Hello!

I know it's been forever since I have updated. I have now moved to Chico, CA. I live out in the boondocks now. I really mean it, the GPS unit can't even help me get home. There are three ways to get home and all of them involve at least 2 miles of gravel road if not more. I am about a 1/2 mile from the Sacramento River. I have a neighbor across the drive, but other than that, the nearest neighbor is about 1 1/2 miles down a gravel road. I live in the prestigious "gated" community on the Deseret Farms of Chico. I say "gated" because if you leave too early or come home to late the gates aren't open. I have now had to open the gates twice.

I moved out of my house on September 29 and arrived at my new place that night around 11. There are deer where I live and so I kept my eyes out for them and spotted two as I was coming in that night. Luckily since it was a gravel road I couldn't be going fast enough to worry about them. The only way I would hit them is if they decided to commit suicide and run into my car.

The next night I needed to go to town to pick up some groceries. The missionary couple that lives next door made me a map on how to get to town. However, they forgot to write down the names of the streets I need to turn on. So on the way back home, I had my GPS unit on to see if I could at least get close to home and then try to nose my way around. All of a sudden I saw a sign for a street I thought I needed, so I slammed on my brakes and turned quickly....so sorry to the car tailgating me. My GPS unit freaked out and wanted me to make a u-turn. Then Mom called and I was talking to her and it was pitch black and I missed the road I was to turn on. Luckily I made it to work and then could make it home. So in the two miles of gravel road, I saw about 10 deer that night. I spotted three, then about another 1/2 mile, I saw another two, and so on. By my house there were another three.

Apparently we have wild turkeys and boar as well. Allegedly there are also coyotes, but no one has seen them. They only know little pets disappear. Sam and Phil will not be venturing out of the house.

As for Sam and Phil, they made the trip okay. They are a bit traumatized, but that is to be expected. I thought the road trip was going to be torturous with 6 hours of two meowing cats. But as soon as I got up to speed, they settled in and only meowed when I yelled at the stupid drivers around me. Finally when we got in that night I put them in the bathroom and left them there since the movers were coming in the next day. I didn't want to have to try to hunt them down. So when the movers left I opened the bathroom to let them out. However, they wouldn't come out. They stayed in their crate all day Wednesday and when I came home from work on Thursday they were still there. They are still mad at me and Phil wouldn't come out from under the bed until about 8 tonight.

On a sad and disturbing note, I have a rodent in the house. I am a bit scared it may be a rat. I am not sure if it is a mouse or a rat. I found fresh droppings on the carpet in the living room. Yuck. I guess I will just have to get some Decon and put it in places Sam and Phil can't get to it.

I am halfway unpacked and just found out I might be able to move to another (smaller) house in December. Yeah!!! One of the other workers has bought a house and will be able to move in December so I will be able to get that house. It is significantly smaller. I am in the 4000 sq ft home, and it is only 1200 + it has a garage. Boo Hoo. But I think I can handle that. I don't need 4000, and I had been in 1600 so going to 1200 wouldn't be bad. It is right across the street from work and the company pool is only a couple hundred feet away. That will be good in the summer.

As for the weather here, it has been great. It is chilly for me. I know all you northerners will make fun of me, but is only getting up into the 70's and the lows are in the 40's. I can't find my sweaters and I don't even have a jacket. I have had to dig trough my boxes until I found a blanket since I have been cold. However, the people are scaring me a bit with the El Nino stuff. I have heard several times that the floods are coming. Floods are coming??? They also state that I need to be ready to be without power for several days. What? No power!!! No power means the well pump will not work, which means no water for the toilets, showers, or cooking. That would be why my walk in freezer is currently full of bottles of water. That makes sense now.

Oh the joys of living in the middle of nowhere. I am having my moments of thinking "WHAT THE HECK DID YOU JUST DO???"

:-( Air Conditioner

So my air conditioner decided to die today. I guess today is a better day than a week ago. Last week the temps were 108. Today the high was only 97. So now it is 93 outside and inside it is 87. Since there is a breeze, I have opened all the windows and it feels cooler outside than it is inside. I will have to get an appointment with my home warranty company to come out. It will probably be a couple of days. :-( Thankfully we are going into a cooling trend over the next couple of days. Tomorrow and Tuesday it is only supposed to be in the low 90's and on Wednesday it is is to be in the high 80's. I don't think I would really call this a cooling trend, but since it is much better than over 100, I guess I will take it. I will count my blessings that the air conditioner didn't break last Sunday. It was really, really hot.

Even then the air conditioner was put in in 1978, so I am not sure if it is fixable. :-( I will see what they have to say when the come out. I was planning on having a BBQ at my house on Saturday. I guess I will have to see if I have air conditioning or not. I wouldn't want to have 30 people over if my house is going to be 90.

July 3rd

So yesterday I decided I wanted to make cookies. I wanted chocolate chip cookies. However, I didn't want to turn on our oven. It was going to be 104 and a hot oven??? I don't think so. So I went and got my propane tank refilled. However, when I went and plugged it back it and turned on the grill it made a strange high pitched humming noise. I looked up online what that might mean and the tank was probably over filled. So then I decided if I was to turn on all the burners on high, and then let it run for 10 mins then the tank might be okay. So I did that. However the humming didn't stop so I let it go another 10 mins. When I went back to look at it, there were flames shooting up out of it, out from the bottom and the sides.

I kind of looked at it not really sure what I wanted to do. I turned off all the burners, but the stuff in the drip pan was still on fire. I knew I could bring over the hose and douse it all, but since I had cooked a bunch of hamburgers in it the last time, I figured it was more of a grease fire then anything else. Water on this wouldn't be smart. I knew I have about three fire extinguishers in the house (yes, I have three...I accidentally start fires occasionally). I didn't want to use a fire extinguisher because I knew the mess that would be involved and I wanted to use my grill again.

As I was watching it, pondering what to do, my roommate comes out and mentions I probably should do something since the fire was near the propane tank. That prompted some action. I hadn't wanted to open the lid because I didn't want to feed the fire, but decided it was easier to blow the fire out from above. I opened the top and started huffing and puffing and blowing out the fire. Eventually it was all gone.

Later that night I had a friend come over and decided to put my BBQ pizza stone on the grill and cook some chocolate chip cookies. Boy, were they good. Yum!!! The best part was the house didn't get hot.

Thursday Night

So on Thursday, we went down to the Temple for the Singles night. Yes, they have Singles night at the temple. It is mainly for the baptisms. So when we got there, I realized there were a lot of people and not a lot of people helping out. So I was able to help out and direct people. That was cool and a little funny. Since I was wearing a dress people thought I knew what I was doing and so would ask me questions. Most of the time I had no idea what they were asking for. Since there is currently a big push for the singles to do temple work, there were a lot there. There were 42 people that came from our branch. This was a big turnout. In total there were 146 people that showed up that night to do baptisms. We didn't get out of the temple until after 10 pm.

On the way home we witnessed an accident. It was right behind us and we were stopped, and the stupid big truck decided to muscle itself out of where it was and ended up getting hit...Should have been more patient. On the way back into Bakersfield it was about 12:30 am and we saw a car in front of us that was weaving a bit. We all decided it was probably a drunk driver. So I decided to call it in. I couldn't make out much of the license plate or the make or model, so I am not really sure why I bothered to call it in. However, I reported a small silver colored 4-door car with a license plate starting with a 5. After I got dropped off at my car, I got back on the same highway and started down the road. This was about 10 mins after I called in the drunk driver. Then it dawned on me.....I am driving a silver 4-door car that the license plate starts with a 5. Great. I decided I better drive the speed limit and make sure not to weave any even though I was really tired. :-)

Sequoia National Park

So yesterday Paulette, Janelle and I went up to see the sequoias. Those trees are huge. We also went to see the Crystal Caves in the national park.



This weekend was fee-free weekend. The national parks are going to have two more weekends this summer. For more info go to to http://www.nps.gov/ . So the trail to the Crystal Cave was about a 1/2 mile long. We were warned that the trail went down about 30 stories. So we knew what we were getting into...or so I thought. :-) It was actually fun.



This was the first time that I was able to go hiking and be the leader of the pack. I had been exercising...kind of getting ready for this weekend, and well kind of just trying to get back into shape. It felt good to be the leader of the pack and still ready to go on the next trail. That morning I had, had my run on my ellipitical so I had already gone about 2 1/2 miles before we headed to the park. At the park I went another 2 miles and was ready for more. However time was limited. We were able to see waterfalls, really tall trees, deer, a tunnel log (you can drive through it), wildflowers, and pretty mountainsides. I will have to post pictures when I get them downloaded onto something. My USB ports still aren't working.

Zebra Butts!

I don't know why, but I think Zebra Butts are funny to look at. Apparently zebras can be a bit mean, so you don't want to try to feed them cookies. They think that fingers are cookies too.

Giraffe Tongue!!! Yuck!!

So on Memorial Day Weekend, I went over to Phoenix to see my friends, Lynn and Jason and their two kids. It was a blast. I thought the drive over would be crazy since it was a holiday weekend. The LA traffic in and out on a holiday traffic is horrible. I have sworn off traveling by car on the holiday weekends because a normal 2 hour drive can turn into a five hour drive. However, this time it wasn't too bad. On the way back I hit traffic. It was stop and go for about 30 miles. I thought I would never make it home, but finally traffic lightened up when we got to the five lane freeway. It was funny, I drove from Phoenix to Indio, CA on a two lane and traffic was fine. In Indio, we picked up a third lane, traffic slowed slightly. Then in Palm Springs we picked up a fourth lane and traffic ground to a halt. It was stop and go for the next 30 miles until we picked up a fifth lane. I guess people just don't know how to drive on 4 lanes.

Anyway, when I was in Phoenix I went to an Out of Africa park. It was fun. There was a tiger splash (more pictures later), and we saw lions, tigers, and bears...oh my. Plus we saw zebra's, giraffes, one hippo, emu, ostrich, camel, and I am sure there were other things. One of the things we did was take a "safari." This was a school bus where the windows had been taken out and we were driven around in and enclosed area that had a giraffe, ostrich, zebras, and antelope. We were each given a giraffe cookie so we could feed the giraffe. The guide told us that if we wanted a giraffe kiss, we should hold the cookie in our mouth. If we wanted a picture, we would need to hold it between our teeth so the giraffe would have to work for it. Giraffe do not have top teeth, so they are not able to bite.

I thought about getting a giraffe kiss, but I wasn't sitting next to the window. Lynn told me that giraffes have really long tongues. I don't know if I believed her until I saw, and took pictures, for myself. Below are some of the giraffe pictures.


This is me trying to feed the giraffe my cookie. He had to come back a second time because I dropped it. I didn't want to get slimed by the giraffe tongue and so I accidentally dropped it the first time.

I don't know this kid. However, he was sitting in front of me. I could tell he was getting ready for a giraffe kiss, and so I thought it would be a funny picture. Hope his girlfriend doesn't see this.