Evening walk in Paradise...

Evening walk in Paradise...  Just Miki, Race, and I tonight.  I let Mo'i wander about in our back yard at his own pace, stopping when he needs to.  The three of us marched at a quick pace a little over a mile (with 300' elevation gain) to an abandoned quarry, and back.  Normally on these walks, paced by Mo'i, my muscles don't even notice it.  Tonight I can feel a little burn in my quads and calves.  It's a good thing!  Or at least that's what I'm told...

The photos below are from that walk.  The first one is looking to the southeast from right near that quarry.  In the foreground is the corner garden I took photos of earlier.  In the background is the home of the gardener, about 3/4 mile away.  That family owns a couple thousand acres of prime hay fields in this area, and they plunked their home right down in the middle of it.  I haven't met them yet, but I can tell they're probably my kind of people :)  The second photo is a panorama looking due west.  I was trying to capture the 22 visible strings of irrigation lines all running right now.  Most of the alfalfa fields have now had their first cutting, so sunshine and water are the farmer's primary objectives.  They want a nice growth burst for the second cutting – and this year, they're getting it in spades.  The last photo is take slightly north of west, showing part of what's in that panorama – but bigger.  You can't see all 22 strings in that photo, but you can pick out 17 if you try really hard.  There's a lot of water being squirted around right now!  Click to embiggen.

One of my readers had the gall to email, complaining that he couldn't understand the diagram I published earlier.  He wanted a photo.  Ok, here's your photo (at right).  I took this photo before I had the brilliant idea of taping the wires together in the correct orientation; at this point I was orienting them by hand, very tediously.

I finished wiring up the air compressor today, both the 240 volt circuit and the 120 volt circuit.  I also capped off the output so we can test the pressure tank when the technicians go through the startup testing (hopefully later this week).

I have an appointment for this Thursday to have my tooth root-rootered, or possibly yanked if it's damaged beyond repair.  If they do yank it, it will be the first tooth (not counting my deliberately removed wisdom teeth) that I've ever actually lost.  I'm hoping that's not required...

Another set of neighbors (Gary and Elaine S.) came by today to see Debbie.  This community is kind of amazing this way.  We just barely know Gary and Elaine.  They live on the other side of the highway from us and probably because of that we don't have much contact with them.  Our previous contacts with them have mostly been waving and saying “hi”.  Today they came over and stayed with Debbie for an hour, and Elaine promised to come by a few times a week – and to bring us a dinner tomorrow night.  They came by because they'd heard from another neighbor (Tim D.) that Debbie was ailing, and that was all the nudging it took for them to take the initiative to see if we needed any help.  They behaved exactly the way you'd expect a good friend to behave.  What a place we landed it!