Bits and Pieces

   Well, it's Wednesday. Penny asked me if I'd written anything recently and, well, no, so here I am. I had a look and saw my readership is down 40% this past week. If I was in a for-profit situation it would be time to shut the doors and lay everyone off. Alas, I'm not, so I'll assume a) people are off in the beautiful summer sunshine and don't have time to read, or b) there's a worldwide Internet slowdown and people don't have enough bandwidth to devote to my musings or c) I've become uninteresting and people found something else to look at. I'll assume c) so I'll try to liven things up.

  In that vein, rather than start off with the travelogue-y things I've been writing about I thought I'd discuss the more mundane house-sitting-y things we've been up to. For example, I've done  laundry (twice) since we arrived. The "pack everything you need into a carry on bag even though you'll be away 3 1/2 months" thing works well as long as you wash things regularly. Check.

  We've grocery shopped more times than I'm comfortable with although, as I mentioned earlier, we spent some of that time trying to find a supermarket where we didn't feel like criminals. Mission accomplished. We found a place called "Lucky". Really. I'm not sure if it's Asian-owned as "lucky" shows up in Asian-owned businesses frequently. It might be an homage to Dirty Harry ("do you feel lucky punk?") since we're in the San Francisco area. Who knows? What I do know is this market was everything we were looking for. Everything was priced. Yes. Previous experience around here says that's unusual. It's weird how special it can be to know how much the cheese costs. We're only here another three days so I'm glad we knocked that off our list. I hate unfulfilled aspirations.

  Then there's the dog. You've met Zoe in an earlier episode. She's cute and friendly and furry and smart and... so goddamned annoying. She and I formed a concrete bond the first day we met. I'm her human. Penny exists in her universe only when she gets food, otherwise, I'm her human.

  I follow all the owner's instructions to the letter. First thing in the morning, open the back door to let her out to pee. Check. Feed her once she comes back in. Check. Take her for a twenty-minute walk along a predefined route around 8 am so she can poop in the same place every day. Check. Walk her again late afternoon, same route. Check. Feed her after her walk. Check. At 10:30 pm move her crate from the office to our bedroom and she will go into it on her own, then close the door. Check. Wait. Uncheck that. She won't go into her crate for love nor money. That's where we were ten days ago.

  Since then, I tried putting the crate into the owner's bedroom. She went in and I closed the door. Ten minutes later the barking started. Out she came and I let her out for the night. An hour later she jumps on our bed, then she jumps off the bed. Are we awake yet? No? Back on the bed. Back off the bed. Awake now? Good. No sleep for you.

  Next night the crate stays in the office. She goes in and I close the door. Same result except no bed-jumping because I'm smart and closed our door. That worked until she started barking at 5 am. We've tried various permutations and combinations without success. Last night was the worst. I didn't bother with the crate and she went nuts, barking at raccoons at 1 am. I put her in the crate, closed the door, closed the office door, closed our door. There. Quiet... for an hour then more barking. Out of the office and barking again at 4:30. No sleep for you.

  Penny was talking with our granddaughter, Zoey (with a "Y"), and she suggested covering the crate with a blanket. Today's experiment. Otherwise, aside from this place having the world's smallest TV and no microwave and the weather being mainly windy and cool, this is paradise.

  On to travel-y things. Sunday, we went for a five-mile hike. Atlas Obscura said there was an old Nike missile emplacement on top of the hills behind us and that an artist had sculpted some large cats that he'd placed there. Sounded like just our kind of thing so off we went. Since we had to get to the top of the hills it was mostly uphill.

Crazy. Of course, returning was downhill. I love the way that worked out. It was a very nice hike but no cats. Just so you know what I'm talking about, here's what we expected to find:

  Yesterday we went off for an excursion to the Big City, having mostly avoided it since we arrived. We started by driving to San Anselmo on the west side of the bay north of SF. Why, you might ask. Well, it turns out George Lucas lived there in the 70's and wrote both Star Wars and Indiana Jones in that house. In fact, the first rough cut of Star Wars was screened in the local theatre. A few years ago, George, in appreciation of the town and its inhabitants, donated a small parcel of land which he called Imagination Park in the centre of town and commissioned these statues of Yoda and Indy:

  From there we made our way across a very foggy Golden Gate Bridge and headed west to Lands End. Those of you familiar with my travelling modus operandi know I can't resist going to the ends of the Earth. So we went.

  As you can see, the entrance to San Francisco Bay is dangerous and Lands End is known for the dozens of ships that have been wrecked along its rocky coast. Although a few wrecks are supposed to be visible at low tide, we didn't see them. We did see an unwrecked ship so that seemed like a good way to illustrate how foggy it was:

  After a brief drive south along the coast we turned our attention back to Atlas Obscura and found the 16th Street Tiled Staircase:

  Penny checked the grout joints when she took this picture and assures me it was done correctly and the stair heights are according to code. We ended our jaunt at Golden Gate park, spending a couple of hours wandering through the Botanical Gardens:

  Of note, during our day the temperature went up and down like a yo-yo. When we left Richmond in the morning it was 16C. San Anselmo, on the other side of the bay, was 21C. It was 12C when we crossed the Golden Gate and 16C at Lands End. We spent the afternoon at the park where it was 22C then we retraced our route north and east with temps going up to 28C north of the city and dropping back to 18C when we arrived home. No wonder it's always foggy here. Later.