Our big night out

Thursday afternoon, Jason and I drove to Oakland to see AC/DC at the Oakland coliseum. It was so nice to get out of town for a night. Big D got to stay the night with grandma and grandpa Robertson, which my mom was just tickled about.

We roll into town and took the BART into the coliseum. I was really looking forward to doing some serious people watching and seeing some die hards. I was not let down. When I worked at the State Park one summer, I always knew who was playing at Konocti by the appearance of the campers rolling in during concert nights. I saw it all from the Willy Nelson fans to Salt N Peppa fans.

My personal favorite were the fans that showed up to see Rock Doesn't stop (Poison, warrant, etc.)

They checked into their campsites in the afternoon looking like the average person. When I saw them all leave around concert time, I see them looking all glammed up. It was great.



I was trying to be stealthy with my picture taking, so this is the best shot I could get of this one guy. He was dressed in a little school boy uniform and had the cap with devil horns coming out of it. I guess I could have been bold and just asked him if I could get his picture, but I didn't.

The fans that showed up Thursday night were pretty much what I expected. The majority of the folks were over 35, wearing their old vintage concert T shirts. There were a surprising number of families, and a few whipper snappers thrown in, but not many 18- 20 somethings. a few people dressed up as Angus, and lots of people were sporting devil horns. I was bummed that I had packed up my devil horns with all my halloween stuff.

We made our way to our seats and find Art Garfunkel sitting in front of us. Not really, but he looked just like him.

He is sitting there on the right with his two sons. He was having the time of his life, he had the biggest grin on his face and even though he seemed to be a pretty reserved little man, he did get up and dance and sing along with the best of them. His two boys were duds. At one point, one of his sons, who was probably 12 or so, sat down and looked very annoyed by the whole thing. Kids today apparently do not know how to party seriously.

Then there was this guy.

He showed up with his buddy and they looked like they had done some pre partying out in the parking lot. Anyway, he happened to walk in when the opening band was playing. Note: opening band was horrible. Anyway, this guy and his buddy came walking in, he was playing air guitar the whole entire time, even to this crappy opening band and looking like he was on top of the world. I am glad I captured this picture of him without being too obvious. I just wish I had captured him in an air guitar moment.

Finally, the opening band finishes and after a short wait, out they come. They opened with a song from their new album but played plenty of their oldies, which made me happy: Back in black, Dirty Deeds, the Jack, Thunderstruck, Whole lotta woman, TNT, Shook me all night long, etc. etc. I'll just let the pictures do the talking here.

**** Note the devil horns hands here*******


Angus did a strip tease and showed us his little bum

Their stage was awesome, there was this big train (With devil horns of course), when they played Hells Bells, a giant bell came down and Angus jumped up and hung from it. Those guys have not slowed down a bit and you could tell they were still so into putting on a great show for their fans.

After the show ended, we walked back to BART, stopping from time to time to watch some scuffles between some drunkards. We don't get out much so we were taking in all the excitement we could get. We bought a couple of discounted, unlicensed T shirts in the BART station, and headed to our hotel with some ringing of the ears but otherwise very pleased.

The next day, we headed to the Oakland Flea market and looked for some bargains.

I almost bought a stolen Nano Ipod for $80.00 but decided to pass and got a John Denver's greatest hits CD instead.

Wow, look how young and virile he looks here. This is not the John Denver I remember. John, why did you have to leave us so soon?! I still love you despite all of your faults. (And I know there were plenty)

Jason got some tools and fishing supplies and we headed on home.

Well, my ears are still ringing but the show was well worth our time. I am proud of those old guys and I hope they will be rockin for some years to some.

Thanksgiving

I am home sick today so decided to take advantage of some alone time to do some blogging. Jason and I are headed to the AC/DC concert Thursday night, so I will be sure to blog about that as soon as I can. Maybe I will have to take another sick day.... hmmm... I think I feel something coming on....

Ok, on to the purpose of the post: Thanksgiving!

This year, Thanksgiving was held at my parent's house. They had a full house: My parents, me, Danny, Jason, my two sisters and their husbands along with my neice and nephew, Sarah's mother in law, and Jason's grandmother, Betty. It was relatively stress free as we all pitched in with the cooking and clean up so it worked out pretty well. The biggest change has been the addition of grandchildren. The Robertson household had been absent of babies for the past 30 years until Danny came along almost 3 years ago. Cousin Joely and Andrew came along shortly after and now the house has become a lot louder and chaotic than years past. The addition of grandchildren has really shaken things up as it was getting a little dull......

Here, are all three cousins are captured in a picture together. We had all these grand plans of posing the grandkids together in their festive holiday outfits, but found out pretty early on that those Kodak moments are not all that realistic. It was hard enough getting a decent picture of all of them on the swings before one of them had a melt down.

Here, Danny and Joely watch a movie in Grammy and Grampy's bed while we get dinner ready.

Finally, we all sit down to eat. We had planned on eating at 3:00 but as you can see outside the windows there, it is dark outside.

After dinner, Jason looked over all the ads and plotted his Black Friday shopping strategy.

He did a really great job and scored a new laptop, so we are all very proud of him.

Friday morning, we headed back over to my parent's house to visit some more. The Borjons, long time family friends up the road, also had their children and grandchildren visiting so they said they would be coming over to join us. Check this out:

They rolled up with a tractor and wagon and took all the kids on an action packed Thanksgiving wagon ride. It was all very Norman Rockwell-esque. Throw in some bikes and a mini dirt bike, and you get a parade.

All in all, it was a very nice weekend. Stay tuned for my AC/DC blog!!!!

Agility weekend in S.R.

Last weekend, the other Heather and I made the journey down to Santa Rosa for our second agility trial since our debut up in Eureka. Heather and her dog, Tyson, picked us up at the house at 5:00 AM on Saturday and we high tailed it down to the Santa Rosa fairgrounds. There, we met up with all of the other enthusiasts from our area. We have been training and practicing with these great folks and they really are great, supportive people.

Here katie is in the crating area.

The trial was held in an indoor arena, which was great since it did rain a little on us. The downside of the covered arena is it was fairly dark and my pictures did not turn out so swell. I am hoping Santa will bring me a new camera so I can take better pictures, as well as a zoom lense so I can get some funny candids. I just took a few pictures of the actual runs, better luck next time!

Here is a picture of one of our cronies, Kathleen, as she runs her weim, Gus. Kathleen and her husband Bill both participate with their weims and have been trialing for at least a couple of years now. They are really great people.

Everyone did very well on both days of the trial and Katie and I had 6 qualifying runs, "Q's" , which means we are almost out of level 1.

This is where I will share a little secret of my success, and please don't judge me here. Last Christmas, my sister wanted to give me a gift having to do with dog agility. She went to cafe press and found a print she liked. Long story short, she changed her mind from ordering the print on a T-shirt to ordering me this:

Now, I can GUARANTEE you well, I should say that I am almost certain that I was the only competitor wearing these undies at this trial, but because I had given my sister my word that I would wear these good luck undies, I wore them....and guess what?.... we had a perfect day. Not wanting to jinx myself, I figured I had to wear these undies the next day too. I had to wash them in the sink back at the motel.

Speaking of the motel..... Now, we are traveling with dogs and that means we have to find dog friendly motels that are in our budget. Pretty much, we have been limitted to Motel 6. Now, I will say that the Motel 6 in Rhonert Park was not all that bad......but the one in Eureka was a whole different story. It was a little scary between the prostitutes' customer phone calls, the mystery stains, and the nasty carpet that Heather and I played "Hot Lava" with, making our way around the room without having to actually step on the carpet with bare feet. (I will never forget flip flops again)

Anyway, here are our finely tuned athletes in our room

Here is Tyson AKA "Sugarlips" chilling with his mom

Here, Katie checks out her breakfast of champions that Heather concoted to her, a mixture of her regual kibble with deer vensison thrown in for a little punch.

All in all, it was a successful weekend, everyone did awesome and we are quite proud of out crew, four legged and two legged

Halloween

Halloween, my favorite holiday, has come and gone. My love for this holiday grows more and more as each year passes. Growing up, we did not do much for the holiday other than dress up for the school parade and then somebody's parent would drive us to the densley populated neighborhoods in town where we would trick or treat until our bags runneth over with candy. I remember my sisters and I would spread out our candy on the bedroom floor, sorting, separating, and trading our goods.

I don't remember all of my costumes from when I was little but do know that we never once wore a cheesey store bought costume. We mostly scrounged up some kind of costume from things we found around the house or borrowed from other people. I realize that times have changed and the new store bought costumes are now so much more improved, but those horrible plastic excuses for costumes in the early to mid eighties were dreadful. Those costumes are like those nast boxed lunchables made by Oscar Mayer. To quote my brother in law, "Those must be for kids whose parents don't like them."

I did not dress up during my High School years because you know I was way too cool, but once college rolled around it was on again with a vengeance. We did not dress like strippers back then like they do now, but we had some pretty creative costumes. We would all parade around town and check everyone else out. There is something about alcohol and the annonymity of a costume that makes us all just a little bit more friendly and open to eachother. I was dressed as a nun one year and must have been groped and or hugged by at least a dozen priest and did not think a thing of it. These magical moments only happen on Halloween.

Ok, enough about the past. Here is the rundown from the past week.

Here is a picture of the house all spiffied up:

I try to buy a new decoration every year to add to my collection. I have more fun decorating for halloween than I do for Christmas.

Last Sunday, we went to the pumpkin patch in Scott's Valley. D's preschool had been there the previous week, but we have a new tradition of going together as a family and picking up a couple of pumpkins. The farm grows and improves every year. They have a corn maze and petting zoo and do a lot of other scary things at night.

Here, D and I strike a pose

Time for me to hold the camera as D takes a picture with Jason
D and his cheese ball grin

Me giving the bitchy mom look. "Just take a freakin' picture!"

When we got home, D freaked out when I started to carve the pumpkin so I decided to compromise and we painted it instead. Katie girl is in the back there, looking like a coyote.

Jason and I both took Halloween day off of work so we could go to D's preschool party and then the Elementary school parade down main street. This is our new family tradition and it really is fun to have this day off work. It is funny when you are driving down the highway and you see a witch and a clown in the car in front of you.

Here we are at D's school party. He was refusing to wear his lion mane. His costume was home made, a joint effort between me and his grandma Georgine.

This is the boy's table and man oh man are these guys a handful. They are really sweet and funny but when they all get together, you better watch out. The kid there with the batman costume is a real character. His costume had muscles buit in to it and he would flex his arms and yell, "Welcome to the gun show!"

Here Jason is sitting at the table looking right at home with a group of kids. He has their full attention sitting there in his inmate jumpsuit. Makes me wonder what he is saying to them.

After the party, we had a couple of hours to kill before the parade started. We had nothing else to do so we decided to wander around Kmart, our equivalent to the mall. Jason ended up in the sporting goods section and realized that he was low on .22 ammo. By this time, we had kinda forgotten that it was Halloween so when he asks the guy behind the counter to grab a box of .22 ammo, we got the funniest reaction. Kmart guy looked him up and down and said, "This is a costume, right?!" Did I mention Jason was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit with Lake County Jail stenciled on the back.?

So, after we left Kmart with our box of ammo, we go to the corner of 3rd and Main St. This is when I meet up with this cute little guy

This is my nephew, and quite possilby the cutest little monkey on earth.

We tried so hard to get the cousins to take a good picture together.

The parade started up with the High School band leading the way. D was absolutely enchanted with the music and judging by the look on his face, we may have a future band geek on our hands.

By the time we got back to the car, we had one tired puppy on our hands.

Ok, jumping forward to Saturday night. Jason and I were primed and ready for a night out. I wore a costume from some years back with a few modifications. We were supposed to be a couple - Jason as a race car driver and me as a dead trophy girl. I made a sash saying "Ms. Lakeport Speedway" and even made tire tracks across my beautiful red dress. Jason, however was a slacker and did not get his costume together so he just went as an inmate again.

Here we are posing with Sarah and Casey, the zombie bride and groom before we headed off for the costume party

Here we see Obama there on the left during a stop on his campaign trail. Mike, the guy wearing the costume does the best job every year. He is a tall slender white guy with light hair but you would never be able to guess that from this picture

Here is the hostess, Jen, as magic Johnson, and there in the back is the host, Scott, as Larry Bird.

Whew! That was a long post. So, farewell, Halloween, it was fun. Here's to the start of a great holiday season to come.

Random

OK, this post is going to be completely random, as the title implies. I just love taking random pictures with my digital camera. Since I have started this blog, I have taken to keeping my little camera in my purse at all times and bust it out quite frequently when I see something that I think it interesting or makes me laugh. I have collected quite the collection of random pictures so I decided to throw some of my recent favorites on here.

I feel I should give some background to introduce this first picture for anyone out there who may be unfamiliar with the area in which we live. See, in our neck of the woods, fall means harvest time. Yes, this area is known for grapes, walnuts, and other mainstream crops, but it is also widely known for the other cash crop: Mary Jane, Ganja , wacky weed, demon weed, the dank, whatever you want to call it. Whether you love it or hate it, marijuana harvest time is upon us and the growers are delighted.

We have been watching this garden grow and prosper over the past couple of years. This grow is in plain site in the back of a trailer park. We pass by it every day and have seen it grow taller than this 6 foot fence. I imagine the owners are quite pleased with themselves, telling themselves this year, maybe this year, they will make enough cash to move out of the trailer park and into the house of their dreams. I took this picture from inside the car, slowing down just enough to capture it without being obvious. I am glad I took the picture when I did; there was rain last week and the growers hacked down their crop before the storms came through and ruined all of their hopes and dreams. Like they say, "Farming is tough!" The upside to the popular hobby of growing is that Jason's job has become a little more secure as a result of it. He works in a home improvement store which caters to the grower's needs such as soil, fertilizers, and trimming shears. These days, with the economy the way it ism the growers are their best customers.

Ok, I can't complete a post without mentioning something wonderful that D has said or done.

D is really into the movie Finding Nemo and especially likes Dorie, the little forgetful but sweet blue fish. Anyway, the other night D was supposed to be brushing his teeth before bed. I could see he was preoccupied, playing with something in the bathroom and being awfully quiet. I walked in to see what he was up to and this is what I discovered

D had put his Dorie to bed in a soap dish and covered her with wet cotton balls and Q tips. He really is a sweet little boy and has a nurturing side to him it seems.

This is the other thing he did:

He really digs matchbox cars. He wants to play with them every night. Aside from stepping on them occasionally, I am really happy these are his favorite toys right now- no batteries to replace, no obnoxious noises, it really is pretty cool. The funny thing is, he does not spend much time actually driving them around, racing them. He mostly inspects them and likes to line them up. He will be very quiet, sizing each one up and carefully lines them up in rows or long lines. Other times, he will stage these magnificent crash scenes where he carefully piles up all the cars in a horrific pile of mangled metal and debris. He is especially proud of his crash scenes and will yell for everyone to come look every time he assembles one.

Fall also marks the end of yard sale season. Jason introduced me to this hobby and we go on yardsale hunts almost every available weekend in the summer. jason is ultra competitive and skilled in the craft. He seriously uses the GPS in the car and brings along his laptop or will call his mother on his cell to check a high ticket item on ebay or to gather further information before he makes some of his purchases. I really can not poke too much fun at him because in all actuality, he has literally made or saved us thousands of dollars in his efforts. He is truly a professional and master of the art. While Jason mainly scours for tools, electronics, and fishing stuff, I look for random items and those diamonds in the rough types of treasures. Here are some of my favorite finds from recent years:

I found this Airedale doorstop a couple summers ago at a tweeker house in Nice. It was on a table amongst a pile of rusty tools and crap. I think I bought it for $1 or less and I love it. It is stamped with "1929". Not sure if this is the date or not. Maybe I should look it up on ebay and find out. Anyway, it is sturdy, substantial, and I use it to prop my bedroom door open. Our house is not really level so this comes in really handy. When I find old treasures like this, I always wonder who originally owned it and how it came to be in the tweeker yard sale. Were they a dog lover like me? Did they get it as a gift or pick it out themselves? Was their house slanted too?This is another gem that I found. I just think this is beautiful and yes, I did hang it up in the house. Ok, we live in a Manufactured home, a mere cousin to a trailer but I just thought it was a classic. Maybe someday I will have a sweet retro travel trailer. If I do, I will absolutely hang it in there with pride.This was a find from earlier this summer. It was so funny to find this. When I was little, my mom was given this same exact print and it hung in our bathroom. I don't know what happened to it in later years. Anyways, it is funny because there is a story behind this, two stories actually. My mom went to an all girls Catholic school and was somewhat of a rebel. She and her little friends thought they were so clever - they would sneak smokes in the mens room at the school, thinking they would never be caught. The story goes they eventually got busted by a priest walking in on them on one of their little clandestine smoking breaks.

The other story involves my Grandma Moran. She had announced she had quit smoking to the whole family and we were all so happy for her. When she came to visit us, my parents found obvious clues that she had in fact been smoking in the bathroom at our house, thinking she was quite sly, like her good catholic school educated daughter!

This is the other prize from this summer- A light up frog.......for .25 cents! I just felt I needed it. Jason looked at me sideways, but I know I will find a purpose for it someday. Maybe D would want it in his room when he gets older, maybe I will just plug it in outside during our next BBQ, I don't know what I will do with it but I felt compelled to buy it. I would hate to see it ending up in a landfill.

Ok, on to my final random picture:

Yes indeed, folks Rip Van Winkle is alive and well in Ukiah! I spotted this character in the Carl's Jr. parking lot. He was just sitting there propped against a tree, reading his paper, and smoking a pipe. I just thought, "This is just classic" and reached for the camera in my purse.

Rollin' with my homies

Big D and his friend Aiden. Aiden is D's Homie, compadre, partner in crime, and cousin. No, he's not really his biological cousin but D refers to all of his friends as his cousins. You know someone is really accepted into D's fold when he says, "I like him, uh huh, he's my cousin" If he doesn't like you, he will call you a Jackass. Even the four month baby at daycare is a Jackass. D does not discriminate. Honestly, we did not teach him to say Jackass -he learned that in daycare. Speaking of daycare, he recently started a new preschool which we are much happier with. I will get to that later on in the post.
Here is a pic of D and Aiden cruising in Aiden's Cadillac Escalade on his (Aidens) third birthday.




The two of them were so funny cruising around in that thing. They took their driving privledge very serious and D was a great co pilot, working the CB radio and tuning in the FM radio. Their ride had to be taken from them after a while as they grew more confidant and started ramming into the house and running over the adults.

Later on in the day, a pinata was brought out. In my day, the kids busted the pinata with real baseball bats or sticks, all the while blindfolded so that when the candy fell out and all the kids dove in there was always the potential for injury as the holder of the destruction device sometimes continued to swing. That's the way it was and we liked it!
Now look at what the safety police have done to this beloved pasttime:


The bats have been replaced with safety strings! Now, instead of swinging sticks and bats, the kids line up and one at a time go up to the pinata and pull a string. One of the strings will be the key string that opens up the candy trap door. I really think the kids were deprived of the thrill and danger involved with heavy bats and blindfolds. Here is the mad scramble for the candy:

I suppose you could still use a bat to do the job, but it's the whole change thing that bugs me...
Moving on....
Here is D with some other good friends of his, T and L. These boy's grandparents live right accross the creek from us and his mom and dad grew up with Jason. We just happened to run into them at McDonalds one weekend and coiincidentally, D and T were sporting matching scabs on their foreheads.



T. got his roughhousing with his brother, seen there on the left, but D got his after being wrestled by an 8 year old at daycare. This was the second time D had been injured at daycare because the provider was not paying attention. (there are only 3 kids there) Long story short, D started a new daycare last week and we are so happy with the way things are going. We are looking forward to fewer trips to the ER and less TV time for him.
Anyways, see the lady in the lavender outfit in the background? Her name is Anne and she is T and L's great grandmother. Anne is a very interesting lady. She has lived in the area forever and used to own and operate a coffee shop in town. Anne is a new-age guru who does Tai chi and has been known to bury crystals in parts of the world that she senses are spiritual locations. I only know this because she approached the elementary school that my mom worked at and asked if she could bury one of her crystals there. Anne also is known to have the ability to determine the sex of unborn babies by using the pendant she wears around her neck. I think it may be in the picture there, but can not say for sure. Anne used this tecnnique on me when I was pregnant but she was not correct. I am not sure if she remembered this and I did not have the heart to tell her she was wrong.
Ok, signing off.