San Diego Big Bay Balloon Parade

My photo club attended the Pre-Holiday Bowl Parade, the Big Bay Balloon Parade (which also has a LOT of marching bands in it from all over the country and beyond). Somehow this juxtaposition of the Wienerschnitzel worrying wiener with the T-Rex looked funny to me.

I'd provide a link to the club's photos of this event, but they haven't been posted yet. You can check out our site and watch for them (http://www.pbase.com/BAESDPhotoClub) or just check out my collection of these via the link above, while they last.

Space Mountain, Improved?

Last trip, a few weeks ago, I never did make it to the new and improved Space Mountain. We didn't get there until they had already closed down the fast pass and the line was very long. Of course it was on a capacity day when they close the park because it is too full. Anyway we went back after the parade and fireworks, when usually the waits are shorter -- only to discover the ride was broke and they didn't know when, or if it would be fixed before closing.

This trip we went there first thing and got a fast pass. We came back at the designated time, all set to see the new and improved Space Mountain. It had been closed for quite some time to do all the upgrades. That fast pass is great -- we walked all the way in to the "inner chamber" before we hit the line. It only took 15 minutes or less to make it on the actual ride. After all is said and done, I'm a little disappointed.

The only "improvement" I could find are these cool looking gates to keep back people waiting their turn. They are pretty, but did it really need to be closed 6 months (or more) for that? Sure, there are more blinky lights inside, but what was cool about Space Mountain was zooming through the dark and not knowing where you were going to go -- even though you kind of had it memorized after a while. The last improvement brought in synchronized music, which was pretty cool -- but now in the latest improvement that cool music is gone and I think there was some lame elevator music of some kind instead.

Greatly improved? I think not. Mildly improved? Um, overall counting plusses and minuses, I think not. It's still a fun ride, but I miss the cool music.

Christmas Day

Normally I take about a zillion boring pictures on Christmas. I mean, how many pictures of people opening gifts do you really need? I've actually taken some nice ones that I still treasure, but generally they're boring even to me. I kept myself to 3 photos (believe it or not) for Christmas day -- and I even used my cheap Nikon camera at that to shoot this shot. Here is Caroline, about to open a gift from... does it really matter? Bev is in the background.

Pepper Lane

Just our typical walk through the Christmas lights near Pepper Lane in Lakeside. An annual tradition of ours for a dozen years or so. Sure, mostly its the same stuff every year, but there are a few new things every year as well. It's nice seeing the old, and the new. I'm glad I don't live in this neighborhood though. It would take at least 45 minutes to return from the grocery store during the month of December because of all the traffic driving through here to get a look. Not us though -- we park and walk it all -- up and down every street.

Remodel complete (sort of)

People have been asking about a view of the house since we finished construction. As you can tell from this photo, we still have some landscaping to do though. The big weathered dirt section is where they cleared our landscaping to put in the new septic tank. Since we added a bedroom, we had to increase the size of our septic tank and increase the drainage as well. That tore up a bit of landscaping – we’re still waiting on the bid from our landscaper for this part.

This shot was from the lower (north) orchard, looking up the hill toward the house.

Balcony Railing, Finally

The balcony railing was one of the final pieces in our remodel project, and coincidentally, the final straw in a long line of disappointments with our Contractor, Michael de Leon, that had us firing his dishonest bu++. After ridding ourselves of that crook, we finished the project ourselves and hired the same guy he was going to use to build our balcony railing. Jim (the iron) guy was much happier to deal with us than the weasel Michael anyway -- in fact he begged us to do so.

Anyway, here is the railing, finally done and being put into place. It looks like they could have taken a couple different approaches, but regardless, no one was killed, maimed, or even injured. They did manage to break one of the edge tiles though, but at least the railing was up and we could get our final inspections.

Steamboat Willie

Around Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure are lots of mosaics made out of lots of smaller photos. This mosaic of "Steamboat Willie" (The first Mickey Mouse Cartoon) was particularly interesting because the photos used to make this mosaic are themselves mosaics made up of smaller photos.

Yes, this is the second Disney post, but hey, I was there past midnight, so this qualifies as the next day.

Snow in So. Cal?

One of the "cool things" about Disneyland in December is the "snowfall" after the fireworks. Well, even though this snow isn't yellow, don't eat it -- it is really soap bubbles. Still, looking at Ellen (one of our photo club members) and those in the background, you'd think this was a real magical Christmas snowfall.

The park was so full they stopped letting people in. We watched the fireworks and the snow from near "It's a Small World" because mainstreet was too crowded.

Lots more pictures available -- follow the link above.

Baluster Day

Finally our stair guy remembered that our stairs were not completely fixed – the balusters still needed to be installed. He came over and within a short time had our new stairway, after the repair, looking new again. Here he is in action – just getting started.

Fortunately for him, his guy that took them off to strip and repair the treads labeled each baluster as left and right, and numbered them so each could be put back in the exact right slot.

Here's another view on this same topic: My Life Through Pictures: The downside of real wood stairs.

Padres Season Ticket Holders Meeting

As season ticket holders, we were invited to a special Q and A session at the park to ask any questions of the Padres management and to listen to some of the staff talk -- and one recently reaquired player -- Geoff Blum. Pretty much standard stuff -- no commitments on future trades of course, but there were things in the works and we watched them play out over the next few weeks.

What was most surprising though was that there was free food and drinks for all -- as much as you wanted of ball park hotdogs, pizza, candy, pop corn, and sodas. There was even frozen limonaid -- the good strawberry kind! I have a tough time even buying some of this at a real game.

After the food, and the talk, we got to see some fireworks and then as we walked out, they were passing out all kinds of free stuff from last year. I got a couple more "Season Ticket Holder" bags -- since our original season tickets only came with one bag for two tickets, we were short a bag. Now we have a spare.

This shot was taken after we were leaving the event. The logo was a projection on the waterfall wall next to the stairs. It was moving around randomly, but of course in this photo it is standing quite still.