The end of 2011, beginning of 2012

So it seems as though I'm starting to come down with some kind of ...gunk.  Went through a few of the rest of the folks here yesterday, and I woke up with the ...gunk in my nose.  Coffee felt good going down, that always helps, right?  Hoping I'll feel better as the day progresses, got lots to do today with picking up a grandson from school and going to class in the afternoon.  

The snow here as all but gone away, although Katie and I were surprised when we took our morning walk yesterday, there was a couple of piles of snow in the park like everyone had come together to put most of the snow in big piles there.  And that was all that was left.  Maybe we'll have to walk down there next time there's a large snow to see if the kids in the area roll all the snow together for massive snow ball fights.  That'd be a reason why there would be snow left in the way it was, right?  Earlier in the week, the weather report was for fair weather in the middle of the week, but something has changed so that it's got rain in the forecast, along with cooler temps.  Not what we'd had planned for!  

Katie and Amanda have gone back into the planning stage, this time for Avery's birthday party, which will happen sometime in December.  For the time being, all the decorations from Riley's party are still up, kinda like leaving up the Christmas decorations for awhile after Christmas is over with.  The decorations for Avery's party won't be up until after Thanksgiving, and will probably come down shortly afterwards so the Christmas decorations will be there.  

The Travelogue  4/13/2012

Ok, so thinking back to 2011, the year ended with a large bang in that we went to our storage place by Katie's Dad's place to find that we'd been burglarized again.  Another blow to what we'd wanted to not abandon.  Among the things the burglars took were all of my hand tools, Katie's nice sewing machine, several items from Amanda and James' stuff, and our peace of mind.  A decision was made to take everything we had left out of there, but we weren't sure where we'd put it.  As most of the stuff there was Amanda and James', we called them and asked them if we could put it in their house since they had the room for it now.  They said yes, and we rented a truck for the December 30 (the next day) - January 3.  The next two days were spent packing at a feverish pace to get everything out of the garage and into the truck as we had reservations at the Las Vegas 1000 Trails for December 31.  At about 6 PM, we left Phelan and headed for LV with Katie driving the moving truck and me driving the moho pulling the car.  Got to LV about 11 PM, and did the best we could to not make noise as we pulled into the temporary spots in the preserve, knowing that we'd get a permanent spot the next day, January 1, 2012.  

After getting our spot as early as we could the next day, we set up, had breakfast, and were on our way up to Amanda's house to drop off all the stuff.  Got there about 10 at night, and waited until the next day, January 2, to unload the truck, which was done much faster than what it took to fill it up. In talking things over between Amanda & James, and Katie and myself,  it was decided that I'd take the truck back as we had to have it back on January 3 and I was to start work with a former associate from CLV in the next couple of days, and Katie would stay there to help make things a little more livable with all the stuff that we'd crammed into their house.  So on the morning of January 3, I loaded up myself and the doggies (remember the doggies that we don't go anywhere without?), and headed back to LV where another former associate from CLV was kind enough to pick me up where I dropped off the truck at.  This began our time in LV for a few months.  Kinda of a hectic way to start it, huh?

My work was to assist in making traffic signals in the LV area work with the flashing yellow left turn arrows, which were being installed by a lot of municipalities.  This was to last till June, when we had to be in Bear Lake, Ut., for a camp hosting gig.  We didn't do a lot of sightseeing stuff while we were there, but one of the things we did do was to go to the St. Patrick's Day parade in March in Henderson, Nv,. of which there are pictures of the parade in the above link.  Here are the pictures I took:

One of the groups that took part in the parade was Post 777 of the Scottish-American Military Society, (SAMS) of which there are a few members in the above picture wearing their kilts and regalia.  About a month later, Las Vegas hosted a bag pipe parade down the Fremont Street Experience with SAMS doing the color guard,

marching ahead of the USMC 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing Band

with the most important part of the band here.  Hint: look at the Sousaphone, not the bass drums, ok?

The LA Scots Bagpipe Band was also there, but I didn't get a good picture of them while they were marching.  But I got a few pictures of them playing on stage.

Here is a picture of the combined bands, I think they were playing "Amazing Grace" with the piper on the stage starting the beat by stamping with his left foot. 

For those of you that've heard a pipe band previously, you probably know more about them than I do.  I was amazed at how disciplined and exact they were in their showmanship and their music.  I was especially impressed with the drummers and their movements, case in point these next photos.  They looked like this when they weren't beating:

But looked like this when they were beating:

Or this:

Yes, the picture wasn't taken by a really expensive camera, but it wasn't time lapse photography either.  Very showy, and good!  I wonder how many mid-air collisions they have...

Somewhere along the lines, the Guiness World Record Caber Toss was done. on the .  In looking for videos of the caber toss, I was amazed how many there were of the same night on YouTube.  I guess I should feel honored that I was there at the time, standing mere feet away from the movie takers.  Maybe I'm in one of the many videos there.  Then again...

Ok, gotta go.  Hope you have a blessed day.