A visit to Bishops Peak

Yesterday was memorial day. We went to P and S's for a hike and dinner. We hiked up Bishop's Peak behind their house and visited the spot where the ashes of many of their relatives are scattered. This is the wonderful view from that spot.

Senior Luncheon

Today was the last Monday of the month and Memorial Day as well. Our church has a Senior Luncheon for our seniors on that day every month. There is no charge. We set up tables with white linen tablecloths and china and silverware. We've ranged from 30 to 60 people since last July. We ask people to sign up but seniors are no better at making a commitment or maybe they can't remember to sign up between the time they get the reminder and they head past the sign up tables! Anyway, we never know how many people are coming which makes preparing the right amount of food a bit of a problem. So how many people would you think would want to come to a Senior Luncheon on a holiday? Well, we had nearly 60 people. We reprised a menu from last fall after there were a number of requests - fruit salad, quiche, rolls, and cheesecake with coffee, tea etc. Fortunately I made enough for more than 60 people!

Strawberry Festival 2011

It was a beautiful day for Memorial Day weekend. The strawberry festival in AG is held every Memorial Day weekend with thousands gathering to celebrate the revered strawberry - either the # 1 or #2 crop in the area. Who knew there were so many different varieties of strawberries? I wasn't here last year for the festival but I hear it was really hot. This year the strong sea breezes kept the temperatures in check. The town is getting ready for its centennial celebration July 10, so it's getting all gussied up.
We stopped into the Santa Manuela one room school house. It was built in 1901 and was used until 1957 when it was moved to make room for the dam at Lake Lopez. It was moved a number of times and was unused until some local groups raised the money to move it to Short Street in 1999. http://www.southcountyhistory.org/santa%20manuela%20schoolhouse.html
We also visited the barn which is behind the school house. It houses a number of period vehicles, household items and tools. It reminded us how hard life was in the early 1900s and how grateful I am for the many advancements that make my life so much easier today.

Around the neighborhood

This morning on my walk I was musing what a beautiful place we live in and I noticed many grounds people out and about mowing, trimming, sweeping and in this case, power washing the docks. We live in an Audobon Signature Sanctuary and the birds are wonderful but they do leave a mess. Fortunately for us our grounds crew takes care of this and keeps the place looking well-kept. They even polish the brass development name plate at the various entrances!

Apple Farm

T and I went for a nice drive to SLO yesterday. It got to be dinner time and we wanted to find a restaurant we hadn't tried yet. We stopped into the Apple Store on Higuera and we played with the demo ipads. One of the aps was a link to places to eat in the area. It listed the Apple Farm as one of the first choices - in the "A"s. BTW - Ipad is pretty cool and easy to use. We had heard about the Apple Farm Inn for the last 3 years but had never been. We had a great meal there - very comfort food - you know, meat loaf, turkey pot pie, pot roast and lots of pies and desserts. It has a beautiful view from the hotel and restaurant. Very cute! http://www.applefarm.com/

Dealing with older people

I know one day I will be one of these older people. With the average age of the people working at the Thrift Shop being around 80! I've had to deal with a number of them of late. Sometimes they really try my patience - especially when they ask for input but have a reason for why any new idea won't work or they just want to talk trash about some other person and how they can't do anything right or they rope you into doing something and you begin to feel manipulated or they agree to do something and then totally forget that they agreed to do it or or or - gosh this sounds like dealing with an adolescent???

Technology

The last few days I've been dealing with a slowly failing cell phone. It started a few weeks ago but it was stealthy. It started with failed text messages. My phone didn't tell me when a text message didn't go out or wasn't received. So it wasn't until I started getting calls or when I next met the person that I discovered they didn't get a text. At first I just figured that it was a fluke. Then it started happening more frequently and on my trip last month it became very obvious that about 50% of my texts weren't being transmitted.

Last week I took my blackberry to Verizon and told them my problem. They said it was not a common problem but they tried to wipe the phone clean and reinstalling everything. That didn't work and in the process my email addresses got corrupted. I don't understand how that happened. Fortunately my phone's warranty expires this week so they sent me a new phone which arrived in 3 days. I took that in to get it set up yesterday and thought I was all set (except for the email addresses!). Then the battery started to die and I took it in again. They fiddled with a couple of the settings that were set at the factory (backlight and screen light) and sent me on my way. They claim that if it doesn't take care of the problem they will honor the warranty on the battery even after tomorrow when the warranty runs out. We'll see about that! Anyway, the phone has been behaving well this afternoon.

Now for the email addresses. The hotmail account has a back-up feature that allows you to reclaim deleted emails up to a couple of days, so I got that fixed. The sbcglobal emails have been a nightmare. This is when saving all those "sent" mails comes in handy. I was able to go back over a couple of years of sent mails and grab the email addresses and recreate as best as I could people who have communicated with me recently. Anyone else - sorry!

So I think I'm back in business. What a lot of work for the sake of technology!