Hey! I'm still here!

I was at the office late last night. Not really late, just later than usual; until about 6:pm. The custodian came in to empty the trash & vacuum the floors. He came into my office and vacuumed around me as I was getting ready to leave.

I was riding my motorcycle and was putting on my gear. I put my earplugs in and my helmet on in my office so I could just go out and jump on the bike. As I stepped out of my office into the hallway, under the motion detector for the burglar alarm, the alarm went off! The custodian locked me in AND set the alarm! After he saw me in my office!

Thankfully, I had my earplugs in and helmet on. The alarm isn't so loud that way.

Of course, if I had waited to put them on outside, rather than out them on at my desk, I would have heard the custodian setting the alarm in the first place.

- Kevin

A Day to Remember

After nearly 30 years of trying, Kevin skunked his Dad in Cribbage tonight.

Dad is appealing the results.

Elephants

Some of you may have seen our SmugMug photo site. (If not, check it out.) Lora takes pictures of just about everything the Girls do. Some of the pics are of various trips to the Fresno Chaffee Zoo.

Some of the pictures were seen by the webmaster of http://www.asianelephant.net/, a database of the Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) at the world's zoological gardens. They contacted us to see if they could use some of our pics of the elephants, we said sure, and now we're published. You can see them here: http://www.asianelephant.net/fresno/fresno.htm

The Girls want to visit all of the elephants in the world now.

New Apartments

We've been anxiously watching the apartments get built behind our house. When we bought our home a few years ago, there was an Almond orchard behinds us. We were told that apartments would most likely be built there, but it was to be "...in the future". Future is a relative term. We were hoping for five to ten years; we got less than three.

September 15, 2003 - Before the house was built. The trees were at our backyard fence.

October 13, 2005 - Amanda watches as they take out the trees.

At the planning meetings we were told that the units directly behind the wall were to be single story. Technically, they are. But, they've got ten-foot ceilings and snow-pitch roofs. Add that to the fact that the building pads are about 18" higher than our house and these single story multi-family units become much taller than our house. And since they're being built about 10 feet away from the wall, the windows face right down into our backyard, living room and dining room.

April 19, 2007 - This is the view out of our back door now. You can see the two-story units behind the singles.

It's called progress, but we miss the almonds.

Lift Off....

We have lift off.

KLARK World has cleared the tower. We're boldly going where we've never gone before.... blogging.

Our hopes are that we can share a bit of our world with you.

We're not sure where it will take us, but we're on our way.

Enjoy the ride!