Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today was the Rose Parade here in Pasadena. And it rained on the parade for the first time since 1955. So we didn’t go, and I’m told that lots of other people didn’t go either.

In the past, they parked the horse trailers on our street to collect the horses at the end of the parade, but this time they had the trailers at the St. Luke’s parking lot up the street. So I just got one soggy-horse picture.

The National Weather Service had issued a flash flood warning for Los Angeles County today. The rain was bucketing down for a while here. When it stopped, I went outside and snapped a picture of what passed for storm damage on our street.

Later, we took our dogs for a walk. We passed the shuttle buses for people who came to see the floats. I had to take a picture of the ‘Live in Baton Rouge’ advertisement. It’s always odd to see places advertising for people to move there. And the ‘viva mas barato’ just clinched the deal. Back when we lived in Hollywood, there was a store near our house called ‘Las 3-B: Bueno, Bonito, Barato’. So we always get a little laugh from stuff like this.

Since today is the first of the year, I looked at my records to see how much I used my car last year. I have a little notebook in the car where I record every time I do maintenance or put gas in the car. And according to this, I drove my car 1705 miles in 2005. I was actually a bit surprised by this. I thought it would be less. I guess that the 274 miles I put on going to San Diego this week made a difference. In any event, I guess I’m about due for an oil change. The last time I did it was May 1, 2004.