Daughter visit

Well, so why is that worth a post?  Well, it' s because she is selling her house in Las Vegas and moving to Austin, Texas!  (I hope, if the sale goes through!)  In the 'If You Can Believe It File':  she has had some trouble selling her house because there is a solar array on the roof!!!!  To be fair it is a rent-to-own set up where she is paying for the array and her regular electric bill is dropping her total bill by about $40 a month but there is an additional bill, like $15, each month.  No one who was reading things could mistake that it was a good thing!  Oh well, plenty of people don't think - I mean, how did we get Trump as a President?   Isn't there a 'Ability To Speak In Public' requirement for the job?  Or at least an IQ test requirement?

Sorry, I've had a few drinks.  I'm so unhappy with the Democrats this year.  We get a bunch of 80 year olds; a gay mayor and FINALLY one younger person with national experience to whom no one is listening.  So why aren't people voting for Amy Kolbuchar?  She is younger, experienced at the national level, REASONABLE, not a socialist:  DAMN she's perfect!   Well, except for the woman thing; the reasonable thing; the not giving everything to everybody thing.  Oh well, what the heck, I know she won't get it.  She just isn't stupid enough to be President!  I mean look at the President!

Gotta go.  It's after 21:00 (9 p.m. to you civilians).  Have a good one!

Balloon Fest

Every year our small town (if you call 40,000 people a small town) has a Balloon Festival.  This year it is combined with a high school rodeo so that's extra fun.  It is part rodeo part carnival and balloon stuff.  Lots of excitement for us (I really like the photo the newspaper used!)  My wife and I have hit the rodeo before but didn't go this year.  However, we do get to see balloons from our house!

That balloon in the second photo is up north with part of the 'Last Chance' range of mountains in the background.  Of course, today it rained, so there aren't any balloons to be seen.  That photo was taken using a small Celestron C90 Spotting Scope that has an attachment for my camera.  I've had this thing since the mid-1990's.  OMG, I just looked it up and it is still sold on Amazon! 
 
I talk about this being a small town because those 40,000 people are spread over a large area.  Call up Pahrump on Google Maps and you get the outline of a roughly triangular area that is about 35 miles north/south and 15 miles east west at it's widest part.  It isn't all built up for sure!  Those mountains are actually included in what Google calls Pahrump.    It's kind of fun to pick a street in town and call up the photos of that spot.  Often there is nothing to be seen except desert.  If you see a tree you know that it is being watered!

That is something that bothers me a lot.  When you buy a home that isn't in one of the subdivision communities you get water rights.  You drill a well and there is your water.  People seem to think that means you can use as much water as you wish and it will never end.  That is just really unlikely BUT no one has ever done the research to figure out the size of our aquifer.  This area started out with people growning cotton in the valley.  Then people started growing feed for cattle.  Both of these activities take a lot of water.  But now we have lots of people and lots of trees.  It's not unusual for an acre lot to be completely surrounded by trees and every one of those things is being watered.  One of these days Pahrump will have a nasty awakening. 

Sorry about the rant.  Thanks for stopping by.

Puzzling stuff

Our son and his wife visited us last week and the talk turned to home technical stuff since he runs a computer support group at work.  He highly recommended the Google wifi router so I ordered a two pack for our home.  When it arrived we installed it which was quite easy and internet speeds to my office which is way across the house from the base router increased nicely.  Then we figured out that it doesn't like our Wyze security cameras!  They are 2.4ghz and the Google really only likes 5ghz speeds.  It claims to do both but we sure haven't figured out how to make it so.  It's not a big deal, we only use the cameras to keep an eye on our dog when we are gone, but it's a pain in the......  Maybe we'll get them to work together or maybe we'll just pitch the cameras.  We'll see.

In other exciting news, Nevada and Pahrump got mentioned in a Yahoo Lifestyle article.  Of course, it was pretty screwed up but heck we'll take what we can get!  It highlighted a drive from Las Vegas through Pahrump to Death Valley and up through Beatty, Nevada and back down to Vegas.  It would be a really long day's drive but do-able if you didn't stop too long to admire what you were seeing.   Amazingly they didn't bother to mention that Death Valley is in California or that you pass by Yucca Mountain and the Test Site where all the atomic testing was done from the 50's to the 90's.  Of course you can't visit the latter two without LOTS of pre-planning.

Otherwise things are pretty quiet around here.  The dog is growing hair in VERY select places and not growing hair on most of his body.  We'll see.  My wife is already worrying about him getting sunburn next summer.  We are still getting freezing temps at night but 60-something during the day is pretty nice.

We do need to get some work done around the house.  We have a concrete block wall that needs some repair.  The people who built it didn't provide a sufficient base so it shifted and cracked.  We'll just see if someone can 'do it right'.  Anyway, it should be 'fun'

Thanks for stopping by.  Have a good one.

Wow! The year is going fast!

It's hard to believe that the year is 1/12th over already but I guess it's true.  I'm avoiding politics as much as humanly possible but it is totally in my face every day.  Jeez, what a mess.  It is distinctly difficult to see a good outcome for the country regardless of the outcome of the impeachment hearings OR the 2020 election.  Is there another planet I could live on?

Personally things are fine.  The usual aches and pains associated with being over 70 but I prefer them to not being here any more.  Weather in this corner of Nevada is weird.  Yesterday morning I was spraying weeds in my shirtsleeves at 70F(21C); then the wind came up in the afternoon and we had gusts around 40 mph (65kph).  It freezes the birdbath most nights so that's pretty chilly.

Our 'new' dog is coming along.  He had a bad day early in the week where he threw up during the night.  He must have gotten into something we didn't know about but about 03:00 he decided to rid himself of it on the rug in the bedroom.  He didn't even want to eat that morning and we only gave him about a fourth of his usual dinner.  Now he seems completely recovered.  His hair is growing back in small patches which makes him pretty funny looking.  It is still likely, I believe, that it will never grow back completely.  This is his most usual position.

We want to take our trailer to Las Vegas on a shake-down trip.  It's been a LONG while since we've been anywhere in it.  Like I think it was October of 2017!  Wow!  Anyway, we hope to start checking out parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Nevada that we've overlooked.  We'll see how that works out.  The dog seems to travel well enough but we'll just have to see how he does in a completely new environment.

Hope the new year is treating you  well.  Thanks for stopping by.