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.

My heart is breaking for the victims of the hurricane. I am seeing more and more examples of how we work, together and against.

I would ask everyone to think hard about what they can do to help.

There was a post…how many days ago? it seems so long ago.

I posted “It’s all over but the shouting.”

Shouting takes longer than I would have expected. I finally closed escrow on my new Claremont home. I will have the keys tonight.

WHAT a lot of drama. Oh my goodness. All this back and forth and this crisis and that mislaid something or other has convinced me of one thing:

I do not want to make my living with real estate.

No thank you. There are too many things outside the sphere of your control in real estate. NOT my comfort zone.

I am quite happy to take on systems with lots of layers of complexity. I like to dig deep and thoroughly learn the systems so that I can quickly navigate between them all.

But, the precision factor is totally lacking in real estate. There are not enough expected outcomes. I mean, there are too many people involved.

And people are not precise.

So, leave me with my machines. I can have patience with them. But I have lost patience with the people.

And just in time. I’ve sold the one and bought the other and NOW, i just have to move all the stuff.

My whole body is a sigh of relief to have it done.

So all the papers are signed and the movers are scheduled. We are now just waiting for the keys exchange.

Chris and I will be moving into the house next week and officially, I will be a Claremont resident. Gulp.

We alternate between telling each other that things are mostly packed to saying that there is way too much left to pack. We are certainly chest deep in boxes. But then again, we keep tripping over all the loose stuff that is not packed yet.

Soon. Soon.

I’ve been at my new job for two weeks yet. It seems to be a good one. There is enough to keep me busy, but also the people are supportive and pretty nice. What more coudl I ask for?

I am wanting to get back into writing my book, which is gathering a layer of dust.

But there has been a lot of change going on. I know I will get back to the book, and I should be able to finish it next year. But there is a little bit of chaos in my life, so the muse if hiding.

It will come back.