August 11, 2026 · 22:47

Hail – But Not Here

The blaring alert on the TV while I was watching the Angels’ pre-game show said there was a flash flood warning combined with quarter-sized hail. Near us? Sort of, but “close” only counts in horshoes, hand grenades, and tactical thermonuclear weapons.

A quick look at the weather radar showed a bunch of large cells popping up, with the really nasty stuff over toward the California / Nevada lines along I-15 on the way to Las Vegas. But there was some pretty good activity about eight miles away, over by where the shooting range is that we visited two weeks ago.

It would be cool to get some big storm cell building up over us, I do love a good thunderstorm. But so far, it’s been hit or miss, primarily “miss.”

Life in the high desert during monsoon season! Gotta love it!

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Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Weather

August 10, 2026 · 22:04

There’s Always One!

It’s early August, the height of summer, pushing triple digits every day. The maple tree in the front yard is glorious and full and green.

Except…

There’s one single stinking leaf that has to get out of the gates early, clearly “offsides,” jumping the gun and showing off at least two months early.

“Look at me! Look at me! I’m a rouge, renegade, crimson red maple leaf in SoCal, where there shouldn’t be any maple trees to begin with!”

Give ’em Hell, Festus!

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Filed under Flowers, Forever Home, Photography

August 9, 2026 · 23:09

Pink Mystery

Something happened to my cell phone after we looking at the classic cars and hot rods yesterday. Images like the one above filled my Camera Roll, over two dozen of them. Most are some similar shade of pink, the last few are black.

A handful are videos instead of photos, and the soundtrack is nothing but a rhythmic rustling which I assume to be an artifact of me walking.

I have no idea what was triggering these photos. The phone was in my pocket, and the only thing different from the other 24 hours, 365 days a year is that I had some coins in my pocket as well from a purcahse at the farmers market. Was a coin lodged against a button in such a way to keep pressing it and taking pictures of the bright sunlight filtered through the denim of my jeans? Whatever.

Perhaps I was temporarily attacked and swallowed whole by a ginormous dropbear and the pink color comes from its skin and tissue and blood as it was trying to swallow and digest me? I’m sure that would have been such a traumatic experience that I would have wiped it from my memory, leaving nothing but the photos behind as evidence that it ever happened.

I hate it when that happens!

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Filed under Paul, Photography

August 8, 2026 · 23:58

Car Culture

Hesperia (and Victorville and Apple Valley) are along the old Route 66, so there’s a fair amount of “car culture” about, with vintage cars and hot rods all over the place. Today there was an event at the Hesperia Library with 100 or so hot rods and classic cars, plus dozens of food trucks and a farmer’s market and other booths for bakeries and knick knacks and quilts and clothing and a petting zoo and live music and governmental offices and a pet adoption and…

Soooooo much work goes into restoring and keeping these vehicles in perfect condition.

The Corvette on the left reminds me of those that the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts had. I wonder if they kept that promotional program going into the Shuttle era?

It was “balmy,” i.e., 102° in the shade, with minimal shade. But it was a dry heat!

I had a nice conversation with this guy, even though I was wearing my Chiefs hat and he had on a Raiders hat. No one’s perfect, and he had a great car!

The petting zoo had ducks, chickens, donkeys, ponies, goats, and what I think were llamas, although they could have been alpacas or some other exotic critters.

All in all, it was a GREAT day out in the community!

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Filed under Forever Home, Photography

August 7, 2026 · 23:09

Tres Codornices En El Muro Del Patio Trasero

Which, if Google Translate is to be trusted (YMMV!) means “Three Quail On The Backyard Fence.”

I never expected to see quail out here. I’m not sure why I thought that – it makes perfect sense now that I know they’re here. But to me, who went quail hunting with my Dad as a kid, quail mean “Grandpa’s corn fields in South Dakota,” not “California high desert.” But that’s a “me” thing, not a quail thing.

I had seen one back when I was exploring the edge of The Mesa, where the Victor Valley floor drops off into the Cajon Pass. Since then I had briefly seen lone quail on our back yard wall once or twice, but never with enough time to grab my phone or camera before they took off.

Today I was dishing out my dinner and I saw not one, not two, but THREE of them out there, and they stayed long enough for me to grab the camera with the big lens. It looks like the middle one is a male, based on the dark face markings and white stripes, while the first and thrid ones are females.

Squab on the hoof! What a delight!

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Forever Home, Photography

August 6, 2026 · 22:51

Boomers In The Distance

It got muggy and it’s been hot, so out here with lots of desert and mountains, that means unexpected pop-up thunder boomers. They stayed out to the east and away from us, but they looked impressive.

(Radar image from the Wunderground app)

Always nice to see that the radar picture agrees with what you can see with your standard issue Mark I eyeballs!

That really nasty, orange blob to the northeast up by Barstow –

Classic form, convection reaching for the next layer of the atmosphere, where it would be prevented from rising further and would break out into the dangerous and threatening anvil-topped shape.

To the southeast, over the mountains –

Not as focused and intense, more spread out, with several smaller cells growing nearby the primary storm cell.

The two biggest dangers from these kinds of storms are flash flooding and lightning-sparked brush fires. Everything is so dry and baked and flammable, any dry lightning turns into 100 acres of fire and growing fast in a heartbeat.

All y’all stay on your toes out there!

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Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Weather

August 5, 2026 · 23:43

Proof Of Life – August 05th

Another reason that we wanted to buy a house a year ago and stop renting a house was because we wanted to get a dog at some point, and our old lease didn’t allow pets. The Long-Suffering Wife adores Great Danes, particularly harlequin Great Danes. She wants to rescue an older one, and re-name it “Spot.”

We’re not quite ready to get Spot yet (getting closer!) but this last weekend we did add a new household member, a Roomba which Ronnie has named “Grogu.” Today I finally figured out the last couple of setup steps that I had missed, and off Grogu went to complete it’s first full-house sweeping run.

The uber geek in me is fascinated by the AI mapping algorithms and the way it learns and acts on its own. The Luddite in me is terrified of this little robotic monster buzzing around and bleating for help when it gets caught on a rug.

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August 4, 2026 · 22:31

Back Yard Blooming

In late July I started to notice these flowers that were blooming like crazy on a short bush next to the pergola in the back yard.

I suspect it’s an annual thing, and while we might have moved in a year ago, I was so busy and frantic back then that the bush could have been burning and in a conversation with Moses and I might not have noticed it.

I’ll have to do some digging to see what it is, but it most certainly is spectacular right now!

Meanwhile, something that I know was happening last year is NOT this year. Even before we bought the house, when we were just looking at it as a possibility, I noticed there was an apple tree and a pear tree in the back. Both were heavily laden with fruit. The apples were small and the birds got most of them, but the pears were nice and I ate several.

This year? Nada. Nothing on either tree. Perhaps they needed to be watered more or fertilized in the spring or something. I’ll consult our gardener and get him on the case, but for now, I’ll have to get my pears the old fashioned way – in the produce aisle at the grocery store. Or maybe at the farmer’s market.

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Filed under Flowers, Forever Home, Photography

August 3, 2026 · 23:02

Shooters’ Sunset

When we went out for our hands-on, live ammunition handgun training yesterday, the shooting range was out in the middle of nowhere, a dozen miles or so north of town off of the major CA highway headed to the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Northern California.

It’s been HOT recently, triple digits mostly, so we pushed our class back from noon until 16:00, which in turn meant that it was after 18:00 when we got to the range. Facing downrange to the west, the Sun setting lit up the holes in the target like a Lite-Bright set, making it easy to see our results.

Once we were done, cleaning up and packing up, we had a great view of a whole lot of dirt, rock, tumbleweeds, Joshua trees, and mountains off in the distance with that classic desert sunset color gradient in the sky.

I, of course, took pictures to share. Because, DUH, like, have you even MET me?

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Filed under Photography, Sunsets

August 2, 2026 · 23:58

Shooters

We came, we saw, we kicked that target’s ass!

For context, Ronnie has never before in her life fired a gun. Not once.

She was, in fact, terrified of the idea of shooting a gun. She hates loud noises. She thought that the recoil would be overpowering.

After a couple of hours of classroom instruction and familiarization with the handguns we would be using, we started with the .22 pistol. (First picture.) Then moved up to the much louder and more impressive 9mm pistol. (Second picture.)

I had a fair amount of experience with handguns, rifles, and shotguns, but that was all over 50 years ago. It came back quick. We both passed our course and Ronnie was a rock star.

Interesting way to spend Sunday afternoon!

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Filed under Photography, Running