All’s Quiet Again On The Home Front

Things are back to normal around here again and it’s eerily quiet once more.  We drove Carrie and Maggie down to Victoria late Sunday morning where Maggie was going to visit with some friends before Carrie drove her to the Ferry to catch a late afternoon sailing back to Vancouver.  It was a great weekend of fun for us as it had been way too many months since we’d seen either of them.

Dallas Rd. Waterfront in Victoria, B.C.

And, speaking of driving, I got to drive the Blue Bullet for the first time since last Christmas.  I’d almost forgotten how much fun it is to wheel around in this little Honda Civic.  What a difference after only driving our Chevy Silverado Diesel for 4 months.  It felt like driving a sleek race car instead of a huge tank.  It was also nice to notice that the fuel gauge barely moved when driving to Victoria and back.

After we dropped Carrie and Maggie off, Paulette and I took the opportunity to take Molly and Rylie for one of our favourite walks – Victoria’s Dallas Road waterfront walkway.  It’s an off-leash area for dogs and a beautiful walk along the cliffs overlooking the Straits of Juan de Fuca.  As usual, on a nice Sunday morning, there were lots and lots of folks out for a walk and dozens of dogs as well.

We spent about an hour walking from Clover Point all the way past Beacon Hill Park and back including taking the stairs down to the beach for one stretch.  Molly and Rylie love this walk as they get to meet so many ‘friends’ – every type and breed of dog one can imagine.  Most of the dogs must be ‘regulars’ because they were all well behaved even though 90% of them were off-leash.

Victoria Conference Center with Empress Hotel in the background

Leaving Beacon Hill Park, we drove right down Douglas St. which is the ‘Main St.’ of Victoria.  It brought back a lot of work memories for me as we went right by the Victoria Conference Center where I spent a lot of time back in 1989.  The center opened that year and I was responsible for installing and implementing the computer system for managing its conventions, reservations and other events.

Douglas and Yates – dead center of downtown Victoria

Downtown Victoria still has a ‘small-town’ feel to it even though the metropolitan area has a population of around 350,000.  That’s most likely because of the city’s imposed height-restrictions on buildings in the downtown core.  I’m not 100% sure and can’t be bothered to Google it but I think the limit is 18 stories.  City Council is ever vigilant to protecting the city’s tourism industry by maintaining many of the beautiful old buildings built as far back as the 1800’s.

My old office in City Hall

Just a few blocks from the dead center of downtown we came to City Hall, the place where I worked for 31 years.  At a red light, I looked at my old corner office with it’s blacked-out windows.  That was the result of a security consultant (aka Goofy) hired by the city to advise on safety precautions to protect our computers.  We always used to laugh about that as our windows were the only ones blacked out in the entire building thus making them the object of lots of questions.

The venerable old Hudson Bay Building – it’s now loft apartments

Leaving the downtown core just a block from City Hall, we passed by the venerable old Hudson Bay Department Store building.  The Bay was a victim of suburban shopping centers and big box stores and closed its doors several years ago.  It has now been converted into retail space on the ground floor and apartment lofts on the 3 stories above.  I haven’t seen any of these lofts but I’ve heard they are pretty spectacular places to live.  A little expensive though.

Daffodils and Blue Bells in Beacon Hill Park yesterday

Safely back home, we just rested up doing nothing much for the rest of Sunday afternoon.  We had great leftover Lasagna for dinner and watched a few of our favourite TV shows Sunday night.  It was a terrific and all too short weekend with two of our daughters.

Have a great Monday, and thanks again for visiting!

Carrie And Maggie Come Home For A Sleepover

What a difference a day makes.  Saturday was warm and sunny so I managed to spend most of the day working out in our yard finally getting both the front and backyard lawns cut.  While I was home working, Paulette and Maggie were off to Victoria to pick-up Carrie so they could start looking for a Wedding Dress for Maggie.

It sure didn’t take long for the Tulips to bloom

The big wedding isn’t happening until summer, 2014, so I thought it was a tad early to be looking for a wedding dress.  But, what do I know?  Paulette advised me it was never to early and with that they were off in the Blue Bullet heading down to Victoria.

Not long after they were gone, I hauled my little Lawn Boy gas mower out of the shed to do my annual ‘see if the lawnmower will start’ ritual.  Nothing happened after the first 6 pulls on the cord so I found my sparkplug wrench, took out the plug, checked it over, made sure it was dry and put it back in place.  The mower started up this time on the second pull and I was good to go.

The sun felt nice and warm and it felt good to be out in the yard again doing some work.  It only took me about a half-hour to finish cutting the front and by then it was time for a coffee break.  While having coffee and browsing on my computer I debated whether I should cut the back yard as well or wait until Sunday.  It was close, but since it was such a nice day I opted to cut the back as well.

Whenever I’m outside, Rylie is never too far away.  When I’m mowing the lawn, she tends to follow me around looking to see what good things the mower might throw up for her to check out.  Molly, on the other hand, prefers to lie on the sundeck and just watch all the goings on from a safe distance.

The backyard grass was thick.  I had to stop and raise the wheels up to their highest setting to stop the mower from getting clogged up with grass and stalling.   It’s going to take a few cuts, lowering the deck each time, before I get down to the level I want.  The mower ran well though once I got the height correct.

Carrie, Maggie and Paulette

Paulette, Carrie and Maggie rolled in just after 3pm.  Apparently, they had a great day looking at Wedding Dresses for Maggie.  It’s even possible they just may have agreed on “the one”.   I would have thought that impossible so I’ll just have to wait and see how that develops over the next few weeks.  Miracles do happen!

Paulette’s Lasagna was excellent – as usual.

Paulette made Lasagna for dinner last night and it was excellent as usual. We had a green salad and garlic bread to go with it. It was terrific seeing Maggie and Carrie again as we hadn’t seen them since Christmas other than on Facetime or Google Hangout. Carrie is just starting her 8th month of pregnancy and is looking and feeling great. All continues to go well with #1 Grandson as well.  We can’t wait!

Last night, the girls took over the family room to watch Silver Linings Playbook.  It looked to me like a “chick-flick” so I figured that would be a good time to head to my computer room to write this blog.

It’s almost 10pm now and the movie just ended.  Paulette, Carrie and Maggie all told me I missed a good one and that I would have loved it.

Somehow, I doubt that.  Although, Robert De Niro was in the movie so it couldn’t have been all that bad!

Our backyard Cherry Trees are blossoming

Have a great Sunday, and thanks again for visiting!

Another Rain Day But The Sunshine’s Coming Soon

Another day went by without me getting our grass cut, here’s why:

My good luck about not being able to cut the grass is going to run out soon as temperatures here in the Cowichan Valley are forecast to improve drastically in the next few days.  Sunshine is expected by Sunday with the weather guessers saying it should be good for the rest of the week.  In preparation, I at least did go up to the gas station and filled up my plastic gas container.  So, I’m ready!

The ‘Blue Bullet’ returned home last night

Since we arrived home a little over a week ago, we’ve been a one truck family as Maggie still had Paulette’s Honda Civic safely parked in her Vancouver condo’s underground parking garage.  That all changed late last night as Maggie came over on the ferry from Vancouver to spend the weekend and much to her disappointment brought the Blue Bullet and the keys with her.

Rylie and Molly’s afternoon siesta spot following their hike

Just because it was cool and cloudy with the odd bit of rain, it didn’t stop Paulette and I from going on our usual afternoon hike.  So as not to get too wet, we went back to the Mill Bay Nature because the trail there is mostly covered by tall Cedar trees that form a canopy over the trails.  The photos that follow in this post are from a walk we took on a sunny day earlier in the week.

Based on comments left on my blog, the feeling was pretty universal regarding Google’s introduction of Google+ Comment integration with Blogger – 2 thumbs down!  I agree with that but I’m not yet ready to condemn Google.  In fact, I love Google and all the free stuff they give us.  They’re not perfect by any means and rolling out the Google+ Comments system proves it.  However, no blogger is being forced to use it so I’ll just wait and see how it develops.

A few writers have suggested they might look at WordPress as an alternative option to Blogger.  The basic, free version of WordPress is very limited and lacks many features available to Blogger users.  If you decide to go for the self-hosted version of WordPress, that will cost you, and it’s not that simple.  There is a significant learning curve in hosting your own website and it’s not for everyone.

Have a great Saturday, and thanks again for visiting!

Cure For Shaky Sidebar Syndrome & A Google Fail

It rained yesterday so that meant I couldn’t go out and cut the grass – oh darn it all anyway!!  Instead, I had all morning to play around on my computer and found out all kinds of interesting things.  One – I think I discovered a cure for “shaky sidebar syndrome (SSS)” and I believe Google has really failed miserably with their attempt to integrate Blogger and Google+ commenting systems. 

The Follower’s widget is the culprit believed to cause the shakes

Back on April 13th, I wrote about how a lot of bloggers were experiencing a “sidebar shaking” on their blogs for all widgets that came after the Follower’s Widget.  After a bit of research, I never did find a resolution or even an explanation from anywhere about this problem so I just forgot about it.  Then, yesterday I was using the CTRL+ and – keys to adjust the width of my blog and, all of a sudden my sidebar got the shakes!  What the heck?

So, I used CTRL+ to increase the display size a bit and Voila!!  The shaking stopped.  I made the blog smaller - it started again!  I tried it several times with the same result.  Next, I visited a few other bloggers who had the “shakes” and found the same thing.  If the sidebar shook, I just increased it a bit and the shaking stopped.  If you happen to see a blog with SSS, try this out to see if it works!

Google is continuing its effort to integrate Blogger with Google+ 

To a lot of fanfare yesterday, Google announced another in a series of innovations designed to further integrate our blogging platform, Blogger, with Google+ its flagship social media site.  This latest new feature is called Google+ Comments and when enabled in our Blog Dashboard will enable us to view all Blogger comments as well as Google+ comments in one place – i.e. on our own blog!

Curious to see how this worked, I went to my Dashboard > Settings and clicked on the Google+ tab.  All I had to do then was check the box Use Google+ Comments on this blog.  Immediately, my blog comment system was changed to the new Google+ format and it didn’t look a whole lot different than our normal comments but there were some additional options.

This is what my Blogger Comments looked like with Google+ on

Playing around with comments on my own blog, I found I could share them directly with my Google+ page by choosing Public so everyone with access to my G+ page could see them or I could restrict access to certain Circles only – i.e. RV Bloggers.  I publish my blog daily on Google+ so I went there and made a test comment and it magically appeared in my Blogger Comments as well.  I was kind of impressed.

Next, I emailed Russ (Travels in Therapy) and asked him if he could go to my blog and leave a test comment.  He kindly agreed but told me that he was now “required to have a Google+ Profile” before he was allowed to comment on my blog.  What?  You mean a reader, who may not want to join Google+ has to join it just to leave a comment on my blog?  Fuhgeddaboudit!!

That quickly ended this experiment for me in integrating Google+ comments with Blogger comments.  I quickly returned to my Dashboard settings and reverted back to standalone Blogger commenting.  The requirement to create a Google+ Profile before being allowed to comment would only restrict readers from commenting as far as I’m concerned – what a dumb idea!

Just to make sure I wasn’t jumping to the wrong conclusion about this, I did a bit of research and confirmed what my friend Russ had found.  The confirmation was right on Google’s Q&A page:

What if my readers don’t have a Google+ profile or page? Can they still comment?

No, but they will be prompted to create one when they attempt to comment.

I think I see where this is all heading.  Google seems bound and determined to integrate Blogger into Google+.  It may be that Blogger rather than being a standalone system will end up as a simple ‘tab’ in Google+.  If that’s how this goes, I hope Google will not make the mistake of closing all doors to non-Google account holders.  That would be a huge ‘fail’ in my books.

Maybe the sun will shine on Friday and I can drag myself away from computer stuff to get outside and get both the front and back lawns cut – I sure hope so.

Have a great Friday, and thanks again for visiting!

Still Trying To Get Going On A Few Tasks Here

Thanks to everyone who commented on my blog post yesterday about Snowbirders Travel Choices.  In my almost 4 years of daily blogging, I think yesterday’s comments were, on average, the wordiest(?) I’ve ever had.  Heck, some of them could have been blogs in their own right.  It was great fun reading all of the comments and it looks like a lot of readers enjoyed it too.

Here’s just one of the comments I really enjoyed: Yellams: Roaming Gnomes Wow... loved reading the comments almost as much as reading the post.. Too bad the comments don't have pictures.

I was happy to see the positive attitude shown by everyone especially those who didn’t necessarily agree with my opinion.  So, thanks to all for a very lively and interesting discussion.

Our lawn may look o.k. but, trust me, it’s deceptively long

My day yesterday was broken up by an 11am appointment at the local GM dealership to get our truck serviced.  It was just a regular oil and filter change but by the time they finished up washing the truck and everything it amounts to about 90 minutes.  It was just enough to stop me from doing any of the bigger jobs I was going to tackle like washing the 5’er or, ugh, cutting the lawns.

While my truck was being serviced yesterday, I walked across the street to have a look around Canadian Tire.  They always have interesting gizmos and their sale prices are great.

Somewhere between Palm Springs and home I managed to lose the cigarette lighter power cord that powered my Cradlepoint CTR 350 travel router.  By plugging our Verizon USB card into the CTR 350 we have our own WiFi system while travelling.  I looked and looked but couldn’t find the cord anywhere – it’s gone, gone, gone!

For the rest of our trip home, I used a rather large, clunky 300W inverter but I really wanted either a new cigarette lighter power cord for the router or a much smaller inverter.

I was in luck as Canadian Tire had exactly what I wanted.  It’s a pocket sized 100W inverter that was on sale for 50% off, so it only cost $18 which is less than the cigarette lighter power cord.  Also, this little gizmo has a USB plug for charging phones and iPads etc.  It’s more than enough to power our little Cradlepoint Router too.

Looking at Salt Spring Island from beach at Cowichan Bay

Not long after I got home from the GM dealership and had a bite to eat, it was time to take the muttzo’s for their afternoon walk.  It was a nice day so we decided to go to Manley Creek Park on Cowichan Bay and walk down to the beach as the tides have been extremely low this week.  I suppose there’s a reason why the tides are so low right now but it’s something I don’t really need to know.

A large variety of shells and sea life in the tidal pools

Unlike many of the beaches here on Vancouver Island, Cowichan Bay is not one of the sandy ones.  Instead it’s rocky and scattered with clam and other kinds of sea shells that would cause nasty cuts if you tried walking along the beach without good shoes on.

This type of beach does have its own advantages though as there are lots of tidal pools to look at.  There is always an abundance of sea life in these pools and Paulette is always pointing to something or other and telling me what it is.  Beyond the Clam shells, I’m pretty much lost but I do enjoy looking at all the different colors.

There always seems to be a few freighters anchored in the Bay

Hopefully, Thursday will be a more productive day and I’ll be able to knock a couple of jobs off of my ‘to-do’ list before it becomes unmanageable.  Of course, I could always just delete the list from my computer’s hard drive instead!

Have a great Thursday, and thanks again for visiting!

Thoughts About Snowbirders Travel Style Choices

Over the past month or so, I’ve found it interesting to follow the different styles of travel we snowbirders take to get back home, wherever that might be. Some folks like to race home like it’s the Indy 500 while others take the time to explore, meander and make their travel time an integral part of their snowbirding vacation.

I wouldn’t have wanted to miss this lonely Cypress for the world

Paulette and I are meander types, for the most part, as we like to pick different routes to, and from, home and see things we’ve either never seen before or re-visit places we would gladly return to time and time again.  This year was no exception as we chose to travel slowly from Palm Springs to home mostly using the Pacific Coast Hwy. 101 – it was spectacular.

Marina Dunes Beach – a spectacular, quiet beach on Monterey Bay

Other trips home have seen us drive through Arizona, New Mexico, a bit of Texas then head up to Carlsbad before heading north through Colorado and Utah. Another one of our fun routes was going to Las Vegas, Sedona, and the Grand Canyon followed by Salt Lake City, Idaho and Montana.  All of these places had special attractions we enjoyed and we’ll probably return to many of them again some day.

Pismo Beach – lots of room and a quiet place to walk forever

While admittedly far from a scientific analysis, it seems to me that we RV Resort types generally take our time while traveling to and fro, while non-fulltime boondockers (NFTB) seem to always be in a hurry. I find this a bit ironic as some NFTB’ers, not all by any means, seem to have a rather superior, maybe even “holier than thou”, attitude compared to us RV park types.  All I can see is, it’s cheap.

This would be my worst RVing nightmare! 

Still, it’s strange because many of those same NFTB’ers spend their nights parked on asphalt beneath the glaring neon lights of Walmart, Home Depot, Cracker Barrel or a Casino.  What gives?  That’s about as odd as Jenny Craig going to 5 Guys Burger ‘n Fries.  It’s weird to me because it seems diametrically opposite to their reasons for wanting to boondock in the first place.  But, each to their own.

Part of the RVing experience for us is the travel to and fro

On our way home this year, we stayed in many very nice RV Parks along the California and Oregon coasts. This allowed Paulette and I to walk for miles along beautiful beaches with the waves of the Pacific Ocean crashing on the beach.  A lot of these spectacular spots were almost deserted giving us all the quiet and privacy we wanted.  We’ve found this to be true even in the RV parks we’ve stayed in.

We stopped at countless viewpoints to marvel at beautiful scenes of Monterey Bay, Pismo Beach and Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge. We stayed in an RV Park in Waldport, OR that looked out over the Pacific Ocean. For the life of me, I can’t imagine trading these experiences for a Walmart parking lot - even if it is free.  I never envisaged camping on Walmart pavement overnight when we took up RVing!

So, if you’re like us and prefer RV Parks and Resorts, I wouldn’t get all defensive and apologetic the next time you hear an NFTB’er say  that the best way to enjoy nature is to boondock.  When I drive by some desert spots and see ATV’s roaring around, generators running and boom-boxes blasting I’m always glad to be in our RV Resort where most night’s its “lights-out” by 9:30pm and very, very quiet.

I’m also happy to say I love an endless supply of hot water, showers, fast cable Internet connections, 50amp power, swimming pools, golf, Laundromats and all the other wonderful amenities RV Resorts have to offer.  After a day of hiking out in the hot, dusty desert I can then return to our park and go for a swim and soak in the hot tub.  

Now, having voiced my opinion, I’m going to get one of Paulette’s beautiful quilts and find myself a nice comfortable corner in the Bear Pit.  Just remember, there are rules against feeding the Bears so please refrain from throwing rotten fruit and vegetables into the Pit.  Criticism and verbal abuse I can handle but not rotten fruit!

Have a great Tuesday, and thanks again for visiting!

Another Tragedy Makes Blogging Seem Irrelevant

My plans to wash and perhaps even begin waxing our fifth-wheel came to an abrupt halt around noon yesterday when my Twitter News App began flashing multiple ‘Breaking News’ stories about the bombs going off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.  I turned on our TV immediately and for most of the afternoon was transfixed by the images and stories of the Boston tragedy.

All of a sudden, I remembered that our blogging friend Donna (Cave Dwellings) must have been in an absolute state of panic when she heard this news.  The reason being that Chris and John, her daughter and son-in-law were in Boston as John had qualified to run in the race and Chris was there to support him.  To top it off, Donna and Dennis were babysitting the kids while they were away.

Not expecting a reply, I still fired off a quick email to Donna asking if she’d heard from her kids and if they were o.k.  I know she must have been quite frantic trying to get news but I just wanted to let Donna know that I was thinking about them and hoping both Chris and John would be flying home safely on Tuesday as planned.  I’m sure Donna will let us all know as soon as she is able to.

With this latest tragedy in the U.S., it makes it seem rather trivial to even think about writing a blog.  I’ve always said blogging is fun but there’s no fun to be had on a day like this when so many innocent people have been maimed or even killed.  The post I had planned to write tonight can wait for another day.

Here’s hoping that Donna and Denny’s daughter Chris and her son-in-law John are o.k. and are home with their family Tuesday.

Have a great Tuesday, and thanks again for visiting!

---

Update:  Great News…. Donna’s Family is O.K

...I have never been so afraid...luckily John and Chris are OK and home tonight..It certainly puts life in perspective...We had lots of people texting us and commenting of Facebook...I never want to do that again..We are one of the lucky families.

Donna and Dennis

---