A New Week

Another weekend has gone by with not much getting done around here. We got a nastygram from the homeowner's association about cleaning up the fallen tree branches in our yard. We don't have any fallen tree branches in our yard but we do/did have a tiny little dead evergreen over by the driveway, so I assumed that is what they were talking about and just used the form letter for fallen branches. Last year we had planted five little walmart bargain evergreens along the driveway hoping they would grow and form a type of living fence/privacy screen. Well, the one smack in the middle died right away, so we dug that one up, and the one on the end started turning brown but Keith kept insisting that it would come back, there's still green on it, and wouldn't believe me that the poor thing was dead. So, there it sat for 6 months all brown and shriveled and finally Keith had to dig it up yesterday so we could send the letter back to the homeowner's association saying that we had taken care of the problem. At least I'm assuming the little 2 foot tall dead tree was the problem since the letter was talking about fallen tree branches and all.

Saturday morning we had gone to run a few errands and you could see all the snow on the mountains because the air here was actually clean enough to even see the mountains and it was very pretty. It's always odd to see something pretty in these parts here. Anyway, Keith said that he was thinking about driving up towards Tehachapi and doing a little train watching along the way, and I said, yeah, go take an afternoon off, it's been a long time since you've done anything fun for yourself. I thought about going with him to see the snow then thought better of it because I would just get bored with watching trains or have to go find a bathroom or something and he'd probably enjoy himself more if he went by himself. So he got all bundled up in his long underwear and went off in search of trains and snow.

As he was heading out of town he saw one of his company's coal trains heading out too, so he followed the coal train up the hill and got some really good pictures of it. No snow pictures, though, even though he went all the way up to Tehachapi where everything was covered in snow from last week's storms.

I really like this shot with the rolling hills in the background. This is out near Bealeville and Caliente, which used to be little train stop towns way back when. Bealeville is just a marker now and Caliente has a post office and a couple of houses. There are a lot of ranches out in these hills and valleys, it's really pretty to take the back roads through here, you feel like you are in a totally different world far away from the big city.


This is the only picture he got with any snow in it.

See, up there on the mountain on the left? Snow!


And this one is the train going around the Tehachapi loop. If the train is long enough it passes the back end of itself going around the famous loop.


He had a good day and I was glad that he was able to take some time for himself, he works so hard all week and then I nag him all weekend to get busy on the stuff that needs to be done around here, poor guy!

Oh, and I watched Julie and Julia this weekend (Red Box $1.00 rental!) and really liked it. I had read the book a few months ago and enjoyed that so was looking forward to seeing the movie. Meryl Streep is wonderful as Julia. I would never attempt to cook any of the recipes in that book, though, because I don't like aspic and calves feet and just plain old don't like to cook!