Wind

When we decided to move out 'to the valley' from Hayward, we heard from a lot of people 'oh, it's so windy out there in Tracy'. I remember thinking 'wind? What's so bad about some wind? Hayward has wind.'

Hayward has BREEZES. Tracy has WIND. Seemingly never-ending, typhoon class wind. Blows garbage cans over. Sends things flying. Puts water pots, empty flower pots, etc. into the pool on a fairly regular basis. Has even been known to send pool furniture, etc. skittering across the patio. It's crazy. At work this week, I was blasted by teeny tan bark chips on my way to and from the bathroom. Like a sandstorm, it HURT when they hit ankles, face, etc. THAT is the wind everyone was talking about when we decided to move here.

Today, it started as a warm, mild day and quickly changed to VERY windy and COLD. The sun was deceiving because you'd walk outside expecting to feel warmth and end up running back in to get a coat. And a hat, possibly. It was THAT cold. We still managed to work on the backyard a bit - pulled lots of weeds, etc. It's looking better, little by little. We went to Costco and I resisted buying any plants in the garden section - they had some really pretty flower flats but I knew we had no time to plant them this week, so I resisted. Good thing 'cuz it's too darn windy to plant them at the moment and tomorrow isn't supposed to be much better.

I don't mind the wind. You get kind of used to it - when it gets bad, you just 'batten down the hatches'. The pool will have various items floating in it tomorrow - and will most definitely need to be netted to keep the filter from being choked full first thing in the morning. All the little bits of our pruning and weeding that we missed will invariably end up in the pool. On a good note, the skies are crystal clear here usually - things get 'blown out' fairly regularly.

Church and coffee kart duty tomorrow. Then plan to go into work a bit in the afternoon. I left after 1/2 day yesterday (since I'd worked 40 hours by noon on Thursday and was exhausted) and left sort of 'in a hurry'. Once I decided to go, I just bailed. So my desk is a wreck and I have some things I need to 'undig' in preparation for next week.

B. is heading to the mall to go to the movies with a bunch of friends. H. is at a friends house, probably spending the night elsewhere again tonight. J. is on his computer behind me - he's been playing his Flight Simulator game, learning to 'fly' jets. It's been pretty funny to hear the 'warnings' - 'don't sink, don't sink' over and over. The voice kind of has an 'accent' that makes it sound like he's saying 'dunt sink, dunt sink'. Cracks us both up. He's trying to learn how to use 'autopilot' - at one point, he went to get some laundry out of the laundry room and I noticed the plane was just turning and turning and turning. So I let him know - there are apparently some kinks in the autopilot feature? And then when he tried to deactivate the autopilot to try to land, he was pretty close to crashing - but he made it. He didn't land on the runway, actually - but hey, he landed and the plane was fine and no one died - so that's a good flight in my book.

At Costco today, we looked at the Touch iPod for J. for Father's Day. He won't buy the 32G one - it's 'too expensive'. It's a couple hundred more than the smaller version - and to me, he should get the 'biggest' because he might wish he had the space someday. He really does use it a lot - he downloads pod casts, and music. And could even download audio books, movies, etc. But he's so darn 'thrifty' sometimes. I gave him my 'revised' philosophy on $$ : we save a lot. We are in general 'low maintenance' people (if you don't count the two teen leeches we feed, cloth, entertain, etc.). We both work stressful jobs that require a fair amount of skill and are paid very well for those jobs. So we should spend some of it. His 401K savings is maxed out - we're at the limit of what we can put in. But for what? We will retire comfortably as is - so we need to start enjoying some of it NOW. And like I told him - 'it's not like you're spending $1,000 more to have the 'biggest' one. You're spending just $200 more for the extra space'. He is 'thinking about it'. He's so much like his dad in that way. So silly.