Watch out, friends. It’s flu and cold season

I got the flu shot, but right now it’s colds going around. One is encircling my head. I hope it passes.

It’s been rainy and cold. Now it’s just cold.

Of course, cold is a relative thing. This is Los Angeles, after all. Cold means it dips below 70 in the afternoons.

But I’m glad it finally feels like fall. Protracted summer is wearing. I am ready for the season change.

People say there is no change in seasons here. Probably other people have missed the changing colors of fall, because there are more than a few cultivated maples and other such trees that change color and drop their leaves.

I was kicking some of those leaves across the sidewalk yesterday. I thought, This is really an artificial fall. This tree isn’t from around here. It was brought here to drop it’s leaves.

And then I realized my disdain wasn’t really fair. I’m not from around here either. Why can’t the trees be validated as transplants? A whole lot of the people are.

So, happy fall everybody. Wherever you are. Even if fall is long past for you. Enjoy the seasons.

America…since…Gosh, I don’t know…But we started to think in decades.

The 50s…the 60s…the 70s…the 80s…

The 80s are coming back, don’t you know?

But, what’s up with the arbitrary emphasis on the ‘0’? the 80 to the 90. Or the 1950 to the 1960.

We have an extra zero now, and we hardly know what to do with it. We don’t have a cute term for the now…The fifties, the eighties, the nineties…and two thousand five…or worse, two thousand and five.

We’re kind of drifting until we get to call it the teens. Then it’s back on solid ground, the twenties, the thirties and the forties.

But at this moment, we are half way. 2005.

And for me, that concludes my own personal decade. On October 15, 1995 I flew from the Anchorage airport to Sacramento California.

My first decade of California living has passed.

I have a geeky reason for remembering that it was 1995. That was when it went from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95

A big year, to be sure. And the decade that followed has been justly monumental. I am so happy to be where I am and to have the skills that I have.

I know Bill! I lived in Eureka from grades 2-5. The zoo was free, and Bill was a great favorite. He would throw his poo at you.

“EUREKA, Calif. — An escaped chimpanzee is back at the Sequoia Park Zoo after a jaunt through a residential area that provided quite a sight for the Neighborhood Watch.

Bill wandered off Thursday night after vandals cut a hole in his cage, officials said.

The Eureka Police Department received a call about 10:45 p.m. from a neighbor who said the chimp was in a backyard on Glatt Street. Zoo staffers arrived with police to take Bill home.

“He was extremely stressed and excited,” said zoo supervisor Gretchen Ziegler. She said changes to zoo security would be made immediately.

The 59-year-old chimp came to the Sequoia Park Zoo from a European circus in July 1957.”

It is fall, or so they say. I does not feel like fall to me. The weather is in the nineties. Most of the trees are very green.

But, it is october, which is not summer anymore.

Chris, who is used to uniform trees, want to go see the colored-leaf trees this weekend. Which is great by me. Every single trip we have ever gone on has been wonderful.

We are going up to Mammoth, and we are going to see the oldest trees in the world, the bristlecone pines. They say they are 6 thousand years old.

Wow.

I’m taking monday off, since my sweet new job allows for the occasional day off. I am so looking forward to it.

It will be cold there. I will have to bring scarves and sweaters, and it will be lovely.

By sunday afternoon, I had finally located the source of the foul smell in the refrigerator. It had been eluding us for days.

I didn’t know bacon could smell like that.

Anyway, I enjoyed my time with the parents. They stayed for the weekend to check out the new house. We were going to go to the county fair, but then again, we didn’t.

I was exhausted. The week included a marathon inventory trip for work, and I just had no energy. Mom didn’t either, since she had been working like a demon on her student-teacher meetings for next week.

That was fine. I made them good dinner, and Chris was an excellent host.

It was nice to be a hostess for the first time, in my new house. It is feeling like a home, really, finally

You know, I have had quite a year. SO MUCH has changed. I quit one job, nealry completed writing a book, remodeled my condo, bought a new home, and got a new and better job.

All in the space of six months.

I am in the throes of moving. And I am trying hard to understand the nature of my new job, which is not readily apparent.

And I am frustrated at how slowly the writing of my book and the settling into the new house is going.

But…

I am coming to terms with my own limitations. I think that is something I took away from my last [hideous] job.

It turns out I cannot do everything. At the very least, I cannot do everything AT ONCE.

And there is nothing wrong with that.

I hope I am learning to have a little patience with myself. Some things just take time. There is no way around it.

I am loving my little house. I love that I have a dining room table, with a window in front of it.

I love that Chris and I often sit down to eat at that dining room table.

I love the living room and my new couch.

I love my bedroom, with TWO windows.

There are a lot of windows in this house.

I love that i have a patio and a tree that I can go sit on and under and enjoy the sound of crickets

Crickets are really loud here.

I love that I have hedges to trim and things to organize.

I have started doing a lot of cooking. Meatloaf, Marinated chicken, interesting salads.

No soup yet. It’s been a little hot.

But I bought an ice cream maker. I want to make my own ice cream, instead of buying it. I eat the stuff nearly every day, so…You know. I would like to:
1. not spend so much on it
2. have some control over what ingredients are in it.

I will let you all know about my discoveries of ice cream making.

I just love my new house.

I’ve had so many things to think about with this tragedy of the hurricane Katrina. It has left me speechless.

I had so much to think about, that I couldn’t quite untangle it to blog.

I’m going to try to get out of that.

I like to write, and I want to keep at it.

So, sorry for the silence.