Phutu...or is it?

6/3/2003 I spent the actual weekend this week going to our friends' wedding in Ventura. Dory and I had gone down there a few months ago so the drive was familiar to me. However, there really was a huge difference in the way that things look in February compared to now. In February the hills were all lush and green and many of the oak trees were just coming out with new leaves...this time the grass was all dead and brown, and the trees have set all of their leaves for the summer. My whole life I have lived in this climate and I never noticed the contrast that exists between winter and summer in the hills.

Since the rehearsal dinner was Friday night and the wedding was Saturday night we had a whole day to bum around so. cal. I called my brother and asked him to meet Dory and I at a park south of Ventura but north of Pomona...actually it's more of an east-west thing I guess. After a little confusion because of bad road signage we managed to meet at the the Cheeseboro Canyon park. I find these places in a really cool book that Dory gave me a while ago that's all about Oak trees. Despite the fact that she gave me the book she seems to groan every time that I peek into it to find another park to visit. Unfortunately, this wasn't nearly as cool as the Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens; the park was dominated by horses and mountain bikes and it was too hot to go for a hike. I walked around a bit under some very nice-looking Valley Oaks, noting that there were actually pole-sized saplings and numerous seedlings around the large trees...both of which are often absent because these trees are often in pasture land where livestock eat the seedlings before they have a chance to grow into toddlers or teenagers. Neither Brian nor Dory were nearly as interested as I was in the trees, and I was annoyed by the numerous stickers in my socks, so we went to a deli in nearby Thousand Oaks for lunch to chat and catch up. Brian is in that post-college, pre-real-job limbo when you have no idea what you want to do with your life...I understand his circumstances, but instead of letting him just sit around and drink beer on the couch I conscripted him to assist in the ongoing construction of the house. I'll be kicking it into high gear on the 16th of June; which is the first day of my summer vacation. I hope to finish things up to the point where I can actually call this a complete house by getting all the new plumbing hooked up, tearing off the old bathroom and utility area and constructing the new deck.

You know, I'm not sure that "signage" is a real word now that I think about it. I'm going to look it up in the dictionary but before I do let me just say that even if it is a word, it ought not be in my opinion. Ok, it isn't...and now I remember where my mind was polluted with this particular abortion of the English language...but I'll spare you. So let's see, "sign" seems to be a form of the word "signal" so I could say that we were misled by a bad freeway signal but I think I would best rephrase it as "...confusion because of a few poorly placed road signs,..."

Anyway I could probably ramble on for a lot longer about this and that. I had five days off this week as a result of the wedding and my normal days off so I got some rest and then killed myself putting the tile on the kitchen floor. Tuesday I rented a tile saw and cut all the pieces to size for the floor but I wasn't able to get them all set with mortar because I ran out of time and mortar.

5/29/2003
4/22/2003
3/18/2003
2/27/2003
2/18/2003
2/15/2003
1/31/2003
1/21/2003
12/18/2002

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