Flying Coyote, a Nudist Colony, Garden and Complaint Dept.

Saw this “lime green” plane flying overhead today, this is the best picture that I got since I sat there looking at it for many minutes before thinking, “Hey idiot, why don’t you get your camera out….”.  Then it took a good hour or more to try and identify it, but I finally did….

This picture is from Wikipedia, and although the “rear end” looks a bit different, the insignia on the tail is pretty clear-cut.

  

The picture to the left is a blow up of my picture, the picture on the right is another picture that I got off the Internet.  The plane is a Rans S6 Coyote II, perhaps a S6-ES.  So had I not got my camera out, I would have missed out on getting a picture of a flying Coyote!

A little over a week ago I talked about the Naked Lady outside the door of our motorhome….now it has turned into a Nudist Colony!!!  

Mom told me that a few of the relatives who live outside of the area had asked about her front yard, and specifically the garden.  Well, this is the front yard…

And a closer image of it. The flower garden is along the stone wall, and you can clearly see that the Marigolds are doing well along the left side, and you can see a few of the other flower plants on the right side.  The ones on the right have a bit of a struggle when the temps climb to 100 or above, and I need to water them twice a day when it is that hot.

Ok, in my last post I complained about how HOT it has been….well, someone was listening because Sunday and Monday have been GREAT!  Sunday only got to 85 degrees, and much of the day it was under 80.  Today the high was only 80 degrees…. and tomorrows forecast is 85 again.  Also, there was some nice rain up in the foothills and in the Sierra’s, which will help with the dryness and the fires.  The worse fire in the state right now is 4 miles Southeast of Burney, just north of Lassen National Park.  It is larger than the city of San Francisco, and pretty much no containment, and they expect it to last for another few weeks before it is contained.  Other fires, however, benefited by the rain and cooler temps, and one reached 100% containment today.

Hard Drive, Hard Pains, Family Lessons

I love laptops where the hard drive is under a panel, like the one illustrated above….but I couldn’t have that type of luck….

I had to remove the keyboard, the touchpad and panel, a few other things just to get to the hard drive. Good news though, I was able to get everything I needed from it using this neat tool like the one below.

Plug in power cord, attach usb, attach to hard drive, turn on and it became another hard drive on my computer.  I copied the files I needed, starting with the nearly 60 gigs of pictures.  Now I have the pictures on our backup laptop, and on this old laptop hard drive.  Eventually I will need to get another laptop, but I am going to take my time and get what I want at the price I am willing to pay.

Mom likes the pictures of the garden…she can’t wait to come home to see it, but I know the truth is that she just can’t wait to come home period.  Probably come home for a few hours visit again this weekend, and she hopes to be out for good a week from Friday….we sure hope so.

As for me, the legs are getting much better.  Could hardly walk on Tuesday, did pretty good on Wednesday, but today my right leg just would not “stretch out” until the ibuprofen kicked in.  

So we had a meeting with the Skilled Nursing facility people on Wednesday pertaining to mom.  Mom, Dad, sister Patty, Marcia and I met with the Occupational Therapist (OT), the Business Office representative, and the facilities “social worker”.  The case nurse was unable to be there, but they were going to pass on notes to them.  The OT gave a progress report, but would not give us their best guess as to when mom would be coming home.  When asked what the average time is for hip replacement stays she says, “We don’t have an average time.”  Family lesson one, it is not hard to come up with an average…which is when she finally said, “less than a month.”  Then the “Business Office” person gives her report.  Medicare will pay 100% for first 20 days, then they pay 80% and the back-up insurance does not cover anything.  Hence, they want 14 days up front for the time she “might” be there beyond the 20 days, but would settle for 7 days since her progress is going well.  Family lesson two, “absolutely not!”.   When told it is their “company policy”, dad says, “What are you going to do, kick her out if we don’t pay 7 days for something we don’t even know we are going to use yet?”  “Oh no, sir, we would never kick her out.”  “Well, it is ‘OUR’ family policy to not pay for something we don’t know we are going to use.”  Ok, Business Person is blown out of the water….time to unload our big guns now. We then talked to them about some of the shortcomings mom has experienced, but assured them that for the most part, everyone has been so nice and in general we have been pleased.  I don’t want to go into the shortcomings, but let’s just say, they seemed to be alarmed by a few things we shared with them.

One thing I had to replace was Photoshop Elements, going to version 12 from version 11.  I think I am going to like this version more than the older version….sure going to have fun with it.

  

The picture to the left is what I published in my last blog, the one on the right is in this blog. Same picture, but the one on the right is cropped, and touched up a bit to make the lawn look better.  To me, taking good pictures need to be followed up with a touch of Photoshop to help the picture look more presentable.   Most of these pictures only need a slight adjustment to the “lighting”, some need a slight touch of color, but most need to be cropped.  Old photographers once did this in the dark room…now it is done quick and easy on a computer.

Mom’s Flower Garden –or– Planting Flowers = Sore Body

When mom was getting closer and closer to surgery, she gave very strict orders….be sure to water my flowers!  It was way back then that I had decided that when she returned, she would have lots and lots of flowers in her front garden instead of flowers in a dreary hospital room or drearier skilled nursing rehab room.  

The first photo shows more flowers in the area that had flowers already.  Above is how it looked before I got to work….you can see my trusted assistant up in this photo if you look near the top, Skruffy was with me all the way.

   

These three pictures show the areas which have no flowers…or correctly stated, “Had No Flowers”.

    

Above is a view left to right and then right to left.  All together I planted 12 larger plants, and 125 smaller Marigold plants.  I am not a plant person….can’t remember the names of most plants, but I do know how to plant them.  Seven bags of top soil, a couple of soaker hoses to help with the watering chores, a large bucket of weeds pulled…all together, including the trips to Home Depot, it took a good six hours.  It will probably take a good six or more Aleve over the next few days to get rid of the soreness too. 

Yes Skruffy, time to go home now!  Hey, let me ask you a question little girl….”How come your paws are not full of dirt?  Oh, I get it…you were protecting me from the giant squirrels.  Good girl, let’s go home, I have some pills to gobble down.”