Category: Blog Posts About Me

My site went from a daily average of 60 visits to a sudden spike of over 8,000 yesterday.  At one point 385 people were on the site, so I am happy my web server was able to keep up with the demand (thank you, WordPress and WP Super Cache).  The 400 pound snake story caused tons of people to visit yesterday from bing.com.  I was ranked third on Bing and as of today I am now first (if you don’t count the Bing news article served up before it).  Even though I was thrilled to see so many people visiting, it looks like most came to the site and left after 30 seconds.  The good news is some of you stayed and some even subscribed to my RSS feed.  I say anyone who knows how to subscribe to an RSS feed is a friend of mine and most likely someone who will enjoy the articles on this site.  Thanks to everyone who visited and a big thanks to those of you who have come back or subscribed to my site.

Tyler, Wilbur, and I went for our regular walk this evening.  The nice thing about where I live is you can walk out in what some may call a “semi-country” area.  I usually try and bring my camera with me and today I was really happy I did, not to mention it was my new camera.  Usually I see some cows or some birds but today I was walking back by some vineyards and there were three foxes that crossed our path maybe 30-40 yards away.   They aren’t great shots but thanks to the great new zoom on my new camera I was able to zoom in pretty close where before you would have barely been able to see much.  On Wednesday night I saw what I thought was a raccoon in the church parking lot but it ended up being a fox and ironically on my walk this evening I was thinking I wish I had my camera with me that night and 10 minutes later I saw three foxes which was awesome.  I never realized how small foxes are, they aren’t much bigger than a chihuahua.

We went to Santa Cruz’s Beach Boardwalk yesterday and the weather was fantastic (low 80’s).  There was lots of Labor Day weekend traffic getting there so it ended up taking a few hours.  We walked the boardwalk, went on the ferris wheel, had a great Mexican food lunch, played miniature golf, played some arcade games, walked on the beach, walked to the end of the pier, watched sea lions for a while, and by that time it was 6:30pm and time to head back.

While walking on the beach I saw Oliver Choy and his girlfriend.  Oliver looked to be doing well and I was really glad we ran into him.  I think I last saw Oliver down in Vignette Village in Austin, TX maybe 3-4 years ago.  Below are some videos of the sea lions hanging out under the pier.  We got a tip from a nice lady at the end of the pier that you can take the stairs down and look under the piers.  The sea lions are able to jump up onto the piers and I got a video of them (below) unsuccessfully and successfully jumping onto the pier which was fun to see.  I lost at miniature golf, I lost at air hockey, and I lost at a car racing game so it wasn’t a winning day for me but it was really enjoyable and lots of fun.

Successful Sea Lion Jump

I volunteered for Bring Your Child to Work Day this year and had fun watching the kids yesterday.  Ironically I think they taught me more than I taught them.  Our group had three volunteers for about 60 kids but they were surprisingly well behaved.  I had two bathroom runs, rescued a girl who lost her shoe in a race, and had to separate a battle for a wristband but we didn’t lose anyone so I considered it a success.  🙂

Cathy from Energy Operations was there to teach the kids about renewable energy.  For some reason my camera couldn’t focus very well with the bright window behind her but it is still watchable.  I loved watching the kids perk right up when she mentioned candy for getting the answers right.  She was vying against cartoons for their attention but candy prevails.

Eric the Magician (Eric Tate) was there to entertain the kids and it was fun to watch how skeptical they were of “magic”.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, we went to see Wicked on Saturday night at the Orpheum Theatre.  The Safeway Employees’ Association (SEA) was one of the group sponsors that night, so there were a bunch of people from Safeway.  Before the show, we went to Osha Thai for dinner, which was really nice.  We sat in the balcony, which ended up being great.  I never once thought we were sitting too far away, or it was too difficult to see what was going on.  Even though I wasn’t allowed to take pictures in the theater, I was able to go to the Orpheum website and get a virtual view of our seat location which is shown below.  The theater was spectacular, but I am easy to impress, being that I don’t go into buildings like that every day.

I expected to not like it as I was fully expecting another rendition of The Nutcracker (sorry, hate it) but was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually loved it.  It wasn’t boring at all, the singing and dancing was good and most importantly I was engaged, which isn’t always easy being that I have the attention span of a two-year-old sometimes.  We got there a few minutes early and talked to the usher for a few minutes about the show.  She told us Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) was being played by Vicki Noon who is an understudy but was better than the person who normally plays her, so as she put it: “we were in for a treat”.  Elphaba (Vicki Noon) rocked it, I loved her singing.  The show was funny in parts, the costumes were great, the stage was all decked out (awesome dragon hanging above it), the acting was great, the sound was awesome, and if you ever get the chance you have to see it.  Who would have thought I would ever say that!

Beginning of the Show

Grand Finale

Gary and Charisse invited us to join them at the Brentwood Cornfest last night in Brentwood, CA.  Charisse works for the High School so she was able to get us into where they shoot off the fireworks from the school football field.  Being so close to the fireworks was great because they were really LOUD (the first few were really loud) and really BRIGHT.  To give you an idea of how close we were, I kept having to shift the video because my camera was zoomed all of the way out.  The weather was fantastic last night too, not too hot and not too cold which made for a great evening.

My son and I have been having lots of fun with the baby birds that decided to call our front patio home.  We come home and he first looks for our dog in the window and next the bird’s nest above the front door.  I blogged last week about the birds who were growing fast and making a big mess of the front patio in the process.  A few days ago I noticed two of the three birds had left the nest and every now and then the three of them would be together.  This morning Tyler and I went to lock up the place and as usual we looked up to see what the birds were up to and we were surprised to find the baby bird who hadn’t yet left the nest had left the nest but was dangling from it and couldn’t free itself.  I walked away thinking it was strange but then I thought being the animal lover I am I should help the little thing.

I’m not gonna lie even though I like animals I’m scared of getting bit, kicked, or eaten by them.  Baby bird didn’t seem like the type of animal that would eat me but it looked pretty upset that it was caught.  I at first thought I would get a ladder and cut it down but then thinking that it hadn’t yet flown successfully I thought “wow that would really stink if I freed the dang thing to only find it couldn’t fly and it plummeted to its death right at my doorstep on the concrete patio”.  So then the idea struck me, I would take a broom handle and knock it free and put a big plush dog bed beneath it so if it did fall it would have a safe place to land.  So I got everything in place and started to take the broom handle and attempted to separate the bird from the nest but it just upset the bird who bit at the broom handle and made a “eeeeeek” sound (not pretty people…not pretty).

I then decided I’m just making things worse by poking a broom at the poor bird so maybe I could break a piece of the mud nest off to free it instead.  I took the broom handle and nudged the nest where the bird and some sort of Spiderman netting were connected.  Wouldn’t you know it with my luck I nudged where it was connected and the nest came crashing down to the ground.  The bird and nest luckily fell right onto the dog bed but the dang bird was still connected to the nest!  I got the bird and nest off of the dog bed and went to work thinking the bird would free itself now that it was on the ground and I didn’t want to mess with it any more than I already had (one can only do so much damage in one day).  Of course me messing with baby bird and knocking the nest down infuriated momma, brother, and sister bird.  They dive bombed me trying to keep me away from baby bird but I had my trusty broom with me so I kept swatting them away and almost hit one of them.  How ironic would that have been if I killed another bird while saving another.  Long story short they were not happy with me and I was not happy with them trying to dive bomb me.

Upon returning to work the bird was still on the ground and was still connected to the nest.  It was much more calm and just watched us go into the house.  I got my son and dog taken care of and went outside with some gloves and separated the bird from the nest which wasn’t easy.  Whatever the bird got into it was really stuck to him and no it wasn’t his wing.  However if you look closely in the video his right wing is all messed up before he even hit the ground.  It looked like it was either broken, didn’t have any feathers, or both.  I swept up the mess the nest made from earlier this morning and went back inside after moving the baby bird to a safe place where there was less foot traffic.  I noticed he wasn’t doing so well and didn’t seem to have much energy.  A few hours later I went outside and he was dead.  He was a good little guy so Bob the Baby Bird (that is his name and I’m sticking to it), this post is for you my man.  Note this video footage isn’t going to win any awards.  I was more focused on the task at hand and the birds kept attacking me so I was a little distracted at the moment.

Before

After

Went to Campo di Boccee last night in Livermore, CA.  I hadn’t ever played bocce ball before but it was really fun.  Rolling a little ball down a court is my kind of sport.