Valentine's Day 2017

This evening marks the fifth Valentine's Day I've had with Sheila.  We're going to formally celebrate it tomorrow for two reasons.  One, her oldest daughter is out with her boyfriend, and two, it gives me one more day to rest up from this awful cold that a lot of us have been having.

At my end, I could complain about my situation, but from what I know of some others, it's not like I have a right to.  I've always known that yes, there are others out there who have it worse than I do, but it remains on the back shelf of your mind until you get a phone call or you hear of one of those other situations, at which point I realize that I shouldn't be grousing about anything.  Yes, I'm frustrated that I haven't gotten a start date yet from my new employer, and that is dependent on a background check that I have no way of knowing how far along it is.

And after another visit to San Jose and back, I'm really ready to end this sabbatical and to get back to doing some work.  I didn't have a lot of time for "fun" in San Jose as that I was helping out with a situation there, and when I could get out of the house there was inclement weather or bad traffic or both.  Usually bad traffic all of the time.  Inclement weather only some of the time.

While I was there, I thought about posting from San Jose about San Jose, but it might have been a depressing post.  A lot of people I knew there have since moved to other states.

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One thing I really enjoyed about this trip was taking a different way back to Tucson.  I reprised my passing thru of some small towns.  Gasoline in Los Banos was significantly cheaper than the truck stop at Santa Nella, and I wandered around the supermarket in Firebaugh since going in there was like going back in time.

I took the left turn in Mendota, and continued on to state highway 99.  I saw the Voice of America towers in Delano (my next time there I really need to get off the highway and take some pictures of it before they tear it down).  Bakersfield wasn't the most pleasant place but tanking up in Delano meant not having to stop for gas there.

The stretch of highway 58 that has you drive thru Tehachapi is my most favorite part of the trip.  I-10 between Coachella and San Berdoo is my least favorite part of the trip.

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Now that I'm back home, I've been catching up on things and have found some time to tune the radio spectrum at night.  KMOX was coming in at local 7:00 PM two nights ago (I did hear them again the next night after I posted about them).  Omaha was also coming in, and although I had a signal on 870 kHz I didn't know if it was really WWL in New Orleans.  I'd really like to get that one logged, as well as one of the Chicago stations.

There's not much on the shortwave bands.  I am thinking of putting up a long wire antenna to see if that will help.  I've also thought of constructing a home brew antenna for the medium wave stations, though if I'm getting KMOX then that portable is sensitive enough for the AM broadcast band.

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And that is it for now.