My new Dell Mini 9 came today. It's so tiny, it's smaller than a sheet of typing paper. But it has a built-in 1.3 megapixel camera, microphone and speakers. It comes with Linux Ubuntu, Firefox and Open Office. And lots of games, including my favorites: Free Cell and Sudoku! It weighs almost nothing and will fit in my purse. The keyboard is small, too, but it doesn't take long to adjust. My biggest challenge is learning to use the Ubuntu operating system. It's shiny white and I love it!
A and I went for a walk up on the levee late-morning and found a few more interesting things to photograph. Lately, it has been very foggy, although this morning the fog was mostly higher. There is a difference between "fog" and "tule fog". Tule fog rises from the ground and hides everything: trees, traffic lights, street lights, tail-lights, and rivers. Regular fog masquerades as "overcast". Thursday night, M and I went to the Celtic Thunder concert. On arrival, all was good. On exit, we couldn't even see the parking lot from the arena doors.
Because the fog layer is so thick, the daytime highs are in the mid-40s - at 2 p.m. today it was 43 degrees! Yesterday, the high was 46. The lows are in the upper 30s. It's cold for this time of year! To take the chill off, L and I plan to bake cookies after dinner tonight and have them for dessert with hot chocolate. (These are the cookies that were in the gift basket I won in the raffle at our staff's "Winter Wowzer" meeting/party on Friday. As advertised, they are "scandalously good!") I opened the cookie jar and shared it with the staff, so didn't bring even one cookie home!
Daughter made the apple pie, and it looks scrumptious! I haven't cooked the squash or made fruit breads yet, but made some pickled carrots, peppers and cauliflower instead. The turkey should only take a few hours to cook tomorrow, so I will be able to do the breads first, and the squash can go in the microwave.
About half the trees decided it was getting pretty darn late in the year, and all decided to turn color at once. Then 3 days ago, they all decided to drop their leaves at once, too. There isn't much color this year - most of the trees are a drab orange-brown - but it's getting colder now. It's the cold that produces the brilliant colors, I'm told. We have fewer than 10 hours of daylight now, because it gets light around 6:15 a.m. and is dark by 5:15 p.m. The days will continue to get shorter for another month.This was going to be a townhome 'plex with 24 units. The first 5 of them have been sitting in this condition for a year and a half, now, complete with stacks of shingles on their roofs, and are heading into their second lonely and unprotected winter. I believe transients sometimes stay inside, and once in a while we see a new broken, then boarded, window.
A family farm used to stand on this property, with a lovely old white farmhouse, garage, barn, etc. In our tenure here, we saw years of corn, tomatoes, sunflowers and other crops grown and harvested. But then the farmer died, and the property was sold. The new owners razed the house and other buildings, leveled the lots and put in the streets. Soon after the buildings went up, the housing bubble burst, and ... overnight the project was abandoned.
In this photo, if you blow it up, you can see a kid in a red hoodie standing on the corner. A few days ago we saw him tagging up on the levee. I think his paint can was empty, because he tossed it away in disgust, then sauntered down off the levee, trailing booming bass and angry-sounding rap from his media player...
Some of us dressed up a bit for Halloween at Central - many as tastefully as I. (M says he's going to write a poem for me à la Dr. Seuss.) Most wore some version of black-and-white with headgear, necklace, pin, or shoes indicating the holiday. No dressed-up kids, though, except for the babies that attended the toddler-time program this morning.
L is with her friends in Kelseyville for the weekend - they're planning a bonfire, if it doesn't rain. so tonight is the first halloween in 21 years that I have not had a trick-or-treater in the family, and the second that I have not had to go walking around in the dark and cold following one. I think we're giving away apples this year, instead of candy.
Our rainy season has begun - it rained pretty good last night, and more is expected tomorrow and Sunday. We typically get no rain at all between March and October, so everyone is happy right now. I hope we get ample rain this year, because the last couple of years have been drier than normal, and the reservoirs are depleted. We depend on the snow-melt to keep us in liquid assets during the summer.
This is my little bit of Hawaii in Sacramento. The ti plant in the background is growing out of its pot and needs to be re-set. The white ginger in the foreground finally bloomed this year, after two years of nurture. Okay, so the leaves are a little chewed up - but I can't tell you how nice it feels to look out the patio doors and see all that green! The plumeria is also thriving, but declined to bloom this summer. Nothing here likes to eat plumeria.
One of Pocket Curves' employees is from Tonga, so we share stories about the plants we have from "home". I showed her this photo of the ginger, and she just melted! Guess which one she is in the staff photo.
One of my colleagues on Facebook posted a new profile photo that has his friends buzzing. It looked like fun, so I made a new yearbook photo, too. Well... it could have been my yearbook photo ... And it was so much fun, I made another one, too!
This afternoon, we wanted to do something besides housework, so M and I drove downtown to the Crocker Art Museum. Admission is free on Sundays between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. - and I thought, since M is interested in clouds and landscapes, we could see how the masters tackled those subjects.
Today, for the first time in the 14-year history of Pocket parades, I went down to watch it. Having grown up in Kailua, whose annual parade is both the oldest and the biggest on Oahu, I was afraid of being disappointed. I was pleasantly surprised to see the ingenuity and community support behind this little parade.
An antique police car led off, followed by the grand marshalls and entries. Heather Fargo, our current mayor, drove by in a little yellow smart car; right behind her, challenger Kevin Johnson waved from the back of a big, bad-a** low rider. Robbie waters tossed candy from the top of a big red fire truck, and Don Nottoli, our city councilman, waved from his car. Community groups followed: Elks, gymnastics, martial arts, cub scouts, boy scouts, girl scouts, and several local businesses.
The police wrapped up the parade with three mounted units. It was 45 minutes of fun, laughing, plenty of tossed candy, and the weather was perfect, to boot! If I could make one improvement, it would be to have more marching bands and patriotic music.
Not sure if I needed to do this, but I uninstalled all my e-mail connections, and finally got a menu prompt that allowed an e-mail address in the "to:" field.
This little orchid lives in my kitchen window, and blooms twice a year. It seems to like it there, because it gets a little sun, and lots of humidity from the kitchen appliances. And it makes me happy.This is a crab hole surrounded by doggie footprints. My visitor from Sacramento mentioned the beaches on the Windward side seemed so clean and devoid of the usual detritus often associated with beaches: shells, fish bones, seaweed ... so I took this photo of a crab hole yesterday morning. It's big enough for me to stick my fist inside.
This morning is my last morning in Kailua. I'm flying back to Sacramento at noontime, and go back to work tomorrow morning. It's been a very quiet visit, but the weather has been glorious! Time for me to shower and finish packing now.
This is my favorite beach. Today, I brought Dierdre with me (we met on the flight over) to Lanikai beach, and then we stopped here at my mom's beach. The waves were good for riding - not too big, not too rough. Everything's green and blue.
This is the beginning of the 2008 Avenue of the Vines half marathon. More than 700 runners and walkers crossed the starting line at 8 a.m. There was a simultaneous 5k going on, but somehow, they all sorted themselves out. The results were posted quickly.
I was - still am - crushed, disappointed, angry, embarrassed that I failed to complete the walk. I realize it was not my fault; I just don't do failure well. After the tears, though, I have decided what I am going to do: I will continue training this week and walk the 13.1 miles next week. In Hawaii. So there!
Two more weeks till the Half Marathon in Lodi. Our weekly "long" walk has jumped dramatically from 6 miles to 9 miles, and next week it will be 10 miles. So, how do I know when I've walked 9 miles?
My walking schedule, up to now in the mornings, has had to expand to evenings. This is such a beautiful time of year - warm enough to wear short sleeves, but cool enough to be able to work hard and sweat. The number of miles I walk is increasing each week, and includes one long walk (Mondays) and one moderate walk (TBD) and three shorter walks of about an hour and a half each. The long walk will gradually increase in distance until I am walking the entire half-marathon in practice.
Way back in the '60s, there was a song we sang in church: "Peace is flowing like a river." That's how I feel when I walk along the levee in the mornings and evenings. This evening after work, I combined my half-hour levee walk with my half-hour Wenzel walk for a 3-mile workout. Evening sunsets are particularly beautiful at this time of year, and the cell-photo really doesn't do justice to the color and the serenity up on the levee.
My training program for the Train to End Stroke half-marathon requires that I walk a progressively greater number of miles each week. This week, I walked 11 miles; next week it will be 12 miles. My supervisors have been very supportive, and have given me day shifts exclusively until the half-marathon on May 18. Now I can participate in the evening training sessions with Team Sacramento, instead of training alone all week.
I've sent out the first wave of fund-raising e-mails and received enough contributions to put me at 25% of my goal already! The next group of letters will be directed toward my co-workers, and the third push will be at my Curves gym, where the manager has agreed to let me post information and a request for donations. For those with a voyeuristic bent, a progress chart is available on my donation page.
American Airlines delayed us again on the return trip. Because the night flight the previous evening was very late, the morning flight was also late, in order for the crew to get its 12-hour rest. As a result, the ticketing agent had to reschedule virtually everyone on the 737 because of missed connections. I was upgraded to business class from Kingston to Miami, and to first class from Dallas-Ft.Worth to Sacramento. I had some time to shop in the airport for gifts to bring back.
I broke down on Sunday. It actually started Saturday afternoon, when it suddenly hit me that I didn't want to leave Jamaica. But Sunday, I broke down big-time. We all went to Mass at Sacred Heart Church in Old Harbor. Peter's sermon was humorous and well-received. I expected the hymns to make me teary, based on past experience, but I didn't expect to lose control! The parishioners were so genuinely warm and welcoming, and the special blessing conferred by the pastor on all first-time visitors to the church combined with my already emotional state, just caused tears to stream down my cheeks. It was like finding a family and having to leave them just as I was getting to know them.
Okay - here's a map, so you can see where I've been going. For those who have been to Hawaii, I gather (no research - I'm on vacation) Jamaica is about 3 times bigger than the island of Oahu; Moloka'i is 40 miles long and 10 miles wide. Jamaica is 120-some miles long and 40 miles at its widest point. It has a population of about 3.5 million, I'm told, and the city of Kingston houses 1 million.
Today Peter took me on a drive up to Temple Hall and Castleton. 
The feature I remember most is the aqueduct that runs along the edge of the lawn. On the other side of the aqueduct is the Wagwater River. We would go down and sit on the rocks at a tiny falls and let the water wash over our shoulders. The weather was changeable, and the rain begin really coming down just as we were leaving.
I'm a victim of holiday airline delays. I only made it as far as Miami today. The morning began with a one-hour delay in Sacramento because of crew rest rules and - get this - de-icing! And then a one-hour-plus delay in Dallas-Fort Worth caused me to miss my connecting flight to Kingston. (Leo Prieto's photo used with permission.)
