Friday, March 15, 2019

New Camera, New Tooth and Other Stuff



Nothing much of anything blog-worthy to report, but we are just glad to have our spot here at Jojoba Hills so we can stay put for as long as we like. After ten years some of the luster of moving around all the time has worn off. Now if we could just find a place to plunk ourselves down for the summer where it wasn’t too hot, too buggy or too smoky, life would be wonderful!

Our site, 411, at Jojoba Hills

Neither of us likes lugging around a big camera anymore, and the Cannon we got from our friends has been having focusing issues, so I found the smallest camera out there with a longer zoom, and that’s what we bought. It’s a Sony DSC-HX90V, and it also has an optical viewfinder, not easy to come by these days in a small camera. We haven’t used it a lot yet, but I’ve been studying the on-line manual and trying to figure it all out.

It has a rotating screen to take selfies, which we rarely do. I had to try it out in the car on our way to Garage Brewery in Temecula, with LuAnn and Terry in the back seat. Couldn’t get Jim in the shot since he was driving, but if we ever do want to take a selfie at least it’s easy to see what you’re getting a photo of. And this was before beer!


Inside the brewery I wanted to see if it took good low light shots, but LuAnn was hoisting her beer at the same time so it blurred. Otherwise not bad without the flash.




Laurelee and Libby stopped by for a few nights on their way to the Lazy Daze gathering at Morro Bay. We considered going but Jim wasn’t keen about the traffic we had to go through to get there last year so we decided against it.

We always enjoy their company. Sweet Libby is such a pretty dog. 



Our succulent garden is doing well in spite of the cold temperatures and excessive rain this winter. There’s a little peek at our new CRV, which we are enjoying immensely.



And we have lots of oranges from our tree but they have too many seeds and are pretty tart so I’ve been juicing them. We’re letting them stay on a bit longer hoping that they sweeten up given more time.




This young acacia tree on the common area between our site and Terry and LuAnns' has probably grown 5’ in the year that we've been members here.






Swarms of these silver dollar sized Painted Lady butterflies have been zooming by for about a week now, on their way from Mexico to the northwest to breed. Apparently the vegetation growth from the wet winter has given them plenty to eat along the way. We forgot to take a picture of all of the squished ones on the front of the car when we drove to Yuma recently, but they leave big yellow blobs and the front of the car was covered with them.



Didn’t have much luck focusing through the dirty, streaked glass, but these two hummers were so cute, acting in unison. Normally they fight to keep each other away.





We made two trips to Algondones, a day trip last week so I could get the implant abutment and impressions made, then an overnight in Yuma on Sunday for my last appointment to get the crown Monday morning. After almost a year I finally have all my teeth again, and it feels good!

A couple shots from our drive through Anza Borrego on the way. There weren’t many flowers along our route through the southern part of the park, although we’ve heard there are lots around Borrego Springs.



It’s nice to see things so green.



This was the view from our room at the Shilo Inn in Yuma. We splurged an extra $10 to get a room away from the interstate. We were close to downtown so we went out for a beer and an Impossible Burger at The Pint House, a nice little bar with 50 beers on tap. Yuma has kind of grown on us over time.
It was too cold to make use of the lovely pool

Other than the usual pickleball, ping pong, walking, working out and doing a little volunteering around the park, life has been pretty quiet since we got back from McDowell Mountain. We’re hoping the winter cold and rains end soon so we can get out and do some hiking and experiment with the camera more. I’ll try not to let so much time pass before I post again, but given the time it took trying to do this post using Blogger, now that Open Live Writer won't work anymore, I'm not sure I have the patience. 

Flowers by one of the ponds at Jojoba Hills





















26 comments:

  1. I found that the summer months of mid-may thru mid-september in my last work location, Richland Washington to be pretty good and very close to lots of great biking and hiking and Mt. Rainer and other little hills like it.

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    1. Doesn't it get pretty hot in that area during the summer?

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    2. I never had to shut down in our area due to heat but check the weather .com site to get accurate temperature history.

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    3. I checked the temps from last summer and June was reasonably nice but in July and August it got in the low 100s about half the time. Of course it was hot everywhere last summer, but that may be the new normal.

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    4. WOW what a difference. I don't recall more than a very few days of over 90, and that was just 2-3 hours in the afternoon. I was there from 2002 thru 2007. Looks like I need to be very careful about heat history in the last few years. Thanks for the heads up.
      Thanks for the heads up.

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  2. Good to see your post on the Ides of March - the day Google has said many bloggers will be stabbed in the back as many features of Blogger and all of Google+ will be discontinued. Nice to see you are not affected!
    Welcome Home! Borrego Springs did have a nice bloom, but Ocotillo Wells had perhaps the best winter bloom ever! Hope you'll have some wildflowers to enjoy too.

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    1. Blogger is still working but I haven't been able to post with Open Live Writer and Picasa for a while now. Very frustrating!

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    2. Just an FYI I was able to post using Open Live Writer this morning...

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    3. We've been working on the OLW/Picasa fix for a couple weeks now and still get either a 400 or 404 error when I try to publish. Glad it's still working for some!

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  3. Always use Microsoft Word to compose our Blog then Copy and Paste it to Blogger. Then I upload the pictures.
    Too bad you weren't at your site in mid December while we visited with Judy Bell and Merikay and Craig MacKenna. Would have loved to have said Hello.
    Be Safe and Enjoy the new Car.

    It's about time.

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    1. I do the text in Open Live Writer and copy and paste to Blogger, but I like being able to add the photos in OLW, too, and the ability to do it offline if necessary. Uploading photos with blogger is slow and cumbersome. I can't ever seem to get the spacing the way I want. Hope it will get easier the more I do it.
      Sorry we missed you!

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  4. So good to hear from you again. It is nice to have a place to just sit. But it does make it hard to get up and go again. I am looking forward to hitting the road again but I sure wish someone else would plan it and pack the MH! You succulent garden is beautiful!! Sorry the oranges aren't sweet...darn! Good to hear you are enjoy a full mouth of teeth again. Keep us posted on the camera, please:) How sweet to see Terry and LuAnn!

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    1. We're staying busy here and enjoy having a place to sit but Jim is still wanting to live in a "real" house again one of these days. If only we could figure out where!

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  5. It sure is a lot harder to post when one is stationary! SoCal sure is looking lovely after all this rain. We're hoping to even get some greening up in Prescott due to the wet winter. Normally I think most of our green happens during monsoon season. Looking forward to seeing you guys in May...

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    1. I'm sure once spring hits it will green up from all the rain/snow you've had. We always look forward to visiting Prescott!

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  6. Thanks for the tip on the Sony Camera. I have been looking for a small camera with a big zoom. I didn't realize they made any with optical viewfinders. I might just buy it.

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  7. It’s good to see that you are back at it with the blog. Your place at Jojoba looks great, it's appealing to have a place for at least a few months of the year to come home to. With all the cameras you guys have been through over the years there must be a camera graveyard somewhere in the depths of that motorhome! Chris

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    1. It's fun having a small, very low maintenance yard of our own for a change. Yes, we have been hard on cameras over the years, usually due to our own negligence!

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  8. I think you made a good choice of cameras. I like the color and clarity. I didn't realize that you had captured a Painted Lady sitting still. They were coming through our site so fast I thought it would be impossible to get a shot of them. You really didn't think I was going to sit still for a photo at Garage Brewery with all those beers in front of me, did you?

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    1. It took me about a half hour and many, many attempts before I got a butterfly shot that was in focus. They don't stop for very long!
      We have to plan another Garage night soon :-)

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  9. Seems like you're getting a lot done. Nice to have a base sometimes. But I've been sitting in one place way too long. I look forward to Bryce's 9000 feet over the summer. I know how nice it is to have all your teeth. :D I'm still able to use OLW on WordPress.

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    1. As hot as it was last summer, Bryce at 9,000' should be just perfect!
      I think the OLW problem is using it with Picasa. I can publish text that I write on OLW but when I add photos it gives me the error messages. Jim is still trying to figure it out but I'm afraid it's a waste of time and I just need to suck it up and get used to using Blogger.

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  10. Looks like you're enjoying Jojoba—so fun to see you with LuAnn and Terry. :-)
    Have you considered the PNW in summer? I don't think there's any better place to be than the Olympic Peninsula or the San Juan Islands—perfect weather, and we only had about 3 days of smoke in the 8 summers on Lopez. I know you might not want to be in the islands, but Port Townsend is pretty sweet, as you know.

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    1. Jojoba has it's pluses and minuses, but we love having LuAnn and Terry as our neighbors.
      Jim was ready to move to Port Townsend last summer after we spent a couple weeks in the area :-) Unfortunately we had smoke much of the time we were there. Hope this summer is better!

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  11. I enjoyed reading your updates. It's strange that so many of us seem to want to settle down around the same time. I feel fortunate that I was able to RV when I did, before things changed. It seems like more and more BLM spots are closing down for RVers. That's too bad, it sure was fun! But I guess more spots will be found and become popular, I hope so. :)

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    1. We've had a great time RVing all these years, but just aren't enjoying the planning and moving around as much as we used to. Sounds like you have settled in and are happy, which is all that really counts, no matter where you live!

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