Category Archives: Forever Home

March 10, 2025 · 23:27

New Neighbor

No, we didn’t get a dog. (I wish!)

The house next to ours got sold and the new owners are doing some work before moving in. Almost every weekend day, Blanc is out in the yard, and I took the liberty of introducing myself.

As soon as she (I think it’s a “she”…) sees me out in my yard, she runs over to a spot in the fence where she can get through the bushes to the fince, and she hops up to get petted and chin scrinches. She’s a sweetheart and very friendly.

The new human neighbors freaked out at first, thinking that she was jumping the fence, but we’ve all gotten to know each other a bit more so it’s not an issue now.

Even though she’s not the breed that would be our first choice when we can get a dog again (the Long-Suffering Wife looooooves Great Danes and I like black labs and golden retrievers), it’s great to have a big, loveable dog that we can borrow for 30 seconds every now and then.

Makes me want to get The Forever Home even more so that we can get our own pack started.

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Filed under Dogs, Forever Home, Photography

March 9, 2025 · 23:28

Night View

A lot of the houses we’ve looked at in the high desert (Hesperia, Apple Valley area) are a bit elevated or up in the foothills, so I’m hoping to find one with a great view. Not an absolute requirement, but if House A is on the valley floor and has a view of the neighborhood roofs and power lines while House B has a view of the valley spread out and mountains nearby and all other factors are equal, we’re almost certainly going to go with House B.

I’m going to miss this view at night out of our back yard.

I won’t miss the money that gets paid to the landlord every month. No equity, no tax breaks, just take a stack of bills, get some lighter fluid, and burn it. Every. Single. Month.

Nor will I miss the house being too small, dealing with issues like plumbing and gophers and sticky doors that NEVER get resolved. I understand that they’ll be my problem to fix when we own our own house again, but at least things WILL get fixed.

With luck, I won’t be losing these views. I’ll be gaining better ones, with many additional benefits.

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Filed under Forever Home, Photography

February 26, 2025 · 23:54

Very Good Dogs

I just finished reading Chuck Wendig’s “Wayward,” the sequel to “Wanderers.” They’re both extremely excellent and I give them both my highest recommendation. (I’ve started handing out copies as gifts.)

In “Wayward” one of the most beloved characters is a golden retriever named Gumball, who is A Most Excellent Very Good Dog.

That got me to thinking about our dogs, now long gone. One of the reasons we really want to buy our Forever Home is so we can have dogs again – where we’ve been renting for seven years now, no pets are allowed.

Lucky Puppy was our first dog, and she was A Most Excellent Very Good Dog. She usually looked guilty because she usually was. But A Most Excellent Very Good Dog nonetheless.

We got Jessie when The Long Suffering Wife moved in, and while she was a trouble making scamp and a jumper who wouldn’t stay in the yard and scared the shit out of us every time she went on walkabout, she also was A Most Excellent Very Good Dog. Squirrels were her sworn, mortal enemy.

Once we find The Forever Home, get moved in, get halfway settled, it will be time to visit a shelter or rescue group.

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Filed under Dogs, Forever Home, Photography

January 17, 2025 · 23:47

Last Light 2025

I think after the Chiefs’ game tomorrow, it will be time to start taking down the Christmas lights. Everyone else on the block did it at least a week ago, most two weeks ago.

At least we had an almost full Moon out there tonight to dress up the sky. As well as a trio of rabbits on the ground over on the righthand side.

Surprisingly, the rabbits didn’t chew through any wires this year. They’ve done that for at least the previous three years, but something kept them honest this year.

It’s probably one last look at this particular view. I think I probably said this last year as well, but this year I mean it more – next year I hope we’re at the Forever Home.

And hey, the pulldown on the WordPress page for the Classic Editor was back today! Yeah!! One less thing to be pissed off about!

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Filed under Astronomy, Christmas Lights, Critters, Forever Home, Photography

January 4, 2025 · 23:50

Not A Great View

If you’ve been here a while, you’ve seen a LOT of the front yard views from both our current rental home…

…and from the previous house we owned until early 2017…

It’s a fact that we’re looking for a “forever home” to move to, so one of these days (cross your fingers!) there will be a new view of trees, horizon, and skies. What that view looks like isn’t a key factor in picking a house, not even in the top 100, but at the same time I’m not unaware of it.

The house we looked at today has a lot going for it (and a few things to think about) but the view to the north is filled with large trees, a ton of poles and wires, and a busy main street. As I said, not a key factor, not even in the top 100.

Still…

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Filed under Critters, Forever Home, Photography

November 11, 2024 · 23:50

Found Them!

Once I knew what the seed pods from the Italian Cypress trees were, I found a bunch of them on the ground and I’ll be trying to see if I can get them to dry out & open up so I can try to germinate the seeds.

I also looked in the trees, and found plenty more, but there all 20-30 feet up and trying to retrieve any sounds like a really good way to break every bone in my body, so I’ll pass.

My bouncing baby days are well behind me, thanks!

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Filed under Flowers, Forever Home, Photography

November 10, 2024 · 23:33

Front Yard Mystery & Solution

Yesterday while taking down the Halloween decorations, I found an odd little lump or pod in the front yard.

Hand for scale.

It stood out and I’ve never seen one like it before, so I was curious. Was it some sort of larva or bug? Some piece of scat or critter poop? No clue! It seemed to be dry and light, but that’s about all I could tell.

Then today when I was bringing in the weekly groceries, I found another.

Now that I was alert to their existence, I found a third one.

And a fourth on the driveway.

This one has some sort of a stem on the left side, and it’s in a huge pile of debris from the Italian cypress trees along the side of the garage, needles and small branches blown down by that tremendous wind storm here earlier in the week. And there’s the clue that solved the mystery!

I did a Google search for “Italian Cypress seed pods” and got this:

I don’t see any on the eight or ten trees we have growing there, but it’s obvious that’s what they are and where they come from. Mystery solved!

Next question – can I grow new trees from these seeds? One thing about many of the houses we’re looking at in the High Desert is that they’re a bit on the barren side from a landscaping perspective. Almost all have fencing, mostly chain link, but it would be really nice to line those long fences with Italian Cypresses eventually, both for privacy reasons and for esthetic reasons. If these four seed pods or pine cones are full of viable seeds, can I get a stack of small pots and potting soil and start my own personal forest now, then have them ready to go (albeit small) for transplant when the Willett Forever Home is secured?

Why, yes, I can!

My own little minion/Ent legion! It might not be as straightforward as winning the lottery and paying a gardener or landscape designer to buy them from a nursery and plant them for me, but it will probably be more interesting.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Forever Home, Paul, Photography

November 8, 2024 · 23:34

Happy Place Panorama

It would be nice to get back again this year, but that’s unlikely. One trip a year is about all I can get away with.

Enjoy the full-sized file – click on it and blow it up. My son’s truck with the flags is over to the left.

For this weekend, there’s more work, more deadlines (I can sort of see the light at the end of the tunnel? Ish?) and taking down the Halloween decorations.

It’s also getting close to decision time and I know where it’s going, I’m just not happy about it. (Just add it to the list…) I had really hoped to be putting up a ton of Christmas lights at the Forever Home this year and setting the place up to make it easy to put up a ton of lights every year in the future. That’s also very unlikely to happen, so in two weeks it will be time to start decorating here, at the rental house again. I’m also coming up on the end of my current set of weight training lessons, which I was also hoping would be the last one because I would be living elsewhere, but again…

So frustrated. So tired. It’s that whole middle-of-the-marathon feeling and the only way out is through.

One foot in front of the other. You too?

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Forever Home, KC Chiefs, Panorama, Photography

October 31, 2024 · 23:50

No Mo’ NaNoWriMo

Tomorrow November starts, and in many years that would have meant the kickoff of a National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) effort on my part. If you’re curious, you can look back in the archives here and search for that term – I’ve always published my feeble and incomplete efforts on here. A couple of them I liked, a couple were just embarrassing. You pays your money, you takes your chances.

This year there’s no way on Earth I have the time or energy to even think about another campaign. I’m already on such physical and emotional thin ice with other time pressures and priorities that it would be suicide.

In addition, in the last year there have been “issues” with the management of NaNoWriMo, which runs as a non-profit. A number of the issues are serious, and while some heads have rolled and some changes have been made, I’m not convinced that the problem has been adequately addressed. So I won’t be a part of the NaNoWriMo organization or efforts, even if I did have the time.

There is at least one other group trying to get a new organization going (I forget the name of the group) but I haven’t heard much, just that it was trying to get started, so maybe we’ll see where we’re at this time next year.

For now – as expected, not a single trick-or-treater tonight at our house, primarily because we live off the beaten path a bit on the top of a huge freakin’ hill. Again, we’ll see where we are at this time next year, hopefully in that legendary Forever Home in a more pedestrian and family-friendly neighborhood.

November starts tomorrow and it will be a big one, especially with the US national election in five days. The fact that it could still go either way is terrifying. For the life of me, I truly can’t understand why it’s not 95/05 in the polls, or more. And even if it does turn into a resounding defeat for fascism, what the Mango Mussoli and his cult do in the days afterward has the potential to be horrific.

C’mon, November. I know you got the short end of the stick and a tough assignment. Make us all proud!

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Filed under Forever Home, Politics, Writing

September 26, 2024 · 23:46

Halloween’s Coming

Is it me? Is it this year? Are people needing to escape reality starting weeks earlier than normal? (I blame politics – if that’s not a reason these days to escape reality, I don’t know what is!) Are the Halloween decorations starting weeks and weeks earlier than in all previous years?

We’ve got a fair number of houses in the neighborhood that go all out for Halloween, the same way I go a bit over the top for Christmas lights. But that has normally meant that three weeks or so, maybe around October 7-10th, we would see the decorations going up.

This year I saw the first big displays going up around September 15th. Of course, there have been Halloween candy displays in the supermarkets since July 5th, that’s “normal.” But today I noticed a dozen more houses that have their full displays up.

Again, when we were at the Pomelo house, a half block from the local elementary school, on flat ground, on a more prominent street, and at a place where we had been for decades, we would put out the telescopes, put up some decorations, and sit out there handing out candy and letting folks take a look at whatever was up in the sky that night. These days, nowhere near a school or anything other than more houses, at the top of a freakishly large and steep hill, we probably won’t bring out the scopes or doing anything else, no matter what all of the folks at the bottom of the hill are doing. I think we’ve had something like five Trick or Treaters show up at our house in six years.

Another thing to keep in mind when we’re finalizing our search for The Forever Home. Next year. I don’t see that happening in any sort of time frame for this year.

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Forever Home, Photography