Sycamore Canyon Hike - after days of rain

It has been awhile since I did some hiking. During the recent rains that we had here in Ventura, I considered doing a rain - hike, just to see how miserable it would be. Instead, I went today, which was the first full day of non-rain in several days. Normal place, Point Mugu State Park (Sycamore Canyon). Maybe one of these day's I'll take a close look at the trees, after all, these are Sycamore's.

So, the hike took me down Danielson Fire Road to the intersection with the Upper Sycamore Trail. Then, down the Upper Sycamore Trail to the paved Sycamore Fire Road, then up that Fire Road back to the the parking lot. This time, I took no backpack. Instead, a plastic shopping bag with a banana, granola bar, two waters and a wind breaker. Took along the GPS too.

So as with past hikes, I was sure to reset the GPS so to get good readings along the way. So, this turned out to be a four mile hike that took 1 hour 30 minutes. Really not that bad for time or physical effort. With the rains, the little stream at the valley floor (which was dry last time I did this in October) was flowing fairly nice. It was not a raging torrent of rapids. There were several water crossings and I did end up getting my feet wet. Obviously, there was little dust and it was very moist. Made the trip quite nice.

I'll be sure to do this one again sometime soon.

Kitchen Remodel, Complete

Well, we are close enough to call the kitchen remodel completed. It was a long 45 days with no kitchen. We are pleased and very happy.

The last thing that remains to be done is install the "kick" or "shoe molding" and 1/4 round moldings. Since the weather forecast is rain for the next several days, I fell and hope that work is put off until clear skies. Last thing we need is to introduce the flooring to wet boots, plus, the sawdust that would be mixed in with all the standing water outside.

We have LED lighting that is on a dimmer. That is pretty cool. You know that LED's are said to last for years and years. It does seem the actual floor space has been increased due to the layers of drywall and plaster, plus the cabinets are not as deep as the previous ones.

This was an interesting topic to blog about.

Ergo keyboard follow up

So far so good. The forearm pain is going away. My arms are positioned in a more natural position and my wrists are not angled in at an un-natural angle. About the only difficulty I'm having is getting used to some of the key locations. Overall, it's a good buy, glad I did it and I look forward to typing on it every day.

Kitchen Remodel, D-Day +32

This will be the last post until it's 100% complete. The finish carpenter, who by the way is very skilled, has been installing the crown molding, trim under the counter and installing the drawer and cabinet pull knobs. From this photo it's clear that the counter top, floor and lighting (to name a few) are not yet completed. Those are going in next week.

So next week is a big week. As mentioned above, the counter top and floor is planned for Tuesday, shortly after the electrical and plumbing will get finished off. Is it possible that this will be done on Friday? The project schedule indicated that December 7th / 8th would be the last day. Looks like a slide to the right, not too bad just a couple days is fine.

Some final painting needs to be taken care of over the weekend.