Kingdom of Nye

Carl Smith - 1960's - Hey Joe

2010-05-03T21:32:00.000-07:00

Tennessee ernie Ford - 16 Tons

2010-05-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

Green day - wake me up when september ends (live)

2010-05-03T21:26:00.000-07:00

This blog is closed

2009-11-07T16:18:00.000-08:00

After two years I am closing this blog. It will still remain here just as it is but I will no longer update it. Instead I will be switching to WordPress. I will miss Google Analytics but posting from WordPress, when using photographs, is much easier in my opinion.
My new blog will be located HERE.

I will try to make my new blog much like my old one, but better.

Going over the hump

2009-11-06T21:03:00.000-08:00

Here are some pics from going over the "hump" the other day to and from work.

On the way home:

On the rare days that we have clouds here, they make for some spectacular sunsets!

It is over

2009-10-31T19:58:00.000-07:00

There has been a nagging issue since we moved here. It would often rear its ugly head at the most inopportune times causing severe marital distress and even some heated arguments. NO MORE!!!!!

WE HAVE AN AUTOMATIC ICE MAKER!!!!!!!!!!

No longer will I have to sheepishly tell Karen that "I saved her one" when she finds only one lonely cube of ice in the tray! No longer will I have to threaten to throw out the remaining ice cubes if I don't think there are enough left for Karen in the tray.

Below is a picture of marital bliss:

Those that say you can't buy a happy marriage have never bought an ice maker!

Taming the maze

2009-10-31T19:48:00.000-07:00

a bit at a time.

Before:

Note the pipe that Papa tripped over and broke.....well, thats the way I remember it anyways......

After:

Much better. I'm sure that at some point in time all these pipes made sense to whomever installed them.

Some days

2009-10-31T07:34:00.000-07:00

my job is better than others. Today was one of those days:

I was at the speedway twice. The day before was all classic hot rods, but I didn't have my camera. Today was dragsters!

More repairs

2009-10-31T07:29:00.000-07:00

My parents worked their butts off while they were here. I would have felt guilty about it if there was a way to have stopped them from doing it, but that would have been impossible.

Since I knew I couldn't stop them from working I had planned a project for them. I needed an 18" trench dug from my elecrical box to my garage. A distance of about 150 feet. Papa said that Nana could only use a shovel that had a 6" handle on it and, wouldn't you know it, I didn't have one so that project never got completed!

They did however fix

5 broken kitchen drawers
3 doors
Added an electrical outlet forthe TV.
Replace a GFI breaker with a standard breaker for our washing machine
Fixed the toilet that broke while I was at work.
Added a whole house filter to our water system.

No we were not drinking when we installed it....lol. We just didn't have enough 90s to make it straight. And yes I do own stock in the company that makes the glue for PVC!!!!! Its not pretty but it doesn't leak and now my washer screen should not get plugged up!!!

I helped with 3,4. Tom and I helped with 6.

Brian also helped to troubleshoot an electrical issue while he was here. Someone drilled a hole in one of our walls and cut the electrical lines. Brian confirmed this by pouring salt water in the hole. I would have never thought to do that....lol

I love family reunions. I'm having another one about the time I plan to wire my garage!!!!

Thanksgiving

2009-10-31T07:15:00.000-07:00

Since my parents would not be here for Thanksgiving, Betty mad a Thanksgiving dinner before they left.

It was, as usual, great!

Building 160 Store

2009-10-31T07:13:00.000-07:00

It is not much of a name, but it is full of STUFF. If you ever need some extra STUFF, this is the place to go!

None of us really needed anymore STUFF, but we were worried that one day we might wake up and realize that we didn't have enough STUFF. What would the neighbors think??? So we went and bought some more STUFF.

They have all kinds of STUFF here. Good STUFF:

Interesting STUFF:

STUFF you may have never realized you needed living in the middle of a desert:

And STUFF you can't believe they are selling:

Here are some more photos of random STUFF:

Here is Karen, Nana, Papa and Nancy trying to figure out how much STUFF we can fit in our car:

Its like that Thanksgiving song "Alice's Restaurant"....You can get anything you want at Building 160 Store.....

We had a great time

2009-10-25T07:33:00.000-07:00

at the Brothels in Crystal Nevada!
While not technically a brothel, we started at the Short Branch Saloon.

Here are some of the locals we met. The lived in Pahrump but felt Pahrump was getting too crowded when they put up a second stop light, so they moved to Crystal!

The current administration is not very popular out here:

Then we went to the Cherry Patch Ranch. Mia was a bit dissapointed that it was being remodeled.

Belly up at the bar. Brian asked for cheap whiskey in a dirty glass....lol

The ever so nice bar maid Sissy. She was great fun.

Here is Brian checking out the "menu" from some of the brothels in town.

Some of the political cartoons on the wall. They have been fighting about prostitution out here since .....well, for a long time!

A business licsense for the brothel.

This poor soul was discovered in one of the wals of a brothel during a renovation.

As seen below, both of her hands have been cut off to prevent identification I suppose.

This is Road Dog. He was found by one ofthe locals here sitting in the median of the road on his hind legs, front legs up in the air as if he was begging for a ride.

Here is Mia holding her copy of the brothel bible.

We had a great time out there. One local advised us to skip the Brothel Museum, another advised us to "go see it". We were glad we went to see it.

Just remember that they are "brothels", not "whore houses" becuase whores don't get paid! Or so they told us!

Comming soon

2009-10-24T18:26:00.001-07:00

pictures from the family trip to the brothel in Crystal Nevada.

The fire queen

2009-10-24T09:52:00.000-07:00

The next day we stopped at Bettys on the way to our house.

Feeding Gideon

Later it got kind of chilly. We had picked up two packs of fire wood. It didn't last long. The call mom the "fire pit queen" in twin mills, now we know why.
When we ran out of wood, she started cutting things off our plants to burn

Here they are burning our Christmas Pine cones.

When that ran out, they started on the furniture:

No one really like that little table anyways. It was a spider pit!!!!

The conspiracy

2009-10-24T09:36:00.000-07:00

We had planned an overnight trip to Fremont Street since all of us like it so much. Its really too far to drive back to Pahrump after a night at Fremont Street.

Here we are parking to go eat at the buffet before checking in to our rooms.
Little did we know that their was a conspiracy afoot.

We stayed at the Fremont Hotel. For $40 a night, we we very impressed.
The rooms were very nice, and clean.

Here you can see my dad innocently talking on the phone to my brother.
In reality, he was putting the final parts of the conspiracy together.

While we were eating, I heard Karen say "Oh my GOD!!!!" I looked up and my brother, Brian, and his wife, Mia were walking up to our table with their food!!!
We were in shock. Karen started crying. We knew that they were talking about visiting us, but they kept saying they wern't sure when. They couldn't come out when my parents did because they needed someone to watch the kids. They got us good!!!

Unfortunately our car only has seating for 5 people.......

We all wanted to see how the Bellagio was decorated so off we went:

Then we were off to the New York New York.

After Brian at the hot dog we decided to go eat at the Mexican Restaurant:

Followed by some window shopping.

Then we went to See's Chocolates where mom and Brian practiced spelling Pahrump on our window.

Neither could spell it correctly!

Then we headed back to Fremont.....

....and did some gambling. Karen won...$15 which made up for what I lost.

Then we hit Fremont Street:

We stopped by the Golden Nugget to show them the swimming pool/shark tank.

We also saw Carl "Safe Sax":

Again mom requested her song, and he played it. She was wearing one of his shirts which probably helped:)

Here are the ladies posing with Snoop Dogg:

My new cheap sun glasses which cost $1.00:

Here we are hanging out with Ed. We see him every time we come out here.

While we were walking around Brian said he thought he saw Jimmy Caughey, our cousin, walking around with a child. My dad said, no way, your mistaken. We went into the bathroom and when we came out Brian was indeed talking to Jimmy and his wife who were there with their two kids Keegan and Mikka.

What are the chances????

Here is Mia and Ed:

We had a great night!!! They tell me we had steak and lobster later, but I think they are lying to me:)

Hanging out at Bettys

2009-10-24T08:55:00.000-07:00

Nana and Pappa feeding Gideon:

Watching a little bit of TV:

The last known bottle of "Rock and Rye" Wiskey:

Tom and Betty decided this was a good occasion to crack it open.

Whats in a name?

2009-10-21T07:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went to the Last Chance Saloon & Steakhouse here in Pahrump. We have been trying to find a restaraunt/bar to replace the Copper Keg that we so enjoyed back in Vegas......we haven't found it yet though.

The Last Chance has "ok" food and the prices are reasonable. The bar the is pretty good though! We were not really impressed with them last time, but that happens sometimes, so we thought we would give them a "Last Chance" as it were.

Here we are "belly up" to the bar before dinner feeding the one armed bandits.

Here we are getting ready to sit down and eat.

I ordered a "Grilled Bratwurst Sandwich" seen below.

They should have called it a boiled bratwurst sandwich instead because if any of it was grilled, you wuoldn't know it.

Mom ordered a BLT. When she got it it was cold. The toast was cold, the bacon was cold. No mayo on it.

Tom ordered a tuna sandwich with cole slaw on the side. He forgot to specify NO FLIES IN MY FOOD! Needless to say, after that most of us lost our appetites. Now I know that it happens. Most of the time you never even know what bugs are in your food. But the restaurants response was to offer Tom some extra cole slaw after the waitress laughed out an appology. That was it. The manager never came out, no discount was offered. Tom still paid full price for his meal.

At the least Tom's meal should have been FREE. And we shouldn't even have had to ask for it!

So that was their "Last Chance" and it didn't go well for them!

We did enjoy the bar though:

Shots of Hennesey....how nasty!

Its time

2009-10-18T11:48:00.000-07:00

The pomegranates are ripe! They are great too. I've been picking a few here and there and although some seemed ripe, after seeing these I know now that they were not.

Now when you squeeze them the juice just bursts out of them screaming to be tasted. They are sooooo good. I can't wait until next year when I'll have a better idea of what I'm doing with them and get a new crop.

A plan for disaster

2009-10-18T10:11:00.000-07:00

The Bacaus health reform plan has some serious flaws. One of the big ones is that it forces everyone to buy insurance. If they do not buy insurance they will pay a fine that is reported to be about $1,000 give or take. Insurance premiums are expected to be $4,000 to $5,000. This does not include other "out of pocket" expenses such as co pays and the like.

The math here does not compute!

Knowing that an insurance company will no longer be able to deny someone health insurance, who in their right mind would pay the $4,000 to $5,000 for insurance when they are not sick?? Why not just pay the $1,000 fine, wait until you are truely sick, then sign up for insurance? The insurance company cannot deny you! You will save lots of money.

Young people, who think they are indestructible, will no doubt see the difference.
This is where the recently released study from the insurance industry determined that premiums will skyrocket under this plan. Of course those in support of this reform claimed it was false, and that the insurance industry was trying to "scare" people. Yet, on at least this point, the logic in the study seems quite correct.
This is what would be called an "un intended consequence".

Another consequence of this plan, although very intentional, is that in order to stay under the trillion dollar mark and be so called defecit neutral, its revenues are front loaded and its expenses are back loaded.

This means that cuts in medicare reimbursements to providers, new taxes on "cadillac" insurance plans and the other host of revenue generating features will happen right away, yet on the expense side, like expanded insurance coverage are not fully implemented until years later(some nearly a decade), so as to allow the reform to build a surplus making it "appear" to be under a trillion dollars and defecit neutral. This is pure gimickry.

Another point on "cadillac" insurance plans is that the government, to generate revenue, calculates that the use of these plans will continue to increase over time, yet that flies in the face of economics 101. When you increase taxes on something, you get less of it, not more. So this is another area that will likely contribute to the reform plan exceeding planned expenses.

As it is now, many doctors refuse Medicare patients, does anyone think this situation will improve after the government cuts reimbursement rates even further?

I am in favor of reform, but only reform that makes sense. This does not make sense!

Not Fair

2009-10-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

use. You can read my previous blog post about this case here from back in Feb of 09. Mr. Fairey was the person who stole the AP photo of Barak Obama and created the now famous "Hope" poster seen below.

Mr. Fairey claimed that he was within his rights to use the AP photograph under the "fair use" exception to the copyright laws.

Mr. Fairey had assembled a top gun legal defense team including the Director of Fair Use Project at Stanford University, to defend him in court and he counter sued the AP.
It turns out that Mr. Fairey destroyed evidence and fabricated evidence in the case. He fabricated new digital works which he turned over to his lawyers to use in his defense and as part of his lawsuit.

"In an attempt to conceal my mistake, I submitted false images and deleted other images," said Fairey. "I sincerely apologize for my lapse in judgment, and I take full responsibility for my actions, which were mine alone."

- Mr. Fairey
His defense team is now abandoning him as he has now admitted to all of this.

This is a victory for all artists and especially photographers. Mr. Fairey will likely pay a heavy price for his wilful and comercial infringement of AP's photograph. Undetermined yet is how much money he made of of the poster. Fines for copyright infringement can be very stiff especially when used in a comercial enterprise. Destroying and fabricating evidence will not help his case much either. Judges tend to frown upon that, and it is possible that those actions could bring serious criminal charges.

If momma ain't happy,

2009-10-15T20:23:00.000-07:00

ain't nobody happy!

about your blog header. i really liked it when i saw you and karen supper em posed in the back ground. and you have such a neat looking house that it would be nice to see the arch in the garden or something interesting like that. also the mountains that you see standing in your back yard, that is such a beautiful sight from that distance... and maybe the dogs too. all of that represents you in a nut shell. to me i get instant relief when i can go there and instantly see the things i hold so dear to me. in other words i hate the plain picture and i don't know where in the hell it was taken...where are your beautiful mountain flowers? you asked and i gave...........love ya mom i will be waiting on your reply. see you in a couple of dayssssssssssssssssssss

So...stand by for a new pic :)

More changes

2009-10-14T16:18:00.001-07:00

to the blog. If it doens't look right on your computer, please let me know!

4 more days

2009-10-14T15:40:00.000-07:00

until mom and dad arrive! I know they left some clothing here from last time, but I hope there are some warm ones in there also! I'm not about to go rumaging through their underware drawer....lol

From earlier this year at Death Valley:
We had a great time seeing all of the wild flowers in Death Valley. Something I have been wanting to do for a long time.

Here are some pics from the flowers:

We had a great time out there. We may even make it back this time since it is only an hour away. Unfortunately this is the worst/best time to go, depending on your perspective. It is the worst, in my opinion, because the place will be overflowing with tourists. I mean jam packed, standing room only. Its the best time, for some people, becuase the weather is so agreeable this time of year. I prefer to go in August when it is 120F+ and I can have the park to myself. No one else is dumb enough to go there then, but thats the way I like it.

We will be going to Fremont Street. All of us enjoy it very much!

You never know who or what you will see down there. Its always a good time.

We can't wait for them to get here.

Shasta

2009-10-11T15:23:00.000-07:00

still has some teething/jealousy issues to deal with....lol

Stopping to smell the roses

2009-10-11T15:21:00.000-07:00

They are back again for the second time, or maybe the third. I don't remember.

One thing for sure is that they are much bigger that the previous one.

Its my birthday

2009-10-11T15:17:00.000-07:00

well it was a few days ago anyways. We had a cook out with Tom and Betty and Nancy. We also invited Melanie and her husban Bill. She is the nice lady that delivers rocks from Star Nursery here in Pahrump. She also brought her sister Jackie and Bill brought his son, Drew.

We had a great time. I didn't get too many pictures, we none actually....lol
This is what I got for my birthday though:

And, although Tom is a taxidermist, we didn't get him stuffed, but the resemblance, especially in the face, is striking. Well it seems that way to me anyways. I will say though that rarely did Tigger's hair cut look "that" good...lol

Eventually we will put Tigger's collar on it, but when I ttried to do it last night, Pooh recognizedthe clinking of Tigger's collar tags and began to stare everywhere as if waiting for Tigger to appear. I had to put the collar down.

Carly spent about 5 mins inspecting the statue, sniffing it, and just looking at it. Pooh ignored it, and Shasta barked at it for a bit.

Its a bugs life

2009-10-11T15:03:00.000-07:00

I found this little fellow out in my garage. He is about the size of a quarter. Cute isn't he?

This is a dung beetle.

I have no idea what this is, but it looks like a tick on steroids!

We have an informal deal with the bugs out here....if we don't see you, we won't kill you!

Green eggs and

2009-10-11T14:49:00.000-07:00

fried rice???

Can you pick out the "store fresh" eggs here? There are two of them mixed in with the "farm fresh" eggs that Betty's neighbor gave her. I don't believe I've ever seen green eggs before today, except for maybe on Easter.

A new header photograph

2009-10-11T12:02:00.001-07:00

finally. I'm not totally happy with it yet, so it will likely change a bit in the future, but it is better that the previous one since we no longer live in Las Vegas!

Introducing Shasta

2009-10-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

We stopped by the pound the other day.....

I had thought that after losing Tigger we would wait a while to get a new dog. It was not long though before we realized that life without Tigger was too quiet. Too low key. In addition it became apparent, rather quickly, that Carly was lacking someone to play with. She was not herself. She didn't want to go to bed at night and was generally acting depressed, and rightfully so, but we thought she needed someone she could play with. She played with Tigger every day, often several times a day. Pooh doesn't do the play thing too much anymore. He plays with us, and occasionally with Tigger, but that was about it.

So we found ourselves at the Nye County Animal Shelter. It was a very sad sight to say the least. On the bright side though, 2 other puppies we went back to adopt had already been adopted!

There were so many sad sacks in there we almost couldn't stand it. This one dog, an older German Shepard mix, was sitting in its cage. As soon as I walked up to it you could hear its tail smacking on the cold cement. She had the most beautiful big brown eyes I think I've ever seen. I reached down to pet her and she just instincively rolled over on her back for a belly rub...but I couldn't reach her.

Since moving to Pahrump we have made several donations to the pound in the form of blankets, towels, and toys for the animals. As we were walking down the gauntlet we saw "Shasta" and her pen partner laying on a blanket that we had donated. That was a sign:)

But that old German Shepard was tugging at our hearts. She was soo gentle. Nye county is not a "no kill" shelter and we were very worried about her being put down because she is larger and older. They are often the last to get adopted.

We kept ending up at her cage. As we were reading the info on her we noticed a notethat said "See Incoming RE: Adoption". We asked the worker what it meant and he said he had no idea but he would check. Apparently a lady saw in her what we did and had a note put in her file that she wanted to adopt the dog if it was going to be put down. We were very relieved to say the least.

There was also a Terrier there that I liked very much, but for the wrong reasons. He mannerisms were that of Tigger and looked kinda like Tigger in a strange kind of way with the little beard and all. I so wanted to take him home but it wouldn't have been fair to him, or to me. Every time I would look at him I would see Tigger instead.

So $85 later we have a new owner!

The shelter said she was a mix between a Heeler:

and a Beagle:

The Beagle part I can understand, but not the Heeler part. We thought she might be a mix between a Beagle and a Harrier:

which made perfect sense until I read this site. Now I'm not so sure.

It really doesn't matter anyways. She is a little sweethart. She is already potty trained, can sit if she's in the mood, and plays catch. She even had Pooh an Carly playing catch wich is a first. Technically Carly wasnt playing catch though. She would get the tennis balls and hide them becuase they belong to her, as does everything in this house including us!

Can you tell they all just got baths???

Pooh, being a "herding" dog spent the first hour or so trying to "herd" Shasta from every direction! Shasta tolerated this...for a little bit. Then the fight for "alpha dog" began. Carly quickly declared that she was the "ALPHA" and it didn't matter in the least what anyone else thought....lol

A great video!

2009-10-04T07:58:00.000-07:00

I don't post too many videos on here, but this one is great! You'll need to scroll down first and shut off my music player though, but its worth it!

Card Skimmer

2009-10-03T07:38:00.000-07:00

found in the gas pump at the Shell on hwy 160. Detectives think it has been in place since early summer. While I can't say that we never bought gas there, it has been a while since we have. Shell tends to have high gas prices so we get it elsewhere. But, if you did get gas there, check your statements closely!

Justice denied!

2009-10-03T07:28:00.000-07:00

36 y/o Joe Ciolino, a decorated Marine who was wounded while serving his country in Somolia, was shot and killed by 45 y/o Kenneth Paule Kneale. Kneale, who was residing in Ciolino's home during a pending divorce, ambushed Mr. Ciolino and shot him 4 times in the back of the head! The reason for the murder is still a mystery.

Kneale was sentanced to 16 years in jail for second-degree murder! That is a crime in itself! Tax cheats often get more time than that! Kneale will be 61 when he is able to be released. Mr. Ciolano was first victimized by Kneale and then by the justice system.

If you ambush a person and shoot them 4 times in the back of the head, you should NEVER get out of jail. EVER! I'm not sure you should ever MAKE it to jail. Maybe a short, but fair trial, then a trip to the cemetary where you can be made to dig your own grave would suffice!

The National Park Service

2009-10-01T20:38:00.000-07:00

The other day I was watching a show about the origins of the National Park System. The National Park Service was created in 1916 by an act of Congress.

It's first leader was Stephen Tyng Mather who played an instramental role in its creation. One of the big controversies to arise was if there should be roads built in them or not. Proponents of roads eventually won out and roads were built in nearly, if not all, national parks.

What I found interesting was that Mr. Mather, upon being shown by an engineer how they would build a road with 12 switchbacks to a particular scenic summit promptly enlisted the help of a landscape architect to build the road in a scenic way that did not detract from the view. Thus many of the roads in the National Parks are built along the most scenic areas in the park allowing visitors to frame the view with thier windshield.

YES!

2009-10-01T20:14:00.001-07:00

My garage is finally cleaned out...sort of.....kinda.....you be the judge...lol

The Three Muskateers

2009-10-01T19:55:00.000-07:00

We decided totake some pictures before we took Tigger to the vets. We wanted to remember him and what he meant to us and were fearful that this could be the last time. I wasn't going to post these as I couldn't even bear to look at them until now, but we have come to accept what has happened as best as we can.
Here are the three muskateers:

Karen and Tigger:

Tigger and myself:

Being new to town, until Tigger got sick we didn't have a vet here. We ended up at the "Animal Hospital" on Basin Rd a few miles from our house.

The staff their made an in tolerable situation as tolerable as it could be. Karen had already called and asked how much to to put Tigger to sleep....$50. We didn't have an appointment but I asked if the vet could re evaluate Tigger to make sure that there was nothing we could do. She already knew his history. After a short examination she said that, while there we things that they could do, nothing was likely to change the outcome.

Although we both knew that before we went, we both began to cry. The vet began to cry. It was very sad, but we knew it was the only solution available.

The vet explained the proceedure to us and said that while most people left, we were welcome to stay. We both knew we had to stay. Tigger was loyal to us, so we had to be loyal to him unto the end.

In the end Tigger's suffering ended. As the old cliche goes, he looked like he was asleep. I kept expecting him to look up at me wagging his stubby little tail.
After spending some time with Tigger and saying our final goodbyes, we tried to compose ourselves and go into the office area to take care of the payment and paperwork. When we asked how much we owed the answer was "Nothing, we are so sorry for your loss...."

If I close my eyes I can still feel him jumping up in my lap and wriggling his nose under my hand or just staring at me. I hope I never lose that feeling.

Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge.

There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together.

There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by.

The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.

They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent; His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together....

Author unknown...

I forgot some

2009-10-01T19:21:00.000-07:00

Pictures from the Fall Festival. Karen and I ended up going on Sunday for a bit.

Although not all THAT hot, I was tempted to liberate some ice from that truck!

YEEEEE HAAAAWWWW!!!

2009-09-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

The Fall Festival in Pahrump was great. You never know what your going to see around these parts.
Here is the guy with the pet goat. I've yet to actually meet him but, he can be seen hanging out with his pet goat all over town:

That was one big snake.....

Here is the Grand Champion Winning pumpkin forthe 4-H club.

Here is Betty and Tom shopping for something or other

There were lots of good things to eat....none of them good for you....but hey it a festival!

These are spiral cut potatos. More or less one long potato chip. We ate at the Ozark BBQ pit. And of course you can't go to a festival and not get a funnel cake. They go really well with beer....lol

There are lots of fun things to do there also

and some not so fun things also....

Then we went to the rodeo!!! Needless to say night photography at a rodeo is...well...difficult, at best.

Betty and Tom watching the rodeo.

Some young wranglers watching the action.

This is the barel race. I think I enjoyed this one the most because it really shows the agility of the horses.

The crowd

Karen at the rodeo.

We had a great time. It runs through Sunday so we may go back tonight. If we do I'll have to bring "big daddy" with me for the rodeo.

We

2009-09-25T17:03:00.000-07:00

are off to the Fall Festival tonight. It will do us some good to get out!

Gone, but not forgotten

2009-09-23T18:57:00.000-07:00

You will be sadly missed.......

Yesterday

2009-09-20T15:01:00.000-07:00

we went to see the Pony Express. We also went to the Western Festival for a short time.

Nye county has a zero tolerance policy towards illicit drugs. Apparently these people didn't getthe message....lol

I had wanted to go see the pony express early in the morning so I would have better backdrops and better lighting, but I had to work so this is what you get...lol.

Another photographer taking pictures along the trail:

Although it seems out of place here is a plover I saw:

Not sure if it is a Kildeer or some other kind of plover though. I could look it up but I'm being lazy right now.

Check out the 4 sale sign!

A man and his donkey....it's a beautiful thing!

To say that this horse was high spirited would be an understatement....

Cash for Clunkers anyone???

Posing for the camera:

We didn't get to spend a lot of time at the festival, but here is a peek at it.

You Lie!

2009-09-18T20:30:00.000-07:00

Well what to say. I probably do not have to explain the comment, but in case you missed it a member of the house from Sout Carolina screamed out to President Obama "You Lie!" during a joint address to congress.

I will admit that I am VERY conservaive.I do not so much identify with the Repblican Party, as I do with conservative prinicipals though. That said, since I've been able to vote, I've voted Republican, and thats not likely to change.

Rep. Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, yelled out at President Obama "You Lie!" during a joint session of cngress recently. Much has been made of this recently, most of which I agree with.

Remembering that it is not for nothing that the house of representatives is called the people's house, it still disturbs me that someone would have that amount of disrespect for the office! The reference to "the people's house" is indicative of the fact that the "house" tends to be more reactionary than the senate, and hence more raucus than the senate. The senate is a more reserved, if you will, body comprised of "gentleman". You would have likely NEVER heard that type of comment from the senate side of congress.

Now some people will argue that President Obama is lying(about health care reform). So why not call him out on it????

Well, I would only argue that there is a time and place for everything. A joint session of congrees is neither the time, nor the place for it. Agree or diagree, he IS the President and deserves a modicum of respect.

The time and place for that would have been an interview on CNN or Fox News.

The respect I try to give President Obama is often the respect President Bush never got from the other side.

I'm not a copy cat

2009-09-18T17:32:00.000-07:00

, well maybe I am. After seeing Lauren's Japanese Curry I couldn't resist.
Curry is something that our family has eaten for many years. I can't remember if it was from when we lived in Cyprus, or Philippines, but for about as long as I can remember, we ate "chicken curry". To us though, it was always considered an Indian dish, or at least an Indian spice.

It is what I always have when ordering Chinese. My mother's recipe was usually, I think, shredded chicken and curry over either rice or mashed potato's. The latter being a southern influence I suppose. I like it either way. My wife, Karen, hates curry though so over the near 20 years we've been married she has cooked it for me.....well....never.....lol. I had to get it from my mom!

In Karen's defense though, she does make me fried rice, exactly how I like it, even though she doesn't eat that either. Curry just seems to be over that invisible, ever changing line that she won't cross.....:)

She did agree to do my shopping though. Here is what she bought:

Most of it is self explanatory. I'll just point out the water cress or water chestnuts, baby corn, and Cayenne pepper.

Basically I browned the chicken a bit and thew the veggies in along with the box of curry and some water. I'm not a measuring cup kind of cook, so I couldn't tell you how much of what went into it.

We did have to thinken the sauce up a tad though.

I added about 1/4 of the bottle of cayenne pepper.

Two things that I noted:
1. It could have used 2 boxes of curry.
2. I kept adding cayenne pepper because it wasn't hot enough. When we would ored out we always had to tell them "Extra spicey hot" or it wasn't hot enough.

I had enough for three meals though. It was very good!

Almost

2009-09-18T17:11:00.000-07:00

a whole week since I last posted. Its been a long week. Every week has been a long week lately. We are as busy as I ever remember it here. We can barely keep up. I wish I could say it was from an improving economy, but it is really just from a near doubling of our market share it seems.

I'm not complaining mind you. The O.T. is nice and in today's economy, I'm just glad to have a job.

On the home front, Tigger is doing "ok". His behaviour, strangely, has changed since he began taking insulin shots.

His blood sugar was originally 380. After being on 3 units, twice a day, his blood sugar was 480! It's not a good trend to be sure. The doctor raised his insulin to 5 units twice a day. She says that there are a few other options fro treatment yet, but if they are unsuccessful, we need to look for an under lying cause for this(Such as cancer). We also informed the doctor that we had to increase his food because he seemed to be disappearing before our eyes. Hopefully we will have better news when he goes back on Monday for more blood work.

Getting back to his behaviour though, Tigger is a "strange dog" to begin with. And I use that word loosely because many people consider me strange....lol.
But Tigger usually only has 2 speeds. On or Off. There wasn't much in the middle. Also when you would let him outside he would do his business and then sit at the door waiting to come in. He is a people dog! He likes people, mostly me...lol If he could crawl inside of me and be absorbed by me, he would be HAPPY! He also didn't bark much.

Now Tigger will stay outside longer and explore more. He seems to have found 50% and 60%. He also barks much more. Not obsessively like my other dogs whoo bark at nothing because nothing is something too, but just more than he used to.

One thing that hasn't changed is that he will eat everything in sight, and then some just for good measure. He is not drinking as much but he is, sadly, still having accidents and he is still sleeping in them so I'm not sure if he just doesn't realize he is doing it or what.....

Our pets are like family in this house. We are worried about Tigger. We know that he is 11 years old now, which is not old for a dog his size, but his breeding was also vwery questionable. We will let you know how it goes.....

The Pony Express

2009-09-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

is comming to town next weekend. They will partake in an 8 hour horse ride from the far north west side of Pahrump the the Saddle West Casino in the south east. Pahrump will be holding the "Western Days" festival also. There will be re enactments, music, food and fun.

The ride will start at 8AM and end at 5PM. One of our freind here in Pahrump asked if I would be willing to take photos of her and her husband as the ride in the event. It should be a fun time.

Finally

2009-09-10T19:40:00.000-07:00

the Prickely Pear Cactus, seen below, is ripe! Nancy cut a few off for us to eat.

Getting ripe:

Ripe:

Pricely Pear Jelly anyone??? Let me just sate for the record that they were pretty nasty!

My pomigranites will make up for it though. They should be ripe in another few months.

From Labor Day. Here is Shelby watching Carly watching me through the gun hole. Carly really freaked out when I peeked in at her through the gun hole.

From the cook out:

There have been many things at this house that left me thinking "What the f***?" when trying to decipher what the previous owners did. Nothing left me more suprised than finding this the other day:

It is a leaking gallon of used motor oil. Thats is pretty bad considering we have well water and it was about 20 feet from the well.

The well is the building in the back.

Well I suppose a little used motor oil never hurt anyone.......

The other day I took my camera over the hump with me to work. Here is a picture of the daily exedous from Pahrump:

My favorite diner...the dashboard diner. You should try it one day....I'll admit though, that the menue is somewhat limmited.

Tigger

2009-09-05T14:33:00.000-07:00

is doing better. He tolerates his shots very well. Actually I don't think he even notices them, he just thinks he is getting petted....lol

For the dogs though, things have changed drastically. They now eat exactly they amount they are supposed to get, and no more. They eat at 7AM and 7PM. They get absolutly NO people food anymore, and they only get a small amount of treats at bed time. They actually seem to not mind much. Pooh and Tigger really enjoy getting breakfast now.

Already Tigger is not drinking as much water and he had only a small accident last night. Hopefully none tonight.

Soon all three will be fit and trim, them me and Karen get to go on our diets.....lol

Tigger

2009-09-04T18:52:00.000-07:00

went to the vet today. When she saw him she said "Oh, its a boy!" he's probably diabetic then.

Normal blood sugar levels for a dog are much the same as for a human. 70-140. Tigger's was 2 points shy of 400!

He will now get twice daily injections of insulin, or actually Vetsulin. I doubt there is much difference, except maybe in price. The vet said that other than that he is very heathy. He has some abnormal blood work, but she said it should be "ok" once the diabetes is under control.

He is even fit and trim. A rarity in this house....lol

Based on what we paid today for the medicine and needles we figure it will be about $50 a month to care for him.

There is not doubt

2009-09-03T20:20:00.000-07:00

who runs our house. It ain't me, and it ain't Karen!

Thats what we call the "stink eye". I know, deep down, Carly is thinking "Thats right bitch, this is MY house!"

Tigger normally sleeps on the bed at my feet. Since Carly moved in, he sleeps there at her pleasure.

The other day, she allowed Tigger to sleep on the bed. The next morning when I got up, I stepped on something sticky on the floor. I wasn't poop, thankfully! It covered about a 3-4 foot diameter area. As it was about 4:45AM and I was up for work, I just grumbled to myself and went about my business.

The next morning I woke up freezing! Tigger had urinated on the bed and he and I were both sleeping in it. Mind you, although Tigger has had MANY an accident, he has never went in the bed and then slept in it!

Our first reaction was "What the hell?" then we just thought it was a fluke. Then it happened again, and again, and again. Sometimes on the bed, sometimes on the floor. It really took us a few days to figure out
A. Who it was?(We have 3 dogs)Waking up in it decided that .
B. What exactly they were doing? Puking? Peeing? It was hard to tell.

We tried to think of anything that we had been doing differently? We remembered that we had seen Tigger act stiff lately. He is about 11 after all. We began to give him glucosomine for his joints. This all began at roughly the same time. We stopped his supplement.

The next night he had no accident. We thought, wow that was easy.

The next night, he had an accident.

We knew then that something REALLY was wrong. And so we watched....
We noticed that Tigger was drinking enormous amounts of water.
Obviously hes was having frequent, un controllable urination. We also noticed that his collar was getting way to big. Its one of those nylon adjustable ones. I tried to convince myself that it just became "un adjusted".

This all took about 10 days to figure out. We only got 1 or 2 pieces of the puzzle over the course of a few days. He has an appointment with the vet tomorrow.

When we made the appointment the vet said, because of his breed and age, it was one of three things.
1. Urinary tract infection.
2. Incontenance.
3. Diabetes.

Diabetes can be a devestating diagnosis for a person, but even more so for a dog. A person can participate in their treatment, a dog cannot. Even well controlled diabetes can exact a heavy toll on a person, or a dog.

Many people opt to put a dog with diabetes to sleep. They view giving the dog shots twice a day as cruel. I think putting a dog to sleep who is still happy is cruel.

There are things that make me think its not diabetes:
1. He still eats everything in sight.
2. He has not slowed down one bit.

Hopefully it is one of the first two.

Health Care Reform

2009-09-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

I have often posted about what I don't think we should do to reform health care in the U.S. I think I should post on what I thinnk we COULD do to reform health care.

First lets define the problem. Roughly 50 million people in the U.S. have no health insurance. But lets first put some context to that number. Lets subtract the following from it:
1. Illegal Aliens--15 million
2. People who could afford(make over $75,000) insurance but choose not to purchase it--10 million
3. People who are eligble for Medicare/Medicaid and do not sign up for it--10 million

That leaves about 10-15 million peopole who, through no fault of their own, cannot get or afford insurance. Some would claim it closer to 5 million.

Tort reform would be on the top of my list. It is easy to do. Estimates run from 3-10% of every dollar spent on health care goes to lawsuits. This does not even include the millions spent on defensive medicine. Remember though that tort reform is to limit puative damages, not compensatory damages. This means that a person injured by malpractice will still be able to sue for millioins of dollars, if that is what is needed to pay forthier medical care. They will only be limited in how much they can get in as punishment from the doctor.

Pre existing conditions are a tougher nut to crack. I know a person who bought a boat, but didn't buy insurance on that boat....until they day he crashed it. You can't wait until you get sick to buy health insurance. Unless of course you want the insurance companies to go out of business. The only way to get rid of pre existing conditions is to require everyone to have insurance. If we would go to this kind of model I think it should be based on people being required to have catastrophic insurance that pays after the first $5,000 or so of medical expenses. The government could subsidize people who could not afford this.
It goes without saying though, that insurance companies should NOT be able to rescind your insurnace when you get seriously ill becuase you forgot to mention on your application that you had acne when you were 20.

Insurance is part of the problem
If you have insurance, you are not the actual customer in the economic sense. You don't care what it costs. If your doctor wants a test every hour on the hour, you have no incentive to even question it. Think if car insurance covered oil changes, and regular maintenance.....how much more would insurance cost?

This is what I like about HSAs and other types of catastrophic insurance.
With High Deductable Health Plans(HDHP) you are put back in the economic equation, yet if you get seriously ill or injured, you are still covered.

Real insurance competition.
In the U.S. there are about 6,000 health insurance companies, yet Americans are severly restricted as to which ones they can choose by the state they live in. Open up the whole country to all of the insurance companies.

Allow insurance tax deduction
Allow insurance to be tax deductible. This will help to lower the costs of insurance.

Public Education, why not Public Health Care?

2009-09-03T18:24:00.000-07:00

Lauren had asked me what I thought about the differences between free public education(k-12) and free public health care. She writes....

“I've been trying recently to figure out the difference between public taxpayer-bought education (k-12) and public, taxpayer-bought health care. Both have (or will/may have) flaws both in spending and results, and both are a public service that a libertarian could argue are unnecessary excesses of large government. However..."

It is an interesting comparison to be sure. Education, she pointed out, is something you can pay for your self. In fact many people already do so. She pointed out that public education is not perfect and it is likely that the health care reform will not be perfect either. The perfect should not be the enemy of the good. So why one but not the other?

Lauren further states.....

"Through government, the taxpayers now give all children a free education UP TO 12th grade, and though admittedly flawed in many ways, I doubt you'll find a whole lot of people who think the US should be without public education. If you want more than that (ie college) then you get to pay for it with money - which not all people have."

As I stated in my quick reply to her comment, I don't think you can lump all "government" together. One of the characteristics of our government is that is a federal style of government. Think of a cake with three layers. One the top is the U.S. Federal government. Below that is the State governments. And on the bottom are the local governments. Now you still don't really know what kind of cake you have....it could be a marble cake where the federal layer reaches down into the state level and the state level mixes into the local level.

When you think about how our government was formed, it was from the states agreeing to give the federal government certain duties, and those only. The state itself was formed from local governments who relinquished certain rights to the state and in turn local governments were formed by the people giving certain powers to the local government. This way the most power was retained by the people, not the governments.

Personally I think we have a marble cake. I can only hope all three layers are chocolate!

Regardless of which view you take, each layer of government has specific areas of responsibility. The Federal government is limited in its powers by the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Constitution specifically reserves all powers not enumerated to the federal government to the states and or the people.

This is part of the reason why the Federal government does not run education. Education is run primarily by local school boards that are elected by the people they serve. Yes, the Federal government does play a part in education, but it is a very limited one, but like all things that government does its role is increasing. Over the last decade, federal spending on education is up more than 50% from roughly 5% to over 8%. I'll just add that the quality of our education system has not gone up 50%. In fact most people might agree that our education system is in big trouble despite the near doubling of federal money. Hint, hint.

Lauren goes on to say:

"Right now, when I try to translate the US's health care system into public
education, it seems like NOBODY has a "right" to be given the opportunity to
learn to read or do basic math. If there's someone in your life to teach it to
you or your family has enough money to pay for a private school, good. If not, looks like you're going to be illiterate and unable to do basic math like balancing a checkbook, and you'll probably be broke and undereducated for your entire life. Which is something that I know some people would argue in favor of. I wouldn't be one of those people."

Most states require, by state law, attendance to some type of school. Children and parents alike can be issued citations for not attending school. In fact the Nevada State Constitution directly addresses education in its "Bill of Rights". Here is a relevant section:

"Sec: 5. Establishment of normal schools and grades of schools; oath of teachers and professors. The Legislature shall have power to establis [establish] Normal schools, and such different grades of schools, from the primary department to the University, as in their discretion they may deem necessary........"

In my old state Michigan, the Michigan State Constitution also mandates "free public education" as shown here:

2 Free public elementary and secondary schools; discrimination. Sec. 2. The
legislature shall maintain and support a system of free public elementary and
secondary
schools as defined by law. Every school district shall provide for
the education of its pupils without
discrimination as to religion, creed,
race, color or national origin.

I doubt there is a state that does not address education.

I think that translation fails because of different powers granted to the federal government and the state government. It would be more appropriate for a State government to require health insurance and several already have. All states already mandate insurance for cars.

That is the best reason as to why a national "universal public health care" plan has never evolved in this country.

That leaves the issue of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. These are three programs that are federal and universal.

Lets begin with Social Security. In a nut shell Social Security was originally designed to keep older poor or disabled people from starving. Although many people consider it a retirement plan, they will find it very lacking in that regards. You get enough to survive.

Where I used to work we had people that pulled in over $100,000 of earned income a year, collecting Social Security!!! That is just not right. It should be for people who cannot take care of themselves. I think that would fall in line with the U.S. Constitution.
Personally, I would like to see Social Security severely restricted though. Financially, it is a disaster. By the time I will be able to retire, you will need to be 90 years old to collect it and will be lucky to get $.50 for your trouble. The eligibility age keeps going up. That's how they try to solve the financial mess that is Social Security. They also lower benefits and raise the FICA tax.

With respect to Medicaid/Medicare they also increase premiums, raise the cap on earnings subject to Medicare withholding. And lets not forget that they also plan to cut reimbursements to doctors, hospitals and such. That's where the $500 billion in savings to pay for "health insurance reform" comes from. Medicaid is in way worse financial condition than Social Security. Medicare and Medicaid, unlike Social Security, target specific groups like the disable, poor, and elderly. That makes it easier to see them as part of a federal plan.

Anyways, I hope some of this made some kind of sense.

Califonia Fires

2009-08-31T19:53:00.000-07:00

as seen from Pahrump. Rather than re invent the wheel I'll just point you to a fellow Pahrumpian blogger. Her blog Post is located here. She has some good pictures of it.
I'll just add that there is actual smoke rolling through the streets here where we live. You can see it and smell it. The mountains to the west are barely vivible.Its much worse than yesterday. At least in this part of town.

Twice the price

2009-08-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

Today I was listening to a town hall meeting with a Democratic Rep and Howard Dean today.
The crowd seemed more or less a mixture of views.

They originally booked it for a place that held 500 people. They switched to a place that held 3,000 people, and still, not everyone got in. Anyone remember when you couldn't get 20 people to a town hall meeting???

A couple of points I'd like to bring out that they discussed.

1. Out of pocket expenses, under the House Bill 3200, will be limited to $5,000 per person or $10,000 for a family. So not only will I NOT be able to keep my insurance plan that I am VERY happy with, I will have the pleasure of paying TWICE the amount I currently pay. Thats a SWEET deal if you ask me!

2. President Obama has made insurance companies the "enemy" in this debate after realizing that "health care reform" didn't poll well because most people are happy with their health care. Yet, the insurance industry SUPPORTS the reform! Thinking people will ask WHY? It is because the insurance industry is looking at additional premiums from the government to insure 47 million more people.

3. Again today they tried to tell the people that this plan is just like Medicaid/Medicare or the Federal Health Care Plans for Federal employees. If thats so true, why not put everyone in it? Or why not just sign everyone up for the Federal Employee plan. Think of all of the savings to be made from not having 3 or 4 separate bureaucracies to administer health care! If its good enough for the American People, why is it not good enough for Federal Employees and the rest of the government? Because they wouldn't stand for it.

It was nice to see how popular Howard Dean is these days......

Some other broader points to consider:

1. We do have a shortage of doctors, esp primary care, in this country. Who, exactly, is going to care for these other 47 million people?

2. The claim is made that illegals will not be covered. But does the bill say that anywhere? Does it even address the issue at all? NOPE. This bill is, even at 1,100 pages, written very broad, and vague. No doubt, somewhere down the road, an un elected government bureaucracy somewhere, will determine that illegals should be covered. Then it will be too late.

3. Nowhere does this bill address TORT REFORM! Not in the least. Not even mentioned.
Just because we have Doctors, who we are short on, closing their doors because they can't afford malpractice premiums, doesn't mean we need tort reform! Nope, not even a little bit of it!

Now for an analogy...of sorts. Your mileage may vary.

I bought a bird feeder the other day. This bird feeder represents the "health care system". The birds, of course, are "health care consumers". The bird seed is "health care".

Now this is a pretty big bird feeder. It holds a lot of seeds. There are also many, many birds around here.

so I go and fill up my bird feeder with seed and hang it in a place to give birds easy access to the feeder. Then I sit in my chair and watch the birds eating the seeds and think to myself, "this is great".

So I come back the next day and my feeder is "EMPTY". I think back, yes I did just fill it up yesterday. So I fill it up again. The next day, again its empty.

So I try to figure out how to fix this problem. What to do?I go out and buy another bird feeder! I fill both of them to the very top. I think to myself, problem solved.
Since it is now beer:30 I dutifully crack one open and watch the birds eating away, thinking to myself that I should be good for a few days now!

In the morning, BOTH feeders are EMPTY!

After purchasing another feeder, plus one of those peanut butter type feeder, I think to myself, "This must fix the problem!"

I get up the next day to find ALL of the feeders EMPTY!

I have concluded that one of two things will happen:
1. I will go broke buying birds seed
or
2. I will have to start rationing the bird seed.

Which do you think I chose? More importantly, when faced with this decision, which do you think the government will choose? I guessing that, like me, they will choose the latter over the former.

While its true that everything in our economic system is rationed in some form or another, usually by price, very little is rationed by the government.
That is as it should be.

People who want to believe that we can have unlimited health care for everyone, for everyone, need to rethink that. It is not possible.

Mis information from President Obama:
1. You can keep your current insurance. NOT true. I won't be able to and I'm VERY happy with my insurance.

2. No health care rationing. Not true. Economics 101 should be enough to convince anyone that this is just not possible. Even today in this country, health care is rationed. But it NOT rationed in the way that other countries with "universal health care" ration it.

Dr Rawlins, who head the NICE in England said:

“be fair to all patients in the National Health Service (NHS), not just patients with macular degeneration or breast cancer or renal cancer. If we spend a lot of money on a few patients, we have less money to spend on everyone else. We are not trying to be unkind or cruel. We are trying to look after everybody.”

That is the truth of rationing in England. The problem is that there never has been, nor will there ever be enough money to provide unlimited health care to all people.
The only conclusion is that it will, in some form or another be limited.

England budgeted 6 billion dollars to build IT infrastructure to run their health system. It costs are now estimated at 30 billion and rising.
This goes to show how the government, theirs and ours, are often way off on the costs associated with its actions.

More BLM exploration

2009-08-29T18:05:00.001-07:00

This morning I took off to explore more of the BLM lands. Today, instead of turning right, I went straight!

This is the road. Roughly 13 miles later I was in the mountains you see in the distance.

Along the way I saw some more wild horses. There are roughly 30,000 of them in Nevada. this is only the second time I've seen any.

This little colt ran right in front of me. He was trying to get across the road to his mother.

My private parking place in Spring Mountain:

Then I ran into this:

Ideally I would have picked a spot and sat for 2-3 hours and see what wildlife crossed my path, but I didn't have time for that today. I was happy to see some more wild horses!

There was

2009-08-29T17:54:00.000-07:00

one set of photos I did not post from when I was exploring the BLM land last weekend.

I didn't really want to publish what I saw until it was resolved by BLM and the Nye County Sheriff.

Here are the photos of what I found out there:

I didn't know if they were dangerous or not, but they were definately military munitions of some sort.

Now that they have been removed, I thought it was ok to post about them.

When I called the Nye County Sheriff, who put me through to BLM Law Enforcement, I told them it was probably junk, but I wasn't qualified to determine that. I sent photos to the BLM Officer and gave him directions to find them. It took about 3 days for them to locate them and finally remove them. They told me they were either already fired or training rounds, but that they were happy to get them out of there. The BLM Officer was VERY nice. He called me every single day to give me an update on what was going on, and then called me and told me the final disposition of them after they had been located and removed.

I'm so dumb...

2009-08-23T16:53:00.000-07:00

when we move, we pack everything, rent a U-Haul and haul our prized possesions accross country and then un pack everything. If I was smart I would have done it like my sister-in-law Nancy, who is moving to Pahrump. She packed her stuff in a POD, seen below, and made sure it got to Pahrump a week before she did! Leaving "us" to un pack it for her!!! You have one month to pack a POD, but only one week to un load it.

Pahrump knew she was moving in too! When she rented this place it was on a dirt road. Now it is paved!!

Here is Betty and Karen trying to decide where to put stuff:

Some of the clutter:

A "storage" room:

Betty and Tom dressing up the outside:

More work:

These shelves were stuffed with boxes at one point but we couldn't stand to look at them any longer so we re worked it:

She will have a plce to lay her head tonight when she gets in:

Its hard to tell in this photo, but she is a fan of Coke...lol

Hazardous Living

2009-08-23T16:39:00.000-07:00

My fellow Pahrumpian, if that's a word, blogger Lauren and her husband Paul discovered a rather large scorpion in their yard. You can read about it and see pictures of it here. Lauren said that when ready to strike it would just about fill the palm of a mans hand!

We have not had the displeasure of seeing one yet, and hope not to.

They have a very nice blog that gives more insight into living in Pahrump.

They also run MidwestWhips where you can purchase hand made whips in more styles than I ever knew existed.

They also run the whip blog where you can learn about whip making.

86%

2009-08-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

of Nevadas 70 million acres are controlled by the Federal Government.
Much of this is controlled by agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service and the National Park Service.

The Federal Governments largest acreage is in Nye County, the home of Pahrump. Nye county supplies the Federal Government with over 11 million acres. Yes, Nye County is huge! Our county government seat is over 2 hours away by car!

Clark County, where Las Vegas is, contributes only 4 million acres(Everyone knows they are slackers over there....just kidding). This includes Nellis AFB at 379,000 acres for the base. Nye county contributes nearly 2.5 million acres just between the Department of Defense and the Department Energy.

Today I went to explore the BLM land east of Pahrump. It is actually in Clark County but it is on this side of the "hump".

This is a view of the mountains I went into:

Two years ago a young man died here:

The road I was on is called Wheeler Pass. I can only assume it goes through the mountains to the Vegas side.

Danger Will Robinson!!!

I wonder if I can ttrade one of these beauties in for Cash For Clunkers?

Somewhere along South Branch Wheeler Pass headed down into the wash:

I think this is a Cresole Bush:

A Red Tailed Hawk...I think.

Gideon lovin

2009-08-16T08:09:00.000-07:00

These are from last weekend.

This morning

2009-08-15T11:29:00.000-07:00

I actually got to go out and take some photographs. Yesterday when I went to work when I was getting out of the Spring Mountains the was the nicest sun rise I think I'd ever seen. I was hoping to catch one like it this morning. I woke at 4:30AM and left the house by 5:30AM hoping the cards would all fall in place and let me see one like yesterday....sadly it was not to be. I did enjoy getting out to take some photos though.

While this sun rise was nice, yesterday it was spectacular. Yesterday it was just hazy enough that you could look at the sun without squinting yet and it was a dark reddish/orange color! Today, it was just a sun rise.

A big ole raven....

An American Kestrel aka Sparrow hawk...

Not sure what this little guy is. he was the only one that didn't fly away.

A flock of Finches

And when I arrived home I found that Paulie had found an escape path from the house. He was sitting on the wall staring at me!

No Death Council??? I have proof of it!!!

2009-08-15T11:24:00.000-07:00

They say there is no death council! But I have pictures of the them meeting.....

I don't like the way they are looking at me! I must be on the list!!!

The irony of it all

2009-08-15T11:13:00.000-07:00

Apparently the Nye County Commisioners have been changing speed limits in Pahrump for many years. By a simple majority vote they would lower speed limits on certain roads. This of course, is a big money maker for the county. There is only one small problem. They lacked the legal authority to make those changes. As it stands now, the only enforceable speed limit in Pahrump is 25mph on dirt roads and 45mph on paved roads. School zones are still active though. There are many 35mph zones that are more or less just speed traps to generate revenue for the county. The Nye County Sheriff has been quoted by the Pahrump newspaper as sayingthat he regularly dismisses all speeding citations that involve these illegal speed limits. They are in the process of making them legal though, but it will take a long time.

Some

2009-08-09T12:09:00.000-07:00

more pics from our house.
Here is Rufus, resting his weary bones.

One of our, not quite ripe, Pomegranites.

(I ate it anyways. It was only a little bit bitter.)

One of our cactus plants getting watered.

Everything in our front courtyard, except for 1 pine tree, has been added to our drip system now. It makes it much easier to water them all now.

HumBee Fight

2009-08-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

Its well known that Hummingbirds are loners. At our house we have at least three. Of the three, one is always chasing the other two away. Those moments are VERY hard to capture with a camera! But I managed to get some while at Bettys.

Tally Ho! The fight is on!!!!

Its not the one you see that you need to worry about! Its the one that you do not see that will get you everytime!

Betty's House

2009-08-09T11:51:00.000-07:00

is coming along nicely.
Here you can see the patio being built off the back of the house.

Here Tom is working on the edging for the patio.

Here is the completed patio.

Here are some of the finished plantings in the front of the house.

Some nice rocking chairs to relax in the morning.

They do have some monster sized gophers out here though.....

Here is the pie Betty baked when we came over to help.

Mile High Lemon Meringue Pie. Too bad its not chocolate!

Here is Betty and Tom's HumBee hanging out guarding his food

Here is Gideon wondering why Tom is not brining him any food??

Here you can see Gideon gnawing on Karen's fingers. He says they are good...They taste like Chicken!!!

Another correction

2009-08-08T16:43:00.000-07:00

After much protest, Britain will now treat Macular Degeneration before you go blind in one eye.

This is a pretty interesting video. At the end it describes how in Canada it can take a month or more to get an MRI.....unless your a cat or a dog. Pets can usually get them same day or next day!

I'd also like to point out again that the Democrats plan on cutting 400-500 billion from Medicare/Medicaid to come up with some of the savings to pay for this reform.
Also when the Democrats say that you can keep your insurance and your doctor they are not telling the truth. I have an Health Saving Account with Catastrophic Insurance Coverage. This type of plan will no longer be available under the reform plan!!! People with Flexible Savings Accounts(FSA) or Health Reimbursement Arrangement(HRA) will no longer be able to participate in those plans.

Also if you currently have employer provided insurance and lose it, you will be FORCED into the public plan or the public exchange by this new reform.

Health Care Blues

2009-08-04T20:56:00.000-07:00

Because I think "health care refom" is so important I want to blog about it again.
I DO realize that health care is an issue in this country.

One often touted fact is that roughly 47 million people in this country lack health insurance. This fact is true. But lets add some context to this. This does NOT mean there are 47 million people in this country who are denied health care. They DO get health care typically provided at emergency rooms and free health clinics and the such. We , as taxpayers, already pay for this in the form of higher costs for proceedures and higher taxes in the form of government payments to hospitals for the treatments of indigents.

So really, we could solve this problem by insuring the 47 million. I'd say insure the 47 million, minus the 10-20 million illegals in this country.

Those of you that support this plan realize it includes illegals! Every dollar spent treating them is a dollar that will not be spent treating you and your family!

The bill also includes reductions in payments to medicare providers and a "government board" to determine what will and will not be paid for!

Britan has N.I.C.E.which is often described as not being very nice! It is the government agency that decides what treatments are available to whom based on things such as sex and age. A board simmilar to NICE will be comming to the U.S.

For example, if you have advanced breast cancer, you get no treatment. Macular Degeneration? No treatment until you go blind in one eye. Then they will treat your remaining eye.

Recently Paul Krugmen was at a "health care" conference. He asked if there were any Canadians in the audiance. 7 people raised thier hands. He asked if any were "un happy with thier health care?" All 7 raised their hands!!!!

Somethings are worth fighting over

2009-08-02T16:47:00.000-07:00

Betty, Tom, and Karen all argue who gets the most loving from Gideon. Who gets the most licks, who gets to rub his ears, who gets to pet his nose! Gideon will not just let ANYONE pet his nose ya know!

Happy Birthday Betty

2009-08-02T16:04:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we had a birthday cookout with Tom and Betty. It was Betty's birthday. Tom had asked why there were no candles on the cake. Betty was not happy when I replied that there wasn't enough room for all of the candles we would need, so we just gave up!

Some people are having a hard time picturing where the pool is so hopefully this will help:

We conviniently placed it next to the pine trees so the pine needles could land softly in the pool instead of falling all of the way to the ground!

Here are a few more Hummingbird photos from Saturday:

I still can't tell what kind it is..They all look so simmilar.

Today, Sunday, our biggest decision is should we cook out, and then go swimming? or go swimming and then cook out?

Amazing as it may sound, the other day when it was 105F we went swimming and were freezing when we got out!

Our little

2009-08-01T11:05:00.000-07:00

buddy is back! We finally found some food that he likes.
These are from last night. He, or they, usually come to eat late in the evening as seen here:

or early in the morning as seen here:

I'm not sure if he is really eating this or just checking it out.

Here is a little finch.

This one is my favorite.

Might be my next one

2009-07-30T21:37:00.001-07:00

Stoeger 12Ga. Stagecoach Gun, originally uploaded by nyctreeman -.

A stainless steal stage coach gun. I know someone who has one and its a beauty! Right now I only have 1 gun. I'm gun poor and cash poor.....lol I hope to eventually have a small collection of handguns and a shotgun or two. Karen cannot physically use the handgun we have now, so I need something else. The only thing she could to with the gun we have now is beat someone to death with it.

I'm leaning towards a pump shotgun but I don't think she would like a 12 gauge after the first shot. Likely I will be looking for a 16 or 20 gauge. Something she will not be afraid of after the first shot. To criminals, shotguns are VERY intimidating weapons.

I will also be switching the ammo in my baby Glock now that I live in a brick house in a rural town. While residing in Vegas I used "safety" ammo that was designed to barely penetrate a standard drywall constructed wall. Now living in a house with 18" brick walls with neighbors fairly far away, over penetration is less of a concern. I will be switching to something with more of a punch to it.

I really do not prefer the 9mm because to me, unless you are in law enforcement, you cannot get a really good defense round for it. They are known for their over penetration. I've seen photographs of people(high on drugs) shot 32 times with a 9mm before they went down! Many of these shots were chest shots that with another round would have likely been fatal. For this reason I want a .357 revolver. Its trusty. Simple. and easy to use. It also has, or did have, the highest percentage of any handgun round for stopping people with one shot! It has been around for many, many years and has been proven a very effective cartridge. Soon hopefully

There is no such thing

2009-07-30T21:27:00.000-07:00

as too many guns!
Actually, since these are not mine, I feel I don't have enough.

Jobs are hard to come by

2009-07-30T21:12:00.000-07:00

these days, but I'm quiting my job!!!!!
Today is the day to start over.

I just won the U.K. Lottery as seen below!!!!!!!!!!

CONGRATULATIONS FROM THE MEMBERS AND STAFF OF UK NATIONAL LOTTERY.
Yours faithfully,
Mrs. Joy Gosselin
ANNOUNCEMENT UK NATIONAL LOTTERY Sweepstakes International Program.
NATIONAL LOTTERY. P/S OPEN THE ATTACHMENT

Life is GREAT!!!

More politics

2009-07-30T20:54:00.000-07:00

I might as well get it all out.......for now.....

President Obama is being criticized for his vacation plans for this year...even though he is PAYING for them himself!!

It is reminiscent of liberals complaining about President Bush spending "too much" time at the Western White House......

Does anyone think the President ever get a vacation???? Ever???? Maybe after they are no longer President!!

It wasn't for nothing that they called President Bush's ranch in Waco Texas the "Western White House"!

Each of these men have had or do have the most difficult job in the world! They would have been and will be lucky to carve out a few hours to themselves and their families during their "vacation"!

To me it is STUPID for Republicans to make pointless, un-important, political attacks against President Obama when they were enraged about the same types of attacks leveled against President Bush!

President Obama's policies give the opportunity to show REAL disagreement on POLICY, not politics!

A correction

2009-07-30T20:35:00.000-07:00

I my post about health care I made a mistake. Union members would NOT be expempt from the "reform". They would be exempt from paying taxes on thier health insurance as is now propsed as part of at least one of the proposals. This correction was brought to you by the person who has been correcting me for 42 years now.....my father.....

I'm on the way to the hospital

2009-07-29T20:37:00.000-07:00

to get a blood infusion. I've bitten my tongue so many times I'm low on blood. I try not to make this blog political, people that know me know where I stand, but damn.

First I'll say that I did not vote for Obama yet he is, for better or worse, my President. I had hoped he would campaign from the left(as he did) and lead from the middle somewhere(he is not, at least domestically)

His health care imitative is just un real. Its not really his though, he has turned that job over to Congress.

Only one action would convince me that this "plan" was a good plan.

Only one, very simple action would convince me to fully support this initiative.

And this one action would save the government money.

That action would be for ALL federal employees to be put in the plan also.
From the President down to the lowliest janitor in some long ago forgotten federal agency.

I mean if its so good for the American People, it should be good enough for Federal Employees who are, by definition, our employees. Have you ever worked at a place where the workers had better insurance than the employees? Me neither.....

President Obama was asked this exact question. His response was to try and say he was giving the American People the same thing that Federal Employees have, then he tried to blend this with Medicare saying that its just like Medicare, in fact its just like what federal employees have....government provided health care.

Does anyone really believe that????? If you do, wouldn't it be easier for the government to open up the plans to all Americans? Ain't going to happen!

Itroducing a "Public" option is a horrible idea. It will not be long until the government begins to subsidize this "Public" plan to the dis advantage of every other insurer out there. Soon the "Public" option will be the only one available.

So how do you get more health care for less money? How does that work?
President Obama want us to think we can achieve that through efficiency.
Their is no doubt a ton of money to be saved from efficiency, but not enough to pay for this plan.

And why are unions exempt from this "reform"??? The UAW, SEIU among others...I wonder why? Payback???

And this very complex(1,600 pages or so) "reform" has to be done by August??? Sorry, I'm tired of Congress not reading laws they pass!!!!

Our health care system is far from perfect, but when I look around I don't see anything better.

I do not like "pre existing condition" being excluded but it is a necessary evil. Otherwise people would only get insurance when they were sick. You can't get sick and then go buy insurance just like you can't crash your car and then go buy auto insurance. So the only real way to get rid of "pre existing conditions" is to require everyone to have health insurance.

As long as were on cars and health insurance....
Everyone knows they are at risk of getting sick. Pneumonia, flue, colds etc. These are minor ailments. Sort of like maintenance items much like changing the oil in your car is a maintenance item. Imagine what car insurance would cost if it insured against needing an oil change or a car wash!

Indeed, if the insurance workings of cars and health care were interchanged, this debate would be about the cost of car insurance!

Insurance is to mitigate a risk. How risky is a cold? Or a twisted ankle? or a fever over a short time? The normal, routine illnesses that come from being alive. The risk is infinitesimal.

My health insurance is a Health Savings Account. To me it is perfect. I put money, albeit tax free, away in a savings account every payday.I can go to ANY doctor, anywhere in the world! I have a debit card I use to pay the bill. I use that card to pay for all prescriptions and tests also. I can use it to pay fom many maedical related things that insurance will never pay for, like asprin or bandages. My "out of pocket expenses" are limited to $5,000 per year so if something catastophic or serious occurs I know what my expenses would be, and I've already saved for it towards the $5,000. After $5,000 I pay nothing. the insurance picks up ALL cost from therapy to doctors to prescriptions and hospitals. It is what is called High Deductible Health Plan and it pays for any catastophic event or ilness over $5,000.
So for about $130 a week, Karen and I are totally covered.

Another upside is that I question the doctor now becuase I am the consumer! although I have yet to refuse what a doctor ordered for me, he knows that I will question him. He recently ordered 2 tests for me that checked for the same thing. I aksed him if he really needed both. He said that because of my family history, he would feel better with both. I completed both...and they both came back "ok". But the point is that if I had "regular" insurance I would have never even questioned him about the need for both.

And, if I ever get to retire, if their is any money left in it, I can use it for whatever.

Much like "energy reform", this bill will have many un-intended consequences. Congress knows well about those little buggers!

We know all about "energy conservation" out here in Nevada. They have been preaching that for a long time here. Our local electric company recently began offering "interest free" loans for you to add a solar water heating system to your house. Not a bad idea on the surface. Las vegas, much like Pahrump and most of Nevada, have been trying to conserve electricity for many years.

The problem comes when the power company gets your payment for your lower electricity use. You save $50 on your normally $200 electric bill. You think "Great"! The power company thinks "Wow! I didn't make enough money last month!" and drives right over to the State Utility Commission and asks for an increase to bring your bill back up to $200! This exact scenario has already played out in Las Vegas. The power company will get their money, that's why they are in business!

So if your in it for the "environment" go for it....and that's an ok reason. But don't think the electric company is doing you any favors trying to lower your bills.

Karen

2009-07-27T20:56:00.000-07:00

and I hanging out in the pool.

One way

2009-07-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

to beat the heat is shown below:

Yes, I know. Your saying that's just a pile of sand with a pool in a box sitting next to it!

But you have to have imagination. Another home owner, here in Pahrump, has an old commode sitting in their yard on a pile of dirt as a decoration. Yes people, its that kind of town! It inspired me though. I imagined our old commode sitting atop the pile of sand. While sipping a Corona, and enjoying the fine mist of cool, refreshing water from the lawn sprinkler, I would gaze into the pool picture on the box and dream of floating around drinking an ever full Corona!

Needless to say, Karen did not share my enthusiasm for that idea! So I did what I had to, I put the pool up.

The pile of sand in the above picture is 4 tons. The store recommended 2 tons for our size pool, but after seeing what 4 tons of rock looked like, I did not think that was enough so I told Karen to get 4 tons.

I started about 6:30AM on Saturday. 2 Hours later it looked like this:

Our first dilemma came when we tried to install the blocks that go under the support rails. The manual called for blocks that were 18"X18" and 2" thick. Well, no one in Pahrump, or maybe anywhere else, sells 18"X18" blocks. The closest size available were 12"X12". On the surface, no a big deal. Or so you would think. We thought "Ok. No problem. We will just move the blocks in 3" to keep them centered." Well what we soon realized was that all of the math changed as well. How far to space the blocks from each other and how far to space them from the center point of the pool all changed from what was given in the manual. After a few attempts at trying to decipher the math we gave up and decided to cheat.

We "pre assembled" the to rail and then placed the blocks where they should be.

Also note the aprox 2 tons of extra sand sitting all around the edge of the pool!!

Getting the blocks was fun too. I asked Karen to get 16 of the blocks. She started at home depot and explained to the 2 guys working there that we were putting up a pool and we needed the blocks to go under it. Both the guys there we alarmed right away. They had both put up pools similar to ours and told Karen that they never used any blocks under the pool. She told them thats what the instructions said to do. What Karen didn't realize was that the block just went under the posts, not the pool. Those 2 guys were looking at her like she was crazy!
Thats the nice thing about our Home Depot here in Pahrump. Most of them have been through what you are trying to accomplish and can offer good advice.

Trying to level the sand:

This is the basic method described in the instruction manual to level the sand. We found it rather useless so we came up with a different method.

We simply leveled each block to one another. Then we just eye balled the sand inside the pool area and made it nice and flat.

Once the blocks were laid, the rest went pretty quick.

We then spread the very thin "pad"(think tarp) that goes under the pool to protect it. I did not know that they had come so far in being able to produce thin tarps. You could almost see through it if you squinted the right way.

Here you can see us after having installed the top rail in the liner and just prior to raising the pool.

After getting the wrinkles out, it was time to add the water:

Here you can see me taking a break from getting the remaining wrinkles out.

The pool is nearly full now. I have begun to put the siding on it. I think the siding adds a nice "finished" look to the pool.

When you

2009-07-22T21:19:00.001-07:00

live in a rural area like we do you have to be prepared for anything. The police and fire dept are a long ways away. Thats why I keep several bats handy!!

Not sure if I posted this before but here is the sunset at the Caughey compound:

Below are shots of the new irrigation system that cost all of $30 to install:

Everything in the courtyard now has a "drip of life" to get it through the summer months.

Over the last few days Karen has worked her ASS off hauling nearly 6 tons of rock into the courtyard and spreading it out.

Here is Carly. No doubt thinking "Here he goes again!"

My rose bush is budding despite the 110F heat!

Karens new friend. A mister from Home Depot. It works pretty well on those really hot days.

One of our cactus plants.

Carly sporting her new haircut!

Location of the new pool! Also to be known as Lake Caughey!...lol

It has been VERY hot here this past week. 110F-114F....and humid. Its going to cool off next week though...down to 108F or so.....

Good Enough

2009-07-17T20:55:00.000-07:00

I suppose, since I earn my living as a mechanic, I could be referred to as a "professional". But let me assure you I use that word loosely. But, having used both Snap-On, Craftsman, and others, I feel I have a valid opinion on them.

Snap-On makes an excellent tool. The quallity in terms of durability, accuracy, or any other measure, is un surpassed. They offer a lifetime gauruntee. Basically, it is unsurpassed. Indeed, in my opinion, there are times that you can acomplish things with a Snap-On tool that you could not with the same tool from Craftsman, or some other off brand.

Yet, I do not own any Snap-On tools!

The reason is VALUE. A given set of wrenches costs $250 from Snap-On. The same set from another company costs $50. Is the Sanp-On set better? You bet! But 99.9999% of the time you will never notice because your cheap set is "good enough" to do what needs to be done. When its not "good enough" you can figure out other ways to accomplish the same thing.

That said, I'm not un familliar with the phrase "knuckle buster". That refers to a tool thaqt is soooo cheap it is garunteed to slip or break and bust your knuckle. That is why I generally buy Craftsman.

Craftsman has decent quality, and a lifetime gauruntee. I have had Snap-On refuse a warranty claim before. Craftsman never even asks questions. They only tell you what is available to replace your broken tool.

A busy week

2009-07-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

last week was very busy. I had the on call phone, and it never seemed to stop ringing! On the plus side, I will have a nice check next week. I worked Saturday and Sunday. Then until 8PM on Thursday and 5AM(I had to wake up at 3:40AM for that) until 2PM. It was a loooong week. In addition, the A/C on my car was not working. Just in time for the 113F heat here in Vegas.

This weekend I don't have the phone so no one can make me work this weekend....except for Tom and Betty who just had 10 tons of rock delivered to their house.........I don't mind though, at least I can take a beer break....even if its 8:30AM!

When we first moved here I looked forward to going to work so I could get a break and relax!!!

Things have changed from what "must be", like fixing the toilet, or opening the water valve all of the way....to what "could be". All of the fires have been put out.

Karens mind wanders to thoughts of what color rock to put down where? Can we get a small swing for the front side of the house?

My mind wanders to thoughts of running a water line to the front yard? What will it cost to run 220 to the 2nd garage? Can I do it by myself?

Our neighbor told us Home Depot was having a big sale this weekend!!!

Its a dogs life

2009-07-12T13:28:00.000-07:00

Over the last two days we have allowed Pooh, Tigger and Carly out into the "big" yard. Because of the Foxtail we were reluctant to do so, but part of the reason we liked this house was because of the big fenced in yard. Plus we now have a better idea of what to look for and we do "Foxtail" checks when they come inside. Much like we used to do "tick" checks as a little kid living in North Carolina.

it doesn't take long for Pooh and Tigger to tire of being outside. Tigger is the first to want back into the air conditioning. Pooh will hang out a bit longer but Carly has to be drug inside!

She absolutely loves it out in the big yard. She sniffs every square inch of it to see what shes been missing.

Today we are expected to hit 104F, and 108F in Vegas. Its not too bad until about 2PM-5PM. Earlier or later and it is pretty nice out.

This is Carly barking out one of the "gun holes" in our front wall. Its a good thing she isn't much into jumping! Tigger is too scared to jump through it, and we all know, Pooh would never fit, but don't tell Karen I said that its too hot to sleep in the garage!

Our Pomeganate tree is doing very well. Soon I will pick a few to try. I didn't realize that they are what I used to call "Indian Apples". Our tree is loaded with them!

This poor picture is one of the bats that flies around in the evening. They are very hard to capture because of their erratic flight pattern, and the fact that they only come out at dusk.

This is a Night Hawk. They are also difficult to capture for the same reasons that a
bat is. they have a very erratic flight pattern and only fly at dusk. They are easily identified by the white bands on the outer edges of the wings.

There are some other larger birds that fly by our house almost daily but I haven't been able to identify them yet. They resemble a raptor of some sort, but they usually fly in a group as large a 7 birds. Since raptors are solitary, I'm not sure what to make of them yet, but I will figure it out eventually.

This is a Mud Dauber. It is a wasp of sorts. Unlike a yellow jacket or a hornet, they are not aggressive. Even when provoked they are not likely to sting. He has been cruising around our pad, no doubt in search of a residence since they only use nests abandoned by other wasps.

International Space Station

2009-07-09T21:08:00.000-07:00

flew by my house tonight. Here are some photos of it.

It looked like an airplane flying by, except that it had no flashing lights at all. It was cool to see.

Thanks to Lauren for bringing it to my attention. You can go to the NASA Human Space Flight page to see if and when it will be visible in your area.

Everybody needs a weed hoe

2009-07-09T19:55:00.000-07:00

Here is mine:

Yep thats right! I got a weed hoe and at only $15 it was cheap!

In less time than it took me to start my $70 Homelite Gas Weedeater I cut down almost 1/2 the weeds in my yard with my weed hoe. This thing is freakin amazing!

Today

2009-07-08T19:27:00.000-07:00

I made it over the hump in record time. Normally in the morning I can make it to work in 1 hour and 15 mins. On the way home it usually takes an hour and 15 mins to 2 hours depending on how I go. Today I made it home in just over an hour because one of the major constrution areas I drove through is now complete. When the other one gets done I bet I can make it both ways in an hour.

Here is Tigger after a hard day of laying around and doing nothing.

The shadow!

I am never in front of the camera.(Or Happy 4th of July)

2009-07-05T09:30:00.000-07:00

After seeing these pics, I remember why now!

Karen and I cooked out for the 4th.

We didn't go to see any fireworks this year. We had hoped to get to see them from Bettys house where we spent the 3rd. The town fireworks were on the 3rd. The park where the shot them off at was about 3 miles from our house. If we would have been home, we would have likely had a great view of them. We did get to see some of them from Bettys though, so not all was lost.

Did he or didn't he?

2009-07-05T09:21:00.000-07:00

Back on May 29th we had a snake enter the house. Or so we think. We were not sure if he made it all the way in or not. We we think we have an answer now.
I found this little fella deceased in the garage this morning.

I am assuming it is the same one, but I could be wrong.....I have been wrong before....lol

This

2009-07-04T15:26:00.000-07:00

is one of the houses that was constructed out of the same brick that ours was.

From what we have learned, the person who owned the brick factory in Pahrump built 5 or 6 of these type homes believing that they would be very energy efficient due to the near 12 or so inch brick walls. We have located 2 additional homes constructed like ours so far.

These home owners are apparently in the process of fixing theirs up also.

Tom and Betty had their yard worked on Friday. The leveled out high/low spots, removed rocks and weeds from the yard.

you can definately tell this is not sand. After the work was done their yard was like the moon. The dirt/silt here is like moon dust. Once you break the crusty top of it anyways. So we took our hose and sprinkler to them to use for a bit. This was in an attempt to prevent theor yard from blowing away.

When wet, this silt sticks to everything.

Toms shoes used to be dark brown.

Here you can see Tom adjusting the sprinkler.

2009-07-03T16:21:00.000-07:00

pics from the house.
Originally the top of our brick wall was painted. That was many, many years ago. We decided to paint it again.

one of the many lizzards at our house.

There is much to do, but we have made a big dent in it.

Short term we hope to:
1. Replace all of the bathroom faucets.(Already purchased and on my "honey do" list)
2. Get my DSL hoked up.(just need to run the phone line)
3. Make more improvements to the front yard.
4. Get the weeds out of our lands so the dogs can go out in the big area without fear of stepping on Foxtail.

Long term we hope to:
1. Run electricity to the second garage.
2. Get a flag on the flag pole.

More improvements

2009-06-28T11:10:00.000-07:00

This is where the "Piggy" door was:

We also replaced the front security door:
The old:

The new:

Jack also stopped by to see the new door:

Here are some shots from Tom and Bettys house:

A project, a project there.

2009-06-26T22:38:00.000-07:00

When moving here I wanted to keep our electric bill as low as possible. I envisioned using a clothes line to dry clothes. And we did.....for a while.

Who knew a pair of my underware could take up so much space! When I imagined a clothes line in my head, my underware only took up a few inches at most! Well that just wasn't the case.

Not having a dryer became bothersome. In addition to the taking up of space, the clothes line was in the garage, your clothes felt like sand paper. No need to sand our feet anymore, our socks could do it for us! Got an itch on your back? Put a shirt on! You may end up bleeding, but your itch will be gone!

There was no vent for the dryer, so I made one.

The start of the hole for the dryer vent. You'd be suprised how easy it was to go through about 18" of brick and mortar.

Pasing through the wall.

The completed project.

Its far from perfect, but it does the job.

This is the bathroom we were afraid to use in the begining. Its looking pretty good now.

Finally

2009-06-26T22:24:00.000-07:00

a reason to like the bank bail outs. We got our loan through First Option Motgage. Our loan was quickly bought up by Bank of America, who then sold the loan to Country Wide. As you may recall, both of these banks were "capitalized" by the U.S. government. Our first payment is due in July of 2009. As I write this, it is June 26th, 2009. Having not received a payment book yet, we called our mortgage oficer. He said, not knowing Bank of America had already sold our loan, to call Bank of America. Upon calling them, we were told to call Country Wide. Neither bank of America nor Country Wide, had any record of my name, SSN, or my adress and then each denied any knowledge of me, my SSN, or my house,

I often joked to my dad about the bank deciding they didn't want any money from us. His response was always "Yeah right!".

This

2009-06-21T09:43:00.000-07:00

post is to highlight the work that Nancy did at our house.
Below is a picture of the window sills when we bought the house:

Nancy scraped and brushed the sills to prep them for repairs:

Then, having no experience with cement or mortar, proceeded to repair them!

This is what the repaired sills look like now:

Nancy did an incredible job!! They are not all complete yet, but we have a good start on them now.

It makes a huge impact on the way the house looks.

Thanks Nancy!!!

Busy Weekend

2009-06-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

Karen and I had a very busy weekend. Friday I made repairs to my "Handy Man" component tester that I use at work.

Some of the soldering needed to be repaired.

I'm happy to say it works fine now.

Here is Paulie wishing he could get out.

Tom and Betty replaced some outside lights at their house. They gave us the old ones.
Although white looked nice at their house, it wouldnt look right at ours.

So I set out to buy a can of black spray paint. After a good cleaning, I painted the lights.

They came out pretty nice I think.

Although the "bare bulb" look has grown on me, Karen and Betty didn't much care for it.

So I did the only thing a dutiful homeowner could, I put Tom to work!!

The end result:

We also emptied our storage unit on Saturday. 3 vehicles filled to the brim. We were up until 1:30AM putting stuff away, or atleast out of sight!

The garage is still a mess though.

Somethings I forgot to mention

2009-06-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

As always, when we went to Death Valley with Brian, I was sure to have all of my camera gear together. I made sure all of my lens were in my bag, put my memory card in the camera, put my battery on charge.

The only problem was that I LEFT my battery on charge! Luckily, when we were leaving from picking Tom up, Betty came running out and handed Tom his point and shoot camera, otherwise we would have had no pictures.

This is the Amish table we got at a local thrift store.

Nancy has begun to repair our window sills. I'll post before and after pics tomorrow.The ones that she has done so far, despite some cracking, look great. Considering none of us have much experience with cement, its going well.

We bought some paint to paint the sills, and wooden headers on the house, but it is too light. Looks more pink than anything. We are going to try to get it darkened up a bit.

It has

2009-06-14T09:01:00.000-07:00

been a while since I last posted. We have been very busy these days. Between helping Betty and Tom to move in, trying to get our house in order, and my new drive to work there is very little time left for other things that I enjoy like photography and blogging. Over time, as we get settled in more, that should improve.

They say that you get used to the drive from Pahrump to Las Vegas and I must agree. The drive really does not bother me. For most of it there is little to no traffic, and the scenery can't be beat.

We have gotten to the point where most everything in the house is functional. It is not the way we would like it, but it is functional. All of the "fires" have been put out. Our main objective now is to empty our storage unit and get our "stuff" put away. That in itself is a daunting task!

One conclusion that we have came to is that one of the previous owners engaged in illegal activities in this house. I won't go into all of the details, but when all of the pieces of the puzzle are put together, the conclusion is inescapable.

After moving Betty and Tom in we took Brian to Death Valley.

I'm the good looking one with the hat and sunglasses on:)

Here we are pointing out Zabriski's Point to a tourist. Tom is a little confused about it's location!

Me and Brian at Artists Pallet.

A Raven waiting for some food.

Brian exploring the Devils Golf Course.

Me and Brian enjoying Bad Water.

This coyote was along the side of the road begging for food. They DO NOT like pretzels.

Here Brian is pointing to a structure at the Ashford Mill ruins.

Here is Nancy making "Cup Kalkas" or something like that. They are great, especially when fried in the morning.

Here Brian is showing of an antique pistol.

Here Tom is showing off his smile!

Here I am sitting at Bettys house.

Karen and Betty talking to Gideon from next door.

Betty and Toms front room.

Here is Carly after being woken from her beauty sleep!

Our dinning room area after a new load from the storage unit. Everytime we get it sorted out and looking nice, we bring another load over and mess it all up!

Betty working out in our yard.

They say

2009-06-06T07:45:00.000-07:00

"You can't get blood from a rock!" That myth has been busted!

Lesson of the day: Never let your brother hold a 8"X8" near your head when he still harbors unresolved anger issues from growing up with you!!!!

Since

2009-05-31T18:04:00.000-07:00

moving into this house, one thing we have noticed is that, if you turn on more than one faucet at a time, water slows to a trickle. It still comes out, but you would be hard pressed to even wash your hands. The solution was simple, yet getting to the solution cost me 12 hours of my life and near $200 bucks.

To fully understand the situation, you have to first know that back when we had the home inspectors out to inspect the house, when we got to the well system, the home inspector pointed to a particular valve and said that "that valve controls water to your house". So since then, when I've needed to shut off water to the whole house I would close or open that valve...it worked just as he said.

After being at Betty's house, and running several faucets at once, we became envious of her water flow and pressure. We began to think that ours was lacking. So, like any good home owner, I decided "I can fix it".

So I bought a pressure guage to check our water pressure. Our static pressure was about 50psi. Perfect! Yet when you opened two faucets, the flow dropped to nothing. However, the pressure remained fairly high. I also noticed that no matter how low our water pressure got, our pump never turned on. After much googling and conversations with my dad, I decided to replace the pressure control switch and add a pressure guage at the at the switch so I wouldnt have to run outside to see what the pressure was. Idid this with no problem. The pump now turns on and off like it should. Pressure, according to my new guage, was good also. Still, when we turned on two faucets, very little flow.

I decided to check the air pressure in my bladder tank. Since the air pressure in the bladder tank should be 2 psi below the cut in pressure on the control switch. My new control swith is a 40psi-60psi switch, meaning the pump turns on when water pressure drops below 40 psi, and shuts the pump off when water pressure reaches 60 psi. My bladder air pressure was at 20psi.

So I decided to increase the pressure to 30 psi. While at Home Depot I bought a manula bycicle tire pump. My first mistake. Yes a pump like this could raise the pressure in a bycicle tire very easily, when trying to increase the pressure in a large cylinder like a bladder tank, it is virtually impossible. It is like trying to inflate a truck tire with a hand pump. Eventually I bought a nice air compressor to do it.

So, after all of this, the air pressure in my bladder tank was spot on at 38psi. And still not change in the water system. Everything checked out. Correct water pressure at the faucets, correct air pressure in the bladder tank, pump turning on and off as it should! I was getting depressed thinking it was a well/well pump problem which are very expensive to fix.

Then it all started to come together. After more reading, conversations with my dad, and remembering hydraulics class I began to think that it was a restriction somewhere in the system, though I didn't know where.

This is because restrictions cause pressure, and I never lost pressure, hence there had to be a restriction. While looking a the pictures of the piping I took to send to my dad, and talking to my dad, we realized that there was a second shut off valve!
I knew it was there! Stepped over it a hundred times today! It was only partially open. I opened it all the way and now I can ren every faucet in the house, the shower, and flush the toilet all at once with no loss of water pressure or flow!!!!

As they say, sometimes when your in the woods, you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.

Its been quite a week

2009-05-29T22:22:00.000-07:00

Last Friday and Saturday we moved into the new house. I truely know why they are called money pits now!!! It has been a great week though. Nothing Vegas has to offer can compare to sitting out in our front yard and watching the sunset while sipping on a drink. Being that it is usually a few degrees coolere here in Pahrump it is even more enjoyable.

We have even had a few visitors like the one pictured below:
.

We had a long nose snake get into the house. We also have a resident jack rabbit that does not seem to want to leave.

I have gotten used to getting up at 4:30AM for the drive to work while thinking of the evenings out in the yard.

The amount of work to be done is great for sure, but it is ours, so we enjoy it much more.

The trappings of a normal life are begining to surround us again. We have cable and SLOW internet. We have so much work to do though, that it will not matter how slow the internet is for a while. I can upload pictures, and google how to repair things...that should sufice for now.

Some random pictures:

Fire place room

Sunset

Plumbing leak mitigation

Front room.

Hummingbird

Well its been a long day....17.5 hours to be exact....I'm off to bed....

This is it.

2009-05-22T07:14:00.000-07:00

The last post for what will likely be a few weeks. Today we are moving.