Sunday, December 11, 2011 in California under a gray sky

I think that while I was out of the room one of our cats walked on the keyboard and published my post when all I had written in it was a title.

The sarcastic diatribes are from the cats. The nice posts are from me.

Some of you may be excited to know that California is not sunny all the time. Here near this part of the coast and further south in California, we go for about 10 years without much change in the weather. So we make the most of what little weather we do get. So, when we get a light rain, drivers lose control of their cars. Once during a light rain in Mountain View at the intersection of Middlefield and Moffett, I saw one driver do a complete 360 in the middle of an intersection. Then when the car came to a rest, the driver accelerated fast and did almost another 360 (went 3/4 the way around or more) and finally sped off, out of the middle of the intersection. During all that show (which I think was accidental), drivers at all four entrances to the intersection sat still in their cars watching and waiting for the intersection to be clear of this one car.

Today was mild, as are almost all days here in San Jose. Louise and I went to the Farmer's Market in Campbell.

I got a knife sharpened at that Farmer's Market. As usual I got beef at the Farmer's Market. It's the only source of humanely raised meat that I know close enough that I can buy it regularly.

I sampled olive oil. They didn't happen to have any from Palestine. The seller says it's hard to export it out of Palestine. He had oil from lots of other places. I didn't buy any olive oil today, because it's expensive.

I encountered a person in a Greenpeace vest. He told me that somewhere 300 football fields area of rainforest were being cleared per hour or per day, I forget which, and most of the material is used to make toilet paper and packaging for toys. Because of a Greenpeace protest, two large toy companies have switched to recycled packaging and at least one of them is down to zero deforestation, for packaging at least.

We got a few other things and left the Farmer's Market.

Louise went off with a friend, and will meet me later this afternoon to go to a movie. The movie is "In Time". Marguerite (my other daughter) has already seen it. Watching movies is one of my favorite things to do. After I first came to California I watched 2 or more per week. Now I see only 6 to 12 movies per year, and those are almost always with one or both of my daughters. One of the few I've seen without my daughters was Fahrenheit 911 which I watched 4 times. It's one of my favorite movies.

Today I don't walk for exercise. I rest from it about two days per week. I'm still gradually toughening my feet and joints, and often don't even get up to 3 miles per hour. Last night we (Louise & I) walked 70 minutes, which is the longest I had walked for a long time.

Louise flew in from Los Angeles where she goes to school, Friday night after her last test of the quarter which ended at 6pm. They have to be out of the dorm at 9pm the same day.

Yesterday I was one of three drivers for a jazz choir. We went from San Jose, early in the morning at eclipse time, up to Santa Rosa which is two hours away. We went to a jazz festival at which high school jazz choirs and jazz bands were performing. Our high school jazz choir is called the Treblemakers. Marguerite's a soprano in it. They have zero budget from the school district, have to do all their practicing on their own time (no school time allocated to it), and do it in a borrowed room (the drama room). They're very good though and won first place for choirs at this festival.

-John L.