March 9, 2026 · 23:27

War Board Review

Back in June, when we were really ramping up the house hunting for our Forever Home and going through Zillow listings by the hundreds, I ended up with what I called my “War Board.” I’ve always had a fondness for these magnetic, white, dry erase boards that you can write on or use colorful little magnets to attach printouts and pictures and documents to.

The War Board was one of these, about 26″ by 40″, with documents for the ‘top twelve’ current Victor Valley listings that we were researching. Some of them we had looked at in person, some we had just driven by, all of them had been researched for hours and hours by me, looking online at their neighborhoods, where stores were located, where the post office and municipal buildings and fire stations were, where the flooding hazards were, and on and on and on. Then I would save the Zillow listing, add lists of notes, pros and cons, print them out, rank them #01 to #12, and put them up on the board so we could look at them all. See the big picture! Take in the gestalt! Leave ourselves open for insight and inspiration!

Now, seven and a half months after we moved in here, I finally found the white boards and was taking time tonight to mount them above my desk in my office.

It was odd, really odd. Looking at this I was transported back in my head to the mindspace of last May and June (go look up some of those daily posts from late June 2025) and it was overlaid with my current mindstate, which has changed considerably since I see many of these areas and streets every time I go out. It was like seeing some sort of mental double exposure where the two images are close enough to being the same so that they do line up, but not perfectly, and in weird, warped, and distorted ways.

The first thing I noticed was that the house we fell in love with, bought, and is now our beloved Forever Home isn’t on here at all. I remember that happening – we had several places we REALLY wanted to see in person after having just seen all of the online information, but they weren’t having open houses. A couple we were seriously thinking about making an offer on if we didn’t hit any red flags when we saw them in person, but figured we might have to make offers on two or three before we got an offer accepted. The weekend at the end of June when we came up to the area to look at houses, two that we REALLY wanted had just gotten offers by other folks accepted before we could look at them, which was discouraging. (One is just a couple blocks away and we drive by it regularly.) The weekend we came up there were just a small handful of open houses, including the house we bought, but it had several things that I was looking at as yellow flags, and I wasn’t hopeful at all.

The other thing is that I remember looking at so many of these houses up in Apple Valley, about ten miles away, and remembering how much I was focused on that area and not where we ended up. That’s especially notable since I know how much we both enjoy the area where we are, now that we’re here. I’m sure the Apple Valley areas would have been very nice as well, but we’re honestly extremely glad that we ended up down in the Hesperia/Oak Hills area. (We’re within the Hesperia city limits by about 200 yards, and Oak Hills is the unincorporated area surrounding us, but the Post Office and the Assessor and Tax Collector all say we’re in Oak Hills, so okey dokey!)

The War Board contents have been disassembled and filed while the board itself has been mounted, to be used on the next tasks. It’s like that board the detectives have with all of the pictures of the suspects and witnesses, and bits of red yarn or string connecting one to another, looking for patterns or connections, but now the murder’s been solved, so we move on.

I also went back and re-read all of the posts and looked at all of the pictures from last June (house hunting) and July (escrow and moving) – how did I not just give up, curl into a ball, and die? I swear I’ve got PTSD tonight just from re-reading all of that.

I guess you just do what you have to do!

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March 8, 2026 · 23:48

Proof Of Life – March 8th

Insert standard semi-annual rant about how freakin’ stupid Daylight Savings Time is and how much I despise it.

Critters.

We of course have these squirrels (three, it seems) and tons of birds (finches, sparrows, scrub jays, hummingbirds, crows, owls, hawks). I’ve seen fence lizards three or four times in seven-plus months so I know they’re here, but we don’t have nearly as many as we had back in West Hills, which I find very surprising.

Rumored to be around (the neighbors have told us they’ve seen them, or I’ve heard them, or some local agency has pictures of them) but not yet seen are rabbits, coyotes (I hear them sounding off every few days), and bald eagles. The bald eagles would be spectacular to see! The Big Bear nest is only twenty-two miles away, up a couple thousand feet of elevation, so it’s not unreasonable to think there are more around.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there are the odd deer, elk, bobcat, or even a bear or two out there, but probably much more likely to see them up in the mountains or at least NEXT TO the mountains. We’re three or four miles away, out on the valley floor, so the odds are against us.

I am surprised we don’t see more feral or neighborhood cats. We’ve seen the security cameras on the back porch turn on in the middle of the night a few times due to cats wandering around, but I would have bet on it happening more often than it does.

And bats! We should see more bats, particularly around sunset. I’ve seen them maybe twice – should be more.

I’ll keep my eyes open.

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March 7, 2026 · 22:48

Mid-Month Shennanigans Set Into Motion

We’ve talked about what we might do, but denial isn’t just a river in Egypt so it was all talk so far. Now it was time to put on my big boy pants, push the button, book the days off work, book the hotel room, buy the tickets. Done. Other necessary steps on the schedule will be more loosey goosey on thee timeline in about eight or nine days. Buckle up!

Timing is everything.

By the way, I’ve been meaning to apologize for the picture in the February 28th post. I wrote and posted that post and took that picture all on my iPhone and the formatting is different than when it’s done on my computer. I was also playing around with the cut & paste & save functions of pictures on the new iPhone, and between one thing and the other the posts on social media came out with a MONSTROUSLY HUGE HEAD like I was the Great & Powerful OZ! I am not Great, Powerful, or Oz.

Hopefully the weird photo above will be normal-sized horrible and not IN-YOUR-FACE-SUCKA!!! horrible. If not, I apologize in advance. No one should have to be exposed to that without prior warning.

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March 6, 2026 · 23:45

Barstow DMV

One of the things that’s really starting to harsh my mellow about the upcoming milestone birthday is all of the freaking paperwork. I’m hitting the age where taking my Social Security payments is mandatory, and all of that has taken hours of filling out forms. And after decades of just renewing my driver’s license online or by mail (I have a nearly spotless driving record and no accidents), not I have to show up in the flesh to prove I’m alive, take an eye exam, and get a new picture taken.

Going into any California DMV office and simply getting in line is an excellent way to spend all day there, so I tried to make an appointment, as they encourange you to do. Except that all of the offices near hear had their earliest open appointments in mid-April or even early May, which won’t work with my birthday in mid-March. Rather than just accept my fate of a full day wasted in boredom Hell, it occurred to me that I could look for other DMV offices further out of the Los Angeles area. Hesperia’s sort of on the edge of the “LA Metro area” – what’s the next step out?

Barstow. (“Jewel of the Desert” my ass!!)

It’s an interesting shift in perspective. I don’t think that I’ve EVER thought of Barstow as anything other than a spot on the I-15 about halfway between LA and Las Vegas or LA and Lake Havasu, a spot you zoomed through at 70+ mph unless of course you had to pull off a block or two for gas, food, or a bio break. But now, as Hesperia and Victor Valley (Hesperia + Apple Valley + Victorville) residents, Barstow is a neighbor, just a quick half hour away. Where before the mental picture was of an endless ribbon of concrete through the barren desert to get from the Cajon Pass to Barstow to Baker to Las Vegas, all looking the same, rocks, tumbleweeds, mountains, and rattlesnakes, now it’s just ten miles through neighborhoods we drive through all the time, then another fifteen or so miles through desert just like the landscape outside our yard, then you’re in the outskirts of Barstow and back to “civiliztion” with outlet malls, McDonalds, Starbucks, gas stations, and stucco jungle neighborhoods of houses carved out of the sand.

It was definitely weird seeing the difference in viewpoint.

The DMV was…the DMV. The stereotypes, memes, and jokes (sloths, anyone?) didn’t spring out of a vacuum. I will say that the four DMV staff that I interacted with were all pleasant, efficient, and friendly, and we got things done quickly once I got to their windows. The system (which isn’t their fault!) to get me TO their windows is totally fucked, and in between the small handful of two minute interactions were twenty and forty minute exercises in wanting to claw my eyeballs out just to dispell the boredom and ennui.

But it’s done.

Another task checked off, and another government agency giving me permission to be older than I was. Seven decades of living to satisfy the bureaucracies just for the sake of satisfying the bureaucracies.

Joy.

 

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March 5, 2026 · 23:08

Red Dinner

My “red dinner” tonight, not to be confused with “The Red Wedding,” which I might still be traumatized by.

Sheer coincidence, just a small variety of stuff that I grabbed quickly since I was busy all evening, and I realized as I was sitting down that everything was red. (Except for that one, odd radish – the result of shopping for super fresh fruits and veggies at the farmers’ market again.)

One unexpected observation that I’ll pass along – eating all of the radishes first and having that zesty ZING! going off on my tongue and then going to the watermelon next gave me a MOST unusual taste sensation. I don’t recall ever having done that combination in that order before, but the sensation was distinct and powerful. Not unpleasant at all, but it very much caught me off guard. So hit the farmers’ market, radishes, watermelon, in that order, and see if YOU get that rush!

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Filed under Health, Paul, Photography

March 4, 2026 · 23:22

Has The Moon Risen? Is It Too Cloudy To See?

Both questions answered quickly as the timing was perfect, about twenty minutes after moonrise.

No windswept moors or hounds, just dusty desert and coyotes.

And owls. There were a couple hooting back and forth out there, very cool.

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Weather

March 3, 2026 · 23:37

Cherry-Plum Blossoms

It’s gotten warm for a few days and we see trees starting to bud and flower all over town. Nothing yet from the pear and apple trees in our back yard (I’m keeping an eye on them!) but in just 48 hours or so the neighbor’s trees along the street have gone from bare to an explosion of pink flowers.

They’re gorgeous! Two separate plant-ID apps on my phone identify these as “Cherry-Plum” flowers. Okay!

It’s also great to see a ton of bees all over all of the flowers.

As long as they’re not building a nest in the walls at our house, the bees and I can be good neighbors!

No scent detected while I was taking these pictures, but then again, with all of the bees I wasn’t trying to get my face in there too close.

I remember a grade school joke about a kid failing a spelling test because he spelled that common red flower as “brose.” The teacher says, “There’s no ‘b’ in ‘rose.'” The kid says, “There was in the one I was sniffing!”

Up along Maple Street, where we go to the grocery store on Main, there’s a line of what I believe to be apple trees, that are covered in very similar white blossoms. They exploded into flowers over the last week as well.

Decent rain over the winter, warming up with lots of Sun now, spring is announcing its presence with authority in the High Desert!

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Filed under Flowers, Forever Home, Photography

March 2, 2026 · 23:40

Sunrise Over The Pergola

In about three hours there will be starting the totality phase of the only lunar eclipse of the year, and the last one in North America for about three years. It may or may not be clear enough to see it here, we’ve been getting on and off clouds all day. It doesn’t matter to me – I won’t be up at that time of the morning to see it. That’s a game for the young.

However, I was up just before 05:00 this AM (another fate caused by age) and saw the most amazing and bright red and orange sunrise. That will have to do for today.

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Filed under Astronomy, Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets

March 1, 2026 · 22:54

City At Night

These go back to a rainy night in March, 2006. I was in a hotel near LAX and the 405 Freeway, taking long-exposure, hand-held photos of traffic on the freeway to see the visual effects.

I ***STRONGLY*** recommend viewing them while listening to the Doors, “LA Woman!”

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February 28, 2026 · 22:50

Forget February

The best thing about February was that it was mercifully short, and now it’s over. That’s also the worst thing about it, since I feel like I was trying to get more done in fewer days, because, well… I was!

March is going to be weird. I know that, it’s out of my control. The schedule is going to be chaotic, my nerves are already shot, and almost all of the rising bullshit levels (on a personal level at least, I take no responsibility for the state of the freakin’ WORLD!) are tied to it being a birthday month involving one of the “BIG” ones (with a zero!). It also requires a ton of paperwork and jumping through hoops for both the DMV and Social Security Administration, so there’s extra joy to swallow there!

Between this and that and the paperwork and the world and this week’s computer issues and everything else, I just want to grab the mother of all chanclas and just start walloping everyone and everything. Fortunately, but frustratingly, I’m too tired to do that.

“March Madness” is going to take on a whole new meaning around here.

No filters, not on my photos, not on what comes out of my head, either via my mouth or via my pen or keyboard. It’s easier that way.

Let’s do this, March!

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