Spitting at jets

We took a trip to San Diego a couple of weekends ago, for Helen’s Epilepsy  conference.   Helen has an interesting, albeit morbid,  hotel metric … jump-ability.    Our hotel, an Embassy Suites, has a large 12 story interior courtyard, so scored pretty high on that metric!

And it had exterior balconies as well.  This is the view we had of the retired aircraft carrier Midway:

Launched in 1945, it was the US 41st carrier.  I did some research before I spent most of a day touring it.    It was in service for 50 years, refurbished twice.    The last carrier built a few years ago, USS George Bush, number 77, cost $6 billion.   The next,   USS Gerald Ford, will cost $13 billion, ‘ships’ next year.

The Midway was the carrier that made the news at the end of the Vietnam war, when the captain ordered $10 million of Huey helicopters pushed overboard into the sea to make room for an emergency landing of a Cessna with a fleeing Vietnamese family.   The flight deck is now a museum full of all kinds of interesting aircraft:   

I sat in the captain’s chair, in the tower high up above the deck.    The captain also had the only bed up there so he could get to that chair quickly when needed:

This was one of a bunch of briefing rooms for the pilots.   The ship holds over 100 planes, so each type of plane had it’s own group of pilots.   This was the ‘top gun’ room for the hot shot fighter jet pilots:

The chip is a floating city, supporting over 4000 sailors.  So buried in the bowels of the chip you could find a room for anything and everything, including a post office with its own zip code.    This is the dental office, supporting 5 dentists:

In the deepest part of the chip was the brig … this guy has been there quite a while:

The most impressive rooms were the Admiral's quarters.   He had the biggest bed and conference rooms, including this impressive control room from where much of the Iraq war was coordinated.    Here I am pretending to be the Admiral, trying to cancel the war,  but it didn’t work, the jets kept taking off.    I guess simulated planes don’t listen as well as real ones:

 

San Diego was where navel aviation, including the  carrier, was invented.     The also have a big city park I tourist-ed which has this air and space museum:

 

If you look closely in the above photo, you can see a live jet flirting with the 2 dead ones on the ground.       The San Diego airport is the busiest single-runway airport in the country, and it is right next to downtown.  So there are jets constantly overhead within spitting distance.    I had fun trying to take their pictures:

 

I also took a harbor tour:

And met some handsome pelicans:

Helen mostly attended the conference.  Once she did escape and got cornered at a local mall by a very effective kiosk salesman who sold her some sort of magic nail polish from the Dead Sea.     Anyone who comes to visit us, be warned you will likely leave with shiny fingernails.    I only let her do one hand, so I could measure how long it lasted (about 1 week):

Salt Lake City downtown is much more active now than it was when we were looking for a house 2 years ago (just 2 years ago??).    This is mostly because of the $2 billion dollar ‘City Creek’ re-development they did downtown.    It includes a Macys, which has a xmas window display with massive candy sculptures:

 

The LDS Temple Square is beautifully lit up:

One of the LDS visitor centers has a large statue of Jesus.  You can see it in the background here, with the 3 wise men in the foreground  admiring just how big Jesus has grown (literally and figuratively):

I finished installing our motorized curtains last week!   12 upstairs and 3 downstairs:

 

Cellular blinds are really slick.   When opened, they have only a small 3” stack at the top of the window that blocks very little.   With our massive windows, we probably could have blocked quite a bit and not really suffered, but we are now pretty spoiled by the amazing view:

Missed it by 1 second!

We had a couple of feet of snow a few weeks ago, so you know that that means!   This is a 30 minute 8 footer … that last foot is the hardest (no ladders allowed):

Helen helped me give it some more character the next day:

 

He started slowly tipping over, despite my encouragement to remain straight and strong:

But snowmen age a bit faster than the rest of us:

 

Even Irena’s mannequin was worried about him:

He eventually called it a good life, about about 1 hour after I took this photo:

And about 1 second before I took this photo …. 1 SECOND!   Ah for a slightly faster camera.   He was impossibly horizontal!

And for completeness, 1 week later:

We had a fun Thanksgiving.   Boris shared with us the joys of cooking Salmon with Pomegranate seeds:

Along with lots of other good food:

Noah and Inna, a friend from NY, flew in for a few days.  Here Noah is trying to figure out why a bird (on the deck chair) constantly perches on our deck and  periodically and deliberately flies into our window:

Our leading theory was he was being territorial and trying to scare away the competition, which looks remarkably like him.    We solved the problem by sitting a stuffed gorilla where he normally perched. 

The rest of our curtains arrive next week.    To prep for them, I bought a 26’ multi-function ladder and strung the wiring to supply power to the motors:

 

In the mean time, I’ve been playing with another project.   We have been enjoying our hot tub:

But feeling a bit guilty about the energy use.    So I researched the best way to leverage solar energy to heat water in cold temperatures.  Turns out to be evacuated solar tubes:

   http://www.solarpanelsplus.com/evacuated-tube-collectors

Invented in the US, but popularized and affordable-ized in China.    Initially I ordered a set from China, but shipping 2xed the cost, and required a “slow boat”.    So I found a state side supplier:

Got so excited, I assembled it in our kitchen before I figured out I couldn’t move it down the stairs:

So I dis-assembled, moved, and re-assembled:

I currently have it jury-rigged, testing out how well they work, deciding where to put them and if 16 tubes is enough:

Those little panels on the left are cheap (in-efficient) photo-voltaics that power a small submersible pump, so no external electricity or valves are needed.  

One last, yet another sunset, photo:

Bruce

Inappropriate handling of a woman

Only a small mystery in this photo:

The mystery is not who (I confess, is me), but rather what (am I doing!)

 

Our leaves are finally Falling, very pretty:

 

Until this last week, we were getting flowers from our yard:

And the Stink bugs are doing their annual Fall invasion.   I heard they stink when squished, so I was battling them by trying to just strategically squishing their brains, as brains don’t stink (at least they shouldn’t).    Then I got curious and big time squished a couple.    No stink:

I was actually a little disappointed.    I was going to invent a stink bomb contraption that auto squished a bunch of them and hurl it at this Rat who keeps stealing the bird’s food.   Lacking that, I just yelled at him, which seemed to work also:

We got a sneak peak at the first draft of the self help motivation book that Nick wrote this summer.   I loaded it up on the Ipad, then Helen started reading it when driving to/from a party.   It was so engaging, I had a hard time getting her out of the car!

This photo is from one of our recent parties.    She is teaching the dog how to hide low in the forest then stick his leg up in order to trip up a bad guy flying low over head on a Star Wars flying motorcycle.  I think the the $8 billion Disney Star Wars franchise resurrection should use dogs in stead of wookies.

 

Our friends fireplace behind Helen inspired me to re-do our living room fireplace.   I converted it from a sand pit vented burner to a metal/glass ventless burner, so we can run without so much wasted heat up the chimney.   Really pretty with all the reflections:

 

My other project has been how to curtain up our vast window wall.   After 2 summers and winters, I‘ve concluded that the temperature swing is too much with uncovered windows.    For the last few months, every week, I decided on a new curtain type.   Then switched to another scheme the next week.    Finally, motorized cellular shades stuck for a month, so I ordered a test shade from the internets:

Works great!  Tomorrow I order the other 15 shades,  $4000 worth!    Still better than the $12,000 estimate I got from the local shade guys.

So, back to that initial mischievous Bruce picture.      My hand is indeed mis-placed on a woman’s body, but her head was also mis-placed, so I didn’t feel so bad:

We are helping Irena dress up a mannequin for posting some of her fancy cloths on Craigslist:

Helen is having fun taking embarrassing photos of us in the process:

And trying to teach me (unsuccessfully) how to model:

This is our model admiring our new curtain:

Irena made Helen promise not to mess with her mannequin until after we have all her photos done, as she knows Helen’s propensity for unusual modifications.     But after she has her photos,  then she says Helen can have her.      I’m more than a little bit scared of what might come of that!

 

Bruce