At least in her opinion: pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/44616363@N04/sets/72157622672368105/detail/

On Tuesday, Jirel, our year-old calico, went out and having absolutely no concept of danger or common sense headed up the neighbor's redwood, the tallest tree on the block. She got about 25' up and couldn't figure out how to get down. Of course she picked a spot out of reach, and it was almost dark Remebering the adage that one rarely sees cat skeletons in trees we decided to let her find her own way down – just jump, you dumb feline.

I finished The Grapes of Wrath last night, appropriately gloomy reading for a rainstorm.  It has everything -  evil capitalists, evil capitalist tools, desertion, sex, starvation, dead babies - all told in Okie dialect that's sometimes a chore to wade through.  Rich had to read it in high school in Alabama: either someone was being deliberately subversive or they didn't have a clue as to what the book was about.

We were cruel to Jirel today: we let her go outside in the rain.  She's managed to escape a few times before but we wanted her to calm down a bit (ok, a lot) before letting her out.  She was bound and determined to see the big world Ivan gets to play in and at first the rain wasn't going to stop her.  This lasted for about 30 seconds, or until she made it past the edge of the eaves.  Then she tried to hide under the back steps and howl for us to come rescue her, until she got tired and came back in.  Ivan has decided he's not getting off the bed until spring.

It's been raining all day.  My school walk was canceled since taking a pack of 3rd graders into a heavily-wooded area is Not A Good Idea during a windstorm.  It hasn't been as windy here as expected, yet, but we've gotten well over an inch, judging by my extremely unscientific and not exactly accurate bucket; the city's claiming over 4 inches up in the hills.   If it lightens up for awhile I'll walk down to the creek at the end of the street to see how much water's in it: it was bone dry on Sunday.  It's too early in the season for it to overflow, but after the Great Flood of '98 I like to keep an eye on it.  At least we still have power.

I'll admit it: I'm a Palo Alto snob. There's a city of 1M people a little south of here, closer than San Francisco. But while I go to San Francisco about once a week, it takes a major effort to get me to go to San Jose. Traffic's horrible, parking's difficult, and if I'm going to take the train I might as well go to SF.

When we first moved here, we went to check out downtown SJ. one weekend. A used book store, but nothing else of interest: greasy spoons (closed on weekends), pawn shops, thrift stores, and the like. Despite taking night classes at San Jose State during the first stages of redevelopment I never saw any reason to go anywhere west of 4th Street.

So it was somewhat a surprise when I was down there for a meeting recently to see crowds with reasons to be there on a weekend. Hmmm, maybe San Jose's more than the drain the rest of the county pours money into (yes, I'm still mad raising taxes to pay for BART while cutting transit service to this part of the county). This past Friday the stars converged in such a way to warrant an expedition.

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We've been having a heat wave the last couple of days, but being the Bay Area it usually cools down at sunset.  So we opened all the windows to get the cool air in, when the skunk let loose.  Pleh!

It's been worse: the year we had the mountain lions in Palo Alto we got the skunks almost every day.  On the plus side, I harvested 1.5 pounds of borletto beans, some mutant, today:  Ivan thinks they look too much like cat food.

This month's excursion was to Napa Valley.  We go up to the Sonoma region 3 or 4 times a year to pick up shipments from a wine club, but haven't really been to the Napa wine region for decades, although we were in the city of Napa a while back.  Too touristy, I kept saying.  But it's fun to play tourist every so often in the Dieties' Own Country.  And it was Rich's birthday.

We got our club shipment in Sonoma, managed to find the Gundlach-Bundshu winery (the last time we tried we were following some weather-beaten signs, half of which had fallen down) and now need a reason for a dinner party.  Two wine tastings is my limit, so we went to the hotel in Napa we were staying at, then to dinner.  The restaurant we had like on our last trip was out of business, replaced by a raucous Mexican place., but we managed to find a nice Italian place nearby.

The next day we headed up to Calistoga.  Route 29 was a lot like I remembered, most of the really old-name wineries still there.  In Calistoga, we stopped at the Sharpsteen Museum of Calistoga History.  I like these little local museums: when they're good they always have something surprising.  This one had several.

The founder and namesake was an animator for Disney from the earliest days until the late 50s, working on Fantasia, Snow White and a lot of other major films.  So they had his Oscar and sketches from his major films.  The museum included Sam Brannan's vacation cottage and an overview of his life - including getting kicked out of the Mormon Church for proselytizing (!), and again for embezzling.  Last was the obligatory local history section, complete with map of Mexican land grants.  One of the big ones was Rancho Carne Humana.  Now, my Spanish is limited, but as far as I can tell this means "Human Flesh" and what research I've done confirms it.  It didn't explain why it got this name, or if the grantee had any strong feelings about cannibalism - although he did apparently once host a survivor of the Donner Party.

As part of our ongoing quest to visit every brew pub in the US we stopped at the Calistoga Brewery for lunch, and later at the Silverado Brewery in St. Helena.  Despite having lived in the Bay Area for over 30 years we ended up coming back via 80, which is never a good idea, especially near Berkeley.  But we managed to hit the Dumbarton   Bridge when the carpool lane was open, which I think makes it only the 4th time ever.

For the past week a very large spider has had a web on the back porch.  Unlike most spiders, this one had the sense to build it on the side rail rather than across the door or steps, as many of its kith are fond of doing.  Every so often it catches something and spends a day or two eating it.  Then it goes off to hide until the next prey comes along.

I know nothing of spiders.  I don't particularly care for them, but I don't actively hate the either.  All I ask is that they keep their webs out of my way.  This one is almost an inch long.  Probably will turn out to be some horribly venomous variety.

a couple of weeks ago I managed to infect my computer with a virus that kept asking me to buy virus protection.  When the simpler fixes didn't work we ended up reformatting the system disk and reinstalling from scratch.  I don't think I lost anything, since everything important is either backed up regularly or lives on a Unix system.  I've been teaching Open Office how to shut up and do what I tell it to, remembering passwords to everything, finding out there's yet another program I need to install - it's too easy to get dependent on this stuff. OK, I understand more about how some programs store data (yeah, I mean you, Picasa) and I don't know if I should be happy the 300+ files I needed for a slide show last week were still there or annoyed that it's creating hidden directories.  I'm the human, the stupid machine's not supposed to go and try to outguess me.

Despite the cool summer, the tomatoes are doing well - we had enough to can last week.  The eggplant's been doing even better, the peppers not so good, probably because the tithonia is smothering them.  But it attracts butterflies.  The squirrels have been eating the sunflowers: I saw one the other day stripping off the blossoms and stuffing them into his maw.  They've gotten rather plump the past few weeks.  The zucchini, though, refuses to be productive.

We've been actively looking for new dining room chairs this week.  Not a set, just the chairs, which is not the common way it's done, I gather. The current ones were a great price - i.e., the dealer threw them in with the table - but they weren't the greatest quality to begin with.  They're had a lot of use, are on the rickety side, and the Calico Marauder has been busy pulling the padding out of the seats.  We've been meaning to replace them ever since we got them, which was before we bought the present house, meaning pre-1986.  I don't like to rush into important decisions like this without adequate forethought and planning.  I also don't like shopping.

So we visited too many furniture stores and finally found a style we both can agree on. Now all we have to do is order them.

Garden update:  The eggplants are doing well, as are the beans.  The zucchini is putting out blossoms but doesn't seem to want to set much fruit, which is fine.  The quince tree is breaking branches again, despite my having thinned the fruit regularly: I'm considering a replacement.  And yesterday I harvested two (2!) tomatoes - they usually don't think about starting to get ripe until the middle of October.

I like county fairs.  Over the past few years I've gotten more involved in the San Mateo county fair than I ever thought I would since my quilt guild is the driving force behind the Home Arts exhibits and they're always looking for people to draft into working.  It's largely a volunteer-run organization, with a handful of paid people who are supposed to be organizing the whole thing.   I already spent a day there before the fair opened for the quilt judging, and will be going back this afternoon to do some demoing.  At least they provide some compensation: lunch, free tickets, and the all-important and coveted parking passes.   And if I go to the set up or take down I get to fondle all the hand-spun wools.

Rich and I went on Monday to see the show.  There are still animal exhibits, including some very handsome chickens.  We didn't catch the poultry judging this year: last year we got to see the novices, whose birds were bigger than they were.  My second favorite exhibition is the potted plants, especially the ones that look like they've been imported from another galaxy.  The category I just don't get is the competitive table settings, nor why there need to be two separate ones - with vegetation and without, apparently.

In the past year I've learned more than I care to about politics and the fair.  The county's converted some of the buildings into horse-race betting facilities (why? money.) so we lost the nice hall we used to have all to ourselves and are now stuck in with the plants (OK, they don't do much), the Fine Arts (that's fair, they lost their building, too) and the vendors.  Not ok.  Not only do they sell "as seen on TV" and similar schlock (anyone need a Sham WOW!?) they're loud.  And they're in the middle so they can annoy the Fine Arts people and the Plants people as well as us.   On the plus side, nobody's buying anything.  And to think I used to gripe about having to listen to ABBA tribute band rehearsals for an afternoon.

Observation: deep fried Snickers bars sitting out in the sun look particularly unappetizing.

With both of us being retired, we try to do an expedition every week. Most of these are local: to one of the parks in the foothills, or to San Francisco to climb a street. About once a month we try for an overnight expedition, usually Sonoma if Priceline cooperates. This week's expedition was due to passing a sign on 101 for the nth time and saying, we really should see Mission San Antonio sometime: we've almost got the complete set.

It was also supposed to be HOT this past Monday, so we decided to head south for Morro Bay, picked because it has a brew pub (another of my goals is to visit every brewpub in the US) and being on the coast had a chance of decent weather. So armed with a change of underwear and something resembling a plan we set off. Now, most of the Spanish missions are close to 101, which more of less follows the path of the old El Camino Real, kinda sorta, but San Antonio is way off by itself, smack in the middle of Fort Hunter Liggett. After about twenty miles of driving through the golden (i.e., dry) hills and past the town (i.e., wide spot in road) of Jolon we come to a military checkpoint.

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On the 27th we took my mother for lunch at the Buffalo waterfront, it being a nice sunny day.  The only day that trip that it didn't rain, for that matter.  The lakeshore's improved a lot since I lived in the area - you can actually get to it (I suppose that's the plus side of losing all the industry: the lake's not totally polluted)  There's a pleasant walkway with the occasional historical marker.  One was to a brave helmsman called John Maynard, who kept his ship steady and brought her to shore during a fierce storm in the 1840s, giving his life so the passengers might live.  All noble and inspiring, and there's even a poem, translated from the German, on the monument.  Only problem is that the actual doer of the deed was named Luther Fuller, which apparantly doesn't scan as well. 

A tornado touched down in the next county to the east on Saturday, a rural area known mainly for its dairy farms (New York State is, contrary to popular belief, mostly rural). The local news interviewed someone whose farm was in the path, and reported that no sheep were injured. This is what passes for big news around here. OK, the tornado is big news, the sheep not so much. In other weather news, it hasn't rained today – yet.

 

From the I'm-not-making-this-up department: “Government policymakers say they like sales taxes because they are paid by visitors – Canadians, tourist, Jets fans coming to Ralph Wilson Stadium – relieving the local taxpayers a little bit.” [verbatim from today's Buffalo News]. I'm going to have to ask my sister about the secret handshake that locals use to avoid paying sales taxes: everytime I buy something here I get charged. That jibe at Jets fans is an example of the dislike and resentment felt towards anyone from east of Rochester around here, an animosity that makes California's North/South split seem amicable. If Erie County could find a way to stick a special surcharge on anyone visiting from New York City or Long Island they would in a flash. And they wonder why they don't get much tourism.

We're off mom-sitting while my sister's away. She's moved since last summer, to the town of Hamburg, NY, on the lake. In winter, you can see Canada from her house – one could probably see it now, if one wanted to get on the roof. You can definitely see it from the end of the street. The area's more urban than her previous house, but it's still this weird western New York environment where the houses are too close to be really urban but too spread out to have the conveniences of a city. And there are trains a block away.

 

There must be something genetic about this attraction to trains. My mother grew up in an enclave on the far east side of Buffalo with the then New York Central tracks on one end of the block, and the Erie-Lackawanna tracks on the other end. When she got married she moved a few blocks to the house we grew up in, with essentially the same arrangement of trains, plus additional tracks and repair yards that burned down when I was a kid. There are a lot of freight trains going by, hourly on the average. Since there is a grade crossing nearby, they all blow their whistles, four times each. Most of the engineers just blast four of the same tones, but occasionally one will get creative and try for a range of sounds.

 

 

"War and Peace" has the reputation of being a really long book.  It does clock in at around 1,100 pages, and there are long philosophical sections that can be glossed over.  But nowadays more and more fiction is approaching that length - and with less to say.

I blame the word processor (which I'm using as a collective term for electronic document editors in general) and electronic manuscript submission:  it's easy to go on and on when you don't have to consider paper or shipping costs.  I'm currently listening to The Poe Shadow, by Matthew Pearl (I like recorded books when I'm doing mindless tasks such as gardening or cutting the 1840 pieces for the quilt my sister requested, my current project).  I'm about halfway through, and marveling at how the author manages to get so much extraneous material that does absolutely nothing to advance the story in the way of the plot.

Or is the trend towards doorstopper books due to buyers wanting to get their money's worth?  "If I'm going to pay $7.99 for a book I want a long read".  Or editors afraid to tell a successful author to get out the virtual scissors (aka The Rowling Problem)?   Is there a WisCon panel here?

I've enjoyed the previous Phoenix-area conventions I've been to on the whole, so I was looking forward to this one, even though it was Arizona in July.  I came back from WisCon energized and full of interesting discussions and recommendations of things to read.

Westercon was small: the chair claimed 600 people on site, but I doubt that.  Panels I attended had maybe 10 people, and I'd estimate the main event, the Masquerade, at 200, +/- a few dozen.  (The hotel used aeron-style chairs in that room, which I think made it look more crowded since they don't pack as well as standard hotel chairs.)  The Friday parties seemed sedate and small: they were widely scattered throughout the hotel, so it was difficult for any one to get a critical mass.

I'm used to more narrowly-focused conventions: this one tried to cater to a wide variety of interests, with separate tracks for gamers and filkers, which diluted the crowds.  The panels were skewed as well: was it really necessary to have that many panels - at least 6 - on Eric Flint's 1632 series, when the Guest of Honor's works didn't get that much attention?  OK, I'm not a fan of the series, but I have an opinion on why it's so popular among a certain group: it lets them identify with the uber-competent protagonists.

The way Wiscon really spoiled other conventions for me, though, was by emphasizing that moderators play a critical role in the success of a panel, and that it's a position to be taken seriously.    A poorly prepared moderator can be the death of a panel, and I saw too much of that.   I'm losing patience in my old age: at one panel I interrupted a rambling, off-topic audience member with "That's a very interesting discussion, but could we please go back to the panel topic?", to a look of gratitude from the moderator (no, I was just a frustrated audience member).  I didn't get the sense of excitement I take back from a well-run WisCon panel.

There were good parts, though.  The Masquerade was brief and of good quality.   The hotel was friendly and well laid out, with a lot of seating in the public areas - don't they know they're supposed to put shops there :-)?  Tempe runs a free shuttle around the downtown and university area, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well the local transit system works and how well utilized it was on Friday.  We had a small wine-tasting party on Saturday and Tempe graciously provided fireworks for us (ok, they were in the town park, but we had a good view without the crowds)., got to spend some time with people we haven't seen in a while, and found a neat Arabic restaurant/store a few blocks from the hotel.  I restrained myself and only bought a few packets of spices, having no need for a Tub O' Tahini.  Any ideas what one does with dried lemons?

We got tired of the desert by Sunday, and decided to come back along the coast.  We stopped in Ventura on Monday: the marine layer was in and the 70 degree temperature felt wonderful after Phoenix's 110.  Ventura, aka San Buenaventura on the City Hall, is a beach town with a higher per-capita population of panhandlers than San Francisco, at least by my biased observation.   I think this is what happens to surfer dudes when they burn out.  A nice little downtown with a used bookstore that deliberately picked its closed day to be when I was there, dang it.  As part of our goal to visit every brew pub in the country, we stopped at the Anacapa  Brewery for dinner.  The beer was good, the food so-so.

The next morning we walked out on the looooonnnnnnng pier, and learned that Ventura used to be the Lima Bean Capital of the World.  I suppose every other claim to fame was already taken.  An enterprising person was offering to lend fishing poles "for a small donation".  Stopped at Pismo Beach for lunch, as did about half the state, judging by the crowds.  Tried to walk out on their pier but got sand-blasted by the wind.  We got back home to relatively little cat damage (Jirel pulled all the tags out of the houseplants and shredded a paper bag, which is sedate for her, and Ivan managed to keep the water in his dish rather than splashing it all over.)

Meanwhile, the bluejays stripped the sour cherry of Every. Single. Fruit.  This isn't a garden, it's the local wildlife restaurant.

I have been spoiled by Wiscon.

Ivan, the newish 4-5 year old male cat, likes to be outside.  He got a little plump lately, and he doesn't seem to eat much inside.  He likes to sleep outdoors next to the tomatoes, which seem to be unmolested by the gophers.  I wonder if he's snacking on them, or dissuading them.  As long as he doesn't bring any rodents into the house he can have all he wants outdoors.

Great Blue Herons eat gophers.  Yesterday in the Botanic Garden I saw a pair of them on the big lawn obviously looking for something: probably bugs or worms, I figured.  But one of the other docents saw one grab a gopher from its hole, shake it, and swallow it, fortunately far enough away so her fourth-grade charges didn't get to see the gory details.  Yay, heron.  Now, how do I get the birds to hang out in my garden?  The local hawks have been making inroads on the morning dove population, but they ignore the &*()%# cauliflower-stuffed beasts.

Usually when I do the ecology walk with the kids the animals are all A.W.O.L.  Yesterday we got 3 herons - one fishing - a pair of ducks with eleven ducklings,  two hawks, five turtles and the ubiquitous squirrels.  And they found a bone: as one girl said, the best field trip ever.

A sure sign of spring: the mockingbirds are back and determined to keep the neighborhood awake.  This one is trying to imitate successively a hawk, a blue jay and a car lock.  Why do they repeat each combination 3 times?  And why do they sing at night?  Because the woodpecker has the pre-dawn shift?