Joy Ride

Jeff was feeling better so we took a joy ride through Hidden Valley.  We are so lucky to live where we do. In just a few minutes, we are out of civilization and in horse country surrounded by mountains.  This is a gorgeous area and always fun to visit in the spring when there are foals and calves.  They film so many car commercials here.  If you ever see cars driving through a winding road surrounded by hills and white fences, it's most likely Hidden Valley.  Lots of movie stars have homes here... Tom Selleck, Sophia Loren, Jamie Foxx, Ellen Degeneres.  If you saw the movie, "It's Complicated," Meryl Streep's home was also in Hidden Valley.  It can be yours for a mere 10 million dollars!  Here are a few photos of Hidden Valley.

We really love the new Prius!  While on our drive, we were learning all about the navigation system and other cool features of the car.  It's so quiet and we enjoyed a beautiful sunny day with the sun roof open and listening to the music from my iPhone streaming wirelessly through the speakers.  You don't even have to plug it in... it was in my purse (along with the car keys you don't need) and the music just started playing!

HAPPY MAY!

  

First World Problems

Jeff has been a little sick this past weekend...started with a sore throat and now a bit of a cough so we didn't get out for a nice long drive in the new car like we had planned.  It's a bit of a Southern California tradition when you get a new car to take a drive up the coast to Santa Barbara for lunch.  That will have to wait for a few days.  I was looking forward to playing around with the navigation system while on the road.  Instead, I read the manuals but not sure how much sunk in... it's so much better to "learn by doing" as I learned when I was teaching.  I had a bit of a panic moment over what could've been a catastrophe!  I plugged in my iPhone (via it's lightning cable) to the USB port that's down inside the center console.  The port is real deep down so it's hard to see if you're plugging it in correctly.  All was fine as I was setting up the bluetooth until I tried to remove the cable from the USB port.  It was stuck!  I wasn't about to pull it hard and wreck the USB port in our brand new car so I called Jeff to come take a look.  He couldn't get it out either but questioned me if I was sure I put it in correctly.  Well, usually they only go in one way so I thought I had but it's too far down to really see what you're doing.  We decided we better not try to force it out and take it into the Toyota dealer the next day.  In the meantime, I googled, "My iPhone 5 lightning cable got stuck in the USB port of my brand new Prius" and sure enough I came up with a lot of links.  Apparently, the iPhone 5 lightning cable has issues with getting stuck in all sorts of USB ports- laptops, computers, cars, etc...  HERE's the link that helped me:  How to Unstick your Stuck Lightning Cable from a USB Port complete with a video.  The solution involved using a stay (the little thin plastic tabs) that the dry cleaners put in collars of dress shirts to help dislodge the cable.  I told Jeff what to do, we had a little white collar stay and the tip worked like a charm!  Bad Apple!  This is a known problem and they've done nothing to correct it.  We had to go buy a new lightning cable made by another company that will easily go in and out of the USB port.

I posted about this on Facebook and gave the link to the site that helped me which is called Wonder HowTo.   It's a cool site and as they say a, "Wonderland for Your Inner Nerd!"  My post said, "Thanks to this site for helping me unstick my iPhone 5 cable from our brand new Prius USB port to which Justin commented. "First world problems..."  If you haven't seen the First World Problems site, it's pretty hilarious. It's a site with a collection of people whining about the most trivial things that you'd only hear in non-third world countries.  Here's one of my favorites:  My iPad 3 doesn't warm my lap as much as my MacBook Pro."  I submitted my first world problem:  "My iPhone 5 cable got stuck in the USB port of my brand new Prius!"    Waaaah!

You Get a Car! And You Get a Car! You ALL get a new car!

Sorry for that Oprah moment!  We got the car!  It's the 2013 Sea Glass Pearl Prius 4.  Here's a quick photo I snapped with my cellphone.  You've seen this car and color before but this is ours.

  

It took about 4 hours at the dealer between all the wheeling and dealing, Then they try to sell us all sorts of extras, try to get us to finance through them and on and on.  We didn't buy any of the extra protection plans and we financed it through our Fireman's Credit Union so they were disappointed in all that.  I think we got a really, really good price.  We got the solar sunroof that we wanted but instead of the Misty Gray interior that I liked, we got the Dark Gray interior which was probably a better choice for us considering we will be taking the dogs in the car from time to time.  It's going to be a bit of a learning curve figuring out all the high tech stuff in the car but Jeff and I both like all that stuff so it will be fun.  We've already set up our iPhones with the apps that the Prius has so we can talk hands free and use our phone address book to make calls, navigate, etc... and even play our downloaded music through the speakers.  It has Sirius radio and all that good stuff.  It has a touch screen, back up camera....seriously, it's like driving a spaceship!  You don't even have a key and you wave your hand under the door handle to unlock the car and you can program in 3 garage doors so you can open them all without an opener.  So we will program our garage door, Jessica's garage door and Justin's.  I'm sure we will be spending all weekend trying to figure everything out!  Oh and one last thing...we were going to trade in my Cabrio and our salesman wanted to buy it for his college student niece so we were happy to sell it to him since he didn't make a huge commission off our sale.  We (especially Jeff!) are always sad to see our cars go... they are like old friends...but Jeff was happy it was going to a young girl who would love having a cool little convertible!

99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall

That has to be one of the most annoying songs ever!  I thought of it because Jeff bought a 6 pack of Budweiser Platinum beer that came in the prettiest blue bottles.  The labels come off quite easily and I knew there would be some good ideas on the internet on how to reuse/ repurpose the bottles.  I googled "Budweiser Platinum bird feeders" and came up with this idea.

  A Hummingbird Feeder!

Amazon has a pack of 12 of the tubes with little red tips but I'm going to check around a few bird supply stores to see if I can find a smaller quantity.  I'm going to get copper wire to wind around it like in the photo and to make a hanger.  So, in addition to buying a Prius, I'm going to recycle beer bottles (with Jeff's help) in honor of Monday's Earth Day.  I also found on Etsy and Ebay where people are making drinking glasses out of the bottles.  They cut off the narrow part and must have a way of grinding down the glass so it's safe.  

This all reminds me of this funny experience Jeff and I had in Las Vegas one time.  I have these cactus stemmed Margarita glasses that I bought in Mexico and while in Vegas, we went to a Mexican restaurant and I noticed a bottle of tequila that had the same cactus decoration inside the bottle.  Here's a photo of my glasses.

We were having lunch and as we were first seated they asked if we wanted anything to drink.  We don't drink early in the day so declined.  Then I spotted the tequila bottle with the little cactus inside.  Jeff went up to the bartender and asked if they had any empty bottles that we could have/buy?  The bartender said only this one bottle (not cheap!) which was close to empty... maybe 4 shots of tequila left in it.  He said if we wanted to buy shots and empty the bottle, we could have the bottle.  So there we are at noon, swilling down tequila so I could get that bottle!  What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!  Ole!

Busy Bees!

We had a very busy weekend!  Besides some car shopping, we went to a Home Show in Westlake Village on Saturday.  We saw some patio covers that we liked the looks of for the other house...where Jessica and family live and got some other ideas of things we'd like to do in the future.  They had food trucks there but we opted to go to a nice restaurant for lunch.  Are gourmet food trucks a California thing or are they everywhere now?  In the old days, food trucks were looked down upon and even called "Roach Coaches" but now they are very trendy and serve good food and it's not cheap either.  HERE's a website where you can find Gourmet Food Trucks.  Many food trucks have followers on Twitter so they know when and where they can find them.  A lot of them have clever names.  Check out the link to see what I mean.

On Sunday, we went to the Canine Classic Dog Walk and Festival in neighboring town Calabasas.  It wasn't as good as the Bark in the Park that we went to last October but the dogs still enjoyed the outing.  They had dogs doing tricks and there was this one dog dyed pink and it made me think of Kim's friend who caught a lot of flack for doing the same thing for the Superbowl.  No one seemed to be outraged over this pink dog.

So about the car... we have definitely decided on the Prius 4 with deluxe solar roof package in Sea Glass Pearl.  We have one dealer holding one for us until Wednesday and, in the meantime, we have an auto broker who works with our Fireman's Credit Union looking to see if she can find us an even better deal on one.  We've been told by other dealers that the price we have been quoted (in writing) is a very aggressive price so we feel pretty good about it.  The best part is they have one on their lot and we've been finding that the Sea Glass Pearl with the sunroof that we want is rather scarce.  We should hear from the broker today and if she can't find one or do better on price, then we will get the one on hold for us.

   

Car Shopping

We went car shopping yesterday.  We want to get a hybrid of some sort and are considering the Toyota Prius, Ford Fusion, Honda Accord and a few others.  We don't want to get a hybrid SUV because they are heavy and don't get as good mileage and we still have our Pathfinder SUV.  However, it would be nice to be able to take the dogs with us so we wondered if there was room enough in the back of the Prius to accommodate Cooper and Kanan.  After going to a couple of dealers and test driving the Prius, we think it would work for taking the dogs with us.  There's room in the hatchback area and if you drop the back seats, then there's more than enough room.  Anyway, here's where you come in....There are only 2 colors I like:  the Blizzard Pearl (which is a pearly white) or the Sea Glass Pearl which is a silvery pastel blueish green.  Here's a photo.  What do you think?

We want the sunroof/moonroof which comes with a solar panel that keeps the car cool when parked in the sun.  The interior I like is Softex Misty Grey  I don't know if this link will work for you but if you click HERE, you might be able to see the car, it's interior, etc... You can click on the right side and see 360 view, dashboard, front seats, back seats and cargo area.  

We are getting together with the boys today.  They haven't been here in a while and want to come to Nani's house.  Here's a photo of Ryan at his new desk.  A neighbor was throwing it out and Jessica saw it on the curb and asked if she could have it.  It's a perfect little desk for Ryan.  He's proud of it! 

How to Dissect a Mouse

Jacob loves to help Jeff with projects around the house.  Yesterday, Jeff was doing some electrical work at Jessica's house and Jacob was handing Jeff tools.  Kids are so quick and before Jeff could stop him, Jacob dissected a mouse!

I love his "cat that ate the canary" expression.  Doesn't look very remorseful, does he?

The news from Boston has been so disturbing and tragic.  Not much more to say about it... I know everyone feels the same.  I hope whoever is responsible is caught and caught quickly.

If you'd like to catch up with Elliot, I've added quite a few of his visits.  I have put each visit into their own photo album.  I've just posted Iceland so we are now up to England and that's going to take a while to gather together because he made 3 stops there.  If you're not on Facebook and would like to see his pages, I think you can view them HERE.