Great evening!

P and S, B and E(a friend of P's and our realtor who helped us find this house) came for dinner last night. We started off with an hour walk around the neighborhood with lots of talking. B manages the hospice care program in SLO county. She assured P and S that they did everything for Aunt L that hospice would have done and more. She talked about the many problems hospice deals with, many involving the family members rather than the patient. We settled in for a great meal where everyone brought a part of it - hors d'oeuvre's by Barb, salad by S and main course by me.

Our very own beach

Today was a hot summer day here on the central coast although it only made it to the mid 70s at our house. T and I headed for Oso Flaco (skinny bear) Lake. It's a state park not far from us. You walk over the lake on a boardwalk that takes you to the ocean. Being such a warm day we thought the place would be packed but when we arrived there were only 2 other cars there and we passed both groups coming back as we were heading out. When we arrived at the beach there wasn't another person. There were many birds and whole sections cordoned off for the least Tern and snowy plover protected areas. It was so beautiful and peaceful.

Surrounded by vineyards and vintners!

T and I went for a drive all within a 20 mile loop of our place. We drove through 3 canyons enjoyed the beautiful mountains and the many, many vineyards. Here is a sampling of some of the wineries we passed on our drive. Pretty amazing!

Things you see on a walk

Since I'm out and about everyday, I tend to see things needing attention before many others. Today part of the sidewalk on our street was covered dirt. The golf course has many drip hoses running throughout the area. (Water is recycled and cleaned from the houses.) One of the hoses must have sprung a huge leak as the dirt from the hillside covered the sidewalk and below before the water turned off. I duly reported it and hopefully it will be fixed before the next timed watering or that part of the golf course hill could slide down.

Fire at JJs

Okay, there are reasons people say don't lean on the window screen, don't run with scissors, don't point guns at people and don't barbeque next to the house! The local market down the street has a large barbeque grill going every day outside the store right in front of the building next to a porch pillar to the right of the main opening. A couple of Fridays ago a bush near the grill must have caught fire and the fire jumped to the building and went up inside one of the porch pillars.

Just at that time, one of the county fire department trucks pulled up to buy lunch - a daily routine! They immediately noticed the fire and turned around and jumped into their gear, radioed for back up and in no time flat 2 more engines arrived. They put the fire out in no time. I always thought it was very risky to have the barbeque grill so close to the building!

They've been forecasting "rain"

Well, living on the central coast the ongoing mantra is "we need rain". Many of my east coast bffs are a little tired of the rain they've had all summer. Out here when there is even a whisper of a thought (is that a usable idiom?? or is it a glimmer of a thought and a whisper of a doubt) that there might be some precipitation, the weather mongers start beating the rain drums. On my walk today I felt about 4 raindrops while I was out. I don't think it was sweat, and it was more than the typical moisture from the marine layer. I'm sure the weather mongers are going to claim victory on their forecast. Since returning home there has been more evidence of raindrops, so I might have to give it to them.

The La Brea fire is about 95% contained but it's still burning in the containment zone having burned through almost 100,000 acres. Any moisture will help the fire fighting efforts.

T and I drove to Lopez Lake yesterday afternoon and took a hike around the lake and campground. It was a glorious day for camping, windsurfing, swimming, waterskiing etc. Of course we were just hiking but we saw plenty of the other activities. I can't imagine but one of the windsurfers actually complained that it was boring! From what we could see there was plenty of wind, lots of tacking and turning and lots of speed. I guess you can't please all of the people all of the time! There was a small herd of juvenile deer - one still had its spots - blissfully enjoying the beautiful environs and nibbling freely. I captured these four but there were five in all.

Toiletry bags

Our church puts together toiletry kits for the homeless. After 5 years they are closing in on 1,000 bags. They make cloth bags with drawstrings and each bag has a toothbrush, toothpaste, a travel size shampoo/conditioner, a large bar or a bunch of little bars of soap, a hand towel and a wash cloth, a small size lotion, a deodorant, pack of tissue, a comb, a set of clippers, a razor for a man's bag or a shower cap for a woman's bag and a prayer sheet from the church. They are distributed through the Community Health Center in town to clients they know are homeless. The bags are made so they can be tied to the handle bars of a bike as most travel around by bicycle. It reminds me of my toiletry basket project every Mother's day and Christmas where I put together over 300 baskets twice a year. Perhaps it's more like the sock program St. J does every Thanksgiving. Today we stuffed 52 bags before we ran out of stuffing to complete the process. Usually I sew bags for the project making between 20 and 40 bags each time. This time I sewed 38 bags. I was also able to help with the stuffing process this time around.

Tired of the news

I'm tired of the news. Often the local newscasters are mostly news readers and they don't even do a good job of that! The weather forecasters are rarely right and often they only have weather readers reading the forecast who don't even check what they are reading before they read it. The newscasters often are making the news by beating a topic to death or by their reporting make the topic the news. With a whole world of news out there you would think there is more than the 10 stories they repeat over and over again. The newscasters' opinions and lines of questioning become the focus and it becomes difficult to separate the news from the opining. Arghhhh!

Ipod working again and I don't know what I did!!!

Today I tried to connect my ipod to itunes again. The computer hasn't been recognizing little red for a month now. I have been able to charge it with my new direct charger. When I loaded itunes there was a new version upgrade to download, so I decided to do that. I think it was a huge re-write as it took forever to finish downloading. Lo and behold once it was installed and computer restarted, I plugged in little red and voila it was identified and we were good to go. The clock updated and everything. So I don't know if it would have recognized it even without the latest upgrade and I guess I'll never find out. I'm just glad everything connects and I'm back in business.

Walking with a new friend

Most days I walk six miles - the first one being back and forth to the fitness center and a second walk of about 5 miles. Once a week I "blue-tooth" with my friend, J, on the east coast and we walk anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours and catch up on all the goings-on. Today a new friend of mine, D, came on my 5 mile jaunt around the neighborhood. We kept up a good pace both walking and talking, and I enjoyed having the company.

Chicken in a tree????

T and I went for a walk in town today and went in search of chickens. First we saw one big red rooster, then a large white chicken, and a pouffy grey one. We heard crowing but couldn't see another chicken until T looked up in a tree and there was this little guy. At the end of our walk the chicken lady (actually she's the cat lady who feeds the chickens so they will leave the kittens alone to feed) was feeding the chickens. There were about a dozen gathered around her with not a single duplicate in the bunch. There were many cats and of course a zillion pigeons.

On electronic devices

K loaded up an Ipod Nano for me in January 2008 with over 1400 tunes. It's been working fine and I've added new tunes and deleted others over the months. When I fell about a month ago, the Nano got "stuck" and with the help of tips on-line I was able to get it to unfreeze and get it charged up by plugging it into my computer. This time when I plugged it in the message came back that my computer did not recognize the device. I tried all the tips on line but nothing worked. K had purchased an extended warranty and I took it to the Apple shop. They said they could fix it but would have to erase the disk. I don't have the tunes backed up so that's a non-starter. To cope with the near term situation (getting the ipod charged) I got a direct plug in charger and that will work for now until I want to erase and add more tunes. How many more than 1,400 tunes does a person need!

Blue Heron

On my walk today in the smokey air from the La Brea fire, I came upon this blue heron in the sand lot that was supposed to be a swimming pool/ tennis courts. You have to look really hard to see it in the picture as it blends quite well with its surroundings. I think it's a little confused as it's supposed to be a wading bird and the water is about 300 yds away. It was one of the bigger herons I've seen.

La Brea fire

There is a fire burning in the Los Padres Forest in a section called the San Rafael Wilderness. It's in a section that hasn't burned for 87 years so it's got plenty of fuel. This location is about 25 to 30 miles southeast of us. We have seen smoke and ash in the area. The Air Quality Management District issued a health advisory for the ash and smoke but said the air quality is still good even though the ash is falling. The fire has blackened over 10,000 acres. They don't know what started it as there has been no reports of lightning. Hunting season was to have started the day the fire started....hmmm....

On my way back from SLO today the traffic slowed to a crawl and I discovered that there was a brush fire along the side of the highway that had many fire trucks and police tending to as I went by. It's really dry! Let's not be stupid people!

Busy wedding season at the Pavilion

This weekend the Pavilion, which is the banquet hall in our development, has 4 functions. They had to set up an enormous tent with 3 side tents to accommodate everyone. One wedding is hosting 3 of the functions with a second wedding squeezed in between. Imagine one wedding putting on a rehearsal, wedding and day after function for all the guests! Yikes, is this just California or across the country? And I thought we were in a recession!

Family dinner

Aunt L's family (the ones left in the area) came over for dinner last night. They have made great progress. They brought over a few bags of things to be given to the Thrift Store. I donated the items of clothing we collected the day before. We had a wonderful evening together and gave us all some time to remember Aunt L and for the family to get out of the house.

On losing a loved one

Since Sunday we have been sitting vigil at my aunt's bedside. She suffered a stroke and became unconscious. She was cared for at home by her loving family and companion/caregiver. Both her children were with her and all the grandchildren were able to fly in from all over the country. They were all together for at least 24 hours and after a big gathering which my aunt would have loved, she slowly stopped breathing last night. She was a terrific woman, a wonderful wife, mother and grandmother. She always bragged about her family and then went on to brag about any of her extended family and friends to anyone who would listen!