Christmas Day 2007

I've often thought that the calendar should not be based on a religious event like the year 2007. What about all the people in the world that aren't Christians? Put yourself in their shoes. How would you feel if the calendar was based on the birth of Budha or some other figure? It would be unsettling to say the least.

So here we are in an unsettled world yearning for peace and freedom.

My picture today is the furled flower hope for a future.
This photo though not taken today is recent. It's also my first
offering to the flickr group 1 Flower 4 Freedom
http://www.flickr.com/groups/1flower4freedom/pool/

Darkness and Light

In the darkness there is light.

project 365 day 2

Cathy & I took the girls and went to Costco today in the Lazy Daze. We strapped Terra and AmityAnn's stroller onto the rear ladder and had a good old time.
Saw this clean Harley and used the nifty fifty lens on the Rebel to capture my shot for the day. Here is is.

project 365 1 of 365

Hopefully I'll be able to post a picture a day to help me
not only improve my photography but also remember the year.
The pancakes and bacon were delicious.

Rainbow

It wasn't a tough call as they brought us to it, the birds did, by getting wilder every day all summer taking over the living room. Finally we couldn't take it any more and I clipped their flight feathers. It's been several weeks now and I just trimmed them a second time as they were starting to fly again.

I'm attempting to tame them and it's a long slow process. I got them to sit on a perch ok and now I'm working on getting them to perch on my finger which is considerably more difficult.

Here is a picture of Rainbow taken recently. He was the noisyest of the birds.

Santa Cruz, CA fall tree

This beautiful fall tree is what I can only imagine New England must look like. Here the fall trees are hit and miss as most of them turn yellow then brown skipping the brilliant red coloring but this tree did itself proud. It was downtown near the library that we found it, Cathy & I. I took this shot from the car, with a Canon Digital Rebel and HDR'd it on the computer to bring out the colors.

Selling Olympus Evolt E-300

Having too many cameras and not enough lenses has prompted me to sell one of my cameras so I've decided to sell the Olympus. It's currently listed on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=250183712659&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=015

and I have a gallery of pictures on flickr:
http://flickr.com/photos/safoocat/1850574716/in/set-72157602892337442/

Fall 2007

This photo is the sky over Felton, CA on Friday Nov 9, 2007 in the early morning.
Nothing ever came of these clouds. We are in a drought.



Summer is gone and slipped by without one sigle blog post mainly because I've become a flickr addict and am spending all my time on flickr. I've decided to post a few of my what I consider to be my more interesting photographs on the blog just to keep it from dying of neglect.

A day at the tint shop

Here is Cathy and Kona with our freshly tinted windows on the Prius.
Here is an old Union76 gas pump we found during our walk while the Prius windows were being tinted.

Costco parking lot Santa Cruz, CA

basal cell carcinoma

Recently I was diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma on my face.
Moss surgery was used to cut the cancer out in three cuts.
Here are some photos of the scar one week later:

 

Cathy took this picture of me at the Scott's Valley Gardening Fair. It was very hot.

 

This is the front window of the overhead bunk with two layers of the buble foil insulation set in the window grooves. They are held together with foil tape and form a great light seal and insulator.

Michelle with home grown chard

 

Solar Panel installation

 
This is a small solar panel mounted on the refrigerator vent cover. The panel will be used
to maintain the engine battery. It puts out about 300 milliamps in full sunlight. The wires
were run down the vent shaft. The ground wire was grounded with the refrigerator ground lug and the positive lead was routed to the engine compartment partially inside the coach and partially underneath the coach attatching at the isolator. June 17, 2007

Eternabond leak repair

We used the foil Eternabond to repair the leaks in our cab over then spray painted it with exterior enamel that is fairly close to the color of the Lazy Dazy.

Running boards and step repair

We used rolled roofing and polyurethane construction adhesive to apply the material.


The step and running boards needed the covering repaired as the rubber was cracking off.

This is the runing board after an application of foil tape and spray paint.

Backup (rear view) camera installation

These are three images of the back up camera that we purchased from Costco.

The camera is mounted inside the coach near the top of the rear window using
two pieces of plastic that were bent to the correct angle with a heat gun.

The on/off switch is mounted near an overhead light where a 12 volt line was tapped.
The camera and monitor turn on and off seperately. The monitor has its own on/off
switch mounted on the console.



I used the provided double sided adhesive to mount the camera on the dash once
a satisfactory location was found. I used duct tape to hold it in place first to make sure the location was good. Power for the monitor was tapped off of the supply to the cigarette lighter in the dash. It came with an alternate 12V plug for that recepticle for anyone not wanting to do wiring under the dash.


We leave the camera on all the time while driving. It has a very wide angle lense but still is a great aid. I plan to experiement with the angle of the camera to get optimal range. It's great for backing up and watching tailgaters but the image drops off quickly at extended distances. There is very little interference with the signal.

Michelle 2/17/2007 Felton, Ca.

Super Bowl Sunday

We debated whether to watch the game but turned in on about twenty minutes in.
I must say the main reason we're watching is because Ronn Owens will be talking about
the commercials on his talk show Monday morning and it's nice to know what he's talking
about. That's on KGO.com on the Internet.

We were in town earlier and it was 78 degrees and only 59 when we got back home.
Cathy picked up her prescription at Safeway and used the new insurance and there
was no copay so that was a nice surprise.

I've been working on the Lazy Daze a little bit at a time. I got the back up camera mounted
and will post some pictures of it when it's done. Currently I'm working on getting the CB working. It didn't have any voltage and I had to dig deep to find where it was getting its power including lifting up the bulk as it's ceiling mounted and removing the cowling as I blew the 12 volt outlet plug fuse and had to trace that wire to see where the fuse was located.

In the process of removing the cowling I missed the bottom two mounting screws and broke
the cowling around the screw holes and that is out and being epoxied back together.

Michelle

Jan 5, 2007

First post of the new year thanks to Sheilah my trading friend
who reminded me I had a blog.
It's also the first post since updating
to the new blog format.

Today we almost forgot our Gray Bears food bag
since they had stopped for the holidays
but when we got down to the church
the two ladies were sitting in their respective vehicles
keeping warm. They said they stay until 9 a.m.
and we had about ten minutes to spare.

The Prius mileage has slipped to 47 mpg somehow.
We had it up to 50 but that was hiway mileage.

It's cold and windy with a clear blue sky.
My project on the Lazy Daze is a stantion
for the rear ladder.
It was epoxied last night and I'll attempt to mount it next.

Michelle