Pedroza's Place

Today I went on a walk with AJ and saw this sign:

New menu, same great food? I think the Stockade needs to pick a side. That or stop eating grubs…

Oh well, on the other hand AJ really enjoyed his Chocolate milk today.

The joy comes complete with a chocolate milk dance, but unfortunately my video capture didn’t work right. BTW, we buy the chocolate milk at the Stockade. I really doubt that they even have chocolate milk in there. The chocolate milk came from Paula’s Cafe. A place where they make really good omelettes.

Having a Relief Society President as a wife has a lot of positives. You know as long as she is in that calling you are safe from any calling of serious responsibility yourself. You know that you will be invited to some really nice dinners. Unfortunately, you also know that if there is a blood drive in town your going to be donating. That is exactly what Denise did today. Actually she had both a blood drive and a clothes give away at the church today. Attendance was good, in all she got 27 pints of blood today.
If your interested in donating blood yourself it is a fairly simple procedure. All you have to do is find a local blood donation center, register, answer a few questions, and then you can donate. It does hurt a little bit when the needle enters, but it goes by fairly fast. If you have rare blood or A+ blood they might even pay you for it. Usually it is just by donation though. In today’s case I did get a coupon for a free pint of Baskin Robbins ice cream.

Click on a picture to enlarge.

Today was the Crestline Jamboree Days here in Crestline. The Chamber of Commerce puts it on every year. Usually, it consists of a parade, fair, and fireworks, but this year there was no money for fireworks. Lucky for us the parade starts right in front of our house.

The parade is fun it has lots of different types of entries:
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AJ got a couple of pictures with the local celebrity:

AJ’s favorite part of the parade was the candy. He definitely got a lot of it:

After the parade they have a little fair:
For three dollars I got a Cream Cheese Wonton, Chop Suey, and some Teriyaki Chicken. For those of you who say that I wasn’t very American I would remind you that all of those things were invented in the United States (really Google it). The celebrations here in Crestline are very small town, but it was really fun. Here is a little video I made of our festivities:

We had the snow and now we have the rain. It has been raining pretty hard for the last 24 hours. The result has been that our build-up area under the house and our bathroom have turned into a little river. I have two pumps right now pumping out the water as fast they can. I have also discovered a few more leaks in our roof. We really need to fix them, but there is no money for that right now. Such is life I suppose. I called the mortgage company to see if they could help me out with a construction loan, but they said I don’t make enough money. I asked them if I could have a home modification and then they told me I have too much money. It was at that point that I said “Thank You” and hung-up. If this house falls apart I might have to walk away from it, but the mortgage company can’t say I didn’t try.

People often ask me after a storm “So, How Cold Was It?” This is a hard thing to convey to the rest of my Southern Californian friends. I can’t blame them, snow is not really something we see too often in Southern California. Being a mountain dwelling Southern Californian I get to see the snow every year. Unfortunately, we had to go to court on Friday (stupid Red Light Ticket…) and with the weather we didn’t want to risk getting stuck at home (thus being in contempt of court), so my mom graciously hosted us for two days. When we did get back home however, this is what we saw:

Now, I am sure if you are from most of Southern California you will look at this video and say to yourself, “I would never want to live in that.” This would be valid, but before you judge our situation too harshly I give you this picture:

This picture was take about an hour after I had been shoveling out our driveway. Several enterprising teenagers had come by while I was shoveling and had offered to help, but when I told them that I only had $10 in the house, they left rather quickly. So while I was shoveling this man in the Bobcat comes up to my house. I look at him and I tell him “Sorry, I only have $10.” (the going rate for Bobcats is like $40). He looks at the driveway he says “whatever” and proceeds to dig out an ample space for my car in less than 5 minutes (thus saving me about 3 hours of work). While he is doing this I tell Denise to get my $10 dollars, but before Denise comes back the guy goes away. This is why I live in Crestline. You may have some good neighbors, but I have great ones. Oh and just so you don’t think I am a bad neighbor, an hour later when the road scrapper came by I went with my shovel and helped a different neighbor dig out his truck.

PS Don’t come and visit us for a few days because CHP just announced that our mountain roads are closed to any visitors.