Saturday 9

Saturday 9: A New Day Has Come (2002)
 
Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

Welcome to the first Saturday 9 of 2017!

 

1) This song is about a new day. Here we are celebrating a new year. What do you hope for in 2017?
I hope that Trump will eventually realize the enormity of the job he now holds and starts acting presidential, not like a petulant teenager who is gonna do what he wants to do and the rest of the world (and the country) be damned.

2) Ms. Dion has said this song was influenced by the events of 9/11, and how a new day dawned after tragedy. Looking back on 2016, did something happen that you're glad to leave behind and move away from?
I'm very glad that the hateful contentiousness of the presidential campaign is over, but I'm afraid we can't yet leave it behind and move away from it.  Country Dew says that the campaign "crushed her soul" and I'm afraid a lot of us in this country feel the same way.

 
3) In the video, Celine serenades us from billowy white clouds. Describe the sky where you are as you answer these 9 questions.
It is grey and off and on the skies open up and give us the gift of rain.

4) This video was shot in West Palm Beach, FL. When settlers arrived in the late 1870s, the town was called Lake Worth County. OK, your turn. Tell us something about your hometown.
Well, my home town is San Francisco, but I've lived here in Davis for nearly 44 years, much longer than I lived in SF.  Davis used to be a small farm town and eventually built a campus of the University of California which, when I was working at UC Berkley was always called the "farm campus."  But it's a big, well respected campus now and the town has grown from a sleepy country town to a small/big city.  It is much bigger than when we moved here and I am enough of an "old timer" that I resent the changes.  

  Geographically it is very flat, so it is known as the city of bicycles.  Though the outer boundaries have expanded in 44 years, still if you drive just a shrt distance you are in the "country" where there are orchards and horse farms and other signs of "country."
Basically, this was a great place to raise kids and their lives are significantly different than they would have been if we raised them in Oakland, where they were born.
 

5) Celine Dion's native tongue is French. Dites-nous quelque chose en Français.
Je parl un peu de Français.  En école, le Français etait un sujet favori.

6) Celine's mother, Therese, is known in her Quebec neighborhood as a terrific cook. Think about your own domestic talents. Where do you excel? (Food prep, house cleaning, laundry, scheduling, etc.)
Well, it's definitely not cleaning or laundry.  I guess I excel in cooking, since I do like to cook and try out new recipes.  It's the thing that has kept Walt from strangling me, I think! (Also, I know the intricacies of the TV remote and that, too, is a saving grace.
 

7) Growing up, Celine and her siblings often performed in her family's piano bar. Where did you most recently enjoy an adult beverage?
Adult beverage?  Oh!  I remember.  I had half a glass of wine at Christmas.  I rarely drink adult beverages, though I do enjoy them when I do. 

 
8) In 2002, when this song was popular, Kmart was in the news because the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. What department store to you shop at most often?
Unless Target, which I visit occasionally, is considered a "department store," I can't remember the last time I was in one.  I may visit Target once every 2 months or so.

 
9) Random question: It's time for a midnight snack and you have your choice of one of these three -- a slice of sausage pizza, a bagel with lox and cream cheese, or a piece of carrot cake. Which will you have? And what shall we bring you to drink?
Hmmm....Well not the carrot cake.  I'm torn between the pizza and the bagel, but "cream cheese" may be the deciding factor.  As for a drink, please refill my glass with ice water and I will be a happy camper.

Today at Logos

The day started with a luncheon of the Dump Trump ladies.  Sadly, our fearless leader, Joan, was unable to join us, too exhausted after a long trip back from Southern California.  We soldiered on, though.  It was not until I returned home to read my email that I learned that "You are aware that 'political' groups are forbidden to be gathered at URC."  I would hardly call us a political group, but it bothers me that in this PC era, so many people are afraid to speak negatively about Trump.  This is the man who will be THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD and represent our country for at least the next four years when he is inaugurated in a week and it bothers me that we are afraid to say anything negative about him. Or as an internet friend said yesterday about a luncheon she had attended, "I asked them to lay off the talk of Trump (we all agree but I'm just so tired of people analyzing his personality)." 

I saw my therapist this week and asked her if her business had risen since the election and she said definitely and that so many people are depressed now that he has been elected.

I walked back to my car with a friend and when we approached where I had parked, I could see that the trunk was not closed.  I checked and it didn't look like anything was missing (but then, other than reusable bags and water there isn't much in the trunk to begin with).  I checked the inside of the car and discovered that all of our CDs were missing.  I couldn't imagine a Gilbert & Sullivan thief (since that's all the CDs were), but there was a police cruiser nearby and I went to report the theft.  He said he was "on a case" and couldn't talk to me, but suggested I go on line and file an incident report.

When I got home, I asked Walt if he had removed the CDs, and he said that he did before he took the car in for servicinglast week.  So no theft after all.  Which was good because I had left my Samsung Tablet in the car, but it was still there, under my coat.

The day at Logos was busy, but less emotional.  There are only 3 more work days before I leave Logos and I was feeling "short timer's syndrome."  There were lots of customers, but I'll just hit the more interesting ones.  The first actually was not a customer but a guy in a Seattle's Best Coffee shirt who came in, carrying a bag.  He set the bag down on a chair then came to the desk and said all he needed was a bookmark.  He took a bookmark out of our vase where they sit, got his bag and left again.

A mom with two grown daughters came in, all three browsing.  Each bought a book.  Mom bought a book on Hummel figures.  One daughter bought a book on the history of the horse and the other bought a biography of Walt Disney.

A guy from the music store around the corner found a barbain book he liked, so plunked the book down on the desk while he went back to the store and got money.

Another guy bought a bargain book for $1 but only had a $20 so left a $4 tip.  "It's only fair," he said.

A couple of people from Friends of the Public Library came in to measure the back room for shelves they are going to build there.

An old woman with an ankle-length skirt, oversized shoes, a sweater, and knit cap, using a cane took a book out of the front window and sat down at a table to read it.  She was there a long time then brought the book to the desk.  It was a book on vintage Vietnamese cars and she wanted to know if we had the "American version."  When I said we did not, she left. $1 was too much to spend, I guess!

A woman was looking for a copy of "The Little Prince" and while helping her look, I had a major dizzy spell and had to hang onto the bookcase. I think it was because I was bent over with my head tilted to one side.  When I started to walk to the desk, I had to grab quickly for the desk.  But as soon as I sat down I was fine, with no recurrence.

My friend came in at 4;30 and bought a book on the Asian art museum in San Francisco.  He helped the lady with the Vietnamese car book to put it back on the outside shelves.

A guy bought a book by Gregory Benford which he said he had somewhere in hardback, but didn't know where it was.  I wondered if Benford was related to Harry Benford, who wrote the definitive Gilbert & Sullivan encyclopedia.  But from what I can glean from Wikipedia, they are not related.

A woman came in to find out if there will be some sort of goodbye celebration when Peter and Susan leave.  Susan says "Lord, no!" and that her end of store party was the one she had for the volunteers in December.

A Latino looking man with a Cornell sweatshirt bought the worls of Aristotle, a book in Spanish, and a book from the literature section.

A lady in Puss in Boots boots bought "Ulysses" and H.G. Wells' "The Time machine."

A colorful guy in an electric blue jacket that had like slashes in the sleeves which showd red, yellow and orange in the slash parts came in.  He also had a hat with muted rainbow colors and a cane.  

When he took off his jacket and hat, he looked more normal.  He was still browsing when I left at  6, but had already stacked up two books on Van Gogh, a book called "Gross National Happiness" (a nice complement to the book I was reading, "The Geography of Bliss," about a man's hunt for the happiest place on earth), "Analysis and Valuation of Retail Locations," "Mastering French," "Larousse French Dictionary," a book of German Art, a Philip Pearlstein retrospective (lots of nude watercolors).  I don't know what his final total was, but he definitely was loading up!

A guy also came in with a big "bag of cool books" to donate.  He said his late wife was a librarian and got special books.  I didnt look to see what was in the bag, but it was definitely heavy.

Came home to cook the first Blue Apron dinner I've cooked in two weeks.  The nice thing about Blue Apron shrimp dishes is they are loaded with shrimp.

The Clock

I was sitting in the family room, peacefully minding my own business, watching NCIS-New Orleans when there was suddenly a blackout.  It was brief and everything came back on within a minute.  The winds and rain continued outside, the TV sputtered a bit and then the show was back, with minimal interruption.  I went into the kitchen and was standing at the sink when there was another brief blackout.  There wasn't a hint of light anywhere, which was kind of disconcerting, but again, it only lasted a minute or less and then was back.  After that no more blackouts.

There are several ways to check the time in this house, most of them digital.  There are clocks on the microwave, the stove, the TV, the computer all the gadgets, so those that relied on power all reset themselves after the power went off.  The microwave continued to keep accurate time, but warned me I needed to approve the time it was now showing.

But the time piece I use the most often at home (since I do not wear a wrist watch) is this clock.

This was given to my parents as a wedding gift in 1940.  It sat on the table at the end of the couch in the living room for all the years I was growing up.  

I'm not sure when it came to us, but probably when my father died, in 1987, thirty years ago.  Since that time it has sat on a bookcase that I can see from my recliner.  My eyesight is so bad I can't read it all that well, but can kinda sorta check the time from the position of the hands, if not the numbers on the clock.  When there is a blackout, the clock starts again when power is restored, but that little round thing below the 12 turns red, to let you know there has been an interruption of power and that you should double check the time.  When you reset the time, the red dot disappears.  Resetting it was always a pain after the nob on the screw fell off, but a minor pain.

But somehow this blackout seems to have fried the clock.  First thing I noticed was that it was NOT running and then that there was no red dot.

I never realized how much I relied on that clock until it didn't work.  I am forever looking over at the clock, but now it is always 10:15.

A couple of years ago, Walt's sister and her husband did an extensive (and gorgeous) remodel of their house.  For years, there was a clock that hung on the wall next to the television set in the living room.  Every single one of us who have visited since the remodel has complained tht there is no clock there any more.  Like my analog clock here, I look at the blank spot on the wall several  times a day, even years after the remodel.  I am a creature of habit.  We don't realize how dependent we are on certain things until they are no longer there.

This clock belongs to my mother and has been a thorn in my side for a very long time.  She went through a long period where "time" was very important to her.  She was forever checking her watch and trying to figure out what time it was and then checking it against the chiming clock on the wall.  Only because the clock didn't get wound regularly, it was never right and it bothered her if it was a few minutes off.  I cannot count the number of times I have reset the clock, wound it again and started it going.  The chimes are never right and that bothers her too.  From time to time, we will cycle through the hours until the chimes match the actual time and then by the next time we go to Atria, the chimes are off again.

I called a friend of mine who used to own a clock shop (and who, I was delighted to learn, still repairs clocks out of his house).  He came to Atria and got the clock started again after we thought it was dead, but it's dead again now.  Rewinding it sometimes starts it, sometimes not.  Fortunately time doesn't seem to be as vital to her as it has been for so long.

The good thing about getting my mother's clock fixed, though, is learning that Darrell still repairs clocks.  As soon as I have some free time, I will call him and see if he can fix our now dead clock.  I hope he can.  It's not a particularly fancy clock and, in truth, there's not that much sentimental value to it, but I just miss being able to look over and find out what time it is.

Again, this is one of those first world problems that make me feel guilty when I realize that some of my sponsored kids don't even have electricity.

This Day was for the Birds

What better way to waste a day?

A couple of days ago, I became aware of Eagle.cam, where a mother eagle was sitting on two eggs and people from around the world have been watching the live camera, hoping to see the big hatching.

From time to time, I've watched for a bit and got very familiar with the back of mom's head and the wind ruffling her feathers.  But no sign of babies.

There was an active discussion board which lit up when the first egg cracked.  But I never saw it.  Two days reading comments from people speculating about the first baby and whether or not the second egg was going to hatch.

This morning I checked again and then posted something to Facebook about it being a useless activity.  I was tired of seeing the back of mama's head.  I decided to give up.

But later I checked back, and to my amazement, I actually saw a hint of a baby

I very excitedly posted an apology to Eagle.cam on Facebook and was pleased to see this little guy's 

head.

But the mom moved.  I mean moved OFF the nest and started tearing up pieces of -- I didn't want to think what -- and feeding it to baby.

I must have sat here for a hour taking screen shot and saving them so I could post 10 or so of them to Facebook.

I liked when mama stepped away, preparing to return to the nest, and I got a picture of baby all by him/herself.

Mama finally finished the feeding and settled back on the nest, so I stopped watching.  The thing that impressed me most was noting that mama's feet are about the size of the baby.  You don't want to be on the receiving end of those talons (did not get a pic of that).

Having spent the whole day with fowl, I am feeling guilty at planning to cook fried chicken for dinner tonight.

Normal

"Logan," read the text message we received from Jeri and Phil on Tuesday morning.  They arrived back in Boston at 3 a.m, missing the massive computer snarl that would shut down airports all over the country later that day.

Laurel posted photos on Facebook from their New Year's celebration, so they were all safe and sound in Santa Barbara again.

I didn't expect to hear from Ned, who lives only 20 miles away, but assumed he and Marta were just fine.

My kiddies had come to join us for the holidays and are now back home again and life returns to normal. I can stop worrying.

I worked at the hospital, taking a "holiday shift," which means I didn't work from 12 to 4, as I usually do, but from 10 to 2, so I covered part of the morning and part of the afternoon.  Things were so quiet I question the need for an information person over a holiday.

But that doesn't mean it was without incident.  I am less and less efficient until later and later in the mornings these days and so I found myself racing out of the house at the last minute, which meant that I was half way to the hospital before I realized that I had left my ID tag at home.  Too late to return for it, so I just hoped that would not be a problem (fortunately, it was not)

There was a problem right a way.  Since I was the "morning person," I had to set up the desk, which meant I had to go to the Auxiliary office to get all the stuff I needed.  It opens by a key code, the number of which is written on my ID badge.  Fortunately I remembered it correctly, but the morning person also has to pick up the daily list of which patients are in the hospital, which is left in the mail room, which is also opened by a key code and since I never have to go into that room, I didn't have a clue what the code was.

I figured I could get by without it because it is a print-out of the database page on the computer.

BUT the last time I worked, in early December, I got a message saying it was time to change my password.  I did, but if I wrote it down somewhere, it was with all the important notes on my old phone, and I lost all of those notes when the phone crashed.  I have about four passwords that I circulate, changing bit of them when I use them.  Sometimes a capital letter, sometime a symbol like @ or !.  One includes a year, and sometimes I change the year.  Pretty simple to remember.

But NONE of them in any form would get me in.  In the meantime, however, I remembered that the codes for the two rooms were in what they call the 'finder binder,' the book which has all the information you need to know to work as a volunteer.  So I was able to get the print-out which was good because before I finally got into the computer someone was there asking what room a certain patient was in.

I finally called for computer help and in order to help me, the help person needed to talk with a full time Sutter employee who could verify that I am who I claimed to be.  There was nobody at all around (all day) except the security guards and fortunately they are full time Sutter employees, so this guy was able to let the computer helper know I was legit.

He reset my password to "Sutter12" which I would then change when I  got in.  But the computer didn't recognize Sutter12 either.  He had me try it again, it didn't recognize it again, and told me I had too many unsuccessful tries and I was now locked out.

He reset my whole account and I was able to get in using Sutter12 and I changed my password, as instructed, but the screen it brought me to was not the screen I should be on, but the screen which showed a blanket of live cams for the birthing center.  Sigh.

Back to computer help and he got me onto the right screen and I was good to go.

That was my entire first hour! 

Next, I was supposed to call the person who is scheduled to work tomorrow but it is a new person who is not in the directory and I didn't know where to find the telephone number.  (I finally found a second directory which had new people in it).

Otherwise it was a fairly quiet day.  I was reading  "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," which "my friend" and I had discussed at Logos the last time he was in.  A woman who was looking for a friend's hospital room saw my Kindle and asked what I was reading and seemed very surprised to learn I was reading Mark Twain.

The last hour went slowly and I was very sleepy, but was glad when 2 p.m. came and I could close up.  Only when I went to record my hours on my time card, nobody had set up time cards for 2017 yet, so I have to remember to do that when I work next Friday.

From there I went to Atria to drop off my mother's laundry, which I had washed.  I told Walt that I really should write an entry called "The Loneliness of Dementia," which would be entirely too depressing an entry but I've been thinking about it a lot lately.  She had people around her most of Christmas and that was very nice but now that things are back to normal again, it's mostly just me again, and Ned, bless him, stops by now and then too.  

Her stepson, who used to have dinner once a week before she moved to Davis, started trying to come every couple of weeks and now he comes every month and a half or two months ("It's a long drive," he tells me, forgetting I used to make it in the other direction once or twice a week in the years before she moved here).

My cousin's daughter used to come 3 or 4 times a year to do her nails (she's a cosmetologist), but I think she was only up here once in 2016.  Her good friends from Hospice of Marin, with whom she worked for >20 years used to come up for lunch, but they don't come any more.  

Face it:  she's no fun to visit any more (except maybe for Ned, who is determined that things will be FUN...and makes them that by the power of his personality!)  But she can't remember a lot of people she used to, and she can't remember anything for longer than a few seconds, plus, most of the time she is sleeping (today she told me she almost never naps any more!) and always wakes up feeling terrible.  She often says she has been sick to her stomach all night and has been throwing up and then has to clean up the floor (not true).  So it takes a long time to talk her out of not feeling terrible, but if you get her to her chair to sit, she eventually starts asking about the weather and "what have you been done that you haven't told me about and I should know" and then "what are you doing tonight?" and often "are you going dancing tonight?" and then back to the weather again.  Wash, rinse and repeat until I get tired of it (almost exactly an hour) and then say goodbye.  If I tell her I'll be back in two days, she gets upset because she needs to see me every day.  If I go early in the day and say I'll be back the next days she is upset that she will be all alone all afternoon.

I feel so sorry for her because I seem to be the sum total of her non-mealtime activity and it makes me angry with myself that I sometimes don't visit her every day because I just don't feel like it.

I usually come home feeling totally worn out, though I really haven't done anything but sit and  listen to her for an hour.  I almost always need a nap when I get home.

But I do understand why nobody comes to visit her any more.  It's definitely not fun, especially if you go every day and spend half of it hearing about how bad she feels.

Books of 2016

Something else I like to at the end of every year is make a record of the books I read during the year.  I've decided that 50 books is a good goal for me to read in a year.  The first year I worked at Logos, I guess I read more than I do now because I read nearly 80 books that year.  Last year I read 56 books.  I didn't make it to 50 this year, but 43 is closer than last year (and if you combine the two years....).  It was a total of 11,788 pages, vs. 18,746 last year. (Don't you love data bases?)

Of the books I read,

16 were "real" books -- 11 of those were read at Logos
16 were on the Kindle
11 were audio books

A bit more evenly divided than last year.  I am finding that I prefer to read on the Kindle these days because my eyesight has deteriorated this past year (eye appt. coming up in February) and I can change the type size on the Kindle.

Breaking the 43 books into genres,

15 of those fit into the crime category, the bulk of those (8 of them) by Harlan Coben.  I finished Coben's Myron Bolitar series, upset that we had seen the end of Myron and his friend Win, so in desperation I read Coben's young adult series featuring Myron's nephew, then some stand alone Coben books and finally, thrilled that Coben was bringing Myron back, read his latest, "Home."  It was a Harlen Coben kinda year,  guess.... and "Home" is, I think, my favorite of all he Coben books I read.

13 were non-fiction, including 4 autobiographies, and 2 books by Bill Bryson, which I guess are a combination of humor and travel.  There were 7 animal themed books, 3 about elephants, 2 about dogs, 1 about a parrot and 1 about a guy who trains animals for Broadway.  Two of the non-fictions were collections of essays.

The scariest of the autobiographies was "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families," which was an in-depth account of what happened during the Rwanda genocide in 1984, written by a reporter who interviewed the survivors on both sides after peace had settled in for awhile.  I finally learned the difference between the tutsis and hutus, and more than I ever wanted to know about who did what to whom during the worst part of the slaughter.

The most fun, perhaps was a toss up between the story of the guy who trained animals for Broadway, and the story of a grey parrot named Alex.  "After his death, he was mourned all over the world, a full page obituary ran in the (either the New Yorker or New York Times, I can't remember).  He had been called "the smartest bird in the world," but work with him just proved that animals are thinking more than we may think they are."

An interesting, but strange sort of book was "With a Feather on My Nose," which was actress Billie Burke's autobiography, but not at all your typical Hollywood story.  Anybody hoping to gain some insights about filming The Wizard of Oz will be disappointed that she gives it short shrift...but the book was written in 1949, before Oz became the cult classic that it is today.  Mostly she talks about her co-stars and her costumes, and especially husband Flo Ziegfeld, very little about herself in Hollywood, though more about her years performing on the stage in England.

And I loved the two elephant books, written by women who had each spent years living with elephants and observing their behavior.  Elephant Memories: 13 Years in the Life of an Elephant Family" by Cynthia J. Moss was my favorite.  It seems strange to think that a book like this is "dated" but she spent a bit of book on poaching, but since the last edition of the book was 1999 and so much has happened with laws about the exportation of ivory that it really isn't that relevant any more

11 were fiction, including my friend Alec Clayton's "Return to Freedom," which I've been meaning to read for a long time.  It's the second book in a trilogy and now I have to find the other two.

"The Gravity of Birds" by Tracy Guzeman was such a compelling read that I read it most of the night and finished at 5:30 am.  I later met Guzeman at a discussion with the book club I was part of then.  She was a delightful woman.

The most disappointing of the books was "Brooklyn," which I'd wanted to read for a long time, but it droned on and on and on.  It I read it as an audio book or I probably would not have finished it at all.  Good potential plot boringly written.

I even read a "chick lit" book, "Finding Frasier," just because it was about a woman searching throughout Scotland looking for her own Jamie Frasier (from the "Outlander" series).  It was as i expected ... chick lit that I was embarrassed to be reading.

Amazingly I only read two dementia-themed books this year.  I must have reached saturation with information about books on dementia and Alzheimers.

In all the questions I answer on here about books it is often asked how often I read and I always answer that I read at least something every doy, but I actually have not read anything for the past couple of weeks.  Now that all the holiday hoop-la is over, I am looking forward to getting back to the several books I was in the middle of reading when it all started.

---

I spent the afternoon with a Hitchcock marathon and then I cooked short ribs with my new Copper Chef cookware (thanks, Laurel and Tom!)

Auld Acquaintances

We stood in a big circle, holding hands and singing Auld Lang Syne.  I looked around the circle at all these auld acquaintances that we have not forgot and thought about how this party has been given for 43 years and we have been to many of them.  While they may not be my best friends in Davis, they are the people in Davis I've known the longest.

We have lost a lot of people over the years and as we are all getting older, many have chosen not to attend, but there were still lots of familiar face that I may see only on New Year's Eve, but enjoy getting caught up.

The hosts are The Psychiatrist and his wife, a former member of the Califoria House of Representatives.  There was the widow of a psychiatrist I transcribed for briefly many, many years ago.  He died 8 years ago.  His son, now pushing 50, was best friend to Vince, our student from Malaysia who lived with us for 3 years, so we saw him more then.  We had a nice chat with him, hearing about the 10 years he has lived in Thailand.

There were two there in wheelchairs.  One is our friend from the Davis Comic Opera company, whom Walt visits twice a month with two other people, to keep him occupied and gives his wife some time off.

The other person in the wheelchair was a woman who has had MS for many years.  She's been in a wheel chair for a long time.  She tried talking to me, but what with the fact that she speaks very, very softly, my hearing is bad, and the house was filled with people noise and music it was pretty hopeless to talk with her.

Artificial joints were a popular topic of conversation!

A former Davis mayor was there, with the new love of her life, whom she met 3 years ago and who has added such a sparkle to her eyes.  The two of them alternately acted like normal adults, and then like horny teenagers.  It was fun to watch them.

There were other old friends, some of whom I had the chance to chat with and some I did not.  One of my favorite people, the former head of the School Board for many years, arrived late and I waved at her but never talked with her, since we were mostly in different rooms.  My friend Nancy, with whom I join in Trump bashing lunches was there, but we just saw each other and were never in the same part of the house at the same time; a local nurse whose son wrote an interesting book called "Honeymoon with my Brother" was there but other than saying hi, we didn't talk.

Several people complimented me on my reviews, which is always nice to hear.  One of them was a woman with whom I had a run-in back in the start-up days of the Sunshine Children's Theater (1970s), when she said the reason Paul had been cast instead of her son, who was clearly the better actor, was that I had agreed to help organize the company and it was unfair favoritism.  She and her son left.  But Paul is long dead and her son is no longer interested in theater, so the hatchet has been buried long ago.

I made my Rolo Turtles to share on the food table.  They were a big hit.

The thing I love most about this party is the Putah Creek Crawdads, a folk group which includes the Psychiatrist.  They perform every year.  They have had losses, the guy who, with his wife, was slaughtered by a teenager who wanted to see what it was like to kill someone a few years ago, the old guy who sang with the group into his 90s died two years ago and I think another member died of a heart attack before that.  But the Crawdads keep on rolling along.

People started going home before midnight, because we're all old now, and we nearly did too, but we ended up staying until after Auld Lang Syne and I'm glad we did. But we were home by 12:20.  I had not had a particularly energetic day, but my body didn't want to work when we got home, so I went to sleep instead of writing this entry.

Jeri and Phil, who had been to a party in the Bay Area last night, called on their way back to Davis and asked if we wanted to meet for brunch.  They were going to visit Grandma after brunch and then head to the airport for their return flight to Boston.  It was fun having one last meal with them.

So it appears that the holidays are over.  Everyone is going back to normal and tomorrow I work at the hospital, so life goes on...

HAPPY NEW YEAR, ALL
(God help us all get through 2017)