2009

I’m not really good about getting out the camera and taking pictures. The camera always seems to be back in the truck, at home, out of batteries, or stuck in my desk. Cameras built into phones has helped a little but I doubt I’ll ever be the type of person where the first instinct is to pull out a camera to capture a moment. However over the course of a year I end up accumulating an array of pictures from various events and have decided to put them together to form a sort of a Fleming Family summary of 2009. I have tried to put these in semi-chronilogical order but no guarantees….

We started off January right and Jake and I packed up the camper and headed to Morro Bay for the NFL Championships weekend. We basically spent two entire days at the Embarcadero Grill eating and enjoying endless free refills of soda! Of course Mojo the Monkey had to come along for support.

Jacob reacting in utter shock at another 4.0 GPA Principles Award. Later in the year he was stunned to learn that he had received the very first B Grade of his entire scholastic “career”.

Yet another week-long trip to Vegas. I used to love going but after a dozen years straight I’d actually rather stay in Fresno. And I lost $200.

In April Brian and I flew to Portland for a salmon fishing trip. It was cold. So cold that even a week later my testicles had yet to drop from their shrunken location in my lower abdomen. We caught one fish the whole weekend.

The 2009 Free Chipper Debacle: Jennifer scored a “free” chipper from one of her neighbors. It took four people, 23.5 man hours, a blade sharpening expert, and a round trip visit to the motor shop to discover that the “chipper” would only “chip” leaves and small branches that were already hand cut into “chip” sized pieces.

I had my first garden this year. Tons of peppers, zucchini, squash, and tomatoes. Along with the delicious fresh vegetables came the critters looking for a free meal….

My entire trapping haul from 2009 was One mama possum, 1 baby possum, and three curious neighbor cats that were wondering why the cat food was sitting so far back in that metal cage.

In one of the few times Brieana emerged from her room this year I was able to capture I glimpse of her right after her relay team won the gold medal in the 4x100 Individual Medley. She immediately returned to her room and put her headphones back on….

Jake had a championship moment of his own as his Angels team won the River Park AAA Championship. Jake knocked in the winning RBI to beat the Cubs in the Championship game!!

Post baseball game with Jake, cousin Noah, and some chick that snuck into the photo at the last second.

Speaking of chicks……

…..I don’t even know how this picture got onto my phone but bears the telltale signs of an impromptu Brieana photo shoot. Jennifer harbors illegal chickens in her backyard. Several of the chickens (possibly this one as well) eventually fell victim to a very persistence chicken-eating toy poodle named Marley.

Fresno Grizzlies game with Jake and his friend Josh.

Jake trying to heckle top Giants prospect Buster Posey into tossing him a baseball. He didn’t. He was actually sort of an ass.

Jake finally earning a little of his rent money.

This is where the time frames get sketchy so I’m just going to start posting pictures.

Labor day salmon fishing in Washington.

Labor Day Kite battles at Long Beach in Washington.

Magic Mountain with Denae’s Family, Jake and Michelle.

Jake winning 3rd place in the Clovis Unified JV Wrestling tournament.

Probably relatives of the possums I caught earlier in the year.

Some lazy surfer jumping off the Cayucos pier to avoid paddling out in the storm. I actually remember doing this when I was younger. I was fishing off the pier but only caught two tiny fish or I would have had better things to take pictures of than a seagull and the water.

Dad bought Jake a canoe for his birthday this year. The San Joaquin River is awesome!! This year we actually saw two deer on the river just up from Woodward Park. Of course I only had my camera out when Jake turned around to make a face.

I think the best trip of the year was to Tahoe. It was typical Fleming family craziness. By the end of the trip the kids were the Godfathers of the Marriott Grand Residence. We had a three bedroom suite which was probably twice the size of my house. It was a great time.

Nick “CC Rider” Mertens sporting the ice skates and the Gayviator glasses.

The members of Team Ghetto Sled

Grandpa Derral aka “The Skipper”
Grandma Becky aka “Garlic Grandma”
Brian aka “The Grand Pooba”
Denae aka “Sweetpea”
Darrin aka “Big D”
Brieana aka “Sguiggy”
Nick aka “Chubby Chaser” (Can also be shorteded to “CC” and/or “CC Rider”)
Noah aka “Colonel Klink”
Jake aka “Kowalski”

Long Live Team Ghetto Sled

I Hate Leaves!

When I purchased my home one of the last things the previous homeowner said to me before handing me the keys to my house was, "I left you a couple of rakes in the back. You're going to need them".

At the time this statement meant very little. What leaves? It wasn't until mid July that I started looking up at the massive trees, thick branches straining from the weight, and thought, "Every one of those leaves are going to be on the ground at some point".  I should have begun developing a strategy then, but for some reason I thought that if I didn't think about it that the problem would somehow go away.

Well about 3 weeks ago I noticed the first signs of trouble. It was a couple of leaves at first, then a few more, and within a week the lawn had a golden blanket of freshly fallen leaves. It was time to address the issue. Not knowing where to begin I called the City of Kingsburg.....

Clerk: City of Kingsburg
Darrin: I was wondering if the city had any sort of plan for excessive leaves.
Clerk: Well you should have a green waste can in the alley.....
Darrin: (Trying to suppress uncontrollable laughter) I think I might have more leaves than that.
Clerk: You could just bag them up in Hefty bags and then just put then in the can when you can fit them in....or...hold on let me ask somebody.

So I hear her in the background asking a fellow city employee and she informed her to tell me to just rake them out into the street and the city will occasionally come by and pick them up.

Darrin: Occasionally? Hmmm....what exactly constitutes "occasionally"?
Clerk: Well there's no set schedule

Now, imagining my leaf pile and wondering how cars will negotiate the street with my leaves in the way, I hung up. They want the leaves in the street. Then leaves they will get.....

So I grabbed my rake and it didn't take long to realize why all those gardeners carry leaf blowers. Not only was MY yard covered with leaves, but my leaves had also been blowing onto my neighbor’s yard and covering her lawn as well. Which brings up an important philosophical question......at what point is your leaf no longer your leaf? The moment it touches down in the neighbor’s yard, a week later, forever? If it blows down the block is it still your leaf? Can they trace them? But I digress.....

So out of guilt I raked MY yard and the neighbor’s yard. Of course my neighbor, rather than come out and thank me, decided to come out and let me know that the previous week her gardener had blown "MY" leaves off her yard and my yard. (I was sort of wondering where they went). It didn't take me as long as I thought and I soon had a nice Volkswagen-sized pile of leaves by the curb, patiently waiting for the next city employee on Leaf Duty.

Triumphant, I took a swig of my coffee, leaned against my rake, looked up at my yellow-leaved nemesis and had the most sobering thought of the morning...........only about 1% of the leaves have actually fallen off the tree. This is just an estimate of course, but even with a 2-3 percent margin for error I've still got a lot of leaves in my future. So....if anyone is sitting there thinking, "Hmmm....I'd better start shopping for Darrin's Christmas gift." (which I'm sure most of you are) I'm going to make your life easier.

Darrin's Christmas List:
Heavy Duty Industrial Grade 5HP Gas-powered Leaf Blower
A new rake
Stock in Hefty.

Reflecting on the Harvest: Rookie Gardening Tips

My first foray into gardening was a mix of successes and failures. I’ve always believed that that God had granted us “dominion” over the earth but most of the time my garden proved less than willing to easily succumb to my domination. I am pretty much at the end of the growing season and I have picked what I am currently considering the “final harvest” I say “currently” because it is California and any day now the temperature could rocket back up into the 80’s and within 48 hours I’ll have a fresh batch of mid-November veggies waiting for me when I get home.

However, I am going to assume that this is it.

My tomatoes stopped producing a while back which left me with peppers, a few more peppers, and still another round of peppers. This is what I picked last night which doesn’t account for the two bags I froze and the dozen peppers I roasted last night for dinner. I’m through with peppers!!!!!

Since this is my first garden I decided to help other rookie gardeners with a list of the things to expect from your first garden.

1. A gang of snails can and will completely decimate an entire garden of seedling plants almost overnight. Forget all the online organic crap they try to tell you will work to get rid of them. Go for the snail poison early and often.

2. If you start seeing veggies disappear overnight and you think something might be eating them, something probably IS eating them. I figured my neighbor was helping herself until I caught the real thief……

Possums appear to prefer zucchini, bell peppers, and squash. They tended to shy away from the jalapeno peppers and Anaheim chili’s. They must have been gringo possums.

3. Plant half as many zucchini plants as you thing you will consume. You’ll have so much zucchini that by the end of the season you’ll be making zucchini ice cream just to use up the damn things.

4. Ditch the organic dream while you still have your sanity. 100% organic is only for the jobless hippies that have nothing better to do than pick weeds and hand remove bugs off the leaves all day.

5. Don’t overwater your tomatoes. Just don’t.

6. Don’t plant and pick Habenero peppers unless you are certified in the safe handling of bio-hazardous chemicals. Just one of those buggers in a batch of salsa will eat through a plastic bowl. I don’t even want to know what it did to my stomach.

7. Your tomatoes probably aren’t going to be as pretty as the shiny red hot-house ones you buy in the store, but they will taste a thousand times better.

8. Use copious amounts of Miracle Grow.

9. Deny using Miracle Grow. You just have a green thumb right?

10. Enjoy your garden.

The garden didn’t turn out perfect, but it was fun and there was a certain sense of accomplishment in growing even the small about of food I was able to produce. Next year I may expand my garden but for now I am taking a well deserved winter break and giving my soil a little rest.

Introducing my son to ‘Grease’

So last Saturday I sat on the couch with my son and watched the movie ‘Grease’. There are few movies that transcend generations but Grease is a movie that you can view one or a hundred times and it’s like a brand new movie. I realized early in life that I was soul mates with Olivia Newton-John. Olivia didn’t realize this at first but after a few years and a couple of restraining orders she embraced my role as possibly her biggest fan.

So as you might imagine driving to work today I was stunned when I spotted the billboard……

In huge letters the billboard read "Olivia Newton-John: August 24th"!!! I about took out the car next to me as I took a double-take, not sure I was actually seeing what I was seeing. I got to work and had to check it out for myself. Sure enough, August 24th at the Chuckchansi Gold Indian Casino, Olivia will be in concert! The reality is still sinking in.

This news brought back many memories. I fondly recall the first time I watched Grease. Innocent Sandy struggling with her feelings for the "bad boy". All set to rather catchy music. Of course the "money shot" being the moment at the end of the movie where the innocent Sandy waltzed into the school carnival (I still wonder why my school never had rides at their carnival) wearing skin tight black leather pants. It's a mental image not easily forgotten and the subject of several late night adolescent moments of self gratification.

It was also the moment I knew that she was the one for me. From that point forward every girl would be measured against what would become known as the "Grease Olivia Leather Pants Entrance". Of course as the years went by other points of reference were added like the "Lets Get Physical" video and the roller skating scene in Xanadu.

Disappointingly, her film career went downhill after Xanadu, but what do you expect? Once you've stared in a masterpiece like that there's really nowhere to go but down. Plus I think she got typecast as a Disco Roller-skating Greek Muse. Those roles don't come around every day.

Her hits span over three decades, but one song stands out. "Have You Never Been Mellow" is pure genius. You can't listen to that song without really looking deep inside and asking yourself...."Have I never been mellow?" With introspective lyrics like that it's no wonder she's still a hot ticket on the Indian casino circuit.

Of course no discussion of Olivia would be complete without the mention of perhaps one of the greatest songs ever penned....Magic, another Xanadu soundtrack hit. I can't listen to this song without feeling an overwhelming urge to strap on a pair old roller-skates and do a reverse direction couples-only skate. Oh the memories....

I enjoyed July 5th more…..

This year July 4th was fairly uneventful. Typically my kids and I travel to Portland, Oregon to visit my parents. We spend the weekend eating, drinking, and lighting off the type of fireworks that would put any California Fire Captain into an asylum. Unlike California the residents of Oregon and Washington get to enjoy fireworks that actually leave the ground. If you have the budget you can buy mortars that can be seen from Idaho on a clear day.

So as you might imagine my kids having grown up playing Roman Candle wars with their cousins were not really interested in buying a couple of “safe and sane” fountains. So we took in the local fireworks show and decided that the next day we would go fishing.

Little did I know that on this 5th of July 2009 we would do a lot more “catching” than “fishing”. Courtright Reservoir, Elevation 8,170 feet. (We actually saw snow not too far above the lake). 13 fish in 4 hours. We would have had our limit (15 fish) but Brieana decided it was time for us to leave. And as most of you men know when the woman is ready leave you pretty much need to start packing up regardless of the fishing action. :)

It was certainly one of the better day’s we’ve had recently and we ate every bit of the catch though with 13 fish I needed to get creative. So after pan frying the first night I found a really good recipe online for baked trout. Click here to see it. I added a couple of fresh chilies and a jalapeño from the garden to spice it up. Then after baking it I topped it with some fresh tomatoes. I also used fat-free sour cream just because I don’t need the extra calories.

I also realized one of the reasons I actually decided to have kids…………..so I don’t have to clean all the fish!! He’s actually pretty good.

Disneyland on Steroids…

Saturday I drove to Livermore, CA. to pick up Jake from my sisters. On my way to pick him up I noticed a huge building off the freeway with a sign that said, “Bass Pro Shops”. I picked Jake up and told him that before lunch we were going to take a side trip. He asked “to were?” and I told him a “fishing store”. He was moderately enthused until we walked in the door….

It was as if Walt Disney himself designed the perfect 120,000 square foot theme park/retail store. Shooting gallery’s, bow hunting demos, aquariums, stuffed wildlife, and EVERY outdoor product imaginable. I consider myself to me somewhat of a sporting goods store connoisseur but nothing prepared me for this.

I could have spent all day there.

I told Jake to “look natural and act like you’re about to get eaten”. The most disappointing part of the trip for Jake is that I refused to buy him a “souvenir”. He wanted a machete….. 

It took all of my parental restraint to deny my son this tool of destruction but I refused. If he knew how close he was to talking me into it he would probably be a machete owner. Few things in life are more empowering than a 24 inch razor sharp serrated blade in the hands of a 9 year old. 

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