The Wandering Minstrel

After a short, but eventful, trip to the Kalifornistan house, we’re back home. The drive back took about 5 and a half hours and was uneventful, which is a good thing - and was a good transit time, as well - it can take up to six hours or more, weather and traffic dependent.

Clickable image - Welcome sign courtesy The Better Half

After crossing the bridge spanning the Colorado River from Blythe, CA to Ehrenberg, AZ, we are always greeted by this welcome sign. When we see this, we know that it’s only 115 miles and another two hours before we get home. It puts us in a really good mood.

When we returned to our California house yesterday, I was greeted with several drooping fronds on the two queen palm trees out front. I never know what to expect when we get here, but there’s always several things to do.

So, after The Better Half’s annual eye exam today, I got the eighteen foot tree tool out of the garage and commenced sawing off the drooping fronds. I think there were about six fronds between the two trees that needed removal. The job took me over two hours including clean up.

The second chore I did was to go through all the junk mail our neighbor collected and shred anything with personally identifiable information and recycle the rest. We always request the USPS to hold all mail for this address, but given they are a government entity, you probably know how well that worked out. ?@&*%$! USPS.

The Better Half caught this (clickable) image of the state line between Ehrenberg, AZ and Blythe, CA, directly over the Colorado River. I’m not saying that there is NO graffiti in rural Arizona, but once you cross the border into Kalifornistan, there are orders of magnitude more instances.

Football tonight and a road trip in the morning. Hope you enjoyed your weekend.

The Better Half and I had to go out among ‘em this afternoon. Every couple of weeks or so, we venture away from the security of our little desert enclave to head to the greater Phoenix metro area in order to do some shopping for provisions not available in our small town. We brace ourselves for the inevitable traffic and congestion and head southeast.

Another phenomenon, which seldom fails, is the presence of idiots on the road. This guy (whose face I fuzzed up in the photo) was texting or using some sort of handheld device while driving - in motion no less.

Now, I’m libertarian enough to deem laws against this sort of activity unnecessary in the hope that sanity and common sense will prevail. In California, this moron would be committing an illegal act. Also in California, there still are just as many dudes like this guy talking on cellphones or texting. As we involved in Second Amendment Rights know, laws don’t stop idiocy.

I just hope that this guy made it home today instead of texting his way directly to the scene of the accident where an innocent person(s) could be involved at best or injured at worst.

The Better Half took this (clickable) image of a Smith & Wesson M&P 360 .357 magnum snubby revolver at the S&W booth when we attended the 2009 NRA Convention in Phoenix, AZ. At the time, we were visiting from California and we camped in a rented RV a few miles north of the convention center. We did not know that less than two years later, we would have moved to Arizona as full-time residents. We even camped overnight in one of Wickenburg’s RV parks after departing Phoenix on our way back to California.

We had to head down US 60 today to the Valley Metro Area. Every once in a while, we have to leave our little enclave here in the country to go and get some provisions from the big city.

We had a list of things that we needed to get plus we scored a few other things to re-stock the freezer in the garage. I bought a pork loin and some pork baby back ribs. I divided the ribs into two slabs and packed them into vacuum freezer packs for later consumption. I carved the loin into several chops, a couple of thicker chops for stuffed pork loin and another couple of petite roast chunks for making pulled pork sandwiches or carnitas burritos at a later time. As it is, we don’t need to go there again for a while, although next week we may go and look at some furniture for the office.

We pity the folks that abstain from pork. And, we pity even more those that abstain from meat.

. . . and there’s nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound?

This is the spectacle that greeted us as we pulled into our driveway after our trip out to California. Clickable image courtesy TBH.