October 20, 1988
Dear Everyone:
It’s Thursday; do you know where your Mother is?
At last report (from Dad), our globe-trottin’ Mom was in Italy. One of those sudden impulse trips, I guess. I take it to mean that her eye is much better, or she wouldn’t have left the country so fast. She’s due back next week.
(Dad: Sorry about missing your call last night; but you do have a genius for calling when I’m in the tub, shaving my legs. By the time I got out, it was too late to call back.)
On the weather front… Good response!!!
I asked everyone to pray for rain (and lots of snow in the mountains) and it started to rain in San Francisco the same afternoon. Consequently, traffic was tied up for hours. But we need the water, so keep up the good work.
Unfortunately, we went right back to our usual heat-wave. Doesn’t anybody know it’s October? We know it’s October because the Blue Angels were buzzing the Financial District earlier this week. And there are all kinds of big boats parked in the Bay.
[This is known as “Fleet Week”.
]
“Jeannie” and I went to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin (and Art) Festival last Saturday. We drove down early – the Devil’s Slide was socked in solid (fog) and just as treacherous as ever.
[For many years, our parents, along with “Jeannie” and “Alice” lived
near Half Moon Bay and attended the “Pumpkin Festival” as a matter of
course. This was one of the
earlier “Arts and Crafts” Festivals.
Remember: This is
1988.]
We couldn’t find a parking place on the street (I suspect the High School students parked their family cars along the street to fill up all the places), so we parked at the school. It cost $2.00, marked down from $2.50. Later, we saw the same stand selling parking spaces at $4.00, marked down from $4.50. We also saw a kid holding a sign that read, “Parking: $4.00, marked down from $143.50.”
We ignored the parade and concentrated on the booths which they arranged back-to-back along the middle of the street, just like we’ve been telling them to all these years. Actually, it’s not that much of an improvement. Before, you could get away from the crowd by slipping behind the booths and going along the sidewalk. This way, the crowd is ON the sidewalk.
They figured 300,000 people showed up. In all that crowd, would you believe we actually found "Marshall"? Would you like to buy a bridge, too? We cheated. “Jeannie” told him to meet us at the library. Then we went back to the festival and bought some Christmas presents and some silly things. And “Jeannie” bought a 25th Anniversary Commemorative Half Moon Bay Pumpkin (and Art) Festival wine glass.
We did NOT buy our pumpkins in HMB. We went up the highway to a patch across from the airport where the pumpkins were much more reasonably priced. Then we went on up to the Distillery for lunch, only to discover that the Distillery doesn’t serve lunch – just appetizers. So we had some appetizers (20-odd bucks worth) and went to look at the old homestead.
[This was the house that our parents, and “Jeannie” and “Alice” had.
It stood on a cliff, overlooking the Pacific ocean.
Great view, lousy erosion problem.
Eventually, when they had to move to
Massachusetts anyway, they
sold it to a man who literally had it lifted from the foundation and
moved to a new location across the “street” almost before the ink was
dry.]
You can barely see where the house used to stand. The patio is gone now, as is the front garden. “Jeannie” yanked up a piece of jade plant for nostalgia’s sake and give it to me to take home and put in water for her. She and “Marshall” were going on into the City. I planted it in a little pot and put it on my patio. It had the distinction of being the only plant on patio that was alive, until “Jeannie” came by to pick it up.
I took lots if pictures which I will send to Mother when she comes back into the country.
In other news…
The hashing of “Hobby” boxes is completed. I can’t believe “Rowena” tried to hash a file with 1400 boxes in it. It took her AND “Murray” days to find all the discrepancies.
Now I’m concentrating on sending out the Annual Destruction Review for the “Livermore” warehouse. This is a monster project and already 2-3 weeks past the deadline, so I’ll be busy with it for awhile.
And I’ve added Logistics & Trading Planning to the Project section of my yuppie-book, so I have exactly 12 projects that I’m working on more or less simultaneously. If I would just get off the dime and write the final report on Ventura, I could take it out of the project sections and file it in the box as a finished project. But Higher Priorities prevail.
Everybody pray for rain and lots of snow in the mountains.
Love, as always,
Pete
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