Our albums

I haven't added to the blog in a while. We have taken two small vacations since the wrist surgery. Last October we took a driving tour up through Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks, to Nevada to visit my sister, then on to Death Valley. I have finally sorted through the photos I took and created the album for the trip.

I also created an album for our 50th anniversary trip last May to San Diego. Turns out that year was the 100th anniversary of the San Diego Zoo. 

For the Yale 50th reunion I go (...)

Typing is abit tough so this will be short,

Yesterday I had a cyst removed fron my left wrist. It was the result of a fall just after the 4th of July. The cyst was impinging on my ulner nerve and making activities of daily living hard much less playing golf! Things did not get better during the wait and see period so out it came.

I am not sure how long for recovery. Probably 6 weeks. Hopefully much less for going back to 10 finger typing.

This one came just less than a year from the knee surg (...)

I releaize I have been remis at keeping this blog up-to-date. Last August we were going to take cruise in Alaska. Well, that didn't happen. I had been having some issues with my left knee since about April 2015. Nothing in particular showed up at the doctor's office, so I lived with it. He gave me a brace to wear and it made golf possible.

Figured it might limit somewhat limit my activities on the Alaska trip, but at least we were on a cruise.

Well at my follow up appointment at the beginning (...)

We have a new Cooper's hawk visiting our garden.

This one is a juvenile, maybe an offspring of the one who we used to see. Anyway he is still learning. A few weeks ago he caught a small bird. Probably not big enough to have justified the energy of catching it, but good practice. Yesterday he got a pigeon. The poor bird is still alive in these pictures. It was trying to move, but just resulted in the pair shuffeling along the grass.

We have not taken a real vacation for a while because of my medical issues over the past five years. I've been healthy, so we took a vacation to Utah and the Zion and Bryce canyons.

We stayed in Springdale, near the entrance of Zion. We took a couple of jeep tours around Zion and spent a day in the park. At Bryce we rode horseback down the canyon. A great way to see the park, but these old bones did have some troubles from the ride. We flew into Las Vegas and drove to Zion.

That way Susan ha (...)

We did get our interconnect permission from Southern California Edison back in November. Fortunately it was retroactive to the end of September, so we have been getting credit for our contributions to the Net for a few months.

Then with the December bill came a notice from SCE of a rate change proposal. Basically what it said was the people not using very much electricity needed to pay more and those using lots of electricity needed to pay less. (Sort of like the California Gas tax. When people (...)

Don't ever discount the power of jinxes. I had been joking recently that I had gone almost a year without surgery. Bad choice!

October 2 after golf I got sick at my stomach. I could not keep anything down. That continued through the evening, but by morning things were back to normal. Then a week later, also after golf same thing happened. Maybe something I ate at the club both days. (That did not make sense since all I had was iced tea and popcorn.)

The next day things had not improved. Maybe (...)

Today the building department came out for the final inspection. We passed (didn't really expect otherwise.) You can view the project photo album by clicking on the meter below.

Yesterday the hole around the new service box got stucco. Today paint.

Now it is just a matter of time before all the details are in place and Southern Callifornia Edison starts crediting me for the excess power I generate. (Right now they are getting it for free.) Even without the credit (so that I have to pay for power used in the evening rather than drawing down on the credits) it looks like my August power bill will be $100 less than before solar.

The new electrical service is installed and the solar panels hooked up. The meter now “runs backward"!

We got a couple of good breaks (pun intended?) with the new breaker box. First, remember the power outage that took out the wine refrigerator? Well Edison was not done. They scheduled another outage for some finish up work on the transformer. Good news is that we were able to get the new service upgrade done on the same day. So we had only one day of no power, not two.

The second good news (...)