Normally I do not cross the Sierra Nevada in the wintertime, save by train, due to the dicey weather conditions. However, we are having a long dry spell, and I arranged to go visit my father and stepmother at their home in the hills above Oroville, California today. It's just within range for me to do it as a day trip, albeit a long one ( Read more... )

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, my father admired my Jacaru hat, and because I buy several of them at a time due to shipping costs, I sent him one of my unworn ones as a present for Father's Day.

Except it turns out that I sent him two of them because I though there was only one hat left in reserve when in fact there were two ( Read more... )

While I was visiting my father, he admired my Jacaru Australian hat (pictured in icon). I explained how, because of marginal shipping costs, I buy several of them at a time. They do wear out, but I'd rather the hats wear out than my head. He said that the next time I made an order that I should get one for him ( Read more... )

Yesterday, I made a roughly 600 km / 375 mile trip to visit my father, who I haven't seen for some years.

( The Trip Outbound )

As I mentioned a few days ago, Lisa has been slowly going through boxes that have been through multiple moves and has been finding photographs for me to scan. Sometimes I even know what the photos are and when they were taken, when I've had the presence of mind to write notes on the back of them. This first one is both a happy and a sad memory, ( Read more... )

Lisa has been going through boxes stored in the garage and has been finding a number of old photographs of me, her, and family and friends from the past. I intend to start scanning these and posting them as time permits. At the moment, though, time doesn't permit, because Day Jobbe is running me ragged and there are multiple fannish projects that ( Read more... )

Today, November 25th, was my late maternal grandparents' wedding anniversary. I may be the last of their descendants who remembers this, and even I can't remember what year they were married. I still miss them.

After reading on the Butte County Sheriff's Department's web site that the area where my father lives had been downgraded from an Evacuation Order ("go now") to a Warning ("get ready to go"), meaning people could come back to their homes, I called Dad, who had indeed gotten home the following evening after spending a week in a hotel in Roseville ( Read more... )

While working this morning, I heard some talk on the scanner between the engineer of an approaching Union Pacific train and the dispatcher that was disturbing. The engineer told the dispatcher, "I can't shut off this engine."

( A bit about how diesel locomotives work )

The post bounced because of the broken DW-LJ crossposter, but if you're interested, I have finally sold the property I inherited from my grandfather via my mother. I'm both relieved and sad, simultaneously.