Category Archives: Weather Happenings

Birding & Getting Out

Since our life hit the brakes and had to readjust last summer, we’ve haven’t had done any birding or anything to get out….too busy trying to get it back together. Going by our birding list, exactly 6 months since we listed anything. =(

We made a point to get out today and explore a different part area that we are now living in. It was also the 1st time I’ve been in our Jeep Wrangler since we brought the Pontiac…..felt good to be back in the Wrangler. =)

We checked out Camano Island and Cama Beach State Parks. Very happy that we stopped at the visitor’s center at Cama Beach. The staff member there was very helpful on giving us advice on where birders have been going.

We ended up in a wetlands area by a river and got to see our first short-ear owl and northern harrier! They were putting on a show. =) We saw at least 3 owls just flying around and 2-3 norther harriers. We even got to see an immature bald eagle, the head was almost finished changing to white.

It felt totally great to get out and do one of our favorite things. And the weather worked with us……no rain. =)

Hubby is working on the pictures now. I’ll post when done.

Been A While

I just discovered that tweets are no longer getting posted daily, I’m working on getting that fixed….no idea what happened and pretty annoyed by that.

Ok, what is going on in my little corner of the world……

We had a few days of sunshine and decent temps, now back to cold and rainy….it is Oregon, the normal.

Just received an email from my Aunt Debbie, my cousin Rodman (named after my late uncle) has been recommended to hospice.  =(  He doesn’t even hit 27 until June.  I didn’t grow up with him so wasn’t close due to that and age, but I have lots of memories of his mom and dad and me teaching his older sister how to walk.  Not sure what if anything I can do to help and feel totally helpless and crushed.  He is part of my family and it hurts.  My thoughts are with them, but that seems to be all I can do.  =(

Hubby and I have hit a rough spot economically but are doing well. Just needing to cut back and keep a closer eye on things.  We are grateful that we doing much better then many other people are nationally.

If you’ve been following my tweets, I’ve been getting very annoyed at the war on women that they right wing nut jobs are doing.  Limbaugh’s crappy comments just highlighted and showed it for what it was.  I’m really hoping that this wakes women up to start taking part.  So many laws have been passed to roll back our rights and treat us like imbecilic property it is astonishing.  And many have no idea how bad it has gotten, they are just trying to live their lives.  And my question is, where are the men in this?  The ones that don’t believe like the right wingers, why aren’t they speaking up?

At the rate this is going, they are going to take away our right to vote……ggeezz

Debating on going to Salem Apr 28th and take part in the March Unite Against the War on Women : https://www.facebook.com/UniteWomen

I know I do a lot of tweets and posts about issues, I hope that they are educational and make people more aware of how the government effects them more then they realize, but maybe it time to do a little more.  Even though, I’m a serious homebody and anti-social.

Not sure what to think about Peyton Manning.  I’ve always wanted him to retire as a Colt.  =(  But I understand why the Colts need to move on (they totally screwed up for not preparing in case he got injured) and start to rebuild.  Irsay and Manning did it really classy.  I really don’t see the Colts doing anything for the next few years.  I do hope, for Manning, that he still has a few more years left in him inspite of the injury and he can retire on his own terms.

We got ourselves IPad 2s for the holidays.  We are thoroughly enjoying them.  We love the surfing options, keeping up with twitter, but loving the ebook option more.  I like being able to update facebook/twitter from it, but for a lot of typing, such as this and skype, it has a lot to be desired.  I need my macbook for that.  We are debating (in the long term) of getting the wireless apple keyboard just for extensive typing.

I do love being able to have a small library in my hand due to my ipad.  I’ve already read the Hobbit & LOTR….being a few years since I have.  Currently going between reading Agathe Christie and “God Hates You : Hate Him Back” while using his arguments to highlight the bible I was given in ’89

Boy, reading this…..why would anyone want to be Jewish, Christian or Muslim??  “God” is such a hateful, murderous and jealous thing (where it acknowledges the existence of other “gods”.)  It teaches racism, genocide…..no wonder why religious nuts jobs feel comfortable in their hatred and bigotry…it taught all comes from the old testament……and I haven’t even gotten the new testament yet.  Like they say, you can’t fully read and understand the bible without becoming an atheist.

Joined the Freedom From Religion Foundation a few months ago.  Never been a fan of organized religion, especially have living in the bible thumping mid west.  Good way to turn you against religion.  But I always thought the bible and things were a log of history….but after actually reading and learning history, nope, it is nothing but a mythology…..just like the greek and roman gods.  Sad that the world still believes in it.

So now I’m reading up on the bible so I can understand and defend myself from the thumpers who have no respect for people who do not believe the same way.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten to the point that I refuse to put up with the crap that I’ve tolerated over the years.  As I say, I’m old and cranky!  lol

The Happenings….

I meant to start this earlier in the day, heck even a few days earlier……lol  Lets see what is going on.

We had a pretty good weekend last week.  We had some of the nicest weather we’ve had since the fall and did a bit of grilling to enjoy it.  Last Sunday night, as we were finishing our dinner, there was a knock at the door.  We pretty much keep to ourselves and was like, what the heck.  Hubby answered the door, the neighbor from across the street was there and seemed to be mumbling……hubby is like, you hit my jeep?  The guy is like yes.  This is not the first time, limited parking and it is on the street, so not a real big deal….exchange info and contact insurance.  So hubby is like, let me get my shoes.  He goes out there, sees a big wide scratch on the rear passenger bumper.  The guy is like I didn’t hit you there, and when asked where, he pointed to the driver side, that is so covered in pollen and dust that there isn’t a mark.  There is no way.

Hubby was going to say no big deal and not to worry, until he lied about it.  Because that scratch was not there this earlier.  He came in, all ticked, I went out to deal with it, asked for his info, he refused to give it to me, saying that he didn’t hit us there.  Sounding real baffled and buffled.  Well, that wasn’t going to work.  My husband started questioning him loudly and called him a liar, I called the police to mediate.  Dispatcher hearing it in the background, got the police here quickly.  We got the info from the wife, we felt totally guilty, she looked so crushed.  The few times we waved and talked in passing, she has always seemed so nice, she even dropped off fudge during the holidays.

The police did ask if the guy had gone back inside during this, we are like yes, well he had been drinking, but no proof if it was before or after he hit us.  I had seen them working out front all day, they had moved their car out of their drive to pull weeds, so I figured it was when he was adjusting from pulling it back in that he hit us.  It was a nice day, many people work out side and have a drink while doing it.  And looking back at how he responded, it makes sense that he had been drinking and you know the wife knew it.

Like my husband told her, he was saying to him to not to worry about it when he denied that it was his damage.  We did draw the neighbors out during this…..ggeezzz

So we have been debating all week whether to get it fix, if he hadn’t lied, we probably won’t.  And then, if to fix it, go through our insurance, pay the $100 deductible and have them deal with the neighbor’s insurance or call their insurance and deal with them and possible denial.  Well, that did get answered today when I got a letter from their insurance and are now have an appointment with their adjuster.

Been having an issue with the mail I sent out on May 31st and June 1st.  I sent out 3 things on the 31st and only 1 of them got there in a normal time frame.  One of them was not received until June 9th!  Icks.  On June 1st, I mailed out 2 netflix (to Salem), 3 cards (MI, IN, & WA)…….netflix FINALLY arrived June 10th, card to MI, June 11th….not sure of the other 2 yet, but I have hope.  What really bugs me about it, is that the card to IN was to mom & dad for their 39th Anniversary and I mailed it to be on time to be there by June 9th…..nope, didn’t happen.  So not happy about that.  But seeing that 3 of the 5 items have been delivered I have hope on the other 2, fingers crossed.  Normally only takes about 3 days to MI and 4 days to IN.

A few weeks ago I spent some time researching about internal hard drives for our macbook pros, what I read it looked easy to do and by doing it ourselves save us $50 for the change out, $50 for the transfer of settings and files and save $100 on the hard drive.  A total win-win, if as simple as they say.  Found us a much bigger hard drive ( hubby’s a 250GB, mine a 160GB at the standard 5400RPM) and even faster : Western Digital Scorpio Black WD7500BPKT 750GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5″ SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive Western digitals are considered very good hard drives, so I got them ordered.

They were delivered this past Thursday, June 9th.  When I opened the 1st one, I noticed that it had some unsecured from it’s packaging in it’s own box.  But since those boxes were surrounded by packing peanuts, I didn’t think too much of it. Hubby used that one to change out his hard drive, took 3.5hrs for the operating system to install, 1.5hrs for it restore from back up and then it ran slow as heck.  Let it sit over night to make sure everything was lined up and it worked faster in the am.

So Fri we decided to do mine, only took about 50mins for the operating system to install and 30min for it to restore, but I also only had 30GB….his was about 150GB. Didn’t take long at all for mine to be up to speed and no issue.  His started to freeze up, opening programs, playing tunes….so I did some research, sounded like a hard drive issue.  We ran the disk utility, ran the repair, still had the issue.  I started to remember about the packaging and the fact that hard drives are sensitive…..so we switched back to his old and put in for an exchange on the new one.  I will say that so far, newegg.com has a really nice and simple online process for returns.  I’ve never used them before, but was aware of them….so definitely a site to keep in mind when we need electronics.

I got the damage hard drive shipped off and now waiting on the exchange.  Now that we know what we are doing, shouldn’t take long to switch it out and get it running again.

Monday, June 6th was the day we planned for a 12mile hike on Mt St Helen’s, as a late anniversary celebration.  Well, we didn’t go to bed as early as we should’ve and didn’t get our NW Forest Pass like we needed.  We figured we can get them when we get there.  We got our packs all ready Sunday and left here by 6 am, figuring the drive would take about 2-3hrs.  We did figured pretty correctly on the drive, took only a little bit longer due to the fog that we encountered the higher we went.  One moment it was clear the next moment couldn’t see a thing on a winding mountain road.  The pass thing really messed us up, because none of the centers opened until 10am.  If you want to do an all day hike and be back by sundown, you need to start by 8/9am.  So we had already checked a few possible substitute shorter hikes that we could do instead.

They did have some pullovers for you to view the area.  You could see tree trunks from the landslide buried sideways in the dirt and exposed by the rivers that recut their flow through the land.  It really does mess with your mind when you think about it and see it and then the info at the observatory, a bigger mind frock….wow

We went to the Johnson Ridge Observatory, where the original hike would’ve started.  Johnson Ridge is what forced the landslide to move west instead of keep coming north.   Wow about the view…..the pictures we took do not do it justice.  When we first got there, Mt St Helen was covered in clouds and would peak out.  When the observatory opened, we saw the 16min movie they have.  They used the original film with some added CGI, it was actually pretty well done.  Learned a lot more about the blast that neither of us knew.

Didn’t feel so bad about not getting the pass needed for the hike until late, because the trail we wanted to take is still covered in snow and won’t be open until July 4th area.  So the fact that we’ve been doing the higher elevation hikes in the fall, has been a good thing.  And it was a very good thing that we ended up doing the 2.5 mile hike….it was a big workout.  Going by how long it took us, with similar terrain, that they 12mile hike would’ve taken us 9-10hrs.  We really enjoyed ourselves and learned a great deal.

I’ll be posting some pics in a separate post and I still need to make a gallery.

I’ve been working this for a couple of hours and heading to bed.

Planning

Finally got some great weather!  Yes!  Been loving having the house open and letting the sunshine in, where it can…..lol

We are aiming to go hiking on Mt St Helens later this week since, other then lunch, we didn’t do much for our anniversary.  Other then the 2-3 hr drive, I’m totally looking forward to it. We need to figure how early we want to leave….not sure on that one.

There is a 12 mile hike that we are looking at, yes, I know after the last one, I said no more one day hike more then 5-8miles….but this may get us to close to edge of the crater.  Now when we started talking about this early May, they news just had it on that they opened the roads to the visitor center closest to St Helens.  And when they showed it, there was snow about 20ft high on the side of the road.  So I really didn’t think any hike was possible…because we really don’t have snow gear for that.

But they do have web cams on the mountain, the snow is pretty high up, and we shouldn’t be going over the 4000 level that much, according to the map, so we pretty sure that we can do the hike.  And what hubby has found, it has been in the 60s where we want to go and 40s at night.

I’m hoping that we can do it in 6-7 hours, better then the 8hrs we’ve done in the past.  I’m hoping mainly due to the fact that looking at the map, we will be doing a lot of up and down but doesn’t seem like a lot of the extreme elevation changes we’ve done in the past.  But we’ll see….I just want a good hike with great scenery.

We are aiming for a good weather day, the sun is out until about 8:30pm but I do want to prepare just in case.  There is always some story in the news about lost hiker stuck out over night when it gets cold and they aren’t prepared. I want to make sure we aren’t one of those stories, that is how you can get hurt or worst.  So pack a little extra food and clothing while trying not to weigh down the packs too bad.

When we look back at it, our first 12 mile hike around Multnomah Falls, we were really lucky that nothing like that happened.  We took a difficult, steep trail, not one that inexperience hikers really should take, used our regular back packs for some food, water and we did dress in layers….no lamps or first aid kit, no compass…..

Part of our trail was not marked very well and for a bit there, we thought we were lost.  There is nothing like being in the middle of an old part of a forest that people rarely see with no clear trail, so far out of the main paths, hearing the eerie silence, no way to use your phone to creep you out.  Luckily, hubby is like, do not panic…..which is the worst thing you can in a situation like that.  We kept on going and finally found a clear path, but you do not forget that feeling.   Then it was a race against day light, at least it was down hill.

We got to the road as we lost daylight, the hike plan had us going back into the woods for the last 2 miles…  Heck no, if we did that there is no doubt in my mind that we would’ve broken one of our limbs or gotten lost in the dark.  So we walked the last 2 miles on the road.  Another beginner mistake we made, is we didn’t leave a note in our windshield when to we expected to be back and the trails.

The good thing about that hike, that hubby keeps pointing out, is that we pushed our limits and know what we can do.  Which is true, but at the time we hadn’t started at the gym, totally overweight (well much more then I am now…lol) and we could barely move for days afterwards…..icks…lol

Since then, we have gotten proper water bottles, hiking back packs, head lamps, compass, first aid kit, knives, trekking poles, all weather blanket and other things that would help if a situation arises.  And we finally got decent rain jackets last month…..wind breakers do no cut it.  So tomorrow we are going to get everything together so we are ready to take off depending on the weather.

I’m going to be signing up for a class to learn what all the gadgets on our nikon D70s does in July.  Right now I’ve been going over the field guide book that we have.  Just trying to get some info in my head…..while testing it on the cats….lol  We need a new lens, so I’ve been browsing B&H Photography.

Looking at a Nikon 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR AFS-S DX Nikkor Autofocus Lens (WB)/LensCoat Kit Probably going to do some more browsing and then hit up my photographer friends for their opinions.  I just need a good lens that lets me learn.  If I get good enough, then I can move on to the next set of lenses.

Tomorrow goals is to finish getting ready, catch up any all and work and finally do our books.  Right now, it is time for me to head to bed.  =)

Lazy Day

Day is about gone, still don’t know what I’m doing with it.  I texted with my MI sis, talked to mom, I’ll call tomorrow for dad and I’m skyping with my IN sis.  I did make sausage and eggs for breakfast and read the paper.

I was reading our new BackPacker, that I’ll like to try and finish later today. It has the top 10 National Parks for hikes, they have a picture of Crater Lake on the cover.  I love the info that BackPacker provides, trails, info on gear, cameras, photo tips, animal tips….just a bunch of very useful info.  We just need to do more to use it…..lol

I took a photo composition class last month, really haven’t used the info yet, haven’t been anywhere/inspired to take pics.  Going to take a class to learn how to use all the options on our SLR, I think not really knowing them doesn’t help.  That class will be in July.  I’m the type that needs a very good reason to use something to learn it.  If it is not something I need or am using, I really have no motivation or retention to learn it.  The weather is really, really not helping on it.  So tired of turning on the heat…it is almost June, dang it…..ggrrr

After a lot of thought and research, aiming to get a bigger hard drive for my macbook pro next month.  I need one big enough to fit all of my music, movies and pictures.  I’m both excited and nervous.  I’m looking at this one : Western Digital Scorpio Black WD7500BPKT 750GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5″ SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive All my externals are western digitals and I’ve read a lot of good reviews about them and this one is faster then what I have.  =) It’ll be easier for me to access my stuff, since it is all currently on my external hard drive, but nervous about the process.  I don’t want to screw anything up and lose all my programs and settings.  From what I read, my mac back up (time machine) can be accessed by the operating system disk and it will restore everything.  I so want it to work.

Wow…..the sun is shinning….weird….lol  Suppose to have a semi-nice day tomorrow.  I would love that, but afraid our smokey neighbor will ruin it for me……yuck.

My Uncle Dave had a stroke, he has a hole in his heart that needs surgery.  From last I heard, he is doing ok. His father-in-law, my Aunt Sheila’s dad, just passed.  =(  And to add to all that, my cousin’s grandma-in-law is in the icu….so she got totally hit with her grandpa, her dad and now her husband’s grandma.  All in one – two weeks time.  So my thoughts are with them.

This wasn’t much of a post, but it is something.  I think I’m going to do some reading and listen to some music.