Webb Family Blog

Today, I had a visit from a Water Conservation Specialist from the City of Roseville. He gave me several pointers on how to fix my irrigation system around the house… for the lawn, flowers and garden. He also mentioned a pilot study on a weather-controlled irrigation control system that the city is paying for. I plan on making the fixes he suggested and join this pilot study. The system uses a Weathermatic SmartLine (SL1600) controller and (SLW20) weather station and a computer-designed system that takes the different plants, sprinkler heads, topography and weather, including EvapoTransporation into consideration in determining how long and how often to irrigate what zones. The system costs around $1000 (paid for by the city) and all the labor is provided by the City of Roseville, although I’d have to be there during the entire installation (not a problem). Apparently, there is also remote management of the system as well. After 1 year of use, the system belongs to me with no cost to me. It sounds like something I’d REALLY like.

Again, for those reading this directly on my web page, you may see a few more subtle differences in the way the pages look. I’ve been learning more and more about Cascading Style Sheets and how to make simple edits to make changes throughout the pages. I’m hoping to see if anyone can spot the changes now.

I’ve been at it again. This time, I’ve added a simple photo gallery to the blog. It isn’t as perfect as I’d like, but it was fairly simple. I used a plugin called "Duh Gallery". I have had to make a few modifications to it and there is apparently a size limit to the pictures. Apparently the person that wrote this made it for a language other than English, as the "Previous" and "Next" buttons were in a foreign language. I also had to work out a few other small bugs. I now have it working at least. In case you are curious as to the names of the galleries, they are taken from the directory the pictures are located in; Linux does not allow for spaces and punctuation in the names of directories. So far, I’ve added 2 galleries… pictures taken by my mother-in-law Donna Weifert at a family gathering at Sizzler in Roseville, and pictures taken by my father Fred Webb at our Mother’s Day gathering at our house. Eventually, I’ll have some of our wedding pictures up here as well as other galleries.

It’s Memorial Day and Kellie and I have again done a bit of work around the house, although not as ambitious as we’ve been in previous weekends. We’ve built tomato cages for all 11 of the tomato plants and a larger one for the tomatillo.  We planted flowers in the spot near the front door.  We bought 6 plants, and I hope they fill-in the area.  At the moment, they are fairly evenly spaced apart.  Also in the front, we placed stepping stones from the side of the house down to the street… since I usually park down there.  Kellie also planted some spices in small earthen-ware pots… like sage, basil, cilantro, oregano and chives.  We also put up 2 additional umbrellas in the backyard.  I fixed the BBQ ignition system, so we don’t need a lighter.  It works great now.  We plan on using those umbrellas and BBQ shortly, as the Weiferts are coming over soon. 

There is one other thing I accomplished this morning.  I’m HOPING that people reading this from the web site, rather than from an email notice the change I made to the look of the web page.  I’ve been trying to learn all about Cascading Style Sheets for a while and I’ve made yet another breakthrough in my knowledge of them.  I’m still not a master at it, but I have learned how to modify the way my blog looks.  I guess that is all for now.

After having some worries about how well our garden is doing, we finally see the first fruit of the garden… a pepper.

The hydrangea plants are starting to flower as well. Overall, it feels as if we’re finally getting somewhere. We have also been growing some weeds, so unfortunately, we have more work to be done tomorrow.

On Friday, Kellie returned to work. She survived, and people seemed to be nice to her upon her return. On my second transport, we ended up transporting to Kaiser North’s Pediatrics ICU, which is in the same area as the Medical ICU area that Kellie works in. I was able to see her at work. After getting home, I made dinner and we sat down on the couch. I started rubbing her sore feet and she quickly fell asleep. We went to bed much earlier than we normally do and I at least had a good night’s rest. It was this morning, after I woke up that I went out and saw our first pepper.

Obviously I’m not posting as often as I SHOULD, but I figured I’d make a post.

Yesterday, Kellie was scheduled to take CPR class, as her card is expiring and she needs to return to work on Friday and needs the new card. Her CPR class has already been moved back 2 previous times. She showed up for class and since it was a renewal, she had to show her old card. Unfortunately, the last time she took CPR, the instructor was being a cheapskate and didn’t want to pay the fees for the American Heart Association’s cards, so they issued their own CPR cards that say it is the "Greater Sacramento Area" CPR. It SUPPOSEDLY is taught to AHA standards, but without paying for the AHA administrative fees. There are MANY CPR training centers that are doing this, but it is up to the discretion of employers as to whether they except them or not. Apparently JCAHO is cracking down on this. JCAHO is an accreditation organization for hospitals. Anyways, this class WAS an AHA class and they refused to accept her non-AHA card for re-certification. Kellie called me, quite frustrated when she found this out. I was thinking to myself, "This is ludicrous for MY wife to have a problem with getting a CPR card, when I’m an American Heart Association CPR instructor." I called up the Queen of the Valley Hospital, which is my training center and called to check about teaching an impromptu 1-on-1 class. They said that should be fine, so I called Kellie up and we headed off to Napa. We were done pretty quickly, as I didn’t have to answer a lot of questions nor give a lot of direction. We DID do a proper class, with the education coordinator being across the hall to assure all was done on the up-and-up. I was able to take care of some other teaching-related issues while I was there too. After the our "class", I met with my friend Jennie Hind, the Trauma Coordinator for the Queen of the Valley Hospital. She mentioned that she was supposed to be giving a speech on trauma care to Angwin Community Ambulance later that night. We decided that would be fun to go to, so we took our time the rest of the day in Napa County.

After leaving the hospital, we first went up to St. Helena and ate at Pizzeria Tra Vigne… a place I enjoy going to. The food was good as always, but service was terrible. We then headed out Highway 128 to Lake Berryessa. I showed Kellie many of the locations of many ambulance calls I’d been on around the lake. We then progressed over to Pope Valley. I then ran into Brad Kirkpatrick and his wife Elgie. Brad has been the fire chief of the Pope Valley Fire Department for quite awhile and Elgie used to run on a lot of medical calls when I was on the ambulance company. I had a good visit with them, as well as meeting with their son Keith and soon-to-be daughter-in-law Sara. We then proceeded up to Angwin and went to the Angwin Market… a grocery store that has many otherwise hard to find vegemeats. I saw my old friend and fire chief Avery Browne. I visited with him for a while. I was very happy to have run into him, as he is a very busy man. His regular paid job is as a Lieutenant with the California Highway Patrol in the busy Golden Gate Division (San Francisco Bay Area Counties) dealing with traffic management. After leaving the market, I showed Kellie many of the nice homes in Angwin… we had to waste a bit of time before ambulance drill.

We then made it to the Angwin Firehouse. We saw that they had a few new vehicles. I’d already seen the new Rescue 18, which arrived shortly after I moved away, but they had received 2 additional new vehicles. They have a new 2500 gallon water tender (Water Tender 18) and a new Truck 18. The new truck is the former Yountville truck company, which is a crew-cab 50′ TeleSquirt. It is at least better than the old Truck 18, but I’d have rather seen a REAL truck company, like an 85 foot elevated platform. Telesquirts are essentially a big pipe that extends up a distance with a ladder attached to the backside of it. It is not designed for rescuing people off a height, but rather a ladder to get up… one person at a time. Elevated platforms usually allow for several firefighters in the basket at a time, or rescues, as well as flowing water out of a pipe. Oh, well.

I was also checking out the "old" ambulances. Both of the rigs are older than the one I normally work in, but they both appear brand new still, while the rig I work in now looks pretty old. Noel Ojeda, the president of the board for Angwin Community Ambulance showed me they have a new computer system for doing Pre-Hospital Reports in each rig. They are on TabletPCs with a Bluetooth-based printer. It was VERY cool. They use the Zoll Data System’s RescueNet TabletPCR program. I played with it for a bit. I met with many of my old friends, including my "cousin" Billy Saunders. I can never remember the relation, but I THINK he’s my second cousin. My friend Monica Swanson also came for the "class" that Jennie put on. Kellie and I were both pretty tired and I had to be up early this morning, so we left around 9:20PM. All-in-all, it turned out to be a good day.

As you may have read in my last post… I’ve been busy with yard work. Today, we had a “Work Bee” at our house. My mom and dad (Fred and Arlene Webb) with Grandma Christiansen, had been up at Terri’s in Reno, and they came down, as well as Kellie’s mom and dad (Phil and Donna Weifert), her sister Leslie with Donna’s parents. The night before, Kellie couldn’t wait any longer to plant some vegetables, so she planted them under the light of a floor standing light that I moved around the backyard. This morning, she continued planting some plants and I started putting in the 5/8″ micro-irrigation pipe. I was working on this when my parents came. When they arrived, I showed them around a bit, then my mom went out and picked weeds under the bushes to the side of our house, while my dad helped me with the irrigation work. We put in the pipe and then went to pressure test the system. We found a leak near the Anti-Siphon Valve, and had to fix it. After that was working, my mom had finished pulling the weeds, so we pulled out the weed-block fabric and installed it under the bushes. I plan on putting in bark, to cover the fabric. We put in more micro-irrigation pipe on the front side of the house before we sat down to eat. We had a great meal, prepared by the Weifert clan. We had BBQ’d portabella mushrooms used as hamburger with some grilled vegetables and corn on the cob. Kellie then brought out an Angel-food cake with Cool-Whip, whipped pineapples and strawberries. It was quite delicious… everything was. We all sat around a big table under a big umbrella on our back porch.

This table we sat around has another story to go with it. We purchased the patio table used via Craigslist. It was a glass-topped table with 6 chairs. The big umbrella went through the middle of the table. It was quite nice. Unfortunately, on Monday, I was cleaning up the back yard and had to move the table. I’d taken the umbrella out for moving and when I attempted to put it back, the umbrella torqued and shattered the glass surface. We had to get a new top for the table, so we got a big piece of ¹⁹/₃₂” plywood and rested it on top. We used blue sheets from our wedding as a table cloth, as well as other blue sheets as cushion covers. Considering we had 10 people, it was nicer to have a larger table then the original glass-topped table.

Another thing we did was to put in some lighting for the garden area. We currently have one light in the backyard and it doesn’t light much up… not even the full patio area. The area where the garden is not visible at night. I’d been thinking of getting low-voltage lighting to highlight the area, but I was contemplating where I’d get the power from and try to make it look nice. I then saw something at Sam’s Club that I hope fills the bill. It is solar-powered lighting. I got 12 of these lights (2 boxes of 6). They look nice, but I need to let the batteries get some charge, so I’m keeping them off for 3 days. They light up automatically when it gets dark and they stay on until the batteries get too low. I’m not sure how long that will be.

Being that it was Mother’s Day, there were gifts for all the mothers. Kellie got lemon and lime squeezers for the mothers and Leslie got flowers for all the mothers.

After eating, my dad and I went to get some more parts for irrigation and then came back and installed much of the little water emitters. We ran out of ¼” tubing, so we had to call it quits after doing MOST of the back yard. We went inside and did a bit on the computer before everyone headed off home.

I enjoyed the day, but now I’m tired and going to bed.

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve made a post to the blog. Last time I wrote, we were in Ensenada, Mexico. In Ensenada, we took a bus out to the “Blow Hole”, which is a half-hour or so bus ride, south of Ensenada. During this trip, we had a tour guide who spent much of his time explaining how to smuggle illegal things back into the US… like Cuban cigars and more than the allowable alcohol. I personally found this entertaining, but not very practical education.

The next day, we spent out at sea. It doesn’t take over 24 hours to get from Ensenada to Long Beach, but they went extremely slow to allow for it. We got passed by oil tankers and had a Navy destroyer do a large circle around us. That day was very “rocky” on the ship. Some people were getting sea sick because of it.

On Friday morning, we pulled into port in Long Beach. This process was fairly uneventful. Kevin picked us up and brought us back to Huntington Beach. The next day, we went to the Costa Mesa SDA Church, which is were Vicki goes. The next day was Easter Sunday, and Vicki had been invited over to an Easter Brunch/Birthday party. It was a birthday party for the pastor of the Costa Mesa SDA Church and his daughters were throwing the party. Everyone was supposed to bring filled eggs for the Easter Egg Hunt, but there were only 3 kids… Xander, Quinn and the pastor’s granddaughter. They all had tons of eggs each.

On Monday, we headed home. It was rather uneventful. We arrived late at night, as we left after noon and took our time getting home. On Tuesday, I went and picked up Bear from the kennel. He looked as though he didn’t eat while he was there. I returned to work on that Wednesday.

Kellie has now been “authorized” by her foot surgeon to bear some weight, that has now been over a week ago. Since then, she has pretty much abandoned the brace and is walking with just a wrap much of the time. Her foot is still a bit swollen, so finding some shoes not fitting due to swelling, but at least she is more mobile.

As I’m a first-time home owner in my home for the first Spring, things have been VERY busy around here. There has been much needed to be done around here. We’ve planted 3 new trees, but taken 2 out. I added 2 “Littleleaf Lindens” (Tilia cordata) to the park-strip on the side of our house. I also added a Saucer Magnolia (Magnolia soulangiana) to the back yard. I planted the Littleleaf Lindens on either side of my plum tree. Initially, I had a 24″ ring around the trees in the park strip, to keep the grass away from the trunk. When we had a representative from the Roseville Urban Forest Foundation come out to our house before-hand and said we should give more room. I ended up making big squares, instead of circles around the trees. I cut away ALL the grass from the tree to both the road and sidewalk along the park strip, which was 5 feet. I then went 5 feet wide, to make a square. I then placed pressure treated 2×6 wood on the border between the grass and tree and filled it in with cedar mulch. Other big projects I’ve worked on has been removing grass/weeds from the cracks in the sidewalk. That took me a long time of menial labor. We had neighbor come by and saw what I was doing. He came over with a gas-powered metal-blade edger and went down the cracks with it. It was MUCH quicker. I had just purchased an electric blower and blew out the cracks to clear them of dirt. The front of the house is looking much better, except that now that it has stopped raining, the lawn has dried out. I needed to fix sprinkler heads. I damaged 2 in the process of planting the trees and had to replace them. I also found that the area where all the sprinkler valves are located, the area is constantly soaking wet and the tree that was there was leaning over a bit… I ended up pulling the tree. I then found the source of the water was a leaky Anti-Siphon Valve (ASV). Last Tuesday, I replaced that, but didn’t have time to test it until this weekend.

Now… for this weekend… I feel like I accomplished a bit this weekend. I finished the work on the sprinklers. I then marked out where the sprinkler pipe ran under ground to the backyard, as well as buried drainage pipe, as I was planning on getting a rototiller to rototill the backyard. I also removed the rose bushes in the backyard, as Kellie would like to replace them with hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla). Once having the “danger” areas marked, I rented the rototiller from Home Depot. That was somewhat of an adventure in itself. Unfortunately, the Home Depot near our house was all rented out of rototillers, so I had to go to the Antelope store. I was talked into a mid-tine model, despite my better judgment. I was assured that it was the best for what I wanted to do. I came home and started. I was getting aggravated quickly… it was jumping all around and difficult to control. It really wasn’t doing much either. I called in and complained that I needed a different model. I had to go back to Antelope and picked up the rear-tiller, that I originally had planned on getting. They credited me for the first one. I came home and did some work. I was able to mulch up all the compost I’ve accumulated on the side yard. That soil is VERY black. It was difficult work, but I got it all done. I have a few more things I plan on doing around the yard today, but there will be more to do next weekend.

This coming weekend, we have a family day planned. I’d like to finish off the yard and garden, and put in micro-irrigation to the newly planted areas. My parents, as well as Kellie’s parents will be over next Sunday, which also happens to be Mother’s Day. We are planning on having a dinner here for our mothers. I BELIEVE we’ll have 4 mothers altogether… My mother, Kellie’s mother, my mother’s mother and Kellie’s mother’s mother. I’m hoping it will be both productive and fun.