I’ve been super busy and not really much to blog about lately. I may be swapping for a new classic this weekend. That’s about it.

Another year has gone by and this is the dawn of a new decade. Ironically that’s what my high school slogan was 40 years ago.

Shit times really does fly.

EDIT: Twelve midnight has come and gone. This is our second year being at Valley Springs during the New Years celebration. Last year I can’t recall very much celebration with firecrackers, fireworks or firearms.

This year it was an all out “Stockton, CA” simulation. I think I heard as much here at VS as I’ve had living in Stockton. I think the difference is Stockton will continue shooting guns until there is daylight. Not so much here, maybe 10 minutes worth of noisy celebrations.

I’ve been working on the Manetarium for the past few weeks getting the photography studio part of it ready for photo sessions. I did a couple family portraitures during the Christmas holidays but will now focus on clients.

This year I decided to make custom X-Mas gifts for kids. I probably have 300 or extra license plates that I can’t use for my wall collection since I have the states already displayed.

I’ve seen license plates that have been cut into separate characters or numbers to create a word, name or something catchy.

It’s been storming up in the foothills the past week or so. We put up a good chunk of Xmas lights during the Thanksgiving break.

We have lights across the front of our home too. We still have to get lights hung up in the “She Shed” area.

Took this photo while crossing the Pardee Dam Bridge. The fog covered the lower valley springs area until I drove up to the higher grounds.

I finally got the old golf cart back up and running. It suffered a severely burnt V-Slider module.

There should be a wiper conductor sliding between the banked voltage taps. The original piece was burnt so bad it crumbled into pieces when I took the module out of the cart.

I left work early to repair a bad PRV pressure regulator valve that was located under our home. This part is literally the furthest point from the access door and the least amount of head room available. Not to mention I saw a rattle snake earlier in the week. I can’t stand snakes.

Crawling under our home late night is not the funnest thing to do. It did give me the idea to start storing things that won’t deteriorate under there. Plenty of storage space.

I saw my first rattlesnake.

Well shit. We had our first planned power outage at our dream home. Due to the high winds predicted they cut us off approximately 12:17am Sunday morning.

As much as it is an inconvenience it is nothing compared to the folks currently losing their homes or the ones having to evacuate in the middle of the night.

I had rigged up an LED lantern with a car battery to provide some night time lighting.