Author’s Note: Some of you readers that are also my “Friends” on Facebook® may wonder what we’re doing in Casa Grande when my last Facebook “Check-In” was in California… well, the fact is; I’m still behind on the blog because I continue to have picture download issues to my laptop. The screen will go blank all of a sudden and all I can do is restart the laptop! It seems to happen most often when I upload pictures from my iPhone… possibly a memory problem or maybe a video driver?!? I stopped trying to download pics directly from my iPhone to the laptop because if it freezes during the process, I then have to do a time-consuming rebuild of my iPhoto application (i.e., all the pics on my laptop), and that’s no fun 🙁 So as a result, I paid a little extra ($.99 per mo) to increase my iCloud space and have been letting my pictures on the iPhone upload automatically. Well, that’s fine except now my iPhone uses a lot of data uploading to iCloud and then when I want to do a blog post I then still have to expend even more data downloading from the iCloud to the laptop which turns out to be another long convoluted process that is also dependent on good internet connectivity. Today (8 Nov) as I write this post, I just recovered once again from having the laptop freeze up on me, but this time it froze up while downloading pics from iCloud! Aaaargh! We will travel to San Jose today and I will try to get the laptop fixed (a 15″ mid-2010 MacBook Pro; 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 processor; 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 memory; 500 GB DATA Hard Disk Drive; running Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5). If I can’t get it fixed, I’ll maybe look at “biting-the-bullet” and purchase a new one. Anyone looking for a used laptop? 🙂
We left the Emerald Cove Resort on the 10th of October and made it back to Casa Grande on the same day. A ~200 mile travel day. We parked in front of my Mom’s house at the “Dirt Farm”. My brother Steve & Cheryl also have a house here on the ~5 acre farm. As I’ve mentioned before – the term “Dirt Farm” is the name they gave the place, not mine… kind of a term of endearment or nickname.
You may recall from my last post I mentioned my Mom was in the hospital but is back home now and doing better every day. We’re all thankful for that 🙂
Some of you have asked about our little dog “Coach”. He’s doing fine as you can see in the picture below where you see him checking out his old favorite spot by the window on the back of the couch in the coach. How do you like that play on words? Life on the “dirt farm” appears to agree with him and Mom keeps him shaved so he stays cool in the hot Arizona sun.
We settled in at the “dirt farm” and helped out around the place as needed. Stilla always enjoys cooking meals in the kitchen as opposed to the Coach.
Soon after arriving we got to spend a day helping to round up some of the roosters running around the farm so they could be harvested, cleaned, and made ready for the fryer.
We also spent a few days helping brother Steve & Cheryl shop for a new motorhome. We made a number of trips to Phoenix and toured dealerships. They finally decided on a Super C to replace their older model Class C. We didn’t get to see the new motorhome in person yet because we left just before they picked it up.
We also spent a few days cleaning up and detailing the travel trailer that I bought for my oldest daughter when she moved (←link) to Phoenix from Colorado Springs. Sorry, no pics… I was downloading them at the time my laptop froze up again. Maybe later…
As always, we enjoyed our time (~15 days) staying with family in Casa Grande, but the next Alpine Coach Rally is scheduled to begin on 31 October, so we said our ‘see-ya-laters’ and left the “dirt farm” on 26 October to make our way.
My next post will cover our travel to the rally located in San Juan Bautista (near Monterey, CA)… stay tuned 🙂
I’m sure you’ve already tried the steps shown on Apples website for troubleshooting a similar (hopefully the same) problem with copying photos to your laptop. But here’s a link to it, just in case.