Recuperating is key

Back from California & glad to be back. After getting to see SanFran, the Yosemite day trip on Saturday was really saving the best for last, and I don't know why more people I know haven't taken the time to go there. It started out at 3am heading out of Stockton with the terrible cold & getting to Yosemite by 5 or so, just in time for the sun to come up with the surroundings. Being above the clouds & feeling 50 degrees and below was a good change from this terrible TX weather. You can see the pictures at My Picasa Account. I'll add some more panoramics later.

Can't be forever

Just finished the training portion today, so the rest of the time is going to be getting over this small cold acquired by the San Francisco day trip(it was quite cold which was good) and heading out to Yosemite to see as much as possible. Everyone have a good weekend.

Some things cannot be celebrated the same anymore

I've been here in CA since Sunday afternoon. It's going fine, learning things, and definitely enjoying the 50 degree weather each morning. Tomorrow I'm taking Elton, another Aramark employee, out to see Oakland & San Francisco since he's never been there before. It should be a nice drive out there, seeing all the turbines again, especially in the Mustang that the Hertz guy was nice enough to give me at the same price. So, I'll get to take good pictures this time of San Fran, this time with a digital camera...Lumbard Street, the Exploritorium, the Oakland Bay Bridge, and of course the Golden Gate.

Dave, glad you're getting into the ECPI program. I hope you stick with it & learn a lot. Mr. Hamby will show you tons. Make sure he tells you about his new color creation. Oh, Mike said you were fat.

Today is Matt's birthday. He is 28, just a little too far away to tell.

Traveling = best

Good catching up with you today Mike. I'll make that date next year for the wedding. We'll see if we can get Dave completely out of the woods for good. Or, we'll start to call him monkey boy or something. Tomorrow I'll be heading to Stockton, CA, for 7 days on Aramark stuff. On the 26th I'll be heading to Yosemite. Night world.

Snakes On a Dock? Possibly another movie title?

So today ended Ronnie's problem at his sail club dock...for now. On Tuesday, after we finished up sailing around Fort Phantom, Ronnie was trying to show me the dock joints that needed to be welded back together when i noticed a shiny snake-like body that was indeed a snake. I was calm about telling Ronnie, not wanting to startle him or the big fella below the boards. Well Ronnie didn't take the calm announcement as planned. He did an extremely fast push up from the dock to get away from the snake with a spasm.

After the snake got away Tuesday, we revisited his little home under the dock on Wednesday.
So today ended Ronnie's problem at With a close shot from Ronnie's gun, the snake took off for the water and we went searching for an hour until he came back to his resting spot. Next we tried to pin him with a steel rod. He attacked the rod and eventually got away again. Well tonight I went up there early to see if he was back. The first crack between the boards...I saw his head, sitting and cooling off under the dock. When Ronnie came, he brought a nice large sharp piece of metal to chop the snake's head off. The big guy put up a good fight, bleeding all over the place until his head & body were separated. Well that head that I had seen earlier...well it wasn't the one that had just got chopped off. There was another one down there under the dock. The metal weapon Ronnie brought would barely fit in between the boards, so he decided to use some excessive force. A 40 pound rock should do the trick. As he dropped the rock on the metal at our estimated place, it broke the wooded handle on the metal. We thought it was a big miss, but turned out to be a dead-on hit, breaking the snake in two at the neck. It turned out that the first killed snake was a mother. It had birthed a baby snake right with the blow to its neck. After Ronnie brought the dead snakes up on top of the dock, I shook two more baby killers from the snake. Jayden was enjoying poking the snakes, making them squirm. This was a first for me, delivering a baby...more of a plus, delivering a baby of a dead headless snake(probably the last too). Here are some pictures of the mess.

Here's to any type of travel

The week is going by pretty well. Plans were put in today for my business venture out in California. I'll be out of Abilene from August 20th-27th in the city of Stockton. Coming back on Sunday allows me an extra day to go where I want. Yosemite will most likely be the choice of place to visit on that Saturday. Seeing it one time definitely wasn't enough. This time I will have the digital camera tied around my neck for tons of good pictures. When Matt & I were there years ago, digital cameras weren't too widespread, so the 35mm pieces were used. Despite California's terrible reputation as a state, their parks make up for it.

Here are some pictures I took last night. I didn't get my camera back outside in time to get the best part of the sunset, but it's still awesome just the same. The pictures of the bird...well there was a bird just sitting on a fence post next to where I pulled off on the side of the road. He didn't move the entire time. I was able to get about 3 feet from him with my camera until he finally flew off. Check them out.