Settling in With a New Year

I still do not have a routine, which is bothering me! But I am sure I'll find one. Screwy weather, strange work hours, and everything's out of whack. I find myself only cooking dinner a couple of times a week, and that's not right. So this week I have a full dinner menu planned out. Tonight was steak with squash and grilled pasilla peppers. Tomorrow is pork ribs. The next night is salmon. Friday will be a roast. It certainly helps that I have no more night shifts this week, working at 6:30pm makes it really difficult to serve dinner.

However, I did manage to slip one good routine in; I went to KMart to see what Christmas stuff was on clearance. I buy up a whole set of whatever and use it for the next year's Christmas theme. That's why there's boxes and boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations in storage.
I didn't find a full set of tree decor, but I did find a very unique stocking, that I will be proudly displaying come December 2011:

Now I need to find some Elvis-type decorations for the tree!!

Happy New Year, everyone.

Hoover Dam Tour

I've always wondered what the inside of the Hoover Dam was like, because Shay and I have watched those documentaries on the construction and the complexities of the hydro-electric plant. So I had a day off and we drove up to check it out. We were too late to get in on the 2 hour tour, it was sold out by 10:30am, but we at least got to go on the power plant tour.
They took us 550 feet down in a huge elevator, and showed us how the water from Lake Mead was being used to generate enough power for 1 million people.

Before construction began on the Dam, they had to reroute the water of the Colorado River. So these huge tunnels were dug into the mountains on either side of the river and the water was directed thru them. After the Dam was completed, the tunnels were put into service with the hydro-electric plant. Here I am inside one of the tunnels:

The generators for the power plant. This is half of them. The other half are in another tunnel.

Looking down from the street on top of the Dam:

Shay with the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge in the background. It was completed recently and it is literally waaay up in the sky compared to where we were down at the street on the Dam.

If you have time, you can get to the upper parking area in the morning and walk across the Bypass on a walking path that's on the side of the bridge. But around 10am it gets so crowded you have to wait in a mile-long line just to get into the parking lot. I think we'll wait to do that when the attraction isn't so popular!
But we did drive across the bridge. It was uneventful, because the sides are built up so high you don't even know you're that high up. Couldn't see the Dam or the lake below.

Palm Trees and Snow

By the time I got out at 7:30 this morning it was 40 degrees, so it must've been a cold night!!!

Decisions

With all these questions, I've been kind of overwhelmed.  What am I going to focus on?  What am I giving up? What am I going to improve on?  Am I going back to school?  Don't know.  But I do know that I've absolutely decided that I am not going to give up.  I'm just not that kind of person.

My Year

I was just talking to someone about how we all like to end each year with a recap--whether it be with a lengthy letter in our Christmas cards or just looking over old photos with friends or family.  The news channels do their own version of this by showing all the major disasters, catastrophies, and tragedies.

I will do neither.  I will just keep hoping that next year is a little nicer.  Okay, a lot nicer.  Not just for me, but for many people.  I'm so sad to hear friends open up and admit that they're sad/anxious/stressed/angry/scared.
I want all these heavy hearts to be carefree and fun loving again.  I want the evil people responsible for this misery to die a terribly strange death.  Really.  Those bumper stickers from a while ago, "Mean People Suck," I agree with that completely. 

I'm ready for 2011.

Foggy Friday

We really don't get variances in our weather here too often, so the arrival of sprinkling rain yesterday and fog today was cause for celebration.

I got out of bed at 6am, and as I was looking out of the kitchen window waiting for my espresso machine to warm up, I saw the fog creeping up from the lake.

How exciting!!

As I was waiting for the car to get warmed up, I used my flash on the camera so you could see the fog swirling around me. It was like a ghost or something.

This is the view from the side of the house.  There's a wash there with trees but you can't see much with the fog.  FOG!!

This is looking down toward the lake on Daytona Avenue.

I made it down to the lake after I dropped Shay at school, (and by the way he was truly excited about the fog, which is phenomenal--you can't get a 13 year old boy excited about weather occurrences too easily)
normally there's mountains out there--they're all covered up.

This is the sun attempting to show itself, I'm standing near Body Beach.

Other People's Dogs

The next door neighbor has a very funny looking little dog, and she reminds me of an alien.

When she is outside, she comes marching over to me, as if I'm going to back away from the BEAST.

Then there's Heather and Kenny's dog. He's a chihuaha but he has the build and color of a big red pit bull:

I probably could've fixed his eyes in the picture but I think he's funnier looking that way.

Then there's JD, who belongs to one of my patients. He came from the pound, and is likely a miniature pincher. This isn't a very flattering photo of him, because he was a little excited at the moment:

He calmed down pretty quick when he realized there was photos...