Saturday, October 28, 2006

It's Flu Season

Grandma and Grandpa took their flu shots Friday afternoon. The Huguley mobile unit was at the Grandview school for a few hours so now we are set for the winter.
Entering The High Speed Era

Our high speed wireless connection with AirCanopy (www.aircanopy.net) was installed the day before we left for California. This was after three weeks of phone calls to the company asking for service and being told each time that we had trees blocking our signal or we were too far from the tower or some other lame excuse.

I can see the Itasca tower from my front porch with bare eyes! I measured the distance with my GPS and found it to be 8.9 miles. Their tech had told me that this tower had a 10 mile line of sight coverage.

Finally I was able to connect with the owner of the company and get him to agree to send an installer. After the installation he checked our reception and said it was one of the best he has seen from that tower!

I bought a used wireless router on eBay while we were in CA. It is now installed and doing a good job. Pages that used to take forever to load (whatsheupto) now load almost instantly and I can upload pictures from home now. I am still having some difficulty getting the network settings done right. Jerry's computer can't seem to see the high speed connection. I will keep working on it.


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Monday, October 23, 2006

Adult Birthday Celebrations



To celebrate Ann Carol's birthday we grazed at Fresh Choice in downtown Walnut Creek.




Grandpa's birthday supper included grilled pork chops with a finale of lemon pie.





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While In California

Lauren worked on a video of her mission trip to Cameroon.


Jordann opened birthday gifts at her party.


Here you can see the hills just beyond the populated area of Concord.



I took a walk around the neighborhood early in the morning.


Lantanas were blooming along the sidewalk.


They shone brightly in the morning sun.


This intersection where two six lane streets meet is only two blocks from the Tatum condo.


Our motel was just across the street from their housing complex.


The hills are completely dead now as this is the end of the dry season.


As we drove through the pass toward Pittsburgh we noticed a few cows grazing at the top of the hill.


Interesting flowers at the shopping mall.


One afternoon we visited the dog park. These people were walking toward the park with their canine friends.


Sunday afternoon as we drove to San Francisco the fog began rolling in through the Golden Gate.


I think soon the entire bridge will disappear.


On Sunday afternoon there were almost as many bicycles on the roads as cars.


The fog came in through the trees.


A sculpture in front of the art museum.


From the hill near the Pacific we could see San Francisco in the distance.


San Francisco looks like San Francisco!


We stopped at a Taco Bell on the beach.


Lots of people were enjoying the surf. The water is so cold that they all were wearing wet suits.


The fog almost obscured the surfers out beyond the first wave. We never saw anyone actually ride a wave successfully.


We visited a pumpkin farm along Highway 1 and walked through the corn maze.


This old barn was at the back of the corn maze.


Customers were allowed to harvest their own pumpkins from the field.


Many pumpkins had already been harvested and stacked outside the field.


There was a big stack of straw bales for the kids to climb on.


Jerry bought a stem of brussel sprouts and some English peas that she shelled while the rest of us toured the pumpkin and corn fields. We saw several large fields of sprouts growing near the highway.


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