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Well, it's been a rough couple of months. Mom broke both hips in January and is in a nursing home now. There's been a lot of stuff to do. Whew! I hope things don't get that bad again. Hmmm... lots of work to do on the site.

Happy New Year and thank god the holidays are over. I barely move during the 12 days of Christmas, except for some obligation or other, and even 6 days later than that it's iffy.

The days are getting longer and soon it will be Groundhog Day - the day halfway between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. A couple of new things - Zombies on the March and The Naked Weasel, in progress.
Wednesday, 12-24-03

Rain leak in my car! Passenger floor all wet! Googling this issue turned up interesting ideas for fixes, as well as the information that 1993 T-birds tend to blow the head gasket after 60,000 miles - a manufacturing or design flaw. Maybe I can finish drying the carpet tomorrow.

Classes are over and Mom isn't doing too badly. Had to search out her glasses and teeth but it only took 30 minutes to locate these items. She's gaining some weight.

Tuesday morning before 11:00 am - Ikea isn't bad. The breakfast special I'm sure was rehydrated, but it's only $2.00 and the coffee is free. While you eat you have a nice view of the bay framed by freeway ramps.

I went over there to see if I could get a look at the birds - it's the first time I ever walked out there. Not that I went too far. At first I wished I had brought a garbage bag to pick up trash as I walked, but I wouldn't have gotten more than 12 feet.

I saw a couple of hummingbirds I couldn't identify in coyote bush - they were making 2 calls I don't recall ever having heard. The ones in my yard make a little snicking call. These 2 were doing 2 completely different ones that I can't describe. Saw 2 mallards mating.

Heerman's gulls and ring-beaked gulls are back for the winter and begging for food. A Heerman's gull landed on the hood of my truck and stared right in at me, waiting for another bit of food. One did that 2 years ago and I wonder if it's the same one! There were other Heerman's gulls there, but only one sat on the hood. They sure are pretty. The plumage exactly matched the gray of the clouds today.

High wave alert - head to beach at high tide to see the waves. Unfortunately, I picked Muir Beach and I don't think they are that high there. Anyway, they looked about 10' but my estimate is amateur.

I saw about 15 turkey vultures on the beach eating a very old, dead pinniped. Even the one raven who sampled it couldn't take it and left. Frogs singing but I couldn't find them.

Bird list: sanderlings, other sandpipers (probably western and least sandpipers), ring-beaked gulls, other gulls (probably western gulls), canada geese, cormorants, stilts, willets, coots.

Back to Costco with the coat Mom could not work the buttons on. This time I got one with velcro so if she can't work the zipper at least she can close it. Of course, this assumes she can work the velcro. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I hope the hell everything goes ok when I go over to the dementia unit for turkey with Mom.

Went for another walk around the shore near Costco. The tide was up and so the jingling of the broken pottery on the beach could not be heard. This explains why I had never heard it before - must have never been there at low tide. (See 11-19-03 for explanation of broken pottery on the beach.)

The files I burned on my CD at work can't be read on my home pc. I guess I should have tested this before. The Easy CD forum has reports that Direct CD is not reliable - oh well. Downloaded Isobuster and that can't read it either.

Could it have been 40 years ago that Kennedy was assassinated? In 30 years I'll be the same age as my poor mother with Alzheimers who currently doesn't know if it's day or night. Tempus fuggit! Not that I really think I'll get Alzheimers, and there are plenty of folks her age who are very sharp, but she's no longer running laps. So I guess I should live it up. In my case, that means have another apple. Do I dare to eat a peach?

Kennedy never got to the stage where he could consider worrying about all that, but then he was on a number of pills, including cortisone and speed - all prescription, of course.

I knew Kennedy had been shot because I heard it on I way to German 101 at the University of Maryland that day. My German professor started to cry and she said that it was starting here the way it happened in Germany. She had spent WWII in a work camp in Poland. (I never got it together to get the story on that, because she was not Jewish - but then I was on a number of pills, including cortisone and speed - all prescription, of course.) She pulled herself together and we did some damn thing for a while until the class door opened and someone gave her the word in German in a low voice. "Well, you heard it.", she said, "Er ist todt."Wednesday, 11-19-03

I was too early to get into Costco, as usual, so I went for a little nature walk. The bay trail has been extended since I last walked this part, just south of Pt. Isabel, and I no longer have to crawl over slippery rocks and through holes in the fence to get past the KNEW station. There's a nice asphalt walk/bikeway around the shore. At this particular point the shore is covered with broken pottery and old pottery molds, perhaps dumped from an old factory, and on the bay side with the larger wavlets there is a nice ringing sound as the ceramic shards bump against each other. I saw an interesting display of cormorants fishing as a team. It was on this shore a little more than a year ago that my friend and I saw a pinniped fishing. After looking up pictures and visiting Pier 39 again to look at the sea lion, I identifed this pinniped we had seen as a harbor seal. The face was flatter (and sweeter), and did not have the snout of a sea lion.

Bird List: pelican, mallards, cormorants, grebes, snowy egret, several flocks of numerous flying, skimming small birds that I hope I can look up, gulls, mourning doves, etc.

I was at Costco to buy supplies for Mom. Later I used an ATM machine for the first time. I never wanted to use one before because I work with computers and I never trusted them. Now I have finally said "What the heck!" and joined the rest of the world in grabbing money out of a slot.

The hammock is a wonderful thing
Under a fleecy wrap
I'm happy in my nice red sling
And take a little nap.
When my eyes are open again I see
A rolling pretty cloud
Squirrels and ravens look at me
And say things very loud .

What did the blackbird say to the crow? I actually heard what they said and it wasn't printable. The gist of it was "Get out of my territory you big brute, for I am a very fierce blackbird." And it didn't rain. So I painted over the caulking I had done 2 weeks ago. To do that I stirred the 4-year old Benjamin Moore paints and the unopened ones were completely recoverable. I love Benjamin Moore paints.

It was 4 years ago that I brought my mother here from Arizona and she was diagnosed with Alzheimers. I stopped working on the house then and was spending much time working at a new job and my second job of overseeing Mom's care. Things were very good in assisted living, but she gradually progressed over the summer and is now in a Dementia Unit.

OK, it's getting cold and the days are really short and this makes me sleepy and irritable. So I was a slug today. Not only that, but to take my mind off my troubles I buried myself in the computer game "Civilization II". It's really a waste of time when I not only spend hours playing it, but get my ass kicked too.

It's nice when the mail comes early. That way I don't have to wonder how many of my mother's medical bills will show up today. Today there were about 8 "non-bill" notices from BlueCross/Shield but nothing horrible. Thank you, thank you!

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