Patricia and Victoria visit.

Patricia, Michael, and Victoria are visiting next week. I am looking forward to seeing them all.

On Tuesday, October 30, Susan and I will pick up a rental mini-van and drive to Big Bear. We will take the cat up there and spend the day. We will leave some stuff there, including the cat. Wednesday morning we will drive to Long Beach and pick up Patricia and Victoria from the airport. The 4 of us will drive to Disneyland where we will spend two days seeing what we can of the two parks. On Saturday morning we will pick up Michael at the Ontario airport and go back to Big Bear. This will make the cat real happy :> On Monday, after a couple of days in the mountains, we will drive to San Diego. Tuesday is Sea World and a family dinner. Wednesday we take Patricia and Victoria up to Long Beach and a flight home. Long Beach is much cheaper to fly from/to because Jet Blue makes it so. Michael will be spending the days with his parents and fly out Saturday from San Diego.

A year ago, while entertaining visitors, we purchased Disneyland and Sea World passes. Both sets of passes expire a few days after we use for this trip. What timing.

Atkins Diet

I have been on Atkin’s diet since the beginning of May. When I work, I consistently eat the same things: McDonalds breakfast = two orders of scrambled eggs and a large diet coke; lunch = a bowl of veggies with Mandarin chicken from Panda Express; Dinner = Some meat I cook at home i.g. hamburger patties or chicken wings. When I go out to eat It is easy to get meat and substitute veggies or a salad for the bad things they always want to add to your meat order. On the weekends I usually go off the diet but try to eat smartly. You can see the little “weekend spikes” in the chart. Below are the results.

I feel good. It is nice going back through old clothes that I haven’t worn in years.

Adams Vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800.

I am reading Adams Vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800. It is a very interesting read. It covers the election of Adams through his loss to Jefferson 4 years later. All the players and all the issues. It is real interesting. A lot of it shows how much things don’t change.

Great weekend with my daughters, Susan, and grandson Alex.

Two of my three daughters and two of my three grandkids visited Southern California recently. Susan and I drove to Anaheim to meet them and had a nice weekend. We were going to go on Thursday to spend the day at California Adventure but Susan had a bad case of IAMNEVERONTIME so we got there at 2:00 AM Friday.

We went to Disneyland on Friday and had a nice dinner at McCormick’s and Schimks on Friday night with my daughter, Teresa, Friday night. Saturday we watched my grandson, Andrew, play his flute and trumpet with his two bands. The second band (trumpet) won first prize among very many bands from all over.

Andrew left with his band buddies on a bus and we went to the La Brea Tar Pits. That is a real interesting place. We had a good dinner and hung out at the pool that night. The next day the 5 of us: Susan, Teresa, Stefanie, my new grandson Alex, and I drove to Long Beach and caught a boat to Catalina Island. A good time was had by all including an underwater ride to see fish do what they do.

Alex has really grown since I last saw him. He is so cute with a great smile. I was real nice getting a chance to spend time with him.

I will post pictures later.

Replacing glass in my Prius

Three times my Prius has had cracks in the windshield from rocks hitting it. This time I replaced the windshield instead of having them plug the crack. I asked the glass guy if he gets a lot of Priui. He said he did. He gave some theory why but I said I had a different theory:

When the windshield is more vertical air pressure builds in front of the windshield and protects it. Any small rock heading toward a vertical windshield is slowed by this layer of presserized air. The Prius’ windshield is more horizontal than vertical so the air pressure is much less (better gas mileage) so rocks hit without any buffer.  

Basketball over. Baseball on the way.

We have season tickets to two sports: Aztecs Basketball, and Padres baseball. The Aztecs had an OK season that went downhill in the second half of conference play after one of our better players was suspended. We might have been able to maintain our level of play (6-2 through the first half) if we hadn’t had one starter suspended before the season and another player’s season eneded by a knee injury. The second half of conference play ened with us posting a 3-5 record. Disappointing.

The great thing is, we don’t have to wait long for baseball. This Friday we go to Petco Park for a pre-season game versus the Angels. This should be an interesting season. Of the 5 teams in our division 4 have the chance of being the best in the entire NL. Last year the Diamondbacks had the best record and the Padres and Rockies were only 1 game back. A very tough division. We have tickets to 42 games. That takes a lot of our time until after September.