat, the old adjustable computer desk i have is much deeper than needed and the room will open up more if it shrinks. since it sits near the doorway. We had lunch nearby at the Mi Pueblo market. Lou  had a torta and I had a burrito. Sauerbraten for dinner

Monday: (05/23) Leftovers of choice for breakfast. We had an appointment with ATT to fix Dawn's phone. It had a tight window, sometime between 9am and 7:30 pm. That didn't make it easy since Lou and i needed to drive down to be there and it takes an hour to get there. About noon we headed down and met Dawn for lunch. Lunch was burritos in downtown San Jose at La Victoria's. I had a chilli relleno burrito while lou and Dawn shared a carnitas burrito. All very good. There red sauce is excellent. After lunch I went over to Dawn's and started replacing a holy screen on the front door. I had just finished that when ATT called and ewas there in 5 minutes. It took all of five minutes for the tech to reconnect the wires to the service box and give us a dial tone. With that, he was off. Then i started to work repairing all the damage the ATT Internet tech had caused when he hooked up the other tennents DSL line and cut off the wires to Dawn's line. About two feet of cable was missing so I restored things to working order and all was well again. I really hate letting service techs fix things because this always to be the result. More leftovers for dinner.

Tuesday: (05/24) Lou made strawberry waffles and sausage for breakfast. I stopped in at Big O and got the new tires for the jeep and the front end aligned. That progressed to getting the rear brakes rebuilt and taking all afternoon. When I finally got home I had a late lunch of Lou's Chinese chicken salad. Lou and Dawn went to a movie and I dropped by Fry's electronics. Haven't been there in months and my there are lots of new toys to be seen. Lou made chow mein for dinner.

Wednesday: (05/25) Somehow I managed to strain my back working on the computer today. Moving tons of dirt and concrete doesn't bother it but pushing a key on the keyboard does? Lou made an omelet for breakfast. Lunch was banana pudding. Dinner was tofu stir fry. My greatest effort today was taking old toad (Volvo) in for an oil change.




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