San Jose

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol 1 p. 599

31.4 miles

cloudy, cool

 

308 recordings of 21 types. 66 old SVU. 31% clear.

 

Sunday morning (the 18th) I went to church. There was an amazing time when all these young people, at least 100, filed in. I gathered it was a Confirmation class by the flame badges they were wearing, and later, after meeting the 14(!) leaders who came from as far away as Scotland and many different states, I deduced it was a retreat, and probably most of the diocese.

 

Then I came home, quickly wrote a journal entry, cleaned up the kitchen and living room, grabbed a quick bite, and was out of the house by 11:15. I tried stopping near the raptor center to see if I could get the cache I missed the other day, but it was down a steep slope and I had no backup if I hurt myself, so I reluctantly let it go. There were a couple of slowdowns on the road to San Jose, including one complete stop, but I got to Monica's house about 2:20, yay me.

 

 

Mark wasn't there! He was off riding his bike. Monica helped me carry the train stuff into the house, and the grill set from Lazy Boy. Then she gave me two bags of citrus. Now I'm trying to sprout some kumquat seeds. We were on our way out the door to walk down to the MLK library when Mark arrived, so we told him he wasn't allowed to look till I got back.

 

It was a pleasant walk and I got to see the inside of the library (which is a joint city and university library, which is a fantastic idea!) with Charlotte. When we got back to the house, I went and got Mark, telling him I want to play with the trains.

 

He was delighted. The decorations are great, (he thinks he can use Windsor Castle as an amusement park) and the trains wonderful. He said one locomotive was worth over $300! I'm so glad I didn't have to try to sell them! (And I just found another box with more layout stuff, though not as full as the last one.) Two of the transformers were corroded, and he gave me back the good one that was in good shape, because the Z gauge train was in the box. So I still have the tiny tiny one.

 

I overheard Genevieve breaking my heart. She was making a poster or something that said "If you're pro-life you're pro-welfare..." Sigh. But no point in confronting the 17-year-old, who knows everything of course. I hope the society continues to change, because I'm sure her grandchildren will be horrified that people nowadays thought abortion was acceptable, the way we are disgusted by slavery.

 

Monica and Charlotte went off to see a play, and Mark had a dinner with friends, so I said goodbye to Genevieve and drove off to Helena's. Of course I once again turned at the wrong exit (the Lawrence expressway). Maybe next time I'll get it right.

 

Helena, on medication for her bad back, couldn't have the wine, but *I* surely enjoyed it!

 

She fixed a pleasant dinner and we were relaxing, both in our jammies at 9 when all of a sudden the CO monitor went off with an ear-piercing shriek! It turned off for a short time when I took it outside, but started up again in the house and there was no shutting it off... Helena went through the neighborhood till she found someone to remove the batteries. We opened windows and turned off the heater, but it was obviously a defective monitor. (It never stopped, even outside.) Nonetheless, we were jumpy.

 

Helena has a way of repeating herself that is easy for me to catch. When I got home I found myself talking to myself (which I do) "That was good. It was quite tasty." "I really liked that tasty meal." "It was really good."

 

Monday morning I went out geocaching. To my delight, I found the first three, so of course I got cocky and didn't find two, but ended up with 5 finds, including two Little Free Libraries and I did remember to bring books to leave at each. (And picked up a book for Padreic at the first one.) The second one was built from an old fence. Their hint was something about the attic so I wasted a lot of time looking there before I found the cache in a fake book. Really clever!

 

 

Helena had been intent on taking the CO monitor to Home Depot but when I got back and said "let's go" she didn't want to. We had lunch and then went off to Notre Dame High School. Monica and Mark had each given us directions, and they differed slightly, so once I had the vague idea, I was able to get to the school, and I saw the parking lot was open. Helena, trying to interpret the instructions, was telling me to turn right, but I decided to circumnavigate the school first, and sure enough, we got a parking place in the school lot!

 

There was a little program, and then Charlotte took us on a tour of the school. The tour finishes at a big display of place settings... each Freshman girl made a plate and display about a famous woman. Of course there were a lot of women like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, not so many of the Condaleesa Rice persuasion. They did have Katherine Johnson, (Hidden Figures), and Malala, women I really respect. They also had Bella Abzug and Margaret Sanger. I dont know why one has to be in favor of killing babies to be a feminist, and this at a Catholic school. If I lived here I would be biting my tongue so very much.

 

 

They also had some really nice food and I, like an idiot, threw out a very nice plastic cup that they had veggies and dip in (so I went back for another which I kept.)

 

They finished with the school song and I was reminded of the time I saw Charlotte in her 1st grade performance of "I'm going to eat some worms" when she really got into it and shuddered. I said then she'd be an excellent actress and so she has been (apart from the first time when she was just checking with everyone else about what she should do.)

 

 

Afterwards I drove us to Monica's (which Helena, for some reason, calls Mark's) where she fixed a very nice dinner. I told her I'd filled my eye-rolling quotient for the day, but I got a few more in before we were done.

 

Part of the eye-rolling was because I'd said "sure" I'd come to her grief support group and then she was all a-dither about dinner, we'd be late, they couldn't have it early enough, etc. etc. I finally said I wanted to go to dinner(!) and to the grief group if we managed but que sera sera. She'd managed to get Mark involved in the panic, but in the end we had a good dinner, plenty of chat time, and make it to the meeting in time. Though Helena's deafness did cause some trouble because on the way back I asked, to be sure, if the grief group was at the church, and she heard something about the Greek church and said she'd never been there and I'm thinking that can't be right. We finally got it sorted out. It's good we went because we were the only two people there apart from the group leaders. I wore my WPAC name badge and we ended up talking about that. They thought we had some good ideas. I pretty well dominated the hour, but we did give Helena some time to talk.

 

Tuesday early I left, and came home. It wasn't too bad once I got out of SJ.