UDATED Snowbirds - Santee, CA UPDATED

If the license plates can be trusted we have snowbirds from Canada-British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and the US-Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Florida, Virginia, South Dakota, Washington, Oregon, Alaska (other than us), Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Arizona (though not sure why they are here), Texas, Colorado, Tennessee, New York, VERMONT, KENTUCKY, NORTH CAROLINA, ALABAMA, GEORGIA, MISSOURI, and UTAH (25 states). We surely would have won all those license place games we used to play as kids!

Snow - San Diego, CA

These are the mountains just south of here between the USA and Mexico. Looks just like August in Alaska – the straight line across the Chugach Mountains on the East side of Anchorage. When this happens, they call the snow “termination dust” because it is the end of Summer! Maybe in Southern California it must mean the end of Winter.

It got below freezing last night and we were without water – until the sun heated up our hoses. Really it was only 30-40 minutes that we noticed. At 1am when Ruthi got up to pee it was already down to 32. She turned on the faucet to let a little water run but we guess that we didn’t wake up enough times – weird because we usually are up multiple times to pee.

This only the second time we have awaken to frozen water – pretty good for 6 ½ years.

Ruthi’s Losing Weight - Santee, CA

When we saw our newest Family Medicine doc in June she suggested that Ruthi begin counting her calories and adding some exercise in hopes of losing a pound a week. So, Ruthi decided to give it a try. She found an APP MyFitnessPal (http://www.myfitnesspal.com/) for her smart phone. This app works on both PC and phone. Ruthi can track her calorie intake/burn, weight, waist, etc. The PC version provides reports while the phone version allows for real time data entry.

So far, in the 6 months (26 weeks) of paying attention and recording, Ruthi has loss 32 pounds. Yea!!! And, she has not felt deprived or like she was “dieting”. Ruthi did need to buy shorts in the next size smaller and they are getting loose now. She will continue for another 6 months, in hopes that she will get her weight low enough to eliminate some of her medications (pre-diabetes and high cholesterol). She could move from morbidly obese (a horrible term, by the way) to just obese! Then she can use the APP to maintain her “new” weight for a few months before working on moving from “obese” to simply “overweight” and maybe below that.

A side result is that Boots is also losing weight as she also is bike riding more and more conscious of her food intake. She is not a geek and is not keeping records on her phone or PC.

Alaskan Men - Alaska Airlines to Seattle, WA

On Ruthi’s flight from Anchorage to Seattle on an Alaskan Airlines, one of the stewardess commented to a passenger the famous quote about Alaskan men "The odds are good, but the goods are odd!". Ruthi found it a bit surprising that an Alaskan crewmember would insult the very state it represented; not that the quote isn’t true!

A "little" Collision - San Diego, CA

Boots was driving into downtown San Diego to pickup Ruthi at the airport, when she decided to get off the highways and get something to eat first. In her search for a parking place, she got too close to the vehicles parked on the right side of the street. The Ford's passenger's mirror struck the drivers mirror on a CAL TRANS truck. Boots pulled over, parked and began the search for the driver of the CAL TRANS "victim". She did locate the mirror's pieces that had been destroyed and flung under other parked vehicles. There was an In-N-Out burger place right near the site of the bump. So, she went in there seeking the driver. The manager even did a PA announcement trying to find the driver with no responses. So, Boots returned to the CAL TRANS truck and waited for the driver to appear. Eventually, the driver came and they exchanged info. Boots, sans a passenger mirror, was able to continue on and pick up Ruthi at the airport.

To replace the Ford's mirror cost over $200. Later we discovered that there was some body damage from the mirror hitting and scratching the doors. So, we don't have the final total on the cost of this "little" collision.

Snow - Anchorage, AK

When Ruthi was returning to the hotel after dinner/movie with Kassie (our grand-daughter) on the East side of Anchorage, it began snowing. It looked like this might be the start of winter’s white cover in Anchorage but by the time Ruthi got to mid-town the snow had stopped and by morning the snow was gone.

Overhead Storage in Plane - 737 Flight to Anchorage, AK

On Ruthi's flight from San Diego to Seattle on an Alaskan Airline Boeing 737, she noticed that they had made major changes to the storage space within the overhead bins. People were placing large carry-ons in the space. Finally, instead of having to gate check these humungous carry-ons, they can now stuff them in the overheads!