Old Stomping Grounds

One thing about being in Lemoore, it makes it harder to get home. It's right at the cusp of being too far to drive and too close to fly. 9 in a half hours makes huge difference in how I schedule thing but when I finally get to the end, it makes it that much sweeter seeing the smiling faces at the end of the journey. In my elder age, I'm not the fly by the wire speeder that I was at 20, now I ponder my moves and am fearful of what tickets can do. When Google maps says something is going to take a certain amount of time to drive, its fairly close to the mark I hit.

We just got back from one of my fly by trips to Arizona, a week isn't much time when you have friends and family scattered across an entire state and considering that I do come by a couple times a year, I don't expect them to drop everything when I'm driving through their town. Never the less, our trip was packed, spent the first couple of days in Chandler staying at my uncle Larry's, he has an apartment at his hanger which he makes available to family such as I when we're in the area and we are really appreciative!

Part of my uncles collection of Things

Where we stayed

While there, got to see my oldest friend in the world, Leslie and her husband Scott. I met Leslie the summer before 6th grade and she was the coolest person on the block because she had a couple of quads and an empty field besides her house that had a track. We went out to dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings where she met my wife for the first time and seemed delighted with the company. Good people!

The next couple of days were spent hanging out with the pop, my step mom Diane , Uncle Larry, Aunt Michele and Aunt Mary and Uncle Gordo had just flown in from Australia and there was a good night of tale exchanging.

From the left, May, Gordo, Larry, Michele bride at the bottom

Bride, Dad and Diane

Next Prescott where I got to hang out with my bald but beautiful sister who was in good spirits even with the tough times she's going through.

I spent an afternoon updating her computers and setting up her audible.com account (which is my account and has entirely too much money sunk into it). I went over to my second oldest friend Jason's house and passed on my old 30 gig Zune (I had 4 Zunes but only room for 3 on my account). He's a music freak and had yet to own an MP3 player, me giving him the Zune was my coin tossed into the pool of karma. I couldn't think of anybody who would have got better use out of it then him and I just installed a new battery. Hmm, maybe I need to blog about my love of Luddites sometime soon.

While hanging out with my mom, her neighbor came by with a laptop that was made in 2000 that was new still in it's plastic that he picked up at some auction that he wanted to use to track his different jobs and wanted me to make it do that for him. Hmm, a spreadsheet would probably be albe to do that. Excel was out of the question because it cost money so I figured I would plug it into my sisters high speed internet and update everything and find something free. Alas, I get to my sisters and find the laptop only had a phone line. So I went online with my computer, found a great free spreadsheep program called Gnumeric, read the directions and used a little bit of computer savvy and downloaded the program to a disk and installed it on the dinosaur and placed a different file with the names for each month of the year on the desktop, it would track the job, with names, supplies, add the money and miles traveled at the end of the month and his accountant should be happy.

Sunday, I introduced my favorite city girl to some light climbing at the Dells with Larry and Jennifer. At first it was a little spotty, it's hard to introduce someone who's walked of flat ground 99.9 percent of their life to clambering over rocks, by the time we left, she was getting her footing. Both of us being not used to that sort of exercise felt it the next day.

The above picture was taken using the Canon setting Color Accent

Me and Larry

Larry and Jennifer

Finally back to work on Tuesday, it's hard to cram all of the people that I wanted to see in just a week. Hopefully next time I can get a little more time out there.

Road Tripping

Spent a couple of days in Prescott with my son Collin, selling one of my trucks a 98 S-10, I put it on craigslist and it was sold half an hour later. That’s what you get for putting it on for 500 under low blue book. I sort of fell into another truck a couple of weeks ago, a 97 Toyota Tacoma which I picked up for a steal, thanks Sandy. It wouldn’t pass smog in California, so I got a special power of attorney and a bill of sale, changed all of the fluids, aligned her and brought her over to Arizona, 21 miles per gallon and 127 bucks later, I was her proud owner, I think I’m going to keep her.

During my stay in P-town, visited my buddies Larry, Jason and their families and found my new favorite beer, Dogfish Head, 90 Minute Imperial IPA, mmm, very good stuff. Also met up with Carla from Some Soldiers Mom along with her soldier Noah and Jim, we had an excellent meal at the Iron Springs Café.

Now I’m down in Phoenix after dropping the son off at the airport, hanging out with my dad. Spent this morning doing some automotive work on my step-moms car and had lunch with one of my best supporters when I was overseas, Sherri and her husband, she’ll be at Blogworld with CC which I’m sure is going to be a blast.

Tomorrow, I have an appointment to pick up a 2008 Dune Pearl Ford Fusion that I ordered from Exchange New Car Sales while I was in Iraq.

Ack! (which is the first 3 letters of the license plate on the Toyota). I’m getting rather long in the tooth and it’s about time I had bought a brand new car, never thought I would see the day. When I get all of my stuff out of storage, I’ll be selling the Suburban at a very discounted rate, anybody interested in an 89 diesel suburban?

More fun in the sun, hope everyone is doing good out there, it's good to be home.

Travel Vlog to Arizona

Video of our trip to Arizona which includes some of the places we went, my mom's latest project and blackmail video of my son singing Gwen Stefani. No, not really blackmail because I don’t believe in blackmailing people, I prefer instant gratification.

We had a great time, my wife and my son are great traveling companions on any journey. She didn’t make this trip but will the next one.

I also posted a bunch of photos here

Back in San Diego

Made a very smooth trip out of the middle east, I must be getting used to flying around the world. I’m at home safe and sound but I can’t come out and play because I’m grounded to my room. Thanks for reading and the support, I’ll be back up for air in a couple of days. Have a great weekend!