Sunday July 31, 2016

Blog time: 1720 on July 30

I am back after my little sabbatical. Here is an update.

Bob and Nancy along with granddaughter AJ left GR on Wed July 13 at 0530 and headed to LA.

It was a pleasant trip. We had a two aisle plane and had the three seats in the middle row. AJ sat between us. She travels well.

We picked up our rental car, Nissan Sentra, at Hertz and headed out.

We stayed at the Hampton Inn in Carson, CA. This Hampton has the best free breakfast.

Family contacts:

We had a couple of dinners with Missy and AJ.

Took Alessandra and Lucas out for breakfast twice. After breakfast we dropped them off at the camp they were attending.

Nancy and I met Steve and Veronica and the kids at the LB Park where the grandkids were attending camp. We had a pot luck dinner and then watched a musical show put on by the campers. Of course the grandkids were the stars.

Nancy and I walked along Huntington Beach.

On Sunday Nancy, Missy and AJ visited a beach house near SD. Missy was house sitting. I walked along the beach in Long Beach. In fact I walked ten miles.

Nancy and I visited a retirement community in Seal Beach. The place was called Leisure World. LW has 9,000 folks. We were shown a two bedroom unit. The unit we visited was only 600 square feet. For comparison we have over 1700 square feet on the main floor in our condo. We agreed no thanks.

Steve's birthday was on the 18th. We met Steve's family for his birthday dinner.

CA is losing some of its luster for me.

Air pollution is still a problem. Most cars have a thin layer of soot.

The traffic is terrible.

The drought has taken its toll. The vegetation is a dirty brown.

The highways and public areas suffer from a lack of maintenance.

We left CA on Tuesday the 19th and arrived in GR at 2230. The trip went smooth.

Blog continues on July 31, 2016

I attended Breakfast Club on Wednesday morning.

It took us a good week to clean our desks and get back to normal.

In the past two weeks we have had some very hot days with temps above 90.

On Sat July 23 we attended a pool party at Kathi Kothe's. Perfect day because the temps were above 90.

We also had dinner on the 22nd with the Moleski's and on the 30th with the Namey's. In both cases we came back to the condo for one of Nancy's world famous desserts.

I have been called to Jury duty in September.

On Tuesday July 26 Nancy and I drove to Port Huron to meet with US Border Patrol. We applied for a Global Entry permit. The Tuesday meeting was to verify that we are who we are. A Global Entry permit allows us an easy pass through airport security.

This week we also returned our absentee ballots for the Aug 2 primary.

Comments on recent news:

If we want to reduce gun violence we should make it legal to purchase drugs. Drug enforcement has failed just like the ban on alcohol.

Way to many folks are carrying guns. When we went for our Global Entry permit the women who completed the paper work were carrying guns. Really!

I am very uncomfortable with the tone of the election. Calling folks names is not only bad manners but counter productive. John Wooden said be nice to folks on your way up because you might meet them on your way down.

President Clinton and Donald Trump are the same age. How come I never hear about Trump's draft avoidance.

The Middle East is a mess. I don't know where Turkey is heading. Press freedom in Turkey is non existent, as it is in Russia and China.

BRexit did not lead to the collapse of the financial system.

I think President Obama lost all credibility when he drew the line in the sand and then did not act. Looks bad in the eyes of our allies.

I think Clinton will be a stronger foreign policy President than our current one.

On a happier note we had some heavy rain this week so every thing is nice and green.

Tomorrow I will be back 100% with my exercises.

The nice warm weather will continue.

I had my bad boy bike modified. After a month of trial and error I found that I only use 9 gears. The bike has 27. I removed two front chain rings and now have only one. Simple is good.

Speaking of my Bad Boy bike I got a call from my Nephew Jason Crandall telling me that my Bad Boy might be subject to recall because of a defective fork. I appreciate Jason's heads up. I will call Ada Bike tomorrow.

During my time out from writing this blog I still managed to get my 30 minutes outside every day.