THE LATEST NEWS

Today is our wedding anniversary! It kind of sneaked up on us. We didn't even realize that we had reached our 52nd anniversary together until we were on our morning walk. Oh, of course, we had both been thinking about it for sometime earlier. It's just that this morning it suddenly dawned on us that the day had arrived. So we went out for breakfast to a cozy little restaurant in Santa Rosa. Here we are fifty-two years ago:




MONTEREY

Last week we traveled with our Daughter Gretchen down to Monterey to visit the Marine Aquarium there. It was especially interesting to watch the feeding frenzy when the fish were fed. Lots of fish and fowl, otters and seals and sea lions, not to mention the huge old turtles. It was a fun trip.

On the way down, we stopped in Salinas to visit the new John Steinbeck Museum. It whetted our appetites for Steinbeck's works. I think Dickie's reading his "Cannery Row" again right now. I know I picked it up for her from the library a few days ago.

We also drove around the famous golf courses in the Monterey/Carmel area - Pebble Beach, Spy Glass, Poppy Hills and Cypress Point. That's where I caught this guy grazing away near one of the greens.


OUR KILLDEER

I promised to let you know how things went with the third killdeer nest on our local school grounds. They hatched! Not sure what happened to the other two, but we saw two of the baby birds again this morning being carefully shepherded by the adult birds as we walked by. This is a picture I took a couple days ago.


That's about it for now. We've been experiencing some fairly warm weather the last few days, although it's cooler again today.

PROBLEMS

It finally happened. After only six months of operation on my relatively new computer, my 160-gigabyte hard drive crashed. For many years this was always somebody else's problem. I knew it could happen, but it never happened to me. I've had hard drives that lasted five, six, seven years, but not this time. This time I got caught. And how! I hadn't backed up my financial data or my photos in the past several months, so it all went up in smoke. I hated to lose some of the pictures and it was no fun recreating the financial data, but I'm finally getting back to normal. Dell Computer was quick to send me a new hard drive and a technician to install it, but I had to re-install all the software myself and there were a few glitches along the way.

I lost a few e-mail addresses, too, so, if you changed your e-mail address in the past six months, I'd appreciate it if you'd send me the new one. It would save me a phone call or the resort to snail-mail in your case.

One good thing that came out of all this was a slimmed down, cleaned up hard drive. I'm a pack rat when it comes to old files, programs and messages. I'm sure I won't ever miss 95% of what I lost in that regard. It's not that I didn't have enough room in this 160-gigabyte monster, but there was a lot of useless clutter that I'm sure I'm better off to be rid of.

In any case, be warned! You could be the next one to run into something like this. Back up your data, if it's important to you. You never know how soon your hard drive will bite the dust. I didn't!


THOSE KILLDEERS

Would you believe, our killdeer parents have returned for a third batch of offspring? Well, we can't actually be sure that these are the same parent birds that made their nest in this spot the first two times this spring, but it sure looks like it. These birds have now chosen the exact same spot three times this year. Earlier it was always so wet and rainy that we felt sorry for the adult birds sitting there protecting the nest. Now we wonder how they can stand the heat and why the eggs don't fry on those rocks when they're not protected.

This morning, when we walked by, this bird was sitting on the nest. It looked suspiciously like she might have something more than eggs to cover, but we kept our distance and hope to discover the truth on another day. Here's mama (or papa, as the case may be) doing her thing:



So keep tuned, we may have further news shortly. If so, I'll get a shot up close and personal with my new telephoto lens, a Canon 70-200 mm L that arrived today! I can't wait to try it out. Till then, here's a shot I took at the Farmer's Market on the town green last Sunday:

ART, WILDLIFE, & SCENERY

Gretchen and I made a trip to San Rafael again last Sunday to see the chalk art that a variety of artists had produced on the streets of that city. Chalk art is short-lived, but it is amazing what good work chalk artists can do, only to have the elements destroy it within days. San Rafael has been sponsoring a chalk art festival every year for the last several years. There are several others around the nation. If you get the chance, I'm sure you would enjoy the visit.

Here are a couple samples from the show in San Rafael:

OUT TO THE COAST AGAIN

Yesterday Dickie and I drove out to Bodega Bay to see what kinds of sights we could find to photograph.

The first thing we saw was a flock of wild turkeys. Here was the leader of the flock. Doesn't he look fierce? I'm not sure if he was doing a mating dance or trying to pick a fight. Whatever, when he dragged his feathers on the asphalt, it made a menacing sound:

The next thing we came upon was a young deer casually grazing in a field not far from the roadside. I got this picture with my Olympus 10x zoom:

Just before we reached the ocean, we came upon this doe and her fawns. They scampered away, but I managed to get this shot:

The ocean was its awesome self, a little angry that day, but beautiful. This is the familiar view from Highway #1 north of Bodega Bay:

At the wharf behind the Tides Restaurant we found this sea lion and some of his friends sporting in the water and waiting patiently, or perhaps not so patiently, for a meal from one of the fishing boats:

Back at home I found this rose in our own front yard. It looked a bit lonesome, so I took its picture:

In the park a block away I came across dozens of butterflies flitting about the flowers. Here's one that allowed me to get up close and personal:

That's it for today.

CHARLIE BROWN

The cartoonist, Charles Schultz, lived and worked in Santa Rosa for much of his adult life. Today the Santa Rosa Airport is named after him, there is also a fine museum dedicated to his memory, and, on the same grounds, an ice skating arena which was one of his gifts to the city.

Recently, in Schultz's honor, some 55 Charlie Brown statues were commissioned and have been placed at various locations around town. Dickie and I have visited 18 of them at this point and hope to see them all eventually. Here are a couple samples:

On an evening this past week several of us Schmidt's got together to celebrate Mary Szecsey's birthday at a restaurant on the Old Courthouse Square in downtown Santa Rosa. That's how we happened to take the picture below since this is one of several statues now located in or near the Old Courthouse Square:

For those who are interested and able to look around, there are maps of the locations available at the Visitors Center in Railroad Square and at the Doghouse in the Courthouse Square. Plans are to bring all 55 of the statues to the Courthouse Square during the last two weeks of September for public viewing.

BIRTHDAYS

Today is my grandson, Evan's, birthday and also the birthday of my brother, Ralph. Evan is fourteen. Ralph is exactly sixty years older. He doesn't really seem that old to me. It seems like only yesterday that he was fourteen. He really has aged well. Here's a picture of him that was taken at Christmas time:

We Schmidt's tend to be partial to the months of May and June for birthdays. I was born in May, too. So were my sons, Carl and Peter. Most of the women in our nuclear family have preferred June. Our daughters, Mary and Heidi, both picked the same day (June 2) a year apart. Dickie waited till the end of the month (June 29). Our youngest daughter, Gretchen, held out until September 23. In any case, we're all having happy birthdays again this year and wish the same for everyone else!


BACK OUT TO THE COUNTY PARK

Dickie and I drove out to the county park again today to take our morning walk around the lake. That makes it a fairly lengthy exercise, but it's always enjoyable. The great blue herons that make their nests in the tops of the redwoods were in fine fettle again today. They can be very noisy. I think it's when the young ones are being fed. The quail were all over the place today, too, calling to one another. I managed to get a picture of this guy sitting on the fence as we walked by:

SURPRISE, SURPRISE

Several years ago a friend of ours gifted Dickie with an amaryllis bulb. As I recall, it was suppose to bloom at Christmas time or on her birthday, but it never did. It has been sitting around in a pot all this time in one place or another. Dickie had about given up on it ever producing, but, lo and behold, this spring it finally came to life - and it's beautiful. Here's what it looks like:

That's it for May. See you next month!

WALKING IN THE COUNTY PARK

Dickie and I went for our morning walk today out in the county park on the west side of Windsor. It's a bit of a trip for us (about six miles out), but it's well worth it. Today we saw several large blue herons (ardea herodias). They make their nests in the large redwoods on the west end of the park where they also make a good deal of noise. One hiker told us that, when he first heard them some years ago, he thought they sounded like a bunch of monkeys and wondered what they were doing in this part of the world.

The great blue heron is much larger than most herons. The adult stands more than three feet tall and has a wing spread of about six feet. I caught this one below as he was fishing at the water's edge today:

We're still keeping tabs on our latest killdeer nest, too. The nest now has four eggs, the usual number in a killdeer nest, and is about two weeks old, so in another two weeks we should have some more baby killdeers running around the local school yard. Here's a picture I took of one of the birds standing next to the nest:

We picked up some trekking poles from a local sports shop recently. They do make it easier for people our age to get up and down the hills. My doctor suggested it would be good exercise for the upper body, too. That can't hurt.

FOLLOWING THE BIRDS

Guess what? We have another new killdeer nest. Actually, it's an old one that's being re-used. Don't know for sure if it's the same birds, but I expect that's probable. In any case, we're seeing it as it develops. We knew this pair was looking around for a likely spot, because for several days we had seen them prowling around the same area. Two days ago now, we finally spotted a couple eggs in the same nest where four eggs had hatched earlier this spring. Today when we went by there were three eggs in the nest and the parent birds were giving us the dickens for standing around. In the pictures below I've set the views of the nest on successive days side by side so that you can see what we saw. This is the same nest on successive days. First with two eggs, then with three.






OUR NEW COUNTY PARK

We made another discovery today, namely, our new county park a couple miles west of town. We had stopped by before but never really checked it out. Today Dickie fixed a lunch and we picnicked there in a grove of young redwoods. It was lovely. There are two large lakes in the park where people can fish if they want, and a path that people can walk along or ride their bikes on around the lakes. We met a couple from Scotland who just happened to be riding by. They said they were staying in Healdsburg for a week and riding their bikes each day out into the countryside. One of them was from Glascow and the other from Edinburg. Here below is a view of one of the lakes:






POPPIES

I'm much enamored of the California poppy. We see them everywhere at this time of year. Here's a picture I took a week or so ago. Somehow the blooms have a waxy look:

THE EGGS HAVE HATCHED!

It finally happened. Yesterday when we walked by, the mama killdeer was sitting all fluffed out on the nest - like she had something to hide - and she did. All four eggs hatched. From a distance of, perhaps, a hundred feet, I saw one little bird running around; although, when we got up close, he was gone - perhaps hidden under his mama's skirts, er, wings. I took the picture below. The male killdeer walked right up and tried to run us off with as mean a look as he could muster, but I stuck around long enough to get this picture:

I didn't have the heart to stick around any longer yesterday, since the parent birds were obviously upset that we were there. We did walk around the block and, when we came back, both parent birds were walking around and all I could make out in the nest was feathers. Again, the birds were upset, so I left without taking a picture - which I now regret. This morning, when we came back by, the nest was empty and the birds were gone. We hunted around a bit and finally spotted two mature killdeers in the field across the busy road. I sneaked around behind a wooden fence and finally got within about 40 or 50 feet of them when I spotted the two babies in the picture below. Don't know if there were any more. The parent birds were lucky to get even two day-old babies across that road without getting them run over by a car or truck anyway. Now, if they can just keep the horses and crows that live in that field away from those babies for a few days, the little ones might even get big enough to fly. It amazes me how quickly these birds mature. Imagine a human baby getting up and running across a busy road after one day of living!

That's the latest in the continuing saga of Dickie and Carl and the killdeer. Keep tuned!

STILL FOLLOWING THE BIRDS

Dickie and I went to see "The Parrots of Telegraph Hill" yesterday. What a great documentary! As Dickie said, you don't really expect to shed tears in a documentary, but I guess we both did. I didn't know about these parrots in San Francisco until I saw the movie. As the movie explains, they're not native to these parts. In fact, exactly how they got here is still a mystery. In any case, I'll be watching for them on my trips to the city from now on.

A bird that is native to our area is the California quail. We see them on our daily walks here in Windsor all the time. The California quail with its curved black crown feather has a little more pizzazz than the quail I knew as a boy in Missouri. Here's a couple we saw sitting in a tree on today's walk:

We're still watching that killdeer nest in the front yard of a neighbor down the road. Nothing has happened yet. The four eggs are still unhatched. Both birds were there when we passed by this morning. One of them buzzed us and the other one ran at us on the ground as if to drive us off. They really don't know their own strength or non-strength, I guess. We think there may be another nest again on the edge of the school parking lot, but we haven't been able to locate anything new there yet. There were three mature birds milling around where we think the nest may be. We'll keep watching.

DUCKS ON THE POND

In baseball, a bases loaded situation is described as having "ducks on the pond". That's not what I'm referring to in the headline above. I'm just being very literal. Dickie and I dropped by Sonoma State University the other day and took a walk around the campus. In a pond behind the commons, we came upon this bedraggled mother duck and her five little ducklings. They were busy chowing down on whatever they could find in their moss-filled water home. They hardly bothered when I walked up to them with my trusty camera. And, wouldn't you know, there was a black sheep/duckling in this family, too:

I caught this one moving away from the pack:

This fellow below lives in a lake in our gated community here in Windsor.  He
almost always takes a good picture:

ANOTHER KILLDEER NEST

Dickie and I discovered another killdeer nest the other morning. As I've mentioned before, they're not easy to spot - even when you know about where they are. Just the day before we spotted the nest which is in the front yard of a home in our neighborhood, I had said to a man who lived across the street from the nest that I knew there was a nest there someplace, because the bird was always there and was doing her broken wing act whenever we walked by. Then, lo and behold, the next day I took a careful look at the place where I first spotted her and there was the nest with four eggs in it not more than five feet from the edge of the sidewalk, in plain view.

Your heart has to go out to these beautiful creatures who don't seem to realize how risky it is to put their nest in plain view in the front yard of somebody's home, where cats and dogs are bound to pass by occasionally. Somehow they seem to manage. The first nest we saw this year hatched four live birds, two of which are still hopping around in the schoolyard when the kids aren't around and in the nearby park when they have to escape any other danger.

I took a picture of the new nest this morning. Here it is:

I'll let you know if the birds make it.


A BIG WEEK FOR SPORTS

You'll have to go a long way to find a better week for sports fans than this present one. The final game of the NCAA basketball tournament will be played this evening between Illinois and North Carolina. Dickie and I are rooting for Illinois. For baseball fans there's the opening of the Major League baseball season this week. I'm hoping my Cardinals will get off to a good start. For golfers there's the Masters Tournament that begins on Thursday down in Augusta, Georgia, where they tell us the dogwoods and azaleas are bursting in bloom. I'm a Tiger Woods fan when it comes to that game.

ANOTHER MUSEUM

Dickie, our daughter Gretchen, and I made a trip to the San Francisco Legion of Honor Museum on the last day of March. We wanted to see the Alfred Bruyas collection of French masterpieces that is presently on display there.

It was a beautiful day and we lucked out on the parking, finding a space right at the entrance on the far side of the relection pool that stands there. Here's what it looked like there:

Before we entered the museum, we toured the holocaust memorial just to the west of the reflection pool. The artist who executed the memorial was George Segal, with whom we were acquainted in East Brunswick, N.J. It's a moving and fitting work, as you will see in this next picture.

As we entered the quadrangle of the museum building which is wonderfully placed high on the hill there overlooking the Pacific Ocean, we passed a statue of Rodin's "The Thinker". I took a shot of that, too.

The museum was featuring Alfred Bruyas' collection of French masterpieces, including many by his close friend and associate, Gustave Courbet. The picture below is called "The Meeting". It was painted by Courbet and shows Bruyas (in the green coat with his servant behind him) talking to Courbet, the larger figure on the right. We were told that this painting caused a falling out between Courbet and Bruyas, who apparently considered his being a smaller figure in the painting a kind of slight.

It was a fun day! We recommend the museum on your next visit to San Francisco.

KILLDEER BABIES

A little over three weeks ago (about March 2) Dickie and I spotted killdeer eggs in a rocky area near the local gradeschool parking lot. If you've been reading my weblog, you may recall that there are some pictures of that scene on March 6 below.

We've been monitoring the nest ever since. Today was the day! All four eggs hatched. One of the babies looked a little weak, but it seems to be surviving. What's amazing is how quickly these baby birds have begun moving around. Three of the four are moving around like gangbusters and they can't have been out of the shell more than a day or so. Here's what they look like. I could only catch two of them with their mother:

It was a glorious day today after all the rain, so Dickie and I drove up to Lake Sonoma, a few miles up Highway 101 from Windsor. We took our lunch and had a picnic on the grounds of the fish hatchery below the dam. Later we drove up to the overlook where I took the picture below:

Like I said, it was a glorious day!

LITTLE DROPS OF WATER

I've been playing around with my digital camera lately, trying to duplicate pictures I've seen in one place or another. With a fast shutter speed, you can catch a drop of water as it bounces "up" from a glass. Here's just such a picture. This happens almost too fast for the human eye to register, but the camera makes the catch:

How about that?

I have a number of parrot pictures that I think are cute. I snapped these two love-birds in a pet shop several moons ago. Don't know what the one is trying to tell the other, something like "I'm your humble servant" or "What's that under your bill?", I guess.

Would you believe that I'm still struggling with the writings of Ben Franklin? I started this book last December and I'm finally coming to the end. Lately I've been reading through his Poor Richard's Almanac material. Here's a tidbit from his wise sayings:

"One good Husband is worth two good Wives; for the scarcer things are the more they're valued".

That's enough for today. Have a good one!

POINT REYES

Dickie and I drove down to Point Reyes yesterday. It was kind of a whim on a nice afternoon. We weren't alone. There were quite a few people taking advantage of the glorious weather. We went all the way out to the lighthouse on the point where I took the picture below. The surf was up, too, because of the storm that originated in Alaska.

We didn't see any whales, although people were looking. Someone told me that fifteen of them had been spotted in one day a couple weeks ago. The ranger I talked to said that the peak of the season will come at the end of March and the beginning of April. He mentioned that he had seen as many as fifty in a day. In all our trips out to the coast over the years, I think Dickie and I have only seen one! That was a youngster that came into the Bodega Bay boat channel a couple weeks ago. He sufaced every few minutes while we were there, but never enough for me to get a good picture. This was the best I could do. I know, it looks mor like a rock than a whale:

Anyway, it was a fun trip yesterday. Those huge smooth-topped hills and mountains down that way are all green now from the winter rains. Of course, in a few weeks they'll turn to gold under the warmth of the sun. This is a great time of year!

PLOVERS

For three years running now, Dickie and I have been observing some beautiful birds that keep returning to the same place to raise their young. Plovers, also called killdeers, nest on the ground. In fact, they don't really have a "nest" in the usual sense. They just lay their eggs in a convenient depression, without even lining it with twigs, as most other birds seem to do.

Our visitors to this same spot have chosen a location on the edge of a grade school parking lot where they lay their eggs among the rocks. The eggs look deceptively like the rocks. You can look right at them and not see them. In fact, I'm sure most people who walk by that plover nest never realize that it's there, although they will probably see the parent bird, pretending to be hobbled and fluttering off to lead any unwelcome visitors away from the nest. The bird still goes through that act for us every time we come by, although by this time it should know that we know and can see where the nest is.

Here below are a couple of pictures of the nest. The first shows just the eggs. The second is with the plover sitting on the eggs. I think you can tell that both pictures are from the same area, although the one takes in a little larger view than the other. Notice the three large rocks just above the bird in the second picture. Now look at the same three (slightly enlarged) rocks in the first picture and, just in front of them, you will see the four eggs that the parent bird is hatching:

If you want to see an enlargement of the picture above, click here.

Here's and even better view: Plover Eggs

This is just one of the little joys of life I'd like to share. Hope you find it interesting, too.

Odds and Ends

It rained again last night and it's still misting this morning, so Dickie and I skipped our usual morning walk. We expect to spend the evening at Gretchen's where we'll watch the "Oscars".

We haven't seen "Aviator", which I understand has a good chance to win "best picture". We did see "Million Dollar Baby" which would get my vote, if I were voting. Hillary Swank was great in that one. So were Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman, for that matter.

This is changing the subject, but I caught my neighbor's cat taking, what else?, a cat nap the other morning. Doesn't he look comfortable?

So, what else can I tell you today? We're coming to the end of the month now. Should be warmer soon. Have a good day!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY !

Spring is in the air here in Sonoma County. Some of the shrubs and trees are beginning to blossom. We have daffodils blooming all over the place and my rose bushes are leafing out like winter is over. There's still a chill in the air at times, but warmer days are definitely around the corner.

Dickie and her friend, Nadine, attended a Santa Rosa Symphony concert this afternoon while I stayed home and watched the end of the golf tournament at Pebble Beach, which Phil Mickelson won handily.

For the rest of the time today I continued reading Ben Franklin's writings. I think the volume I'm reading contains most everything he published, which was quite a lot. Presently, I'm going through articles he wrote for London newspapers in the years preceding the Revolutionary War. Ben was a loyal Englishman, almost to the last. He was certain in earlier years that, if his countrymen (the colonists) were treated justly, they would never rebel. In that he may have been too idealistic, but his writings suggest that he was realist enough to see that war was becoming inevitable by about 1773. It's fun to see how his own attitude gradually changes. What an interesting time that was!

Mustard Time

Driving through the countryside here in Northern California at this point in time, you see vineyards filled with blooming mustard plants. It's a brilliant sight. Dickie and I drove past some fields this morning as we went to buy produce at a nearby market. Here's a picture I took last Sunday afternoon:



It was warm this morning. Something over 60° when we went for our morning walk. Everybody we met was talking about it. It was about 30 degrees warmer today than yesterday according to one of our neighbors. We stopped by the library on the way home from the market so Dickie could pick up a book and there were people sunning themselves out on the Village Green. Spring is definitely on the way, although there's little doubt we'll be having some more cooler weather before spring really gets here.



WEB PAGE HASSLE

I had a difficult time of it with the distribution of my web page today. Apparently, the McAfee protection controls on my email were somehow marking it as "spam", maybe even "infected", as it left my computer, so most people who got the URL couldn't open it from the e-mail message, as they usually can. Hopefully, I can teach all my web page recipients to copy the URL from the e-mail message to the address line of their browser when they run into that problem. That's the best way to handle it. I tried re-sending several times, but even that didn't always work. I guess that's life!

Winter

My January wall calendar from the World Wildlife Fund has a picture of a couple of polar bears. It actually looks like they're kissing - being friendly, in any case. Speaking of polar bears, I got a good shot of some polar bears at a zoo in Copenhagen, Denmark, many years ago. I'll see if I can dig it up. Here it is:



The polar bears can have this winter weather. I prefer a little warmer climate, although I guess those of us who live here in this part of California shouldn't complain. It was 54 degrees below zero in Embarrass, MN, yesterday. They're used to it though. The record in that part of the world is 60º below. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

I don't think the sun will shine around here today. It's a good time to stay in and catch up on my blogging. I've been remiss lately, spending too much time trying to get my new computer tweaked to my own fancy. I think I have six or eight different programs on this computer that will manipulate photos. You really only need one, if it's a good one. I'm afraid most of mine aren't that good. The best one I have is Paint Shop Pro by Jasc. It's the fanciest program and will do almost anything any other program will do. For simplicity's sake, I prefer Irfanview, a freeware program designed by a guy in Germany who gives it away. I guess he just enjoys complicated programming. I also use Microsoft's Image Composer and ArcSoft's PhotoImpression 5, not to mention their PhotoMontage, Dell's Picture Studio 3, PhotoMax Pro, Camedia Master by Olympus, Microsoft's Paint, as well as their Picture It, and Adobe's Photo Deluxe (which version only works on my old computer and doesn't like XP. Gee, that's nine different programs, isn't it. I didn't realize that, but, let me tell you, it's too confusing. Stick to one or two good ones. You'll be better off.

AN OMEN FOR 2005

New Year's Day started off well for us here in Windsor. There was a bright rainbow in the sky. This is what it looked like from our back door:



Yes, there were clouds, but they were breaking. I'd like to hope that might be an accurate prediction for the year.

AWAITING 2005

2004 is winding down quickly now. A few more hours and we'll be entering 2005! Wow! I like to compare present times with those of a century ago. A hundred years ago in 2005 Albert Einstein was just formulating his "Special Theory of Relativity", Norway was deciding to separate from Sweden, Ty Cobb was just beginning his Major League career, the New York Giants would win the World Series from the Philadelphia Athletics, and the first neon lights would start to appear. What strange and wonderful new things will we see in 2005?

I like to think there will be much good. There's always a mix. In 1905 the Russo-Japanese war was just ending, Sun Yat-Sen was forming a union of secret societies to expell the manchus from China, and the Sinn Fein party was organizing in Ireland. That same year Ayn Rand, Howard Hughes, Greta Garbo, and Jean Paul Sartre were born. What wars will end and what great people who impact their own times will be born this year? We live in intriguing times. Here's hoping 2005 will be a good year for you and me!

BACK IN WINDSOR

Dickie and I had a great trip back to California on Tuesday of this week. Our US Airways pilot landed the plane without a bump. Dickie didn't even know we were down. That was quite in contrast to our trip to St. Louis a few weeks ago when "crash", the ace at the wheel, did everything but knock the landing gear off the plane when we came in. To be kind, I think it was his "first" landing. We noticed him and the co-pilot checking the tires before we took off!!!

It's good to be back here in foggy northern California. The sun has come out a time or two, but it's our version of winter and sometimes it takes a while for that fog to burn off.

Last night we drove down to Santa Rosa to see the new house that Gretchen and her kids are renting. It's beautiful - a great yard, plenty of room, and close to downtown. Looks like a real winner.

It'll take some time to settle back in here. Plenty of yard work to catch up on, but I'll manage inch by inch. Our neighbor, Jon, kept our front yard in great shape while we were away. I can't thank him enough. What a guy!

We did our morning walk late today. I stayed up last night until 1:30 A.M. fooling with this computer. I get started on things and just can't quit.

Found out this morning that the Sonoma County Library has several copies of the Ben Franklin book I was reading out in NJ. I was less than a third of the way through, so I'm glad to find it again. The book is 1605 pages long, so it's like reading an encyclopedia, but I've enjoyed it, so I'm determined to finish it off. 10/4