L.A. Day Trip

Lately it has been go to work, come home, go to work, repeat.  So yesterday we decided to take a day trip to L.A., where every day is Halloween.  Of course "A" set us up with a few estate sales to check out, usually we just check out the houses but at times we will purchase something.  Most of the houses that we look at are really outdated inside and crappy. I guess when you deal with that much money and with the prime locations, they have no desire to make them nice. Sometimes people will buy a property for millions of dollars just to tear it down and build a new place. 

The first stop was a house in Malibu. The house was OK, but the location was amazing, it was right on the beach. It wasn't currently for sale, but it last sold in 2013 for $7,000,000.

The other noteworthy house was in Brentwood, and no it was not O.J.s house.  This place is listed at $8,195,000 and it is currently pending.

It was really amazing how much money is in that area. Every vehicle was one of the following, Lexus SUV, BMW SUV/Sedan, Range Rover, Mercedes SUV/Sedan, Maserati, Jaguar, Tesla. In San Diego I have seen maybe 1 or 2 Teslas, Yesterday we saw over 20 of them. Yes, we actually counted them because we just don't see them here and they were literally everywhere up there. 

I know my breaks work because I damn near T-Boned a Prius that decided to turn left in front of me.  Had to lock them up and the dumb b**ch just went about her business like everything was OK and she didn't narrowly miss a trip to the hospital.  We were outside of the really nice areas, otherwise I might have tagged her and gotten a new truck.

Got to see a LA hipster with his "man bag". You can only see the strap across his chest, the bag is hidden. Hard to take the picture, the light had just turned green and "A" was yelling at me not to take the picture. She doesn't like it when I do that.

Say hi to your neighbors

The cement pond

LA Hipster

Virginia Trip

Last week duty called and I had to go to Stafford Virginia for a conference. I am never enthusiastic about having to go on business trips. I figured I did enough of them for 20 years and that was my fill. But being the good drone that I am I did a right face and forward march.

I flew into Ronald Reagan Airport in D.C. and I was lucky enough to be on the left side of the aircraft so that I could capture all the landmarks. I got a good picture of the Watergate Hotel and then decided to turn on the video to record the landing and was able to capture the Lincoln Memorial, WWII Memorial, Washington Monument, Treasury, the Capital, and the Jefferson Memorial. So if you ever fly into Ronald Reagan Airport in D.C. try to sit on the left side of the plane.

I didn't get a chance to tour DC but I did get a few hours free to tour the National Museum of the Marine Corps. It is one of the few Museums that doesn't bore me to tears. There is so much that a few hours just isn't enough. I did snap a few pictures of what I think is really cool, especially the two Medal of Honors awarded to Dan Daley. To see the actual medals that he wore is magnificent.

Flying back into San Diego I snapped a few pictures from our very low reservoirs.

Leaving San Diego

Watergate Hotel

Dan Daley's Medals of Honor

 

The US Capital Building

Low Reservoir in San Diego

Another Low Reservoir in San Diego

Toilet Paper Holder

***EDIT*** Apparently a stud finder can detect re-bar in the walls. Who knew? Hat tip to "A" for finding it out..

After 6 years we finally decided to get the TP roll off the floor. This bathroom is so small that we were unsure of how to do it. We knew that a normal TP holder would not work because it would stick out too far and probably be ran into all the time. Which would correlate to bruised legs and the need to constantly reattach it to the wall.

We thought about having a floor stand like the master bath but it would need to be moved around depending if you needed to take a shower. In the end we decided to get a recessed one. We wanted a white ceramic holder but damn they are expensive ($60+). We found a nice white metal one at Home Depot for about $15.

Normally installing one would take about 15 minutes. Use a stud finder and then cut a hole in the drywall between the studs, no problem. However, as you are aware, our house is not normal. Can't find our studs with a stud finder, all you can do is guess. So I thought to place the holder in the middle below the window with the thought that the re-bar would be just outside the window frame. Of course I guessed wrong. I drilled my exploratory hole and sure enough, I hit re-bar. So unfortunately it is slightly off center. But hey, it's off the ground.

What are the odds of a re-bar stud being there

About 100%

Add caption

Foot Surgery Followup

On February 17th I had the stitches removed and was hoping that was going to get me back on the road to normal. Unfortunately not completely yet. I am getting better and this week I am finally able to wear other footwear besides tennis shoes. I can walk without a limp and at lunch I have gone for a few walks but afterward I kind of regret it. My main concern is that I cannot curl my toe as much as I used to without pain and I hope that it's not permanent.

While the swelling and redness is mostly gone, it does comeback after being on my feet for extended periods. Hopefully things will improve.

Below are some photos of the "healing" process. Once again discretion is advised.

 **********WARNING!! GRAPHIC PHOTOS BELOW. DISCRETION IS ADVISED**********

 **********警告！下の図の写真。裁量は通告されてい**********

Foot Surgery

For the last year I had a lump/bump on the top of my left great toe. It didn't hurt if you pushed on it but it would rub on the top of my dress shoes. This was causing a callous and it was uncomfortable. It took a long time to work my way through the VA health care system to even get an appointment with podiatry. I got the referral appointment from my primary on October 3rd and after visiting with the Dr., he said yes it was something they could fix and it was not a super big deal. Well, he also said he was new and didn't know how to set the follow up appointments in the system but he would have another Dr. help him.  I guess that should have been my first red flag.  I was going to give it 2 weeks and then call to follow up. Well, on October 15th my Mom passed away and this immediately went to the bottom of my concerns.

I tried to call podiatry the beginning of November but the number the VA has goes right to the appointment line. I was in a yoga study and it was down the hall from podiatry, so I decided to pay them a visit. The very unhelpful lady said that yes I did see one of their Dr.s but he was not in on Wednesday, however he would be in the next day and she would leave a message for him. The following Monday I had not heard back so I called the bad number again and got the main appointment line. They said they could only make an appointment for my primary. Since I had already seen my primary (he gave me the referral) I asked to speak to him ASAP. I got a call back from one of his staff who said that I should call podiatry and proceeded to give me the bad number again.

The following Wednesday, I had yoga, and decided to visit the very unhelpful lady again. She again said the Dr. wasn't in on Wednesday (no shit) and said she would leave a message. I asked for a better number and she gave me her "personal" desk number. I waited till Monday and when I did not hear anything back (are you seeing a pattern) I called Mrs. Unhelpful's number where I received a voice mail asking me to leave a message and then I am promptly disconnected.  I went into orbit!!

My Gunny's wife works at the VA for the chief of staff and she got me the Patient Advocates number. I called, left a message, and the ball finally begin rolling. I had to go back to my primary so he could clear me for surgery (even though he gave me the referral). REALLY!!! I called the patient advocate again for some assistance. I received a call from the Chief Surgeon for podiatry who apologized and said he would do my surgery. However I still had to go back to my primary.

He had to shave down the top part of the toe where the bone had grown up and there was some type of gout paste that they cleaned out.

I will say that once I got the surgery date, did the pre-op and went into surgery, the staff was nothing but professional and very competent.  I had the surgery on January 28th and today I had the follow up and everything looked good. I am set to have the stitches removed on February 17th.

I guess I was overly optimistic (as usual) and thought that I could be back to work yesterday, when I told this to the Dr. the day of surgery he just kind of looked at me funny and said to wait until I had the follow up. So today I went back to work for a half a day and kind of regretted it. I will say that I did not expect the level of pain, it really hurt!!!!!

 Below are some photo's, several of them not foe the week of heart (like "A").

**********WARNING!! GRAPHIC PHOTOS BELOW. DISCRETION IS ADVISED**********

 **********警告！下の図の写真。裁量は通告されてい**********

Target Shooting

Last weekend some friends from the neighborhood went out to Ocotillo Wells to do some target shooting. Honestly, I didn't know there was anyplace in Southern California that you could go out and shoot that was not an "official" shooting range. I also had no idea that there were quite as many people in the neighborhood who owned guns and liked to shoot.

Getting there was an adventure, actually a scary adventure. The normal way is to take I-8 East through the mountains, and we did, but that weekend the Santa Ana winds were howling. We all rode in one of the guys RV and with the winds blowing around 40mph with gust hitting around 60-70mph it was all he could to to keep the RV on the road. In fact we almost turned around.  What normally takes 1 1/2 hours took over 2 hours thankfully, when we got in the desert, the wind wasn't blowing there.  But around 1PM the Highway Patrol closed the highway for a few hours. Going back we took the S-2 highway, no wind but it took us over 3 hours to get back. So the drive there and back sucked.

We had a whole mixture of weapons from the .22 rifle up to a 300 Magnum hunting rifle. One guy made his own AR-15 receivers and the little black gun I am shooting is one of them. Another guy had some WW2 rifles (M1 Carbine and M1 Garand) which were really cool to shoot.

(L-R) Mini 14; M1 Carbine; M1 Garand; don't know what the far right one is

Tonight's Sunset

Really nice sunset tonight. It has been a rough few months and I will work on putting up more posts in the future.