Love, As Always, Pete

The Weekly Letters, by A. Pedersen Wood

June 25, 2008

Dear Everyone:

California is burning.

Starting last weekend, lightning set off literally hundreds of wildfires around the state.  None are close enough to “Jeannie” and me to cause any worries, but the sky is filled with smoke everywhere.  And the sunlight, when it lands on a surface like a building or walkway, has a brownish tinge to it.  Very surreal.

And the weather is somewhat cooler than expected.  On Monday, the forecast was for mid-80s, but the temperature outside never got above 70.  So you’re tempted to open the windows and let the cool air in.  But then you get the smell of smoke on everything.  It’s a balancing act.

In other news…

We had fun last weekend.  Last week, the president of the Mt Diablo Chapter of ARMA announced a Board planning meeting to take place on Saturday at the home of our Program Director who lives in Alameda.  Knowing that this would put a big hole in the middle of my Saturday, I consulted my calendar and decided I could afford to take the following Monday as a vacation day.

So we spent Saturday deciding when the Chapter would meet (every other month) and brainstormed ideas for programs and decided, more or less, what to do about the fact that our Secretary had flaked out on us and we hadn’t yet found anyone to take her place.

Then on Sunday, “Jeannie” and I drove in to Oakland to find out where our niece, “Liza”, would be living while she attends graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley.  She is renting a room from the woman who is actually her boss at Habitat for Humanity (but just until school starts, then “Liza” won’t be her employee anymore.)  The woman who owns the house (we were introduced but I’m terrible at remembering name) is renovating it herself (all those building skills from work), doing her part to “gentrify” that part of Oakland.  The house is only a block from the nearest BART station, so “Liza” is able to get to work in San Francisco quickly and will be able to get to the Berkeley campus just as quickly.  (BART=Bay Area Rapid Transit.)

 “Jeannie” and I took “Liza” and her friend, “Opal”, to an early dinner.  We had planned to go to some place that “Jeannie” had picked out in Emeryville; but there was a glitch in the navigation and, before we knew it, we were on our way to the Bay Bridge and San Francisco.  Someone supplied the toll (my purse was in the trunk) and we sailed over the Bay and decided to eat at Sinbad’s, the same seafood restaurant that the family had dinner at back at Christmas time.

After dinner, we strolled along the Embarcadero for a while.  Then we took “the girls” back to Oakland and dropped them off.  I got “Jeannie” home in time to watch 60 Minutes on TV.

Instead of frantically trying to get through all the weekend chores Sunday evening, I spent Monday on a leisurely round of laundry and shopping.  I even found the time to (finally) watch a science fantasy movie that I had taped back in July but hadn’t got around to watching.

Then back to work on Tuesday.  My GIL 3 project is winding down, while another is beginning to wind up.  However, a look at the calendar shows that next Friday is Independence Day.  I may decide to take four days of vacation and take the whole week off.  So don’t be surprised if there’s no Letter next week.  Just in case, everyone have a Safe and Happy Fourth of July.

Love, as always,

 

Pete

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