Broken Hearts

We lost our beloved Goldie today. 13 years old.

June 17, 1995, to October 27, 2008

She wants his bagel!

Naptime for Rick & Goldie!

In the RV

Halloween 2007 - Elvis! Hound Dog?

And to think that until 13 years ago when we brought that peppy puppy home, I was afraid of animals!..and allergic. All it took was a 9 year old to say "Mom, I just want a pet that loves me back". That changed my life, and all of my family's, for the better of course!

Now she's up in "Doggy Heaven" running with the wind on strong legs and without ear or tummy aches! She may be playing with Barrie, Bruiser, Sam, Watson, Gemini, Buddy, Sandy, Cocoa, Whitney, BB, Taffy, Rusty, Dolly, Nicki, Rosie, and all of everyone's loved puppies who left us.

My (partial) Goldie Girl slideshow. More to be added. You may click on photos to get a larger view.
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GO GREEN! MSU beats UofM!!

YEAH! After 6 years, Michigan State finally beats the University of Michigan!!! Whoo Hoo!!! and at the Big House in Ann Arbor! THAT hasn't happened since 1990!

We had a good time with our neighbors Pat and Tom across the street -- they are from Farmington Hills, Michigan! and, 3 of their children went to UofM! So the 4 of us watched it together. It was strange cheering opposite each other!

I brought green jello with white whipped cream! and an appetizer of blanched broccoli and cauliflower (bright green and white!) Before we went over I stopped at Eric and Suzanne's (also across the street) and hung our green and white MSU blanket on their fence, which, gee, just happens to be up the hill and right behind the family room window of where we watched the game!

Pat and Tom greeted us with the Wolverine fight song blaring and Bob Ufer screaming on a cd, and of course they had all their UofM goodies out: including blue and yellow M&Ms!

Julian was down in Ann Arbor at the game in the UofM student section with his buddy Karpo and other friends. What fun! We are all so happy that the Spartans finally won one before he graduated!

Mitch Albom's Detroit Free Press article: SPARTANS WIN!
Here's part of it:

"Normal? Michigan State was sick of normal. Normal meant losing. Normal meant hearing U-M call them “little brother” and “second tier” and whatever other words exist for “also ran.” Normal meant 18 years without a win in Michigan Stadium. And even before this game began, you knew certain Spartans were done with that: several players did a silent trash talk to their Wolverine rivals, holding out two fingers and five fingers to rub in U-M’s 2-5 record. It was as subtle as a bottle rocket up your nose. This is your year to lose, Wolverines. We’re done with it."

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Miss Goldie

Its been a rough week for Miss Goldie. She's been pretty sick. Two days ago I was sure we were going to lose her. She hardly moves, won't eat or drink, and has been generally very lethargic. She won't even eat treats, or maybe takes one nibble and leaves the rest. I was shedding a few tears. Neighbors have been phoning and coming by to pet her and see how she's doing.

Finally yesterday she ate a peanut butter sandwich! Not all at once, she left one quarter, but it was a good sign! She won't lift her head -- she just sticks out her tongue on the floor and scoops it up from there. She ate another in the evening, and now one this morning. Her eyes are looking a little better too. Maybe she'll make it!

We did cancel our RV trip that was planned for the first week of November. If she can't hardly even get up from the ground, she'll never be able to get into the truck or RV. Rick made her a ramp and nailed some carpet to it a few months ago, but even that won't help right now.

We'll see. Maybe she'll totally bounce back, maybe not. She turned 13 in June.

Today is also my Dad's 84th birthday. He was able to go to dinner with his grandsons: Julian & Kevin! That was pretty cool! Maybe next year we can have a party out here for him!

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Good News!

While fires are still burning around Vista some, there IS good news around here too. In addition to the stock market jumping 900+ points today, Julian got a job offer from Intuit! He can start in January. Good Job Julian! He will graduate from Michigan State on December 6th.

His room will be FOR RENT in February. hahaha

Also: October 10th was our 3rd anniversary of arriving here in California!

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Fire #3 - Oceanside/Camp Pendleton

4pm: The 3rd local fire of the week is burning near-by. Closer than the Camp Pendleton fire last Wednesday, and this time some houses are threatened in Oceanside. Two giant "super-scooper"* planes just flew overhead (before I went and got my camera). They were flying so low I thought they were going to hit the rooftop of a house just up the hill (above the "Great Wall of Vista" lot some of you are familiar with).

It's a bit more risky this week than last, as "Santa Ana winds" are blowing in from the desert. The temp is only about 80 degrees but humidity is only 6 to 11%! The winds are nowhere near as strong as a year ago, so we should be OK.

We are watching this on the news... will update later.


*I "Googled" Super Scooper and here's what I found (besides kitty litter tools!):

Super Scooper

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

A Canadair CL-215.

Super Scooper is a nickname given to certain amphibious firefighting aircraft built by Canadair, now Bombardier. The family of three aircraft known as "Super Scoopers" are the Canadair CL-215, the CL-217 and the Bombardier 415 turboprop.

Image results for super scooper

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8pm: here is a slideshow of my photos of mostly smoke this evening. (You can spot a small flame in one.)

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Meanwhile, a much bigger fire is still burning near LA. Two deaths so far.
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Fire In Vista Today!!

Tuesday: For a moment Rick thought I was cooking: the smell of something burning was coming in.
It turned out to be a fire not far away - at the corner of Foothill and Vista Way, just a mile down the hill from us, next to our grocery store complex.

We watched from our front yards while calling several neighbors to alert them. There was smoke coming up and into our house, and we could even see some small flames. It was put out in about a half hour. The temperature was in the high 90's and it is, to say the least, VERY dry out here. October is when the worst fires usually happen.

The San Diego Union-Tribune online said 4 acres burned. No big deal...this time.

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Wednesday 6pm: On my way to Mac class tonight at Vista High School, I was surprised to see a large portion of the sky filled with black smoke. I called home for Rick to take a look from up on the hill where we live.

Apparently it is a good size fire in Camp Pendleton. More to follow............. (I'll search online while class is going on.)

11pm: The fire is raging out of control tonight. It's red and glowing and we can see it out our dining room window. Over 1,000 acres have already burned. Here's what's in the paper so far: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news It's a much bigger fire, but further away than last night. The wind is blowing north and east -- away from us. The article says it can be smelled all the way to Temecula!

I tried to take photos just now: you can see it through our dining room window! I couldn't get a good picture. It looks much like the photo in the article link. Kinda' scary. We'll sleep lightly tonight.

Pictures Rick took while I was in school; from our front yard:

From the San Diego Union-Tribune article:
That's pretty much how it looks from here this evening! We were away on vacation during last October's wild fires, so this is a first for us. (I must add: the fire was about 12 miles away, so our neighbors were not worried.)

Update: Now officials are saying 2,000 acres burned last night.

Our temperatures broke record highs today too: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news

Thursday morning update: The fire is mostly contained now. I didn't sleep too well! We do have a big plastic bin filled and ready to grab in an emergency departure. Overnight I thought of more things to get ready! Here's the morning news: http://www.10news.com/news/17666356

9am: Fire is completely out. Good thing we didn't have high winds.

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Lime, or No Lime?

This morning the Evolas flew back to Michigan.
Rick and I are draggin' butt. Too many calories and not enough sleep!

We are tired and sore from laughing so much too! We all figured out that except for where to eat dinner each night (no bad choices were made all week!) our biggest decision each day was "lime, or no lime" in our Coronas out by the pool!

Dawn did have just a "few" urgent phone calls to deal with due the the nation's financial crisis this week, but at least some of the calls could be handled this way:

Rick really enjoyed having Julian around eat, drink, and smoke cigars with! Even Goldie got into it:

Here's a slideshow of all of our photos from their visit. Remember, just like individual photos posted on my Blog, you may "click" on the slideshow to see larger copies of the pictures.

UPDATE Saturday October 11, 2008: Dawn seems to have "survived Temecula"! As of this writing, no signs of Temeculitias have shown up!

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Dawn & Julian stay at Villa di Simioni and Dawn hits the Big 5-Oh!

I think our week looked something like this:

Carolyn took them to Old Towne for Mexican food, then Chin's Chinese the next night.

We went to Curbside Cafe for lunch, Chicken Picatta dinner here.

Bacon & Eggs cooked outside on the grill; Paninni's in LaJolla for lunch;

Picked up the Black Forest cake at the European Bakery in Point Loma and got a carry-out of

Volare's speghetti & meatballs. We followed that with Gelato in Little Italy.

We had Cessy's famous tacos Wednesday for Carolyn's birthday, then a great steak & shrimp dinner at Ronee's.

Thursday we barely came out of the pool, enjoying Coronas & lime, and cigars all day, after Evolas stuffed us with potato & egg pie (15 eggs!!!) for breakfast.
We also enjoyed fresh-squeezed OJ, from oranges we picked ourselves at a neighbors!
Later Carolyn joined us and we all continued our "Poor Man's Trip To Italy" and had pizza at Ciao's just down the street in Vista. We split a cannoli 5 ways!

Friday all 5 of us spent the day touring wineries in Temecula!
We visited five but only drank at 2. The boys spent a couple of hours at a fancy cigar bar in Old Temecula while Dawn, Carolyn, and I ate sushi the walked the little town for about a half hour. But oh that half hour! This is how we greeted the guys when we went back to pick them up:










They almost wouldn't come out! (Can you blame them?)

Still exhausted, Saturday was Fillaberto's tacos for lunch, then one more Italian feast: this time at Marco's around the corner. Friends of the Evolas, Dave and Nancy, came down from Torrance, California (LA) and we stuffed ourselves again! Even though we got free spumoni for Dawn's birthday, we went back and had ANOTHER chocolate cake!

HAPPY 50th BIRTHDAY DAWN!
It may take until you are 100 to burn off all the calories!

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Carolyn Turns 60?!?!?!

HAPPY 60th BIRTHDAY CAROLYN!!!

It was SO VERY HOT! 101 degrees in our backyard when we left to go to Carolyn's! After lunch at Cessy's Taco Shop, we took a drive over to the Oceanside Harbor and strolled awhile. It was in the high 80's even there! We were hot and sticky and in "dressy" clothes (meaning nice shorts and tops that were not t-shirts!)



We headed back Carlsbad where Ronee threw a great dinner party for 8. Carolyn's work friend Merceda came too, and we all enjoyed the Margaritas, Coors, steak and shrimp... Followed by the tasty Black Forest Cake and lots of presents!

Dawn turns 50 in a few days......

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1/8/09 I just took a MAC class and am learning to make little movies. Here's my 2nd attempt.

Enjoy this video!

Note:  I had to remove the video as it is too large and slowed down the blog.  If you would like to see it, just ask me.

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Evolas, Torrey Pines, Point Loma, Little Italy & TARANTULAS!!!

Oh My! What a day we had!!!

It was so much fun......... One and a half hours of hiking at Torrey Pines State Reserve:
the adventure to Point Loma for a chocolate cake to die for; a carry-out of spaghetti and meatballs from a hole-in-the wall joint, oh and one cannoli; gelato* and biscotti in Little Italy:
Coors at Ronee's; only to come home and find a giant tarantula on our driveway!!!

then drinking and hot-tubbing into the wee hours! (Ok, so it was only 9:30pm, but it FELT like 2am!)

And that is just the first day of our "poor man's trip to Italy" spent at the Villa di Simioni with the Evolas!!!

* Pappalecco - A Gelato Lounge report with pictures We'll be back here again! The gelato was good, but the owner: beautiful! Julian E. and Rick both fell in love! Pappalecco's website

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Wednesday morning: 82 degrees at 8:30 am on the way to the gym!
95 coming back at 10 am
101 at 11 am!!! YIKES!

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