The weather has been quite lovely this week.
After dinner on Saturday, we investigated the newly reopened parking area at the western edge of Daly City. It's called Thornton Beach Vista; apparently the original road went down to the beach and was undermined in a bad storm in 1982. Thornton Beach itself is a state park. It's been closed off ever since we've lived here.
We knew they had been working on it over the past few months and now it's open with a parking area, solar-powered sidewalk lamps, benches, trash cans, and informational signage. Very nice. Also, the moon was close to full so it made the breakers light up nicely down below.
When we got home, I wrote a nice note to the Daly City Parks Dept., commending them on their nice work, and another to the State Parks people asking them to update the web page for Thornton Beach to mention the vista point.
On Sunday, after brunch, we drove over to the East Bay to El Sobrante to the Bay Area Storytelling Festival to see Willy Claflin and Maynard Moose. The traffic was pretty clear going over (a lot heavier coming back) but it was a nice day. Rich drove over; I drove back.
We got there at 12:30 (the show wasn't till 2:00). We bought some t-shirts, a "date-cashew Walkabout trail bar" (a marshmallow krispie bar with dates, nuts, and seeds, and an "Oatmeal Carmelita" – much like a caramel 7-layer bar with a little cognac in the caramel sauce :). The treats were made by "Express Gourmet at the Truffle Shop, Nevada City". Quite yummy.
Some friends met us at about 1:30. We found seats under the tent the original brochure had indicated lawn seating; we're glad they had the tents and the chairs. For one thing, the tents made it less likely that sound from the other tellers would overlap. And it was HOT in the sun and very bright; sitting on the lawn would have been terrible. It was over warm under the tents but at least there was shade. I noticed that no one was sitting on the lawn. Everyone was either moving or sitting under the trees.
I was able to introduce myself to Maynard this time. I petted his nose 🙂 Willy had placed his guitar, suitcase and Maynard just inside the tent 20 mnutes early and I said hello to Maynard. I'm a great fan.
Willy was wonderful as always. We had good seats near the front because we were so early. There were some stories we knew and two I had not heard before. Maynard told the story of The Uglified Ducky.
We had a last minute SF Perl User's dinner meeting in SF (the 4th Tuesday rather snuck up on us). Not bad for last minute there were 6 of us total and we had interesting conversation as well as good food.
We also had a nice dinner in the South Bay the next night with long-time friends. This was a good week for food and conversation.
Squirrel had his annual vet checkup this week. We discussed it in the car on the way over and back. Squirrel weighs 20.4 pounds and has beautiful eyes.
I'm making more use of iCal Shared Calendars. First I subscribed to US Holidays aand Sabats, Esbats, and Moon Phases. Now I'm publishing my "Work" and "Personal" calendars so I can share them among my machines and accounts. (The original "Work" calendar also syncs with Exchange again. Whoo hoo!) I also set up Rich's calendars for sharing. Finally, I found the proper incantations to password-lock the calendar URLs. Cool 😉
I also reworked my Contact list and reprinted our household phonebook. One of the annoyances of Apple's Address Book is you can't save your preferences for which field to print! There's a shareware program that does allow saving preferences but it doesn't (yet) have a full list of choices. I wrote to the developer and he says add this in a future release.
Last but not least on the technical side, I learned about Palm OS shortcuts this week. I now have shortcuts for some of the more difficult-to-draw symbols:
• º ' _ ,
I didn't get a lot of reading done this week, although I finished Getting Things Done, by David Allen. I then dropped off "loaner" copies for five people at The Company with a note recommending the book.
In between and around the rest, I've had almost enough naps and plenty of snuggles with the cats. There have been good meals and interesting conversations with Spouse and friends. I've had a few chats with my Dad and exchanged email with my Mom and sister.
Onward and Upward.
Slightly Off KIlter 