Living in Reno

Every day in July is filled with events. Concerts, drama, art shows, and various performances take place around the city. Wingfield park, next to the river in the center of the city, hosts most of the free events. Between the events in the park and the fun in the river, it is always a fun, busy place during July.


Lookin down part of the river as it flows through the center of the city.

Looking across the river into Wingfield Park where the perfomance stage is located.

A drumming group was performing out on the grassy area opposite the stage.

I don't have a real camera so these pictures were taken with the little camera on my PDA. No flash. No focus. No anything. So, they don't really do anything justice, but they are better than if I hand drew them:-)

This is a picture from the chipping green out toward the golf course, Northgate Golf Club, which is about 10 minutes away from our apartment. It is the former host of a couple of PGA events. I haven't played it yet, but have it in my plans.


We finally have a bed! Getting up off the floor each morning was good exercise, but a bit of a chore. Life should be good now. We bought a Japanese (I think) design. It has two drawers under each side and tatami mats for the mattress support. It looks really cool. Irene, who sold it to us and set it up, made sure the mattress was slid to the top so you could see the beauty of the tatami mats at the foot of the bed. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a decent picture.


We have a Cold Stone Creamery just down the road from us, too close and too convenient. Wow, do they have great ice cream. I am going to have to add a few more minutes on the treadmill over the next few days.

I was in downtown Reno on the motorcycle to watch the Reno Philharmonic play in celebration of the Silver Legacy's 11th year birthday. As I was parking, I turned around and saw big, dark clouds and a bolt of lightning. I skidaddled out of there in a hurry. About half way home I saw people stopped by the road taking pictures of what was behind me. There were bright, double, complete rainbows against this big black cloud. It was cool, but the raindrops were catching me. I made it in as the "light show" started. I took a picture of what was left of the rainbow as the sun went down behind the "mountains." The lightning was pretty cool. The whole mountain side (What you call hills in Washington) would light up. Jagged bolts shot through the sky. Probably like the storms you find in Colorado Springs:-)

As you probably know, there are some physical laws of the universe which cannot be broken. The most commonly known one is the speed of light. Nothing can exceed it. Einstein proved it theoretically and it has been proven empirically as well. If you try to break the speed of light, time will even slow down to keep you from going faster than the speed of light. Which segues into the next immutable law of the universe...

... waiting in line at the department of motor vehicles. I get there, check in, and get the OK from the gentleman at the desk who gives me a number, a308. Not bad since they are on a301! Unfortunately, I sit through e304, m456, h867, etc. A number is called. Nobody shows. Wait again, and again. My number finally comes up.

I go to the desk. She looks at my paperwork and... "Sorry you need a different form to verify your birth date. That guy at the desk always forgets to check them." ...They won't accept a birth certificate from a hospital?

Anyway... Please remember, this is not their fault. They are nice people. They just cannot break the immutable law of waiting at the DMV.

So, she keeps my application and gives me a paper that lets me skip to the front of the line if I come back that day with the proper paper. I hurry home. Get the paper. Boldly walk to the front of the line holding the special "go to the front of the line paper" while ignoring the stares of those standing in the line that snakes through the lobby. I get a new number. It is called before I can even walk away from the counter!

(Now technically, this should count as part of the first visit, but I am counting this as a second visit that is going at super speed flying in the face of an immutable law.)

I gleefully slide my documents over to her in amazement at how quickly this is going. She takes them. Looks around a bit and... she cannot find the form they had kept! Bam, I run smack into the immutable law. About 20 minutes later the form is found. The immutable law of the DMV has again been validated, and finally...

The cats have two main activities. Sleeping sprawled out on the floor and moving to another location to sleep sprawled out on the floor. With the temperature staying in the upper 90's, they don't have much desire to do anything:-)

I can never find Tony. He finds the strangest places to crawl into or under and sleep. I found him sleeping in the sink the other day. It is probably cooler in there.

Squeek almost made it across the room, but had to stop and rest.

Here is the computer center. Mona bought this neat little stand at the thrift store in which to put my CD's and books. I was close to throwing the computer in the dumpster when this was taken. It was shutting down, losing the keyboard, locking up, etc. After trying hours of reinstalling and checking software, I decided to check hardware. It was a bad stick of RAM! Pulled it out all was fine. Put it in, disaster. So I am running at half RAM for now:-(

First part of Mona's experiment. Lying on the couch sleeping, not exercise.

Part two, sitting on exercise equipment watching TV, is exercise. I have my doubts about this theory, but we'll see.

Pool and hot tub at the club house:-)

Mona putting on her shoes to go for a walk. I fell for it. She's back in Washington!

Here is a view from our dining room. You can see the car and motorcycle in the car port. Mona doesn't know how to drive the motorcycle and I have the only set of car keys:-)

Here I caught Mona trying to sneak back to Washington and sent her back inside:-)

Here is the view from our front yard looking back to downtown Reno. We are up on the hill on the northwest corner of Reno.

Here is our living room with the essential items in place:-)

Here is a picture from the living room to the dining room. I was standing in front of the hallway to the front door to keep Mona from escaping back to Washington!

Here is a view from the front door. You can see the mattress on the floor. You can't see that I have tied Mona's shoe laces together:-)

We had a pretty structured routine going. Mona would take me to class (intro to the district classes). She would shop. Pick me up. We would shop some more. Eat lunch. Go home unpack and put things in place we purchased. Watch a DVD. Go to bed.

We did squeeze in some time to walk along the river that runs through the middle of town and sit in the hot tub/sauna.

We have most of our furniture coming on Friday. And, the satellite TV won't be installed until 7/24! If not for the fact I finally got the DSL working, I would have been cut off from all civilization!

I took the motorcycle out for a short spin to my school and back. The school is about 5 minutes away. I didn't realize I was that close.

I didn't think to document the trip down. We were on a mission! Drive as long as we can stand it and then sleep and get there the next day. We did make a short stop in Eugene Oregon to buy some essentials, a mattress and plasma TV. Then, back on the road. It was 105 degrees in Northern Californis. Fortunately, the air conditioning was great in the vehicles. The drive from Weed California to Nevada was a straight shot through the high mountains. We had very little traffic anywhere along the way. Hmm, how come nobody else was driving to Reno in the middle of July on the weekend?

We pulled into Reno about 10:30 on Sunday. Unpacking the truck was relatively quick and much easier than expected. It is the unpacking part that is a chore. Even though I was careful to label every box, there were still a few surprise packages over the next few days. We went shopping for a bed, figuring that was the top priority. We couldn't find anything we liked, anywhere. And, there are lots of furniture stores in Reno. So we reproritized and set up the TV and bought a few DVD's to help us make it through the day and just put the mattress on the floor.

The weather is about 90 degrees, with clear skies, occassional breezes, and cool in the morning and evenings.