Fall Fashion, Sacramento Style

Found this photo on my camera yesterday as I was reviewing our Thanksgiving photos. This is a nearby street that captured my imagination with its array of green, orange, and red trees. I took the photo after a walk with my walking-buddy Alison, since it's near her new halfplex in an area I wouldn't otherwise frequent.

Our weather has been unseasonably warm for the past couple of weeks, but yesterday the clouds gathered and today it rained in the first "winter storm" of the season. I'm glad I remembered where I stashed my fleece booties, because I think those warm days are gone for the forseeable future!

Before and After (Thanksgiving Dinner)

Not to say we pigged out or anything, but here's what was left on the platter after we ate our Thanksgiving dinner. [Just kidding!]

Actually, we have two huge containers of leftover turkey (and stuffing and cranberry chutney and apple pie.) Tomorrow I'm going to bag, seal and freeze about half of what's left, and the bones are in the crockpot as I write this.

CRC Library - Monday Night

View of the library's reference area

For nearly two semesters I've been doing "adjunct" work as a reference librarian at the Cosumnes River Community College library. This is where Patrick is going to school.

Since last January, I've been working approximately two Mondays a month from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. It's been an interesting learning experience, because most of the regular librarians have gone home by 6 p.m., leaving inexperienced me to run the show for the evening and close the library at 9:00.

The service philosophy is far different from that of the public libraries where I've worked for the past 30 years. (OMG!! has it been that long?) I've learned a lot about how the library and the instructors cooperate to help the students get through their research and writing projects.

It's me!

Having fun with my phone - and practicing for when we visit Hawaii. My intention is to be able to post photos to the web for Lisa's family while we are there. I notice the camera lens is very wide-angled, so we have to factor that into any photos we take. Also, the resolution is pretty small ...

Here's a photo Laurel took of me the day we stopped at Coco's for lunch. It's really easy to do, and the phone can actually store a fair number of photos. It's better for close-ups, though, than for scenic shots.

Next big get-together is Thanksgiving - we got a 24lb turkey, and will be having Pat over for dinner. I'm making an apple pie, cranberry chutney, and, as long as the oven is hot, I thought I'd throw in a few autumn breads: cranberry, pumpkin, maybe some apple scones if there are any apples left from making the pie. Yum!

Florin Road in Fall

One of the most glorious sights in Sacramento in the Fall is the triple line of Liquidambar trees along the sides and median of a mile or so of Florin Road near where we live. This photo doesn't even come close to showing how red and gold and orange and yellow they all are because the camera on my cell phone is rather limited in its abilities. Marty and I went driving around last Sunday all the way up to Placerville looking for colorful foliage, only to realize after getting back that the best show was practically in our back yard!

Election Reflections

California's special election yesterday was covered by the evening newscasts just as though it were a presidential or gubernatorial election. The governor mounted a $50 million special election to get the people's backing for state budgeting reforms that the legislature was balking at implementing. Of the eight initiatives, not one passed! As one spokesperson for the coalition of unions said, the people clearly were opposed to the whole idea.

I tend to vote "no" on all initiatives on general principle, because I believe that such ballot-box lawmaking is by definition serving only the interests of special groups who draft the initiatives, and is never thought through well enough to anticipate its ripple effect. It almost always means the state has to pay millions of dollars for overseeing the provisions, which money the state doesn't have. When it becomes obvious that the state can't continue to fund the programs the initiatives create, a whole new crop of propositions is drafted for the next election. What a continuous loop! What loopy legislators we have in this great state of ours, who refuse to deal with the difficult issues and instead allow them to be handled by initiatives! Why even bother to elect representatives to the state government?

Winter Wood and Lemons

We ordered a third of a cord of wood for our winter supply - and Pocket Firewood came through with a truckload this morning and dumped it in the parking lot. Pat came over, and the four of us made short work of stacking the wood on our patio. It seems like less than last year. Actually, that's good, as we were gratuitously burning last year's supply well into spring just so we would not haveto store any over the summer (spiders).

The Meyer lemon tree has twice as much fruit as last year, so I think sometime over the winter I will have to prune and repot it. Unless I can take over the area outside the fence as we did at the old apartment, I think all my plants will have to be in pots. The yard is so shady, I have to move the plants around to catch the few rays of sun that manage to filter in through the pines surrounding us.

We've noticed lots of active bird life recently - owls, hummingbirds, scrub jays, and various migrating species like geese and miscellaneous songbirds. The hummingbirds will stay year-round, and so we've started keeping a hummingbird feeder in the patio area. Several times a day, but particularly in late afternoon, the tiny hummingbirds come to check it out.