Began the year with a trip out to the Seymour Center to play with the touch tanks.
Replaced the patio uplights that had been installed in the new patio in 2012. The constant moisture and exposure had dulled the lights and in some cases they were shorted out. So we bought replacements and I rewired them back up. Here's a before, during and after look.
At Spring St. in February, I installed an Ecobee thermostat for Mom. She can tell Siri to turn the forced air system on and off.
We also helped Gunnar get his science fair project setup and entered in both his school fair and the county fair.
I hit 2k miles on my Gazelle Medeo ebike. I started prepping the car for the AutoX season (oil change, brake pads, etc.).
AutoX started up in March with our first event out at Crows Landing.
Replaced water harvesting pump in March. See the article here.
March and April fishing, pump track riding.
Spring flowers and uplights in patio.
LRO b’day in Beverly Hills. We stayed at the pink palace as a treat.
While we were in LA we did a downtown LA architecture walkabout and travelled through various neighborhoods we know from TV shows and films.
I had to replace the extractor fan porsche after I got an error message in the console. It was stuck so it probably just wore out over time. Installed a CarPlay module. The car horns died, so I decided to replace them both (bass and high). Turns out that is a pretty common part to wear out.
Gunnar spent most of his summer with us, so we got him into music lessons, swim lessons, swim team and water polo. He had a great time in water polo. Not many pictures of him to protect his identity.
Sleepovers in June. Pump track, violin lessons, fishing, fishing, fishing.
End of summer trip to Occidental. We took a trip to Sonoma county in order for Gunnar to go fishing. He got a chance to fish on the beach at Bodega Bay and Hagemann Ranch. He caught sizeable trout at the ranch and some surf perch at the coast. On the way home we hit Half Moon Bay and the SC Wharf where the anchovies were running.
In late September, we headed out to see the fall colors in the western states of Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. We got back in October in time to attend Poodle Day in Carmel.
Poodle day prep to get pretty.
Spring St. needed to have some tree work done. It had been about 8 years since the last work had been done. I had Koala Tree service come in and remove dead wood from the Dawn Redwoods, Liquid Amber, and two Cypress trees. That lead to some additional work of stump grinding a pair of Redwoods that were pushing the root ball debris into the fence.
In November, a neighbor who has been recovering from a stroke for the past several years came and knocked on the door. He has had a 1972 911 in his garage for years. I’ve approached him a few times to see if he was interested in selling it or at least letting me help him get it running again. He was finally ready to look into this project so I did a bunch of research and documentation for him, got Mario to come over and provide some first tier assessment of what it will cost to get it going again. It’s a lot thousands. More later.
In this part of California, fall colors start in November and extend through January depending on how cold it gets. We had nice colors in the Dogwood tree out front through the first rain and wind storms.
And then winter began.