A New Place To Explore

   Hello faithful readers. First, thanks for following our adventures here. I write these posts for you so I hope you're enjoying them.

  As you know, we arrived here in Richmond, CA Saturday after our adventure-filled drive from Arizona. Richmond is a suburb of San Francisco across the bay, just north of Berkeley and Oakland. It's a beautiful, green area with densely packed post-war homes on steep streets with million dollar views of the Bay and environs.

  The house we're in has been enlarged over the years into a weird mix of rooms but it seems to work. The best feature is the backyard which is like a slice of paradise.

Combine that with the view from the front, overlooking the bay, and you can ignore the odd layout of the house itself.

  We're taking care of a dog, cat and two koi ponds and the owner has left us very specific instructions... a little too specific. Some of the routines seem as odd as the house so we try to do as we're told without asking why. After all, we're only here for two weeks.

  The dog is a two year-old Dutch Kooikerhondje named Zoe, a smallish fluffy girl who's very smart and playful.

  The orange eight year-old cat, Felix, is very friendly but is constantly harassed by the dog so disappears for long stretches except when it's mealtime.

  The owners expressed some concern about the cat looking thin and Penny and I think it's because Zoe doesn't let her eat. Rather than place Felix's food in a spot Zoe can't reach, they leave it on the floor so the dog gets in Felix's face whenever he's eating. As I said, we're not about to change routines but I think putting the cat's food on the laundry room counter would be a simple solution. Anyway, we're guarding Felix while he's eating and giving him extra food and maybe that will help.

  The fish are very healthy and there's a lot of them. One of the ponds holds about 20 large goldfish with a couple of largish koi and the other holds about 15 very large koi.

  So far, they've been easy to deal with as they're properly trained re feeding time and the pump/filter system seems to be functioning well so there's little to do other than feed them.

  We've been taking it easy since we arrived so we got out today to see the latest Indiana Jones flick and it was great! Tonight we watched all the July 4th fireworks from our driveway high above the Bay Area. Although it was too dark to take any quality video it was quite a sight with dozens of displays going off below us all around. I'm writing this as it approaches 11 pm and the festivities are just now ending.

  Being baseball fans it's no surprise we'll be heading to Oracle Park to watch the Giants Friday night. This is supposed to be the best ballpark in the major leagues so we're looking forward to it. We'll also likely play some golf tomorrow or Thursday as well as a couple of days exploring SF this week. Stay tuned!