Category: Carol

Wendell and Carol and Eric visit Carol and Marcus and Brian June 2015

They drove from Las Vegas to Reno after their “Germany Reunion” in Las Vegas. That occurs every three years with more than 200 folks attending. Who knew? I thought it was like 20 or so of the people they worked with at their school in Wurzburg. No. It’s everybody ever at that school, students and faculty alike.

Never mind, it gets them on their way here. Driving on Sunday they arrived a bit after 4:30 — good time and set about chatting us up as we waited for Eric to pick up Brian from the airport, returning from Kyiv. Brian’s plane due to leave Seattle (from Kyiv via Amsterdam) but delayed. So we had a chance to sit on the back terrace and catch up on the past many years… EZ… who changes.

So… B and E arrived, I threw lamb chops on the Big Green Egg, we opened a few bottles of wine and commenced the evening. Rosemary potatoes accompanied the chops, along with two versions of Eric’s Gazpacho. YUM.

Monday, after breakfasting and chilling, we set off on a tour over Somersett Parkway to McCarran Boulevard and down past and to the University of Nevada campus. We parked and walked around the Green, noted the Excellent mining engineering buildings forming  the green; eased down through town to point out how UNR will ultimately connect with the downtown and arrived early for our reservation at Campo for lunch. Eric joined us.

After, Eric returned to Sparks and we continued touring with Reno Provisions and RENO ENVY where we treated W&C with happy anniversary tee shirts. We drove through Midtown and down South Virginia pointing out the worthy sites.The Peppermill is undergoing extensive remodeling and thrusting forth a new face. Wonder what it will be?

We joined West McCarran and drove around its hilly grandeur to reach I-80 and our way home. It seems like a very short encounter, but we experienced a lot of Reno and unless we ventured to Lake Tahoe or Pyramid Lake or all those other places outside Reno, we’ve had a good visit and it’s nearly time to go to the Aces game.

It was a cloudy, balmy evening at the Ballpark, and not only that, but Dollar Hot Dog Night and Dollar Ribs Night. Who could ask for more. Eric and Brian got seats in our section — and eventually in our row — and we settled back to enjoy the game. It was a pretty good game and ended up 7-2, aces winning before 4,080 lucky fans.

After the ardous effort of posing with us, Archie and the girls chilled out between innings.

the two old guys kept score…
and it was — all in all — a fine evening at the ballpark.
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Bussie and Lizzie go BOOM

photo by Jon Hale

Sent to Carol by Jon:

Ok everyone – the details are:

The cremains will be going up in the very first two shells starting the fireworks show at this week’s Festival finale (usually somewhere in the 10 to 10:30 p.m. window).  Those first two shells will be what are called Gold Glitter Crossettes (plenty of YouTube video available upon Googling that phrase to review exactly what that variety looks like).  Attached is a photo of the actual shells I received today, nicely labeled In Memory Of.

I don’t know who all will actually be attending the concert, but Michelle and I will be at a table, should be fairly easily found as we’re in the very last row of tables (row K), on the side nearest the main entrance, table number 21.  If anyone else knows exactly – or has at least some sense of – where they’ll be onsite, let us all know so we can greet each other as best we can at some point during the evening, in what I hope will be a good sized crowd.

I hope we can all get some good photos of the Hale fireworks to share.

Continue reading “Bussie and Lizzie go BOOM” →

somethin’ for sittin’

…(and nappin’) in the fine mountain air.

Kind of a funny place to plant roses, under the only covered part of our front courtyard.
So Brian and Natasza volunteer to take the roses home…
And we have that rose bed paved over.

A month or so later, Craig’s List Reno NV sez:

Futons are on sale at K-Mart, — $89 without mattress. But they’re kinda cheesy, so I thought I’d give Craig’s List a shot. Jason’s apartment was so full of furniture — from a friend who moved — he could hardly walk around and decided he had to get rid of the futon.

So his fortune became my fortune. Later that day, after a shout-out to Brian to help me with his truck…

The futon found a home on our front courtyard.

The preparation and thinking about our front courtyard took weeks and months, but actual getting the futon happened very quickly. Monday after dinner, we were able to sit and relax and watch the sunset. We were treated to these amazing clouds, something we would have surely missed had we not a comfy place to sit.

It’s 7:30pm. The sun — as usual — sets in the west. Our courtyard is on the east side of the house, so we don’t see the actual sunset; we see the effects of the sunset.

A Good Front

After a year in Reno, we felt it was about time we made our house our own.

The day we were moving in — moving truck in the driveway, boxes strewn everywhere — our new neighbor came over insisting that he show me how to turn on our lawn sprinkler. He screwed it up royally and we experienced a river running down the east side of our property. My turn to insist: TURN EVERYTHING OFF.

About a week later, our mailbox key was ready and the first letter we received at our new address was a letter from Sierra Canyon Association saying that our lawn was all brown and we have 30 days to tell them what we’re going to do about it. The letter was about six weeks old.

The next week, I paid a guy from the next village $25 bucks to properly turn on our sprinkler system. Hey, we lived in a San Francisco flat with no grass the previous 20 years, do we really need grass in the desert? But we vowed to live here a year and experience our new house before ripping anything out.

Our sprinklers at work on Sunday morning.

About 10 months later, a LivingSocial Deal offered $1000 worth of landscape work for $250. Carol was on that like white on rice. We really didn’t renege on our vow, because the work didn’t get started until late June.

This is what we did…

The front yard landscape plan.

Out with the grass. On my morning walks, I have admired and photographed many xeriscaped front yards. As it turns out, the yard directly across the street from us is one we like a lot. When we talked to Frank, our landscape guy, we went and looked at that.

our front lawn
Our front xeriscape. The plants will grow and cover that area.

Continue reading “A Good Front” →

First Aces Game

As partial season ticket holder — Thanks Eric and Alison.

Here we are waiting to park while a tow truck does his business.

We’ll go to the end of this building then ramp up to the third — of six — floors to park. Five bucks, and you can use your ticket stub for a free slice at the pizza place (right beside that Ford). Hey, this is Reno. In SF they charge $20 to $40 within 5 blocks of the ballpark. This is just across the street.

Opening Day — with all new staff — is not a good time to get quick service before the game.

We’re in one of the *Freight House District* restaurants that border the ballpark. Carol is looking out the window to the field as they bring the National Anthem singer in in a limo.

Here’s the Aces starting lineup. No digitized jim-crack-scoreboard in this ballpark.

They do have a nice, big scoreboard, but it’s the kind that shows slides and short pre-made videos (such as advertising).

Our view of the ballpark. Pretty good, sez I.

As Brian promised, when the sun went down it got pretty cold, but we’re used to that from San Francisco — Not to mention Fenway Park in April. What we’re not used to is the Aces trailing 16-3 in the top of the Fifth Inning, and it’s about 9:20. We took the opportunity to leave.

And this is what was happening the next day… April snowblobs bring May flowers, we hope.