Celebration Time

September 11 and 13 are always special times of year for us since those are the dates of our wedding anniversary and Sam's birthday. This year, we started celebrating on the 9th since it was the most convenient day to have our annual co-anniversary dinner with Richard and Nancy. Between our two couples, our September 11th anniversaries total 72 years! After toasts with Polly, Dillon, and Hannah at R&N's (thanks for taking our pictures, Dillon!) we had a fun and delicious dinner in Ojai at Bodee's. The celebration level was increased by adding Tommy B's birthday to the festivities.
Much later that same night, Sam, Jenn, and Doug arrived with Diesel. This gave us a couple of good visiting days (and a Monday Night football get-together) with Sam and his friends, and on the 11th, another anniversary-birthday dinner in Downtown Ventura.

Thunder, Lightning, and Rain . . . Here?

The weather continues to be strange as the high inland temperatures are colliding with our cool ocean water. They had lots of lightning in Santa Barbara and Lompoc yesterday, but this morning, we had a tiny taste of a thunderstorm. Yup, those are raindrops - cool! Since it was too hard to catch the lightning with a still shot, I made a little video and put it on YouTube. Look closely for both lightning bolts; the first one is right after the title shot and the second one comes at the end. Sorry for the traffic noise, I was too late for the sound of thunder:

We Might Be In the Tropics (If We Pretend)

Hurricane Dean, the storm that hit the Yucatan area as a Category 5 hurricane last week, blew all the way up to SoCal. We got a cool wind instead of warm weather, but we did get some gorgeous sunsets and sunrises!

Historic Downtown Ventura on the IKEA site

I don't know how long this will remain active (I saved this screen shot, just in case) but IKEA had a contest for small businesses to win furniture by making videos about their town.This little video is a nice summary of the flavor of Downtown Ventura. Click on this posting title to see if the link is still active. To see all the entries (Old Town Lansing, Michigan, was the winner with 6727 votes) go to http://ikea.shycast.com/contest/1/. Kudos to Greg of Dexters Camera for this entry - with a 4th Place voting finish, it just missed being in the winner's circle!

Edison Lake and Mono Creek

Tom, Scott, Mike, and Don went on their annual Brotherhood of the Trout fishing trip from August 13-19. Since Tom had to go back to work by the 22nd, they made the trip just in time. As they have for a few years, they fished and hiked Mono Creek, getting themselves and their gear across Edison lake via a ferry. This year, however, the lake level was much lower than normal because it had been used to fill the lower lakes. (The tree stumps in this picture are normally under water.)Since the ferry couldn't take them as far as they have gone in the past, they weren't able to setup camp where they had planned and actually camped on the lakebed. In spite of that, they had a great time and hiked up to some beautiful fishing spots - as Tom's picture of Scott proves!Tom has finally gotten used to digital photography so didn't hold back to save film or experiment with exposures and angles. Click on this posting's title to see more of his photos from that trip.