Hello 2012

Lets welcome the year 2012...
It's a new day, new week, and a new year...lots of "new" stuff going on...

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Is it too early to think in terms of a drought...??? 

We have some very nice weather the last few weeks...but...that's the problem...

While I've been able to get in some good outdoor bbq grilled meals...we have had only a small fraction of the rain we should have gotten by now...

A few years ago we were in drought for about 3 years, but the last 2 or 3 years we recovered in terms of rainfall and I've not needed to use the water in my reserve tanks...

The next 3 months *can* be very wet...we've not had any "frog choking gully washer" storms yet, and the rain totals since July 1st (when the rain measurement year starts) at this point is just over 11 inches at my place...

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Speaking of WX (weather) I got a new digital weather station...now I can see just how strong the winds are when they howl...

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Time for a new reefer box...my propane refrigerator needs to be uninstalled, and turned upside down to "burp" it...but with my bad back that's impossible...so I'm looking at a new medium sized electric reefer...

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New video editing software is on it's way...I'm replacing Magix with Adobe...I got an upgrade price on older products: Elements Premier (video)...Audition (audio)...Photoshop (photo)...these are modules of the larger CS (Creative Suite) and they all integrate and exchange data back and forth ok...

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It's time to replace my video camera, but I don't know if I can afford a new one this year...My Canon Elura MIni DV has served me well over the years but it's on it's last legs...

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I have a new project in mind: driving up (or down) US Hwy 101 for a FOOD SAFARI...

Drive, eat food, sight see, take pictures...document it...

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I've been doing research about railroad dinner car food...not easy to cook in a tiny galley that sways back and forth...decades ago several railroads served food comparable to a fine dinning restaurant...and we have the CZ (California Zephyr) Silver Plate dinning car up in Portola that is being restored...so I got several books on the subject, with many recipes. I'm NOT a chef, mind you, and some of the recipes might be way too gourmet to start with...but the idea is to get the Silver Plate functional enough to crank out a few meals to raise money...the Silver Plate is the LAST Western Pacific RR dinning car in existance, and it's restoration goes only as fast as incoming donations permit...

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That's all the news for now...y'all take care...