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It was a quiet day in the land of flamingos. We didn't do much of anything other than the usual daily chores. Laundry day was put off until today, for no particular reason other than, "lets do it tomorrow".

We ordered some food from the Cambodian restaurant, and ate it with garlic toast.

I received a call from Kaiser asking if I wanted to come by in the afternoon and get my COVID vaccine, rather than waiting until Monday. I said I would, and they said they would make a medical record number for me.

I got another call from Medical Records, asking if I was the same me who used to live in Santa Clara, who had Kaiser insurance back then. I was, and had completely forgotten about it, and that I had lived there for a brief period of time back in 1983.

I went over at the scheduled time, and was quite pleased to see one of my recently graduated students working the registration desk. I love seeing former students doing good things.

I got the shot, and waited for about 15 minutes to see if I was going to have any reactions. I didn't, and came home.



I took the obligatory post-vaccine selfie. No real after-effects other than a mild headache. I noticed that my hair is now almost completely gray. I'm not sure if that's from the vaccine or that I just haven't been paying attention.

I woke up pretty early (4 am) today,thinking about what I still needed to do for the start of the semester. Our first day of class is next Tuesday. I got up and finished setting up the course site and evaluation site. Pretty much everything else is done. There are meetings later this week, and then the big convocation on Friday.

I ordered some new scrubs and socks for clinical. It's the first clothing I have needed to buy in almost a year. It will be strange to have somewhere to go a couple of days a week.



Random bubble against a cliff at Bodega Bay. You saw it here first.

I finished up the work necessary to get my students onboarded for their clinical experience in a couple of weeks. It's one of those tedious and time-consuming tasks that has to be done, and has to be done while I am on break. It all needs to be completed two weeks before the start of the semester. It went smoother this time than any other semester, which is ironic, since it will be the last time I need to do it. I'll pass it on to whoever. Maybe it's not really ironic, and there's probably someone out there muttering to themselves, "No, no--that's not irony."



A great blue heron from our drive around the delta the other day. We saw such a wide variety of wildlife that day. Malida saw a red fox in a field.

I have been waiting for the opportunity to get a COVID vaccine. Not because I think I am going to get it again, but because I think it will be necessary in order to do anything in the hospital, which I will need to do in a few weeks. Not to mention international travel. I want to go back to Thailand this summer.

I called my healthcare provider to see what the situation was. I'm kind of in a gray area between Phase 1a and 1b, and they said they didn't have any to give. I mentioned it to a coworker, and she told me that Kaiser was offering immunizations for nursing school teachers, and got me connected. So I'm getting the first jab on Monday.



We had all sorts of really bad fires this summer, and one of them was along a creek where I used to fish, back when I used to fish. I took a drive out along the creek to see what it looked like. You can see all sorts of devastation, but there is a lot of new green coming up that softens it a bit.



Some chickens inspect my left foot.

I walked down a trail to the creek and these two guys came out of the bushes and started following me around. They were the friendliest chickens I have ever met. I talked to them for a bit, and apologized for not having any dried corn in my pocket. I did remember, though, that I had some unsalted peanuts in my camera bag, and gave that to them.

I was curious about them--why they were there. I was nowhere near any farms or structures. I am wondering if they lived on a farm somewhere and fled the fire, ended up next to the creek, and decided to stay there. They look pretty healthy. There's probably someone out there muttering to themselves, "No, no--that's not how chickens behave." Ironic, isn't it?

Malida was off yesterday, and I proposed a short road trip down the river road to explore some more of the delta. She was enthusiastic, so we put some tea in the thermos, gathered some snacks, and headed off toward Hwy 160, which follows the Sacramento River all the way down to the San Francisco Bay. We went as far as the Antioch Bridge, which crosses the San Joaquin River as it joins the Sacramento and empties into the bay.

We drove along a levee road around Sherman Island, got a hot dog in Rio Vista and then headed south to wander through the Montezuma Hills. We saw all sorts of things, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We stopped somewhere at about 2, and I looked at my phone for the first time that day. I saw the news reports about what was going on in the Capital, and turned on the radio. That was the end of the trip for us.

We came home and watched the news for the rest of the evening. I was stunned and angry.

I had no appetite for looking at the many pictures I had taken, and let them be.

This morning I got up and downloaded the pictures, looking for one in particular that would be my social media post for the day.



A baby lamb.

I'm taking it as a good sign. For what, I'm not sure, but I'll wait and see.

It is foggy and overcast this morning, so no stars, and just a hint of the waning moon. It rained for a bit overnight, and more rain is expected in the next few days. We always welcome rain here. We might drive up and see the snow later today.

One of my nieces got married yesterday in Florida. Had it not been for the pandemic, I would have loved to go, and spend a few days in Florida. I've only been there once, and was limited to Ft. Lauderdale, which was ok other than the beach being a bit oily. The high point of that trip was getting to meet the person who gave me an invite to LJ, way back when you had to be invited. Now they let anyone in.

In any case, because of the pandemic, they decided to cut the invite list way back, and Zoom the wedding for those of us who couldn't (or wouldn't) travel. Of course, being Florida, no one who actually attended the wedding wore masks or distanced.



Congratulations Lauren and Mo!

Attend zoom wedding--check.

To celebrate, I made some crab melt sandwiches from the crab meat we had leftover from dinner on New Year's Eve. I didn't have any mayo, so I substituted with tartar sauce, and they turned out fine. I was talking with someone here yesterday about how shopping habits have changed since the pandemic, and not going out just to get something is one of those changes. Find something else in the house that will work. Had it not been for the tartar sauce, I probably would have just slathered the crab in melted butter, which sounds pretty good too.



I had plans to travel to Lone Pine, Alabama Hills, and Death Valley this coming week, for my winter break photo trip. Lone Pine is on the eastern side of the Sierras, down highway 395. It was the trip I had planned for spring break last year, just as the pandemic hit. Because our travel restrictions have been extended, I have canceled once again, and optimistically rescheduled for spring break this year, which is at the end of March.



Mobius Arch in the Alabama Hills at sunrise, with Mt. Whitney in the background.

It's a new day.

Hello again, it's been another 3-4 weeks worth of stuff. Sometimes I want to write more frequently, but get stuck on one thing that I don't really want to write about, so I don't write anything. I want to write more in 2021--maybe something every day.



This is my stepsister Robbin. She had knee surgery in the fall, and had to have a cast on for close to two months to keep it from falling apart. When they took the cast off, they discovered that she had some breakdown on her ankle. That got infected, and she ended up in the hospital just after Thanksgiving with sepsis. She was getting better, and called me just before my birthday to tell me she was going home the next day, and that she loved me.

That evening she threw a clot into her lungs and had to be intubated and placed on a ventilator. They gave her an anticoagulant, and she had a massive brain bleed and died the next day. A perfect storm of things gone wrong.

I am so glad I got to talk to her the day before.

Once the pandemic has subsided, we will have a celebration for both her and my dad.



This fucking year.

I'm proctoring a test that I am giving remotely. I miss being in the testing room and watching the students work things out as they try and determine the correct answer to whatever question they are attempting to answer. It was always such a quiet time--I could really get some thinking done, if I wanted to. Most of the time, though, I would surf the web or make an LJ entry. No thought required.



Here's a corner of my office at home, while I was writing test questions yesterday morning before dawn. I found that scrap of paper with ideas for LJ entries, and one of them was about how I redesigned my home office after I realized I was going to be working in here for a while. This isn't that entry.

I did a Zoom tutoring session with my class yesterday, and at the end, we got to talking about why certain things are the way they are. It ended up being an hour-long dialogue about all sorts of things. That's one of the things I miss about being in the classroom--those spontaneous conversations that pop up about random things. Sometimes that is when I feel most like a teacher.



Yesterday's sunrise. I could see it from where I am sitting, but it was so spectacular I had to go outside and take a look. It later rained (finally), and kept raining on and off overnight. Now the sun is shining, but we are expecting some more rain later. Maybe. I need to go out after the exam is done, but I don't care if it is sunny or rainy. I like both.



This morning is the 16th anniversary of my first wife's death. Her name was Arlina. She was only 47 when she passed, which seems younger and younger with each passing year. I said a prayer for her this morning, though I suspect that if there is a good place where we go after we die, she is well-settled there. Her mom used to tell me that she dreamed that Arlina lives in a little house somewhere in heaven. "By herself," she would add, somewhat cryptically.

I've thought about her and our life together a bit these past few days. It seems like so long ago--almost another lifetime. The more time passes, the less familiar that old life feels.

The room that is my office was once her office, and it looks out on the rose bushes she planted when we first moved here 20 years ago. In spite of the rain and the wind, there are still a few roses out there, and I will take them to put on her grave later.

It's cloudy this morning, with a 60% chance of rain in the next hour. I'll believe it when I see it. Out my window I can see the rising sun peeking through a crack in the clouds in the east. I don't think it's gonna rain this morning.

I was on campus yesterday to conduct a skills lab for our students. It's the first time we have been together as a group this semester. It's the first time that I met most of them, other than talking with them via Zoom. I discovered that one of them lives next door to a doctor I worked with for many years. Another is the cousin of the husband of one of my first wife's nieces.



It was challenging to maintain any sort of social distancing. We lost one of our rooms because another class got displaced from their clinical site due to a COVID outbreak. I had made a schedule that had staggered start and end times, but pretty much everyone showed up at the same time. It's the first time they have been together as a class, and I think everyone wanted to see each other. In normal times we would have had a pot luck. I don't know what I would have made. Maybe some cranberry bread.



I took a photograph of the moon the other night, for no discernible reason. I don't really even remember doing it. I think it was a few days after the blue moon. Anyway, here is the moon.

Somewhere in this mess, I have a list of things I thought I could write about if I went back to writing here. I can't find it, but it's probably a stale list anyway. Many of my random thoughts have a short shelf life.



One of the last of my fall color shots for this year. This has a sort of spooky feel for me. In spite of everything, I managed to get some good pictures this fall. I expect most everything is gone now.

I put down a deposit on a new camera the other day. It's not in stock yet, so I am waiting. It's back to Canon for me after a short excursion into Olympus cameras. They're pretty good, but they just aren't Canon.

I'm glad I didn't sell my old lenses. My old Canon 5D (and the lenses) will be 16 years old next month. I bought them just before my birthday in 2004. At the time, it was pretty expensive, but I think got my money's worth out of it. It's been a journey.



This used to be one of my favorite coffee cups. Now it is relegated to the back of the cupboard, and when it is the only choice I sigh, and reluctantly pour. I don't know what happened between us. Such is life.

Well, that was kind of a long week. I suspect there's still some more tomfoolery ahead of us in the coming weeks, but at least there is a hint of dawn on the horizon. We are relieved.

I have lost all track of time, and can't remember when I did what. We went out to the coast a week or two ago and stayed overnight in Montara. We ordered in from Nick's Rockaway and walked along the coast in the morning.




The day before, we stopped in to see all my step-sisters in Burlingame. One of them is recovering from knee surgery, so is laid up at home with a big cast on. A few blocks away, the other two were busy making large batches of Chex party mix.



They gave us a big bag to take home with us. Malida had never tried Chex mix, and took to it immediately. She finished off the bag and insisted I make some more, which we did yesterday. It's not as good as my sister's. She is an amazing cook and baker, and has a catering business that she started after retiring.

We had hoped to take a drive up over the Tioga Pass in Yosemite today, but there is a storm up there, and the pass is closed temporarily. I'd like to get up there again before the pass closes for the winter. This will be the first Fall that I haven't been up that way in a long time. Yosemite has been pretty closed down during the pandemic, and really just opened up without restrictions last week. We do have reservations to stay there over Christmas, and are hoping that the situation allows that.



We went to the museum last Friday to see my photos before they took them down. My other step-sister, who lives here in town, joined us. She is in a multimedia class, and is doing a documentary on me. It's kind of a summation of my career as a nurse. I'll be interested to see how it turns out.



Malida and I in front of my photograph of her in Yosemite last Christmas.

The weather has cooled down considerably in the past few days, and it really feels like Fall now. I like it. I tend to experience some sort of seasonal affective disorder, but in the summer rather than the winter, so when the weather cools, I always feel better.

It's just after 6:30 am here, and there is a hint of dawn on the horizon. I'm enjoying a cup of coffee and listening to the Celtic music show, and it is shaping up to be a lovely day.