Snow?

(Totally forgot to post this and now it's been a coupla weeks.)

A coupla days after we had snow in the mountains, it was a late Friday night, chilly and about 11PM I walked out to....

SNOW!

OK, not a lot of snow, and not even sticking anywhere on the ground, but still SNOW! It was just 90 degrees out, and I JUST mowed the front yard that same day. What kinda weird-ass whacky place is this!

My Favorite COPS quotes

I have never been able to pinpoint exactly why I like watching shows like COPS, America's Most Wanted, Most Amazing, Judge Judy, Jerry, etc etc. It has something to do with observing how STUPID people are I think. COPS plays quite often on Court TV, so much so that in a few days, I better watch my TIVO or I'm gonna run out of space. It's good background noise too, if I'm in there cooking, it's an easy show to listen too while I work. I know she won't admit it, but Tracy likes it a bit too, especially the 1 minute clips of the truly memorable moments, such as:

• Put it in da paper! Put it in da paper!!
• What did I did?

I love the blank, dumb, I'm So Innocent look on some perps faces, very bad actors in most cases. More of my favorite quotes & moments:

• I wuz scared (always in response to "Why were you running?"
• That's not mine! (Mary Jane in the wallet, crack pipe, gun, etc)
• I'm not gonna lie to you (or) Why would I lie?
• I don't have nuthin' on me. (it's in the bushes where I threw it)
• "So you haven't been smoking any weed?"... "No, why would you say that?" (Guy has a joint behind his ear in plain sight. Whoops! Forgot! Silly me!
• And one of my favorite action adventures was when this idiot had about 20 police cars behind him, as if he's going to get away! Happens to be in Kansas City:

More weather talk....

It's as weird as KC, but different. Yesterday it hit mid 70s, today 80 and this is what I can see from my back yard, best to enlarge it:

Yeah, that's snow in the mountains. SNOW! Officially it was there on the last day of summer, can you believe it? The pups love snow about as much as they love the water, and I can't wait for true winter weather to arrive. Biggest bummer is I don't have a wood burning fireplace, but I'll survive. The gas one puts out a nice ambiance, and maybe as I get older I'll realize what I was doing was a LOT of work. Satisfying work though.

Weird weather

All of a sudden the weather here is reminding me of Kansas.

Don't like it? Wait a minute!

A week or so ago it was in the 90s near every day and it had been hot since the day I got here. The other day about 9PM I opened the door and WTF? It's RAINING? Tracy gets a little excited and tells me to grab the cooler and put it under the eave to catch the water. Sure enough, it filled it half way full (water for the garden, filthy too. All that dirt running off the roof). The next day it's still cloudy and I hear something about chains required at elevations above 7000 feet, that's Lake Tahoe. Already??? We went from 90 to snow in a week? Sheesh. And I guess it's true, while it reached mid 70s yesterday and is already 60 here and it's still mid morning, I've heard of 6" to a foot of snow in the "Sierras". Absolutely weird. The lows every day for the next week are upper 30s, highs in the mid 70s. Great sleeping weather, but doubt we'll be taking the dogs swimming soon.


Last weekend:
Oh look! A Chicken!

Throw the ball, will ya dad?

Drying out:

My helicoptor is bigger than your helicopter, NYAH NYAH

I wasn't going to bitch about this, cause I've been accused of being fairly negative and bitchy, but I am what I am so I'm GONNA! Let me start by saying I've found that overall the people here in Reno/Sparks are pretty friendly and helpful. I've got more than one story about people going out of their way to help, suggest, advise or just discuss something with me unexpectedly. The earliest example is when I was still in KC and Tracy was wanting to hire someone to do our yardwork cause she was working so much. I emailed a friendly person that had come to look at our playground, asking if she knew of any neighborhood dudes that cut lawns. Guess what? She did it for us! She hauled over her mower MORE than once and cut our lawn, fer nuthin'!! And after that, allowed Tracy to come borrow her lawn mower too! What a nice gesture. (I still need to meet her.)

But not this dude. A few weekend's ago we were exploring, going up & down the Truckee River looking for dog swimming areas. Out by Verdi (Ver DIE) we came across a little subdivision right along the river, which happened to be having a neighborhood garage sale too. It was Sunday, so not many participating, but we still managed to hit a few. On the way out, an old GEEZER was at the end of his driveway and had a large gas powered helicopter on a stand that he was about to put away. Could he be selling? Could he be closing up his garage sale? Nah, I doubt it. Those things are expensive and this looked like a big one. But what the heck, it's a neighborhood garage sale, right? Beautiful day, sunny, blue skies, nice driving weather.... I roll up and roll down the window and:

That thing for sale??
(Grumpy look on his face) You couldn't afford it sonny.
(Me, a bit smart alecky) Now, how do you know how much money I have in my pocket?
(Almost angry look!) Do you know how much this costs? This is over $20,000 and is worth more than your car. To give you an example (of what I don't know) I own a Boeing Bell Blah T-206, costs me 1.5 million.

Goodie for you scooter. Take some of your money and buy a personality. I'm not even sure how the conversation ended, but we didn't talk much more and I drove away. What an ass. It struck a little nerve, and probably always will when people PRESUME things about you, your lifestyle and your financial situation. I've lived with that a lot, especially since I've gone self employed, which to many means "doesn't work". For all he knew, I was a bulti-zillionaire. It's the same thing to hear how "lucky" you are, let's ignore the hard work we've done, we're "lucky"!!

Lucky I tell you!

I want to (HIC!) ride my bicycle (HIC!)

I simply HAD to do it. Had to!!!

Butta, WHAT ARE THEY THINKING!???!!?

I'm sorry, but WHAT THE HELL?!?!

They changed the size of BUTTER?

Or is this a West coast thing? Did they get Bill Gates in on it? You know, make a change that EVERYONE will have to conform to even though it doesn't make it better? Did they take a survey? Do studies? Testing? Gave a rats ass about all the BUTTER DISHES out there? IT DON'T FIT my DISH MAN!!!!! You know, they still sell hot dogs in a 10 pack, and buns in an 8. They can't fix that but some f-ing genius has convinced the butter patrol to revamp the size of sticks. Help me man, what am I missing?!?!?!?!?!

I **HATE** People Who Steal! YA THIEF!!!!

Or people that thing they have a "right", or think they are better than others and show it. Talk about balls!! I finally got this little situation resolved thanks to my buddy Pete. I found out about it about three weeks ago, and being 1500 miles away, it's tough to be DO anything about it:

Here is my garden in 2005. Nice huh? Blow up the picture, look at that sunflower, those luscious tom plants, the windmill. Nice huh?

Now two years later, after I've left but before I've sold my house. Here's another pic. Blow it up, whatta ya see? To clue you in, that's my NEIGHBOR'S yard, with *MY* WINDMILL!!!

Look closer, oh I'll do it for you, look below. That's my wagon. Home made for the most part and I forgot it, and Suzie was supposed to go get it out of my garden but had forgotten.

So yeah, my lovely next door neighbor BRENDA figured since I was gone, she'd help herself! Windmill, wagon, and I've also heard of a few other things that frankly were trash to me, but she JUST HELPED HERSELF! No call, no email, no nothing. Just went over and STOLE them. That's stealing, and trespassing, but mostly FRICKING RUDE! Thanks to Pete, they are in my garage now, I've got a home for the windmill, and the wagon will somehow find it's way home.

SHEESH!

Labor Day River plunge

Man my pups sure love the water. We scouted around a little bit and found a nice access area to the Truckee River just West of downtown Reno. Sure does tire them out too!

Ready?

Cruise Dog Missile
Three very happy dogs

Action movie!

Boo tired

Stones tired

Abbytail queen of the bed