Weird Weather

Today, July 4,  there was a freak hailstorm in Santa Rosa, NM which dropped two feet of hail.  Looks almost like snow in the middle of winter!

Photo from KATU-TV, courtesy of Santa Rosa Fire Dept

I remember one time we were driving across the southwest on Interstate 40, we stopped for Sunday brunch at this restaurant in Santa Rosa.  Good food with a Route 66 decorating theme.

Photo is from Tripadviser

May the Fourth be with You

Photo from @squirrelbeebz

YMCA to the Rescue

Since June of last year Mr. B and I have been taking the Enhance Fitness class at our local Y twice a week.  What a difference a little exercise makes!  When we started I couldn’t:

• Get up off the floor without help, either from a person or a piece of furniture
• Walk down stairs one foot after the other
• Turn my head far enough to see oncoming traffic when backing out of a diagonal parking space.
• Take a deep breath without having my lungs hurt

Now I can do all those things, the first two within a couple of weeks of starting the program.
We were so pleased that we joined the Y and planned to use their exercise equipment on a regular basis. 

























The regular basis part hasn’t happened yet although I have used the treadmill a few times.

Last Tuesday we had a pretty good rain and Wednesday morning this was the view of the mountains east of town.
At first I though that white stuff was clouds but it turned out to be SNOW which is a rare sight around here.  Maybe once or twice a year.

 This winter has been much colder than usual with frost almost every morning.  It doesn’t stay below freezing for very long so we haven’t had any damage in the garden, except for some of the Meyer lemons.  But the Washington Navel oranges have been fantastic. 
I usually juice them but this year they are so perfect that we’ve been just peeling and eating.  We’ll probably juice the Valencia oranges, although they are pretty good eating too.
The only other things in my winter garden are parsley and swiss chard.  I really dropped the ball on starting seeds last fall and then I didn’t feel like going out in the garden when it was so cold. 

A Landslide Would Have Been Better

but we'll take this.

Lots happening tonight

The Giants swept Detroit to win their second World Series in 3 years, a hurricane nicknamed FrankenSandy is barreling along the east coast and we had an earthquake. Pretty good shake but didn't last long.

Zito wins one for Gma Harper

Game 1 of the 2012 World Series
SF Giants win 8-3
Barry Zito allows no runs and the Panda hits three homers!

It can't be a coincidence that on April 9th, the day she died, he pitched his best game in years. We think she has been guiding him all season.

Still Alive after All This Time

It’s been so long since I’ve posted on anything like a regular basis, that I don’t know where to start.  Maybe it’s best to go ahead from here and plug in previous events as I remember them.

This has been a strange winter:  Usually we can’t count on any rain until mid-November at the earliest but, after having an inch in September and another in October, we have been dry as a bone since.  This morning we had a bit, not enough to register on the rain gauge but enough to dampen the ground.  However it did energize me and I bought a couple of six packs of sugar snap peas at OSH today as well as onion sets -  red, white and yellow.  I’ll try to get the peas and some of the onions planted tomorrow.  I couldn’t find any English peas so will have to plant those from seeds.

When we were in Gilroy today I stopped at Grocery Outlet and found one-ounce bottles of red food coloring for 79 cents each.  I made a Red Velvet cake for Christmas and the food coloring cost me $6 for the 2 ounces required.  $1.60 sounds a lot better to me and I think I’ll make one for Valentine’s Day.

I used the original boiled frosting instead of the current cream cheese frosting.  Sure was good.