August 19, 2025 · 23:31

I’ve Had Another Vision!

In unpacking, I (of course) am keeping all of the old, used bubble wrap since “we might use it sometime in the indistinct future.” As one does.

But there’s soooooo much of it.

Tonight as I was nodding off towards a nap after cleaning up a bunch of this bubble wrap crap and I had “a vision”!!

We have a big, rectangular, walled-in back yard. We have a lot of this bubble wrap. We could fill up the back yard with the bubble wrap!

THEN!

We build a large trebuchet, take it two or three houses down the block into a neighbor’s back yard, and fling folks into the humongous bubble wrap filled back yard at our house!

It’s also a great way to meet the neighbors!

Take a number for your turn, it will require an “E” ticket!

Leave a comment

Filed under Farce, Forever Home, Photography, Silly Shit

August 18, 2025 · 23:05

Clear & A Billion-Trillion

Literally, not a cloud in the sky. Anywhere. And shades of blue that I never, ever saw in LA.

It’s definitely different up here in the High Desert, but we’re getting used to it. Mostly good stuff. While waiting to be seated for breakfast on Sunday, we saw an ambulance go buy, lights & siren blaring. It occurred to me that it was the first time I had seen anything like that in almost four weeks here. To my memory, I’ve only heard sirens out on the main road (a block away) twice. Between our two homes in LA for almost 35 years, it was a daily occurrence, or more. Granted, we lived near a couple of fire stations and a large hospital, but still…

The population up here is about 550,000 for Victorville, Apple Valley, Hesperia, and the unincorporated areas like Oak Hills combined. I haven’t gathered the statistics or gone looking for them online, but it sure feels like it’s a lot less hectic and stressed.

The other thing you might notice is that the second hummingbird feeder is up. Hummer2 is active and getting traffic, sometimes at the same time as Hummer1. The most I’ve ever seen is four hummers out there flitting about and feeding at once, but I’m hoping that will grow.

No additional sighting of the owl there was out there at sunset a few days ago, and very few finches are around. A bunch of crows, some pigeons, but no hawks at all, which surprises me. We did see a huge turkey vulture circling a few hundred feet up, but it never came down closer.

Also no small critters seen at all. No squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks, or gophers (thank god!!). Also no lizards at all, which I find very odd. We’re surrounded by open desert, have rocks and “desert landscaping” everywhere, and when we were house hunting there were plenty of places where I saw fence lizards, just like in LA. But here, not a single one yet.

We have plenty of black widows outside (it looks like the house has been empty and unoccupied for a while before we bought it, so there hasn’t been much of that light maintenance) but I’m mowing them down like waves of wheat, so they shouldn’t be a problem for long. And no snakes that I’ve seen, although I’m sure they’re out there in the more undeveloped, wilderness areas. I’ll keep an eye open for them if I go hiking or walking and I’ll leave them alone if they do the same for me.

Have I ever told “the snake story” here? Maybe another night…

I thought it was supposed to be up in triple digits this week, but today was lovely. Mid 80’s, toasty in the sun but wonderful in the shade with a nice breeze, keeping the wind chimes active outside my office. And that blue sky!

 

3 Comments

Filed under Birds, Critters, Forever Home, Photography

August 17, 2025 · 22:30

INVADER!!!

I was working on unloading a bunch o’ things from the PODS unit and ended up in the back yard by the small pear tree.

I’m very excited by the expectation that we’ll actually be able to eat some of these pears in a couple of months.

I was admiring the incoming crop.

The pears are still a little on the small and hard side right now, but…

WAIT!! WHAT’S THAT??!! DO YOU SEE IT?

SOUND THE ALERT! We have an INVADER!!!

It would have taken to long to go get a shotgun (especially since I don’t own one) so instead I just flicked it into low Earth orbit. NO PEARS FOR YOU!

Don’t worry, it lived, flew off over the back wall and out into the tumbleweeds and dust to wait for its chance to come back when I’m not being ever vigilant.

Leave a comment

Filed under Critters, Forever Home, Photography

August 16, 2025 · 22:52

Saturday Night In The New Neighborhood

There are parties going on, one next door to us and probably another at the end of the cul-de-sac. Nothing raucous or disruptive, judging from the folks parking down the block and walking past earlier it’s families & the dress code is “evening pool party.”

My favorite sound while I was out in front was the train whistle from the BNSF tracks to the southeast, down by where the Virtual Railfans camera is located. Just something about that sound, makes me want to a Steve Goodman song or something country-western.

And WOW!!! Click on that photo and blow it up to full-screen size. LOOK AT THE STARS UP THERE!!!

I had no idea they were there since I just had looked at the photo on my phone before now. You can clearly see the tail of Scorpius on the right above the street light – the two stars close together are Shaula & Lesath, with the “tail” curving down and then up to the right-top corner. To the left of Scorpius, at the top above the pink-lit house, you can clearly see the entire “teapot” of Capricorn. HOLY GUACAMOLE, BATMAN!!! Looking at the full-sized image, there’s a light spot in between the left of the tail of Scorpius and the right side of the “teapot”, and it’s right where (see that tail of Scorpius link a couple lines up, it will take you to a map!) the M7 star cluster is! Did I somehow manage to capture that in this image?!

I’m loving these dark desert skies!

I didn’t even use a tripod for this picture (handheld only, tripods & other camera gear still buried deep in a PODS unit in the driveway) nor did I use one of the good cameras, just my iPhone! I’m gobsmacked!

Leave a comment

Filed under Astronomy, Forever Home, Photography

August 15, 2025 · 23:29

Proof Of Life – August 15th

I have a fairly large desk in my office. In the old house, where space was at a premium, most everywhere underneath was filled with stuff, except for where my feet are. But now, with a nice, big house to arrange and organize and store things in other rooms, the garage, cabinets, closets, all of that space is wide open.

As exhausted as I often am when working in here, and given some of the horrors of the world that I would like to escape from, it has occurred to me that this would make a wonderful pillow fort area. We have plenty of extra pillows, blankets, sleeping bags, and so on, and it could be my personal hidey hole that no one else knows about!

Except of course, those of you I’ve just told about it…

Okay, so it’s not a perfect plan!

Leave a comment

Filed under Forever Home, Photography

August 14, 2025 · 23:09

Proof Of Life – August 14th

How did it get to be mid-August? My head is spinning.

Is there an end to the madness somewhere down the road? Is there a quiet, stable, relaxing space somewhere where everything is in the house and unpacked and put away, where I’m not “behind the airplane” at work and watching deadlines whiz toward me like freight trains, where I have time to kick back and chill in this nice yard and maybe read a book or have a BBQ without feeling like I really, REALLY should be doing something critical?

There must be. I have faith, or hope. Why keep moving in the marathon if I didn’t think there was a finish line?

But, damn! There are days…

Good and bad. For example, I know that there’s a drip irrigation system for all of the nice plants and fruit trees and flowers, but I have yet to see it on or any signs that it’s working. So I did some poking around, found a control panel of some sort, played around with the controls, and viola!

The good news is that it turned on! This is in the interior courtyard.

The bad news, obviously, is that I found the first drip irrigation stub that needs its nozzle replaced.

I have no idea how to do that, but I’m sure that someone at Lowe’s will be glad to explain it to me – and sell me a bunch of replacement parts.

PROGRESS! Onward, to the quiet, stable, relaxing space somewhere! RAMMING SPEED!!

Leave a comment

Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Video

August 13, 2025 · 23:56

Can We See SpaceX Launches From The High Desert?

This was not quite a deal breaker when figuring out where to find our Forever Home, but it was definitely an important question to me. And I had gone looking for videos and pictures prior to moving here, so I was pretty sure I knew the answer.

Yep! Coincidentally, we happen to have a clear view between the two houses across the street all the way to the western horizon, so less than a minute after launch there was a red dot climbing up which quickly started growing a tail of fire.

Over the next minute or two it was easy to see the tail get longer and start to change color, then it all suddenly blinked out at Main Engine Cut Off (MECO).

I figured that was it, but after the second stage lit up I could see it with my eyes for another couple of minutes, headed southbound and up.

Tonight’s launch was originally supposed to be a twilight launch, with the exhaust plume all lit up by the setting Sun from way over the horizon, and possibly a huge “jellyfish effect” as the exhaust expanded and blew around in the high altitude winds. Then the launch got bumped almost two hours, and we didn’t see any of that in the dark night sky.

Maybe next time.

It most certainly looks smaller from here – we’re almost three times as far away from Vandenberg as we were in West Hills. But this is not a strictly local phenomenon, so let’s bring on the next night launch!

By then I’ll have found the tripods and rescued them from the PODS unit and I’ll be looking for better photos and maybe some video. Stand by.

Leave a comment

Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Space

August 12, 2025 · 23:42

If You’re Up Before Sunrise

Last night and tonight will be the closest approach in this conjunction of Venus and Jupiter, and they’ll be slowly separating over the next month or more, but if you’re up before dawn and have a clear sky, look to the east!

At 05:25, my iPhone taking pictures through the kitchen window is having just as much trouble focusing as I was! I know how it felt!

With a little bit of effort, both I and the phone were able to focus, both in the optical and in the philosophical sense. The brighter, lower right one is Venus, the slightly dimmer, upper left one is Jupiter. With a pair of binoculars (or the time to actually put on pants and shoes, go outside, and set up a good camera and a tripod, assuming I could find one of the tripods in one of the PODS units out in the driveway) you could easily see several of the Galilean moons near Jupiter.

This was my favorite view. We have plantation shutters…

If you’re up, go look! Take binoculars! Put on pants!

Leave a comment

Filed under Astronomy, Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets

August 11, 2025 · 23:08

Visitors

We had the pleasure of a visit today from The Son, The Second Daughter, and The Son-In-Law. They came up to see the Forever Home for the first time and were suitably impressed. They also helped to solve a problem I’ve been having with one of the PODS unit, an effort which is greatly appreciated.

See, I can stop being stubborn and pig-headed (occasionally, reluctantly) and ask for help!

We’ve been googling restaurants in the area and went out to a BBQ and pub just a mile or so from the house and found it as tasty and excellent as we were hoping for.

Finally, after they had gone, I spotted a large Great Horned Owl sitting out on top of the pergola in the back yard. No pictures, it flew away after a minute, before I could grab my camera. But I want to think that its presence is a sign of good things to come.

Progress.

Dragons slain.

Dare we even say – hope?

Leave a comment

Filed under Birds, Family, Forever Home

August 10, 2025 · 23:00

Sunset View From The Mailbox

Another change for the Forever Home from all of my previous houses is that we don’t have an individual mailbox at the street next to the driveway – there’s a set of mailboxes for the entire tract down on the corner. Since we’ve been in here almost three weeks now (WOW!) I figured I should probably see if we had any mail.

We did! A couple of very nice “Happy New House!” cards from some friends, lots of escrow closing and insurance documents, and a slew of “Dear New Homeowner” spam. (Which went straight into recycling – life’s too short!)

Since it got up to 102ºF here today (it’s a dry heat, really, not that uncomfortable) I went about a half hour after sunset when it was comfortable. With some smoke still in the area from a couple of brush fires, it was lovely.

Not saying that a few clouds couldn’t push this sort of lighting from “astonishing” up a notch or two to “extraordinary,” but I’m thinking I can get used to it as a baseline without ever taking it for granted.

Leave a comment

Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets