Staying at Home (Again)

 We had a nice and quiet Thanksgiving spending most of the holiday in the house relaxing and watching some football and a couple of movies. Over the weekend we got out all the Christmas stuff and put up the tree.

It looks like staying home will continue to be the routine going forward. The virus is spreading out of control here and there are new orders designed to try and slow it down.

We are doing our best to keep safe. Aimee continues to work from home and my work is limited to very few people onsite with contact tracers and weekly testing for everyone.

There won't be any softball for awhile. We go to the grocery store and they are limiting customers to just 20% capacity at a time.

While it certainly looks like this will get much worse before it gets better, hopefully the new year will bring everyone some much needed positive changes.

New Niece

Way back in the days when it was considered safe to travel and people were able to go and visit with each other Aimee and I had made plans to do so.

We were going to Connecticut for nephew Max's high school graduation celebration in June. We were very disappointed about that not working out. It would have been fun to be there for that.

We also were going to go to Minnesota. Aimee's dad Richard has a June birthday and we wanted to celebrate with him. At the same time, Molly and Lars were welcoming their second child and first daughter Kinsley Jo.

This visit also will have to happen another time.

Aimee was later able to take part (online) in Kinsley's baptism ceremony as a very proud Godmother.

While we weren't able to be there in person Aimee was able to sew a few gifts for Kinsley and her older brother.

Smoky

 It's been very eerie this past week.

The holiday weekend was 4 straight days of heat with temperatures we've never had before. That was followed by thick smoke blanketing pretty much the whole state from the largest fires we've ever had.

The Bay Area had it a lot worse than we did but there was no escape from either the heat or the smoke.

We've tried to stay inside as much as we can and relax at home. Fortunately there are no fires in our immediate area.

It's just one more way this year has been unlike any other.

Still at Home

Aimee and I are continuing to spend nearly all of our time here at the house. Grocery shopping and walks around the neighborhood are about as far as we usually get. Now it looks like our city is preparing to shut down non-essential businesses once again.

Most people are pretty good about wearing a mask around here. It's required in all public spaces even though there are still some who refuse to get onboard.

Fortunately the lines to get into the stores have gotten a lot shorter or gone away altogether. Most of the shelves are fully stocked now. A couple of months ago it was a different story.

In the meantime, we're keeping ourselves busy around the house and enjoying our summer safe at home!

At least baseball is back......... for now.

Birthday Week

We had a nice 5-day weekend celebrating Aimee's birthday. We did the best we could under the circumstances. Aimee finished her puzzle and got to work making her own chocolate cake with raspberries on top. I offered to make her a cake but got turned down.

She did get to have a nice Skype visit with her dad. His place is not allowing visitors and so this is how it's done these days. It was a brief but very enjoyable visit.

Later that night after dinner I was part of a 16-person Zoom call and they all sang Happy Birthday to Aimee right before she blew out the candles on her cake. Hopefully later this summer we'll be able to have another celebration when this is all over and we can leave the house for a change.

Aimee is Puzzled

We've got plenty of time on our hands so Aimee dug out a puzzle we've had for a long time. This puzzle is particularly challenging because it is a PhotoMosaic image. The picture is made up of hundreds of tiny pictures.

It's a 1,000 piece puzzle that takes quite a bit of attention to detail and a few days to complete. Aimee was determined to finish it in a few days so it would be done by her birthday (which was Wednesday). Here is the finished product.

Aimee was lucky enough to get a couple of paid days off this week in appreciation of her birthday and all the hard work she has contributed to the project. Awhile back we had made plans to take a long weekend trip up the coast to celebrate but had to shelve that for another time.

Staying Home

Here's a look at Aimee's home office. She's been busy with her usual workload but, like many, is now working from home. She and I went down to her office last week to get her monitors and a docking station so she doesn't have to look at just a laptop screen all day.

We dug out her old drafting desk and set that up for her. At this height she can stand or sit and work comfortably. The larger desk was from an old job she had where they were going to get rid of this desk. Aimee asked if she could have it and it's been a great work surface for the past 4 years or so.

It's going to be at least a couple or three months (if not longer) before we are both able to return to our routines. Right now there is very little work that I can do so I'm hoping for a quick return.

In the meantime we are taking advantage of the extra time we have by getting plenty of rest, exercise and catching up on Netflix. The weather's been a bit cool and cloudy but it's now starting to warm up so there will be plenty of gardening work to be done in the weeks ahead.

Can't wait to get back to normal!

Magic Castle Visit

Monday night Aimee and I made a visit to the Magic Castle, a private magic club in Hollywood that is typically open only to members and their guests. We are lucky to know a guy who performs there occasionally and he was kind enough to put us on his guest list for the night.

The 'castle' is actually an old Victorian-style mansion built over a hundred years ago and now serves as a performance venue for magicians and as an Academy of Magic. There are a number of different rooms and theatres of different sizes inside the mansion that feature various performers throughout the night.

In this picture above, Aimee was selected to be seated in a prime spot for a show in the close-up gallery. That was a lot of fun as she got to participate in the act that involved some coin tricks.

(My trick was getting the picture taken without being noticed - there's no photography allowed in the club beyond the lobby. I think my experience taking photos at Pebble Beach, where it's also not allowed, helped out here.)

We took a picture in the lobby before we left. It was a fun night and we'll look forward to going back for another visit someday.

Early Christmas

Santa came a little early to our house this weekend.

He had to squeeze a queen size mattress down the chimney.

Now we are sleeping on a new bed for the first time in almost 15 years!

Aimee's Day in Court

Last week Aimee fulfilled her civic duty by serving as a juror on a criminal trial.

She called in for duty each day the week before and was told not to report. But on Friday she was summoned to the juror pool and ended up getting selected for a case that was set to begin the following Monday.

The trial lasted just two days, a simple assault case with no witnesses other than the two drunks who were involved. In the end there wasn't enough convincing evidence to convict and the jury voted to acquit.

Aimee was Juror #10 and she was selected by her fellow jurors to be the foreman. Naturally, she did a great job and yesterday she got her reward:  a check from the county for $36!

A Win is a Win

Saturday Aimee and I got to watch the ND-Va. Tech game and it was a tough one to watch at times.

Not as bad as the Michigan game, that one was a disaster. At least then there was a World Series game we could switch to.

But this one sure looked like it was not going to work out - even on the final drive when they needed to convert multiple 4th downs to keep going. It was a real nail-biter and we're glad they won but such a close game against a 17-point underdog is not what you hope for.

They may win the rest of their games (and we hope they do) but it's clear they're not ready to take on the big guys again anytime soon.

Morning Fire

Good thing I left the house very early this morning. This was the view heading south on the 405 with a fire that had just started near the Getty Center in Brentwood.

The wind started howling last night before we went to bed and we're expecting fire conditions all week. We've already been keeping an eye on nearby fires that have left us with some very smoky air.

These two  pictures I took from the house last Thursday. The first is smoke from a fire in Santa Clarita and the second from another fire that broke out much closer to home but was handled pretty quickly fortunately.

We're lucky that so far the winds and flames are not nearly on the scale that they are in Northern California right now but as long as the wind is blowing there's always concern.

Aimee's boss called her before she left the house and advised her to work from home today.

Driveway Sale

A few weeks ago Aimee and I partnered with a couple of the neighbors to put on a garage sale.

We had been meaning for some time to get rid of a bunch of stuff that we didn't need or never used. We talked to the lady across the street (whose house is in the picture above, behind Aimee) and the people next door to us and we collaborated on a multi-driveway sale.

Aimee made some signs and we put a note on Nextdoor about the sale to take place on a Saturday morning at 8am. When I opened the garage door at 6:45 to start putting everything out there was already a guy waiting for us who wanted to buy some of our stuff.

Before long a whole bunch of other people showed up and by 8am we had already sold about half of the items! People continued to arrive through the morning and continued to keep buying stuff. I was surprised that anybody wanted some of these things. Amazing what people will buy. It certainly made for a lot less stuff to take down to Goodwill later than I anticipated.

Each of us got rid of a bunch of stuff and we know that if we ever do it again we'll have to be ready to go before 7am!

Grapefruit

We planted some citrus trees a few years ago and they are starting to mature and produce fruit for us.

Last year was the first time getting grapefruit and they were really good. This year the grapefruit tree is producing again. Not quite as many as last year but the fruit are huge - and very tasty.

Also, an orange tree we planted at the same time seemed to be lagging behind the others and we thought maybe it was going to be a runt. Well, that tree had a growth spurt in the last year and caught up to the others. This season we got our first oranges off that tree and they were very sweet and juicy.

This picture below is part of our bounty from last year off a mature orange tree that was here already when we moved in. We had so many last year I had to give away dozens of them.

Woolsey Fire

As of Wednesday night this fire, which began last Thursday afternoon, was finally starting to become less intense as the winds have begun to die down.

Sadly, hundreds of homes have burned down and at least a few people were unable to escape alive. Many of the canyon roads (including Topanga - which we use almost daily) are still closed and PCH has limited access available to residents only.

It's amazing how large this fire has been. This story reports the size is 150 square miles - the size of Denver, Colorado. The smoke has been tough to deal with and now the charred hillsides will be especially vulnerable to mudslides if it ever rains this winter.

On Fire Again

This was the view from my street this morning. There are two large fires burning nearby and I could clearly see the flames late last night from the house.

Fortunately for us, even though the wind is howling here, the smoke and the fires are not blowing toward our direction.

On the map below you can see that the Hill Fire, which started in the Thousand Oaks/Newbury Park area had already burned to the ocean when this image was made. The Woolsey Fire is closer to us and is heading south toward the ocean. (We live just above and to the right of the last s in the word Calabasas on this map.)

As of 2pm the Woolsey Fire has just reached PCH after burning pretty much the whole area south of US101 all the way to the beach. There have been mandatory evacuations for all of Westlake Village, Malibu and Hidden Hills as well as parts of Agoura, Calabasas and Topanga Canyon.

Unfortunately many homes have been lost and the wind is expected to continue to blow during the weekend.

Hunting Wabbits

It's been awhile since we last posted, sorry about the delay.

It's been a busy 1st half of the year so far. Aimee made a trip to Minneapolis the week of the Super Bowl and the whole time she was there the temperature never got above single digits. In fact, much of the time she was there it was below zero!

Back home we've been working on keeping the backyard clear of rabbits. They're fun to look at but they do a number on the lawn and we also don't want them taking up residence under the deck. We're aware of only two that we've seen so far and we managed to relocate each of them to an empty lot next to the golf course.

There are plenty of coyotes in the neighborhood and who knows how long these rabbits will manage to avoid their inevitable destiny but at least we know our yard is clear of bunnies - for now.

Wet

We finally got some rain this week, first time in a long time.

Unfortunately for people living in the fire areas the heavy rains brought some significant mudslides. In fact, the largest fire was still not quite 100% contained until the rain came this week.

Our neighborhood is fine, just the usual mudflows and downed trees, but no major damage. The canyon roads are closed for a few days while the mess gets cleaned up. We're fortunate to have missed the fires and the slides, many people were not as lucky.

The rain is gone for now and 80s are back this weekend.

Happy New Year

Here's a look at part of our orange crop this year - a bumper crop!

Maybe it's due to all the rain we got last season, I don't know, but this year the tree is packed with over a hundred sweet navel oranges the size of softballs. This tree was mature already when we moved in a few years ago. We have since planted several other citrus trees and they are slowly coming along and starting to produce fruit for us also.

I heard it was cold in some places this week. It's been quite the opposite here with 80's all week. We are hoping for some rain soon since it's been warm and dry the entire season and we could really use a change.

The huge fire just north of us in Ventura/Santa Barbara has been burning for about 4 weeks and won't be fully contained for another week. We still deal with smoke in the air. It is the largest fire in modern California history.

Happy New Year to you. Aimee and I are enjoying a few days of R&R at home during the holidays and looking forward to 2018. We are thankful for continued good health and hope you are well.

Morning Commute

Not the typical morning commute... pic.twitter.com/kJIOQeqsIK

— A. Mutzabaugh CMT (@WLV_investor) December 6, 2017

I did not shoot this video but this was what our drive to work looked like this morning.

Aimee left shortly before I did and this is what she drove through. It was a lot worse about 45 minutes later when I came through the same way. Fortunately I made it right before they shut down the freeway.

Very sad to see that so many people have lost their homes in the various fires. The whole region is blanketed in smoke.

Game 7

We've been enjoying the postseason baseball and hoping for another close game tonight.

It's tough enough to stay up until the end of some of these games. I don't know how people in the Eastern times are able to watch until the end every night.

Game 6 on Halloween was another good one. As usual we got zero trick-or-treat visitors.
That's OK with us since we didn't have anything to hand out anyway.

Petty Finale

Aimee and I were lucky enough to make it out to the Hollywood Bowl a couple of weeks ago for the final stop on Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' 40th Anniversary Tour.

The place was packed and all three nights were sold out. It's very uncommon for anybody to sell out that place three nights, much less a band that's been around for that long.

We're glad we got to see him one last time - the show was as good as ever. The news of his death a week later certainly came as a shock as he was in great spirits and spoke optimistically of the future.

Moon Shadow

We're back from our eclipse trip and it was a success. I did not take these two pictures but this is the view we had right before totality and then moments later when we got darkness and an amazing view of the moon completely blocking the sun.

                                                                             
The area where we were staying, in Sun Valley, was just within the band of totality and would have given us over a minute of darkness. We decided to drive about 30 miles north to get as close to the center line as possible and maximize our time in the dark.

There is only one highway heading north out of Sun Valley towards Stanley and we didn't want to get caught up in any possible traffic problems. Fortunately our friends know the backroads really well and we were able to get to a spot near the center line (just below the word Chilly on the map above).

              Here we are about 9am with a nice spot just off an unpaved road and hardly any other people around. The sky was clear but the air was a little hazy with smoke from numerous fires that were burning in the region.

The eclipse began around 10:30 MDT and climaxed an hour later. We loved every minute of it and enjoyed our trip very much. Now we'll hang onto our eclipse glasses for next time!

Eclipse Trip

We're on our way to Sun Valley, Idaho for a long weekend to stay with some friends and take in the total solar eclipse on Monday.

We've been planning to go since last year so I probably should have bought plane tickets a long time ago but I didn't. By the time I got around to it a couple of months ago it was too late. The airport in Sun Valley is tiny and there are not many flights in and out. All the seats for the days around this weekend were gone or priced way too high.

So we are making the drive. I've driven up there three times before and we are looking forward to this time.

The path of totality will be passing over the area and the skies are expected to be clear.

By the way, the next total solar eclipse in this country will be in just 7 years - on Aimee's birthday!

Birthday Weekend

We enjoyed a nice break recently celebrating Aimee's birthday. We took a 4-day weekend trip up to the Central Coast wine country. One of the tasting rooms we like to visit on our May visits was holding their spring pickup party on Aimee's birthday and we were happy to attend for the second year in a row.

We also got to visit a few new places we've never been. It's always fun to discover new places and meet some new furry friends.