Pacific Northwest Road Trip - Day 1

This is my test video for day 1 of Harry and my Pacific Northwest Vacation / Road Trip. I hope to do one of these every night after our days adventures

Got up today around 7pm.. started packing up the truck. Everything went smoothly, but we still were running about 1/2 hours behind. We left around 8.30, made a quick stop a Pepper Tree Gas to fill the truck up and then followed Sierra Highway and got onto the I-5 at Valencia.

We took the I-5 north, through the absolutely flat and boring CA Central Valley. Only saw a few olive tress farms and lots of grape vineyards. The only positive side is that the I-5 is the shortest way to get up north and since it's completely flat you use less gas and time.

Around 12.30 we stopped for lunch at Del Taco in Santa Nella. Once we were done with lunch we decided to fill the truck up again and then continued on the I-5 North. We went through Stockton and Sacramento, but didn't stop anywhere along the way, since we had done a CA-Vacation in 2005 and we wanted to get as far north as we possibly could.

After driving for over 400 miles Harry decided that it was time to let me do a little of the driving. So I took over and drove the remaining 250+ miles. Around 8.30 pm we reached our Hotel in Mt. Shasta in Northern California.

All in all it was a very good first day of our road trip. But we are both happy that we made it to the hotel and can relax. On this road trip we brought Daisy along. At times she wasn't quite too sure what to make of all the commotion, but for most part she was doing just fine. And Daisy absolutely loves to go on trips in the car.

Tomorrow we drive up to Hood River in Oregon...

Packing and Prepping

Today Harry and I spent the day packing and prepping for our road trip adventure. Packing for 19 days of travel. Think we are all good to go. Gotta get up early tomorrow and began our 10 hour drive up north to Mount Shasta.

I'm going to try and do a daily video blog of the days events. So keep an eye out for those. Also going to take a ton of pictures and Harry is taking video.. should have lots to share in the near future.

Night All!!

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Opening day to the public.. been following this on twitter.. People are waiting in line for 8 to 9 hours just to get into the park. I LOVE Harry Potter but there is no way I would wait 9 hours in line just got in the park for a few hours.. I don't care if it's the first day or not.

This is why I am waiting until August/September when kids go back to school and it will only be somewhat crazy.. but I can't wait to go!!!

Amazing Race 16 - Spoilers

Today I spent about seven hour watching the final 8 episodes of The Amazing Race (if you don't know what it is.. it's a TV show were teams race around the world). I don't watch to many of the reality shows but this one is by far my favorite. It aired from February to May and it's been sitting in my DVR just waiting for us to watch it. Harry and I finally sat down last night and watched the first 4 episodes and today we finished the season off. This is it's sixteenth season and I have watched every season. This year was a lot of fun. They always have some good characters on this show and this year was no exception. There are people you love (The Cowboy Brothers (pix to the right)) and people you hate (The Dating Lesbians) and everything in between. The detours and roadblocks were awesome and they tried things this year that they haven't done before.

I was "okay" with the winners, the brothers. I didn't hate this team until the last episode where the cut in line in front of the Cowboys, I was rooting for The Cowboys, who were charming, funny and always gentlemen. They came in second, which is cool.. at least the finished the race and were all smiles.

Can't wait for next season!!!

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Today was the "Grand Opening" of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando Florida. It officially opens to the public on Friday June 18th. But today was for celebrities, cast, crew and press. There are several big Harry Potter sites covering the opening with news and pictures.. but my favorite site in http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/ That is a great place to get all your Harry Potter News.

I can't wait to go, planning a trip later this year.

Will This Ever End!!!!

Today was the final day of working on our land and all the weeding. Everything was cut down but all over the place. I came up with the idea of getting "The Bagster" which is a large plastic bag type dumpster that you can put stuff into and then call Waste Management and they will come and pick it up (for a fee, of course) . I figured this would be so much easier then using a ton of trash bags (like we need more plastic in the land fills). So I did a search online and found that only a few places local to us had Bagsters. We wound up driving out to Sylmar to a True Value to get a bagster, which only cost about 30 bucks.

After that we headed over to Valencia to have lunch at Islands (I had heard there was one near us). We then took the back roads back to our house, since the I-5 was really congested. While driving the back roads we saw tons of stores we normally shop in, and neither Harry nor I had any clue that the were there... and we've been living out there now for almost 1 year. So taking the back roads was definitely worth it.

Once we were home Harry and I went outside and filled the Bagster up with weeds. Then we dumped the contents of the Bagster in the trash bin. That almost filled the dumpster up. So Harry came up with the idea to jump into the dumpster and use my body weight to compact the weeds. That way only the bottom 1/3 of the dumpster was filled. Then we put all the clippings of the east facing slope into the Bagster and dumped it again... and Harry once again used the same method to compact the weeds as before.

After that we took a little break. For the rest of the afternoon Harry and I raked and filled the Bagster up with weeds and yard clippings. At 7 pm we were finally done. The cutting down of all the weeds and removal is done, now the fire marshals have nothing to complain about. Now we have just to figure out how we're going to dispose of the weeds... as there's no way that we can dump them all into the trash bin (as we share this trash bin with three other houses). Either we leave them for now and dump them over several weeks into the trash bin or we have Waste Management come out and pick the Bagster up for a cost. Not going to worry about it until we get back from vacation.. so will see.

After this experience I'm not sure I every want to do it again. This is was of the most exhausting work I have done in years. I understand why people pay people to do it.. but on the other hand looking at it now and how beautiful is looks with all the weeds gone I have a sense of accomplishment.. which is great.

Should haven't have mess with the land for at least six months.. so for now I'll just enjoy my weed free property.

Errands & Yard Work... oh joy!!!

Today was pretty much a day of running errands in preparation for our upcoming vacation. Harry needed to get a second battery and a second memory card for his video camera. He had checked earlier and it turns out that Fry's had the cheapest batteries and memory cards. So we headed out to Fry's in Burbank. We got battery and memory card. I was hoping to get a second battery for my still camera but the only one they had in stock was returned.. so I opted now to get one.. if I need one I can always get one in our travels.

Next we decided to have lunch at Chevy's and after that we headed over to Ralphs in Burbank to pick up some groceries and a father's day card, as I'm going to be traveling on fathers day and I wanted to make sure I got a card to him as least. ( I mean I'll call him also)

After that we headed home but had to make a quick stop in Santa Clarita since we had to pick up a couple of things at Petsmart and Lowe's.

We stopped at Pepper Tree Gas Station to fill up the gasoline container for the weed whacker as I had ran out the previous night.

Once we were home I was back on yard work duty.. after what felt like months I was finally done with mowing down all the weeds. Up next, raking and disposing the weeds.. think I'll do that tomorrow.

Knights of the Guild Ep 17 pt1

Show Notes:

Here it is Episode 17 part 1 of Knights of the Guild… Enjoy!!!

Today’s show features:

• * First up a classic Vorkism
• * Thanks to @ben_b55 & @kentela for commissioning @unmodisch to create a FANTASTIC KOTG song that we use for our opening Theme
• * We are recording this weeks podcast live in our wonderful studio
• * We discuss the latest Guild News
• * We have the one and only Amy Okuda for our cast interview

• * We read listener feedback
• * We also announce winners of our end of month contest for May and talk about continuing contests
• * Then Business Time (contest submissions, Thanks to Megan Lynch, Jennifer Wong, Jerod Bennett, Harry Amner, Mark Donica, David Mello, Adriene Holland, and Tightrope)
• * Then our Good byes

Thank you again for all your support, we do this podcast because we are fans and more importantly for the fans.

Kenny & Jenni

• Knights of the Guild Feeds/Downloads http://knightsoftheguild.com
• Knights of the Guild Daily Blog http://knightsoftheguildpodcast.blogspot.com/

Yard Work

More yard work.. I continue to cut down weeds. Luckily I got our neighbors uber weed whacker. I can only do for four or five hours taking many breaks in between before I'm exhausted. Downside to doing so much yard work is I'm too exhausted to work on my Knights of the Guild podcast. I'm suppose to be organizing all my interviews that I had gotten during the filming of Season 4 and I need to start to edit a few of the new "CompanionCast" podcasts. First one is due the day after the premiere of the first episode.

I'll find time.. somewhere..

Editing KOTG Podcast

Tonight I finished editing Episode 17 parts 1 and 2 of Knights of the Guild podcast. Since we are going on vacation and I don't want to have to be editing on the road I manage to get both parts done before I left. Part 1 will be released on June 15th and part 2 will be released on June 29th. Both have really good interviews. Now I have to work on a few of the Companioncasts before I leave.

Doctor Who

Watched the latest Doctor Who, Episode 11 titled The Lodger. First let me say I have been loving the new Doctor and Companion, can't believe this season is almost over (with 2 episodes left). This latest episode was my favorites, it was funny and sweet. Loved, loved, loved the Doctor trying to be a "normal" bloke. Loved his relationship with his flat mate Craig. Not a lot happens with the story but it was a nice change from all the heavy episodes they have done this season. This was simply FUN!!!

Yard Work

One of the very few down sides of living on 2 1/2 acres of land is maintaining it. Though we have a very short spring here, with all this rain we have had, weeds are grow all over the place. By law (Fire code) we have to keep weeds 200 feet from any structure or face some hefty fines.

Harry and I have been battling this losing cause for the past few months. Yesterday one of our neighbors came to our rescue and brought over their heavy duty weed whacker. So today I started up on our hill and kill some weeds. Before this heavy duty weed whacker I was using a very tiny weed whacker that would lose it's power in about 10 minutes of cutting, because the weeds were so thick it drained it's juice cutting them down. Mind you it's in the low 90's and I'm sweating like a pig but I did manage to get the entire hillside cut. Now the fun part will be raking up the cut down weeds so we can dispose of them.. think I'll wait till tomorrow to do that. Also still have another even hillier side to cut down tomorrow. Oh the joys of home ownership...