TURRIBLE!

7:15 am - Tuesday - 30 F degrees, 66% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the south......clear skies......I assume they will be blue once the sun rises high enough in the sky to give an indication.  Sunrise is now at 7:12 am, and setting at 6:16 pm......so now we are down to 11 hours of daylight.....what a change from July!

Frost on the Beetle first thing Monday

So, Monday, after more than three days of rain I figured all the dirt, grime, and dust of the summer must have been washed from the surfaces of the Newell, and I was correct.....she hasn't looked this clean since the day we left Fontana for TVC back in late April.  Once the sun was up I spent time wiping down the sides of the Newell from front to back as high as the windows.....the roof line looks clean and shinny once again. I finished up by wiping down the trailer and VW......ahhh, everything clean at the same time, and with the least amount of effort expended.  

It was still in the high 30's at 9 am and in spite of wearing a pair of latex gloves my hands were somewhat numb so I headed inside to warm up once again.....

The postdiluvian sun

TLE went in to work for a few hours Monday, and will work one more day this week giving her about 25 hours for the week......if I work Tuesday and Wednesday I should get to 23 hours for the week.

While TLE was at work I puttered around in the 47 degree afternoon sweeping all the pine needles and other storm debris from our awning mat, and then raking all the pine needles out of our site.  I thought I could do it in my flip flops, but let's face it....47 F degrees is 47 F degrees.....by the time I finished I had no feeling in my feet anymore.....I guess it's time to admit it is no longer short pants and t-shirt weather.....at least not until we get below 4,000' elevation.

TLE was home a little after 5:30, and proceeded to make an amazing dinner......baked, bread crumb encrusted mahi mahi, mashed potatoes and some veggies.......

.......we chased it with a bottle of Phantom red wine......a gift from one of our customers this summer........

......we watched the MLB ALCS game between the Cleverland Inuits and the Toronto Blue Jays, which was won 4-2.  So Cleverland is 1 game away from the World Series.  Meanwhile the MLB NLCS between the Trolley Dodgers and the Chicago Cubes is tied 1-1 and will reconvene in Chavez Ravine tonight.  The MNF game was 'turrible' as Charles Barkely would say, so beyond that descriptive it deserves no further mention other than 'TURRIBLE'!!

We watched a recorded episode of 'Elementary', and were in bed by 11 pm with our electric blankets in the 'ON' position in anticipation of another very cold night.

Thanks for stopping by!

Diluvian survival.....

7:10 am - Monday - 29 F degrees, 77% humidity, wind 11 mph out of SSW.....finally something under 20 mph!  Cloudy, very cold, and very damp, but looks like the rain has gone.......it should be mostly cloudy today, and if it gets over 48 F degrees that will be impressive.

TLE headed off to open the office/store at 7:45 am, and I settled in to watch NFL pregame shows, and get ready for a full day of watching the NFL Sunday Ticket.....once again, virtually all the games I wanted to watch were only on the Sunday Ticket.....I had no interest in the network games.....

.....I thought the Bengals had a real chance to beat the Patriots, but once again Tom Brady came up big and they easily defeated the Bengals 35-17.  I watched parts of the Buffalo vs. 49er game, and was happy to see the Bills win easily 45-16....and the Giants edged by the Ravens 27-23 in another close game. The big afternoon game for me was the Seahawks vs. Falcons.......the battle of the winged carrion hunters.  Seattle outlasted Atlanta 26-24 in a very exciting finish.  The nightcap was a double header for me......the NFL game was between Houston and Indianapolis, and the MLB game between my Dodgers and the Cubs, so I was flipping channels all night long......The Dodgers with Clayton Kershaw outlasted the Cubs 1-0, and Texans came from behind to beat the Colts in overtime.

During all this sports frivolity I was also 'on call' once again and was called out twice....the first time it was not raining too hard, and I only had to pump some propane, which went quickly.  The second time was around 2:30 when it was raining torrentially.....I really did not want to get dressed and go out in that.......Robert, our manager, had 4 chores for me......clean a shower and empty the recycling can at the 'G' restroom, and then at the 'F' restroom unlock one of the toilet stalls, and put an 'OUT OF ORDER' sign one of the showers that was missing a tile.  By the time I finished with those four tasks I was quite wet, but I knew I was pretty much done with my 'on call' duties for the day, so I headed home, threw my wet clothes in the dryer, put on my pajamas and got back to being warm, dry and watching the NFL Sunday Ticket.

TLE closed the office/store early at 4 pm as all our reservations had arrived, and headed over to Raley's do do a small shopping.  She was home a little after 5 pm with her shopping spoils.

Thanks for stopping by!

Stormy Lake Tahoe

6:58 am - Sunday - Rain, wind and dark as midnight......40 F degrees, 69% humidity, wind 29 mph out of SSW.  The wind was ferocious last night....every time I woke up the coach was rocking from the wind.

Saturday began with wind and rain, ended with wind and rain.....in between we had about 5 hours of partly cloudy skies as the next front moved towards SLT.  I had planned to be 'on call' Saturday, but the day began with sun and partly cloudy skies so I really had no excuse for a second consecutive 'rain day'.  TLE left about 7:50 am to open the office/store at 8, and within 20 minutes I had a call on the two way radio that bears, who apparently are not deterred from their nightly foraging by rain and wind, had pulled garbage out of 4 dumpsters.  I advised her I would be on the job in a few minutes, and proceeded to get dressed for work.

As I drove over to the office/store in the Ranger cart I saw that the mess made by the bears was not too bad, and after 'clocking in' I returned with a picker to pick up the residue of dumpster diving bear style and was finished within 10 minutes.  Next I busied myself with doing a little storm cleanup around the front of the office.  

I spent some time helping our manager, Robert, and Adam, our maintenance manager, dig a 20' ditch, and picking up trash in Section E before TLE called me on the two way radio advising it was time to clock out and get ready to drive up to Tahoe City to have an early dinner with long time friend Don Neff.  I've known Don since 1962 when I was in 7th grade and he in 6th.  He comes to all the school reunions, and does not live far from Lake Tahoe.  He retired a number of years ago when he sold his 'tech' business and took up his avocation......painting.  He comes to Lake Tahoe at least once a year to paint, and has a number of his paintings on display in the James-Harold Gallery in Tahoe City.  At any rate, he was going to be at the gallery painting from Noon to 5 pm Saturday so we decided to drive up to Tahoe City to see him at work, and to have an early dinner.  We left TVC about 2:30 pm and arrived at the gallery around 10 minutes to 4 in spite of the rain and winds we encountered along the way........

......we found Don deep in thought working on a painting entitled, I believe, 'Nocturnal Tahoe'.....

.....I'd recognize this guy anywhere!  While Don worked on his painting TLE and I decided to check out the restaurant, Christy Hill, which we had settled on for dinner.  The restaurant has a 4 star rating on Yelp on 245 reviews, and is located right on the shores of Lake Tahoe.  The menu is pricey, but as I have said often.....I don't mind paying for really good food.  We thought it would be perfect to have dinner with a view of 'stormy Lake Tahoe'.  They were not open until 5 pm.....they are strictly a dinner place......so we called for reservations and headed into downtown Tahoe City to Fanny Bridge for our obligatory 'Fanny Bridge' picture....of course it was windy and rainy, so we opted, at TLE's insistance, to just take an 'usie', as opposed to me walking across the street to get a picture of TLE's derriere whilst she leaned over the bridge railing.....

.....next we stopped off at Lakeside Brews and Spirits to see what craft brews they might have to sample.......

.....TLE chose some sort of pumpkin seasonal, which I also ordered and was pleasantly surprised.....if only I could remember the brewery and name of the offering.....:-).  We bought a 22 ouncer of another craft beer which interested us and were on our way back to the gallery to pick up Don and head a few blocks over to Christy Hill......

Internet photo of the exterior

My picture of stormy Lake Tahoe

Don's 'usie' contribution

.....we had a wonderful two hour dinner full of wonderful food, vino and conversation.....of course it didn't hurt that we had a wonderful, unobstructed view of stormy Lake Tahoe.....Christy Hill is a very intimate restaurant with probably fewer than 20 tables.  The food and service were exceptional, and so was the company!

Of course, the wind and rain continued unabated and that is what we faced as we got into the VW to make the 1+ hour drive back home.  I yielded the driving reigns to TLE for the trip home as I don't see as well at night as I once did......we arrived home just after 8 pm grateful for an uneventful although interesting drive home through wind driven rain.

Thanks for stopping by!

Rain day......

7:18 am - Saturday - 42 F degrees, 64% humidity, wind 18 mph out of the south....forecast to be cloudy and windy all day, with rain back by 2 pm and continuing until sometime early Monday morning......time to inflate the kayak!

With the lone exception of dumping our black tank around 9 am Friday when it was just sprinkling I did not venture outside again all day long.  The wind driven rain came in waves, sometimes quite hard, but most of the time it was just steady continuous rain until about 9 pm when the storm finally passed.....the next one is due in a few hours from now.

Since we chose to be 'house bound' we caught up on watching recorded episodes of 'Blacklist', 'Designated Survivor', 'Hell's Kitchen' and 'Gold Rush' as well as a 1959 black and white movie called 'Young Philadelphians' starring Paul Newman, Barbara Rush, Brian Keith, and Robert Vaughn.  At 2.5 hours this is a longish movie for the time period, but very well acted, and a good story line.....a great rainy day movie!  To add to the rainy day festivities TLE made a Banana Cake, which I chased with some ice cold milk.

Also in vogue on a cold, rainy day is the taking of several naps, and if it is the right time of year, an American League Championship Series game between the Toronto Blue Jays and Cleveland Indians (my friend Keith calls them the 'Cleverland Inuits').....it was a well pitched game in which the Blue Jays pitcher was dominate for the entire game except for one bad pitch which resulted in a 2 run homerun.....the 'Inuits' won 2-0.

It's been a while since we had a 'rain day', and it was nice to just laze around all day doing pretty much nothing but relax.......16 days until we roll!

Thanks for stopping by!

And the winner is.......

7:51 am - Friday - 46 F degrees, 42% humidity, wind 16 mph out of SSW.....heavy cloud cover, and heavy rain from time to time.  100% chance of rain for the next three days.  The wind blew all night long no doubt pushing in the rain we are now experiencing.

Thursday was windy, but not too bad until late afternoon when the temperature began to drop in anticipation of the approaching storm.  TLE was not planning on working Thursday, but she got a text from Robert, our manager, that Sally (opens the office at 8 am) had called in sick so she rallied herself from deep sleep to get ready for work in about 20 minutes and was on her way over to the office/store by 7:45 am.  I had planned to report for work around 10, but since TLE had gone in early I decided to make a run to the USPS office to drop off my tax returns and then over to Scotty's TruValue Hardware to pick up some more water spigot washers, and some more yellow stripping spray paint so I could finish what I started on Wednesday.  I 'clocked in' by 9:30 am and headed down to the maintenance yard to pick up a few things for later in the day before retrieving TLE from the office who had been relieved by Victor.  

TLE and I spent the morning finishing our survey of Section F's RV sites started the day before, then surveying all of Section A's RV sites for length and width.  We finished Section A by noon time and TLE decided she was done for the day so I took her home, had a sandwich and then went back to Sections E and A to finish replacing as many water spigot washers as possible....in all I think I replaced close to 35 washers in all the tent site water spigots.

Once that was done I headed out Melba Drive to check the current state of the fence repairs made going back to last weekend, and found just a small issue where another bear had pushed down some old fencing.....otherwise all was good with the fencing....we've now gone one week with all the fencing remaining intact.  I went ahead and replaced the old section that had been pushed down by an unknown bear with new fencing in about 30 minutes.  By that time it was after 3 pm so I decided I had worked enough for Thursday and after 'clocking out' headed for home.

My Dodgers were scheduled to play the Nationals in a 5th and deciding game to see who will go on to play the Cubs for the National League Pennant beginning Saturday.  For the first 6 innings it was a 1-0 game in favor of the Nationals, the came the weird, amazing 7th inning which lasted one hour and six minutes......the Dodgers managed to get off the mat and score 4 runs followed by the Nationals in the bottom of the long 7th inning who scored 2 runs to come within 1 run of the Dodgers.  The Dodger manager brought in his 'closer', Kanley Jansen, in the bottom of the 7th to get the last 9 outs......this is very unusual.....at most he will usually get the last 6 houts, but 9 is unprecedented.   He managed to get 7 outs and then another very unusual thing happened......Dave Roberts, the Dodger manager, brought in Clayton Kershaw who had just made 110 pitches two nights before to get the last two outs.  He made 7 pitches to get two outs and the Dodgers are now on their way to Chicago for Saturday's game......what a crazy game!

We went to bed expecting to be awakened by the forecast rain, and were not disappointed......at about 6:30 am the rain came, and it is still raining as I write.....thanks for stopping by!

'Me and my arrow.....'

7:05 am - Thursday - 45 F degrees, 27% humidity, wind 9 mph out of the SSW, cloudy.....forecast high 65 F degrees.  Extended forecast is for 100% chance of rain Friday, 90% chance of rain Saturday, 100% chance of rain Sunday, and 70% chance of rain Monday.......so, folks, it looks like rain in SLT.  Just finished addressing the envelopes for our 2015 tax returns (Fed and California).....now if I can just find those stamps!

Wednesday was the end of our current pay period....to give you an idea of how work has dropped off we were working over 40 hours per week up until three weeks ago.....now we are working a little over 25 hours per week.  We have two pay days remaining in our season.  The thing we like about this time of year is that we are able to work on things in preparation for next season.

I spent part of Wednesday morning assembling our tax returns in preparation for their insertion in envelopes and their eventual mailing Thursday.  I reported for work at 10:30 am and promptly headed out to Section A to finish refreshing the tent site directional arrows I referred to yesterday, plus painting new ones on the outer loop where we repaved in 2015 thereby covering up ALL the old directional arrows......

......in all I refreshed and/or created 21+ directional arrows in Section A by 1 pm when I took a brief lunch break.....now on to Section E where the rest of the tent sites are.  As I painted arrow after arrow the 70's song by Harry Nilsson, Me and my arrow, kept running through my mind.  After lunch I spent about an hour replacing water spigot washers in the Section E tent sites......none of the tent site community water spigots has a shutoff valve, so we have to shut all the water off for Section E in order to replace those washers.....since the water was turned off almost a week ago I can now replace them, and did they ever need replacing!  Some of the washers I replaced had crumbled, and I have no idea how anyone was able to turn off the water at those spigots.

A little after 2 pm I picked up TLE and we went to Section F to re-measure all the RV sites.  The site length information in DigiRez is not accurate for most of our RV sites, and we have no width dimensions whatsoever.  I began this project last summer, but only got Section G done, so our goal this year is to get F, A and E re-measured and then get the I.T. department to input the corrected dimensions for all our RV sites in time for next season.  We managed to finish the outside loop in Section F which has 78 sites, now on to the inside loop Thursday which has just 37 sites!

 We were clocked out and home by 4:15......now that we are down to less than 50 sites occupied we are getting a lot accomplished, and the projects I've had in the back of my mind summer are coming to fruition.

Thanks for stopping by!

"It ain't over over till it's over........"

7:22 am - Wednesday - 33 F degrees, 74% humidity, wind 4 mph out of the south.....high clouds right now, but supposed to be sunny......forecast high to be 66 F degrees.

 I spent about an hour transferring my 'rough draft' tax figures to the IRS and Franchise Tax Board forms so I can mail them in by Thursday.  After everything was printed and ready for signatures I got dressed and reported for work about 10:30 am.  My self assigned task for the day's work was to take advantage of the warm, sunny day to do some street painting.  About a week ago, or so Alex had repainted the white parking lines in front of the office/store and it was time to repaint the handicapped lines and graphics.  In all it took me about 2 hours to refresh the handicapped parking spots, and I think they turned out pretty good.......

.....I neglected to get 'before' shots, but they were so faint you could hardly see them anymore.  I think it has been at least 3+ years since they were last refreshed.......

.....then it was time to refresh the color coded lines we have going to each of our four campgrounds.....yellow takes you to 'E', red takes you to 'A'.  Since we have closed 'E' and 'A' I put up the 'Closed for Season' sign, and got to work.....since there will be no snow plowing, or vehicle traffic this winter this is the perfect time to take care of this......it will be one less thing we have to do next Spring.  I'll wait until Spring to refresh the white (to 'G") and blue (to 'F') lines as there will be snow plowing and traffic this winter over those lines.

Once I finished refreshing the red and yellow lines I turned my focus to refreshing some of the tent site arrows which show our customers which side of the site post their site is.  While all of our RV sites go from the site post to the left as you face them from the street, our tent sites are a mixed bag....some go from the site post to the right, and some go from the site post to the left so these arrows were painted some years to ago remove some of the confusion.  The problem is they have not been refreshed in years and the result is we have a lot of confused tent campers.

 In this case the tent site begins at the site post and goes right

By the time I had finished two of the tent site arrows it was time to clean up my painting tools, and clock out for the day.  Having been a house painter in college I know how important it is to clean up your brushes, rollers and roller pans so they can be used again......it took me about 30 minutes to finish the cleanup.

I was home before 4:30 pm....TLE had reported for work just after 1 pm as there were two people in the office in the morning....she stayed until after 6 helping Ben learn how to 'close'.

I forgot to write about some of our beer discoveries over the past few weeks.....when we were at Dart Liquor a couple of weeks ago TLE picked out this seasonal brew called 'Black Pumpkin Oatmeal Stout' (Buffalo Bill's Brewing, Hayward, CA) .....I'm always a little suspicious about these type of seasonal brews, but was totally blown away by this 22 ouncer!  We had this one with dinner a few nights ago....it is only available from July to October each year, but it is definitely one to check out.

Yesterday when I got home I was hungry as I hadn't had lunch so I went to our Norcold refer to see what I had brewise, and I found this 22 ouncer I had forgotten about.....I believe Brian Devine of 'Roaming Pint' gave this one to me a couple of months ago.......it is a 'Salvator Double Bock' by Paulenar Munchen out of Munich, Germany......what a pleasant surprise....thank you Brian!  I poured a bowl of roasted peanuts and chased them with this brew!

TLE made Fajitas for dinner which I chased with an 'IKY IPA'.....those were the spiciest Fajitas I have ever had.....I think my forehead is still sweating!

I watched the end of the Dodger vs. Nationals game won, ultimately, by the Dodgers 6-5 to tie the series 2 games apiece and send it back to Washington D.C. for the fifth and deciding game Thursday.  The nightcap was the Cubs vs. Giants.......this was a thriller!  The Giants led 5-2 beginning the top of the 9th inning and needed just 3 outs to tie the series up 2 games apiece.....for some inexplicable reason the Giants manager, Bruce Bochy, took out the starting left handed pitcher who hadn't given up a hit since like the 5th inning and was still 'blowing them down' in the top of the 8th.....well 5 pitchers later the Giants lost 6-5, and are now on vacation until next Spring.  There have been 828 post season games in MLB history where a team went into the 9th inning leading by 3 runs or more.....in only 4 cases did that team lose (including yesterday's game)....the team leading by 3, or more runs won the other 824 times!  I'm reminded of a famous Yogi Berra quote (played for the Yankees and also managed them)......"It ain't over till it's over".  Here's hoping my Dodgers can win Thursday and meet the Cubs in the National League Championship Series!

Thanks for stopping by!