12-1-18 Sat

Well, I'm in real trouble! I got a nasty email from my good friend Larry and he only asked one question with one word, "Blog?????" because I forgot to put the blog out this morning so here it is almost noon and I'm working on it.

How was your Thanksgiving? This Thanksgiving I was giving thanks for Harriet. I'm so thankful that God gave me a godly woman, that was beautiful, hard-working, disciplined, cooked, cleaned and she love me in spite of my shortcomings. That is true love! Of course I loved her the same way, but I feel it was a lot easier, because she wasn't perfect but just close, real close. I Still Love You Honey!

I've been keeping busy, it seems that there's always something to do. Now that we are in December officially I'm going to get ready for my trip to Hawaii. I leave on December 17th and return on January 18th. I have to get all my drone equipment ready which means, draining the batteries to less than 20% and packing them carefully so there are no problems when transported to Hawaii. Batteries cannot be shipped on a passenger plane they have to go to cargo plane. I'll show you some of the warning stickers that I have to put on the box and it's not cheap to send them because they weigh so much. But, I've got it get them over there or else I can't fly and make the surf videos.

I'm hoping for a couple of good North swells to come through while I'm there. I'm staying on the North Shore of Oahu about a half a block from the beach close to Foodland if you know where that is. Lord willing, I'll have some great pictures to share with you.

Every year when we went to Hawaii, we would get a picture of the 2 of us at our favorite restaurant which is Dukes. That's where this first picture was taken. This picture was taken in 2007. Harriet is beautiful and I'm overweight.

In 2001, it was the first time we had ever gone to Hawaii and we were celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary a few days earlier. Our wedding anniversary is on September 4 which also happens to be my mother's birthday. But look at the year, 2001. 7 days after our anniversary, it was 9/11. We were planning to leave on 23 September for Hawaii. After 9/11 it seems like 95% of people decided not to travel to Hawaii or anywhere else by air because of the hijackers. Harriet and I were going regardless. It was amazing Waikiki was almost empty of tourists and we had a great time. Here's a picture.

Boy, Harriet really is beautiful! Not only on the outside but on the inside too!


I know this is early, I would like to wish everybody a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!  The next blog post should be from Hawaii.

Maranatha,
Frank

11-3-18 Sat.

This year seems to be going by so quickly! Here we are in November getting ready for Thanksgiving.

During this past month I've had the opportunity to take my grandson Timothy out for some driving lessons. He had his learning permit, so I took them over to Blossom Valley and we drove around there for hours. He actually was doing pretty good and then I took them out on the freeway and we drove on the freeway toward El Centro. This was over a period of days, not all on the same day.

I mentioned this to Sarah and our daughter Sarah said that Lilly is also learning to drive and it is "scary, scary"! I thought that described it very well.

On Wednesday mornings I meet with our son Daniel at Emma's Mexican restaurant in Santee. I took a picture of him this last Wednesday because of the food that he ordered it was so huge. Here's the picture, he had the chimichanga breakfast plate if you're interested in ordering.

Afterwards he comes over to my house and we watch an action movie and critique it. Along with catching up on all the things that happened in the past week. Most of you know that Daniel is driving Uber. So every week he has some unusual stories. I thought he had an interesting observation this last Wednesday. He's only responding to what he sees and talking to people that are getting in and out of his vehicle. He made this comment about Halloween and I'm quoting as closely as I can, "Halloween gives the girls an opportunity to dress is slutty as they want and men to put on a dress and say, it's just Halloween"! I don't really feel comfortable about telling you how little clothing the women have on that he mentioned, it's less than a 2 piece bathing suit at the beach.




My friends Larry, Bob and I videoed the Tourmaline Surf Contest early in October and I'm can try and add a link here in case you're interested in seeing what it looks like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgRsxyCZvrE&feature=youtu.be

 I think that's about it for this month. I'll include a picture of my girl. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving day and may the Lord bless and keep you and may his face shine upon you all the days your life!

Maranatha,
Frank

Harriet and our son Joe 2004

10 7 18 Tourmaline Classic Sunday

10-6-18

I'm working on this blog post early because Saturday and Sunday there's a surf contest in Pacific Beach and they asked Larry and myself to go down there and video the contest. The contest start's like really early so we got to get down there and I won't have time to post the blog so I thought I'd do it today. On Sunday, we will go after church and get the final 3 hours of the contest.

It was Harriet's birthday this month. Last month I had my birthday and Larry and Judy & Bob and Diana took me out for a hamburger for my birthday. They gave me birthday cards. I wanted to show you something special that Diana did. Check out the picture. You see candy bars and you see some typed paper. I'm gonna read the first couple of lines to you so you can get the drift of what's going on.

"Turning 72 is nothing to (Snicker) about there are a few things to look forward to. Your mind will play (Twix) on you. Your joints will begin to (Crunch) and you will have (Butterfingers). Diana inserted candy bars instead of the words that I put in brackets. It was very cool and delicious!

I wanted to bring something up. Last week we had all those terrible hearings going on in Washington DC. So last Friday I was listening to KFI which is a Los Angeles station and one of the commentators made this statement, "80% of rapes are not recorded". What a stupid, stupid thing to say. How can you possibly put a percentage number on something that's not reported? It could be 99% of rapes are not reported or it could be 1%. "Then during the week I watched a movie and a guys reading article out of a newspaper and he says," 87.2% of your average salary goes for housing". That is crazy, you could not survive on 12.8% to meet the rest of your needs, auto, gas, electricty, food, Ins, just to name a few.
How do people get away with putting these numbers out there and we have people who are so devoid of knowledge, they don't understand what's going on. Lest you think I'm going over the brink, I heard a number of years ago a  reporter say that there are 10,000 new homeless people every week in the United States". You just have to do the math and you find out really soon their more homeless people than people that are paying taxes. That my friend is an exaggeration.

Okay I'm done venting. I just feel that people lose all credibility when they do things as I described above.

I hope you have a great weekend.

Maranatha!

Frank

Pic taken 10 years ago

416

This will be the 416th post I've done since I started doing the blog. Honestly I didn't realize there were so many posts. The reason I bring this up is because I got it email from Daniel this past week. A few days ago he sat down and read every post from the very beginning! He was not here one Harriet was going through chemotherapy. So, he got a real good feeling for what it was like. God bless you Daniel!



I wanted to included a picture of my good friend Larry. We've been friends for over 25 years and Larry goes flying and taking the surf videos with me. So he and his wife Judy went to breakfast and here's a picture of him taunting me with a beautiful piece of bacon.

That's just the way I like it cooked extra crisp no rubber! Actually, that's looking really good right about now at 5 AM.

We just completed the Book of Daniel in the Monday night Bible class. Monday is Labor Day so were taking that day off and then we're going to show on 3 consecutive Mondays, messages given by Walid Shabbat concerning The Minor Prophets and End times. It's really excellent.

Pastor Jack is starting a new series on the Book of Genesis this Sunday. If you don't have a good place to worship the Lord, I would encourage you to give East Valley Christian Fellowship a try. First service starts at 9 AM on Sunday morning. I will see you there!

God bless you and keep you. Maranatha!
Frank

Sat. 8-4-18

This morning it is Saturday, August 4, 2018, 2 days short of 3 years since Harriet died. 3 Years and a lot has happened since then. Boy, I sure miss my wife. I know you've heard this before, I'll just say it one more time, Harriet was the best part of my entire life. Now she's gone and there's a be empty space. I was thinking of the verses in first Corinthians chapter 15, where Paul the apostle talks about the resurrection and the resurrection body.

⁵⁵ O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
⁵⁶ The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
⁵⁷ But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1Cor. 15:55-57

This is the picture I have sitting just below my monitors so that every time I worked on the computer it's right there and I can see my girl.

This is one of my favorite pictures,. Harriet  and our son Joe.

Okay I guess that's enough going down memory lane. Now to bring you up to speed on my car accident. If I remember correctly I included the picture of my van last month's blog post. My van was totaled and of course the insurance company never gives you enough money to replace the vehicle with the equivalent. I'd looking since the accident because I was given the advice that it looks like the vehicle would be total and I was prepared. I was looking at the smaller Hyundai Tucson which is there smallest SUV they make. I went around with my son Daniel and tested a few of them and I found one up in Cardiff that had all the things I wanted on it electronically speaking, and my friend Larry took me up there on a Friday and I purchased the vehicle. I had to add about $3500 of my own money to get this 2012. It really is in pristine condition. They must have garaged it and taking excellent care of it. Here's a couple of pictures.

This car drives so good, the steering is so tight I just love it. I'm getting 42% better gas mileage than my van and since I can't use my surfboard anymore this will take care of all my needs. Realistically you can seat for adults and one child. At this point in time the most people I carry around our 2 of my grandchildren Samuel and Ethan. So this will work great.

I made a startling discovery a couple of weeks ago when I was watering Harriet's  plant that's on her nightstand. Check out the picture below.

You see all those little branches that are heading toward the window, I just realized there was another little branch that missed the window and went down behind the nightstand so I didn't notice it. Now I've moved it, it is growing out into the bedroom and eventually if I keep feeding it and watering it it will take over my entire house and then the world. 

Last week I was videoing at Windansea and my drone was attacked by a squadron of seagulls. Probably a half dozen of them and they kept swooping down making extremely threatening passes at my drone. I was able to capture one of the frames of the seagull that was flying right toward the drone. Look at this picture and look at the face of the seagull he's really ticked off.

I'm going to pick up our grandsons Samuel and Ethan and bring them back to my place this morning. They are such fun kids. We have this regular routine and they are a lot of fun to be with them.

I think that's about it. I hope that you have a great weekend.

Maranatha,
Frank

Sat. 7-7-18

July 7th is the day I will not forget. I graduated from high school 1964 and a month later on July 7th I was boarding a plane to fly up to Alameda California for boot camp. I joined the Coast Guard reserve in May just a few months earlier. This happens to be one of the smarter moves I've ever made.

While I was in boot camp we got news of the situation in Vietnam and the escalation began. I was fortunate enough, not to be called out from reserve to active duty.

Last Sunday I was heading home from church at approximately 10:48 AM there was a slow down on westbound I-8 by the Mollison offramp in El Cajon. I was able to stop, but the guy behind me driving a Ford Excursion 4 x 4 was unable to stop. When you look at the picture below of my van, note that he did not make contact with my bumper. Because it was lifted high it went right into the back of my liftgate. If you look carefully you can see the imprint of his Lic. Plate, right below my Lic. Plate.

Fortunately he has insurance and taking 100% responsibility. The bad news is they are going to total my van because the last I heard from the bodyshop it's over $8000 worth of damage so far. I started getting pain in my left shoulder and neck the following day. I went and saw the doctor a couple of days ago and this is the proverbial "soft tissue injury". I've never experienced this type of injury before and I'm just surprised at the pain involved. They said the pain will continue for about 2 weeks and then it takes approximately 2 months for the healing process if we're lucky.

As you know in March 2017 we lost the lease for our church building. The past year I've been going to a nice church and the pastor's great. About 3 months ago I asked the guys in the sound booth if they could use some help? The lady that was currently doing the live streaming, said that she could use an alternate and I started my training. God bless Michelle she trained me well. Now for the past 2 months I've been doing it hundred percent of the time and she's got a different job in the children's Sunday school.

I took a picture of what it looks like so that you can see. They have 3 cameras that are attached to the back of the church either the ceiling or the wall and the 4th is the projector which projects onto the screen. There are 3 monitors starting from the right and going to the left, the right monitor has 4 segments and you can see the 3 different views from the cameras and then the one that is in black and white are the verses that go up on the screen if you look on the platform you can see the same verse on the screen.. The other 3 segments of the screen are the 3 video camera views and they're all adjustable zooming in and out, left and right, up and down. One of the 3 video camera angles this live, then I have a 2nd camera set up to transfer the image to the main screen. Transitions from one screen to the next are about every 10 to 12 seconds. This way people don't get bored watching the same image. The separate monitor that's in the center shows the live image and the monitor to the left shows what it looks like in live streaming if you're watching this on your computer or television. Anyway I like these type of things and I find it challenging to get the best angle and position possible.

 Yesterday it was 107° in Santee. That's the hottest it's been for a long time. Today it's going to be down in the 90s and then it will go down into the 80s the following day. I'm taking my grandkids to see one of those action movies that's kids appropriate. We have so much fun together. I've heard it said that grandkids are a reward for not killing your kids while they were growing up and misbehaving. That's not very nice, but you get the drift

I've not taken a whole lot of surf videos because the waves have not been real great. We had a swell that came in yesterday but it's not just the size of the waves, there has to be some good form. It takes a lot of time to do the videoing, editing and posting to YouTube and I don't want to waste my time on 1 to 2 foot waves.

 Here's the Father's Day card I got from Joe and Hilda.

 There's a piece of fabric that imitates here and of course it was a humorous thing. Joe and Hilda are great!

Here's a picture I took of Harriet, Hilda and the grandsons in January 2013 at In-N-Out hamburgers.

Here's a picture of my good friend Pastor Mike and Harriet, taken on the North Shore of Oahu at Turtle Bay Restaurant. They're very good hamburgers. What is interesting about this little restaurant if they have wood framed glass pocket doors and they slide all the way back into the wall that all of a sudden you are outside and of course it has the million-dollar view.

The picture below was taken at Duke's restaurant in Waikiki about 2013. I still miss my girl. You know I don't that will ever go away. They say the time heals all. I'm not sure if that's true.

That's about it for this time. I hope everyone's doing well.

Maranatha,
Frank