I mentioned in my last post that Donna was heading to San Diego to visit her sister, Sheila. I dropped her off at the airport a week ago on Thursday morning. She had a short, enjoyable time there. Friday she went hiking with Sheila on the Los Penasquitos Canyon Trail.

This trail is in the Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve – a park jointly managed by the city of San Diego and San Diego County. There’s a parking/day use fee of $3. They hiked the trail to the waterfall – a hike of about seven miles. The preserve is located north of the Mira Mesa neighborhood and straddles the city limit. It follows the Penasquitos Creek which flows from Poway Creek in the east to the Pacific Ocean near Torrey Pines. Here are some photos she took on the hike.

There’s a small gravesite along the trail with a headstone for John Eichar dating back to 1882. He’s believed to have been a cook at the ranch that once occupied this land.

Friday night Donna attended a concert that her nephew, Connor, played in. He plays saxophone in the Bishop’s School band. Bishop’s is a private college prepatory Episcopal school in La Jolla. She said the school band is very talented. Connor performed several improvised jazz solos and also wrote a piece of chamber music for two alto saxophones and a euphonium.

While Donna was away, I modified my Marshall 112 speaker cabinet. The Marshall 112MX comes equipped with a Celestion seventy/80 speaker. I favor the sound of most Celestion speakers, but the seventy/80 turned out to be not such a favorite. It is a budget speaker in the Celestion line and I found the higher frequencies to be spikey and somewhat unpleasant. I ordered a Celestion G12T-75 replacement speaker from Avatar speakers in Idaho – they have the best Celestion prices.

The 112 cabinet back plate was very tightly fastened and it took some doing to get it opened. When I removed the seventy/80 speaker, I found some excess glue hardened into a ball where the dust cap meets the speaker cone. This couldn’t have helped its performane any.

New speakers can be somewhat stiff and benefit from a break-in period. Avatar offers a break-in service on some of their speakers, but not the G12T-75. Their service involves 15 hours of break-in tones. I hooked my signal generator into the input of my Marshall 18 Watt amp and ran a 1000 Hz tone through the speaker for about 12 hours. Then I played through it for a few hours and I’m very happy with the sound of the Marshall 112 cabinet now.

In my last post, I mentioned a problem in the treble bleed circuit of my Stratocaster guitar. I should have mentioned that I didn’t wire this circuit originally – I’d ordered the pickups, control pots and selector switch pre-wired. However, I may have had a hand in creating the problem. When I shielded the control cavity, I needed to add a ground lug and wire it to the pot. I used some scrap16-gauge wire that I had on hand. I don’t know what I was thinking – 16-gauge is way heavier than I needed and it was really stiff. It may have interfered with the circuit once I installed the pick guard. I rewired it with 22-gauge wire which is plenty to handle the millivolts present on the ground and it’s flexible.

Donna came back Saturday evening and I picked her up at the airport. My two nights of bachelorhood were mostly uneventful – in fact, I was down for the count Friday afternoon and most of Saturday. I had shingles vaccine (Shingrex) and pneumonia vaccine shots on Thursday and it knocked me for a loop. I ran a low-grade fever (101.5) and had a very sore arm. I’m glad that’s behind me now, but I need a follow-up shot for shingles in a couple of months.

Tuesday was Pearl Harbor Day – December 7th. Eighty years ago, Hawaii was hit with a surprise attack. Four battleships were sunk, many others damaged and 2,335 people lost their lives. I always take a few moments to honor those that were in Pearl Harbor on that date.

We are 12 days short of the winter solstice – the days have noticeably shorter with the sunrise coming later and sunset earlier in the evening. After December 21st, the daylight hours will start increasing again.

Yesterday Donna hit the golf course with some of her girlfriends. I was inside, reading a book when I thought they ought to be coming up to the fifth hole soon. I went outside to the rear deck just as they came into view. I watched them play the fifth hole behind our house.

While Donna was away and I was feeling punky, I didn’t have the best meals. Now that she’s back I’m getting much better nutrition. Sometimes it’s a simple thing – like the green chile bratwurst we bought at The Pork Shop served with fire-roasted corn and grilled zucchini and peppers topped with feta cheese.

Tuesday night I manned the grill and grilled bacon wrapped petite filet mignon from Basha’s – I still have it when it comes to the barbeque grill. The filets were perfect. Donna baked potatoes and steamed green beans.

The weather has cooled here in Mesa, Arizona. We’ll be lucky to see 70 degrees on the thermometer today. Tomorrow is predicted to be downright cold with a high of 59 degrees – in this climate that qualifies as cold. We probably won’t see temperatures above the upper 60s for the rest of the month.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!