I collected some more rocks from around the lot and placed them along the road to shore up the rocks I placed there on Wednesday. Verna came out to help also. She took this picture of me working on the project when she brought the dogs out for their run.
I took the panoramic image seen above after the day’s work was complete. I still want to move more of the one-inch red gravel to cover some of the bare spots. Click on the image to enlarge.
Verna and I are football junkies. So much so, that we brought our DirecTV tuner with us to watch a rare Wednesday night NFL game. The plan was to hook the converter to the California dish (still there) and our old analog TV (still there) and watch the game. Unfortunately, the tuner we brought did not furnish the voltage that powers the electronics in the dish like the old tuner.
Image – the new TV with a Tony Romo sack in progress. Click to enlarge.
After thinking the problem over for a while, one solution would have been to get a coaxial power supply for the dish that fits between the tuner and the dish and plugs into the AC power. I checked around and found that I could not readily get the item in time for the game.
The solution we chose, was to simply get an HD digital TV for the California house and hook it up to the outside TV antenna (still there). We found a 26″ TV on sale at one of the local discount stores, hooked it up and now we’re in business.
We decided to swap the new TV with the one in the office in Arizona (smaller screen size). We’ll dispose of the old analog TV that is in the California house.
There is going to be a full moon (second one in the month of August) tomorrow night. Tonight, I couldn’t wait for the so-called “blue moon” to take this shot of our little red house in the moonlight. I used my simple little Canon Power Shot A710 with a fifteen second exposure to capture this nice image of our retirement house in the moonlight. Of course, there are some sky-friendly accent lights and a couple of solar-powered spotlights to enhance the natural celestial lighting. Click on the image to enlarge.
Last week we discovered a scorpion in the master suite. We found a second one near the office in the hall on Monday. I don’t know about you, but two scorpions in a few days is two too many.
I got on the phone yesterday and called the exterminator we had out last year for ants. The technician showed up today and did a perimeter spray inside and out. Hopefully, that should be that for scorpions and other crawly stuff.
Monsoons bring out all the insects looking for shelter. Unfortunately, it also brings out the termites and it looks like we have some subterranean termites building tubes around the base of the house. That will require a separate procedure which we’re going to have done soon.
Verna took several photographs of the mountains and clouds north east of town. A couple of them happened to line up such that I could stitch them together to get a panoramic view of this pleasant mountain and cloudscape vista. Click on the image to enlarge.
We had a really heavy downpour last night. It looks like I’ll have to shore up the front of the property with big rocks to avoid losing more of the landscape. Click on the image for the full sized panorama.
