Survived the latest rain and wind storm

This year's rainy season is living up to its name. Today the weather mongers finally said that we are above rainfall totals for the season...imagine that! The micro-climates are pretty amazing on the central coast. We had a pretty dry day in AG yesterday but Su in SLO said it was rainy and windy almost all day there and that's only about 20 miles north and a little bit further inland. The storm did some damage to the giant cypress tree in the green space behind our house. The tree had 2 trunks which were cabled together and the wind must have pulled it apart. The damaged part is on the right tree which is now significantly shorter than it used to be.

The church I joined, St. Barnabas, often ends the service with a more modern hymn which is usually pretty easy to sing and gets the congregation to join in with full voice. Yesterday's piece was "Here I am Lord" http://churches.rca.org/communitywhiting/heriam.html. Yesterday was the church's annual meeting. St. James's in West Hartford has had a tradition of having the annual meeting right after the last service followed by a pot luck lunch. More recently it has taken place in the church, I think in an attempt to keep as many people as possible and to cut down on the extra work of setting up chairs in the auditorium. St. Barnabas has theirs in the afternoon which means anyone attending has to return. As of yesterday morning they were still looking for people who want to serve on the vestry or be convention delegates.

We were invited to P and S's for dinner (although P was not there - skiing in Salt Lake City), therefore I did not attend the annual meeting. S is still recovering from surgery and she invited us to dinner. I told her I would bring a lasagna and before I knew it she had a little party going - Aunt L and her care giver and P&S's next door neighbors. We had a wonderful time but the drive home was an adventure as it was indeed windy and rainy in SLO.

Aunt L agreed to translate the piece of calligraphy that a famous Chinese calligrapher wrote about my mother. Sister P has the piece written by the same person about my father. We just had the piece framed and I want to get it translated and paste the translation to the back of the picture so I and others will know what it says. Aunt L said that if she can't read it she'll get some of her friends to look at it.