Oldies But Goodies

Old Central Press building, on 11th and R Streets

I worked at Central Press for 15 years. It was my first big-time job as a typesetter in the publishing industry. Our original location was nearer the outskirts of Sacramento, in a building that now houses a casket maker. The brick building above was centrally located in the city, halfway between downtown and Cal Central Press, which was our "mother" company.

If you walked down the sidewalk to the left, just past our building, there was an old, small house where Mr. Weird lived. All the windows were boarded up. His ancient green station wagon was always parked in the driveway. The house was strange enough, but Mr. Weird was a cross-dresser. Some days he'd be out hoeing weeds dressed as a guy. Well, pretty much a guy, he did wear pedal pushers but he didn't have boobs on. When he went out, though, he wore a tight sweater and a straight skirt and those nylon stockings with the seam down the back. What made him weird is that he was a very homely man and an even homelier woman. He looked sorta like Richard Nixon except he was squattier and had broader shoulders. He always had a 5 o'clock shadow. And his clothes were really about 15 years out of style. He was a caricature of a cross-dresser.

Occasionally a pedestrian would come running into our office in a fright. "Call the police!!!" he'd say. He had just been walking down the sidewalk, noticed the strange house, and while he was looking at it Mr. Weird came charging out carrying a Samurai sword and chased him halfway down the street. We'd say, "Yeah, that's okay, he does it all the time."

Just across the street (and the railroad tracks) from our building was the Fox & Goose.

View of old Central Press building from the porch of Fox and Goose.

Fox & Goose is Sacramento's (supposedly) authentic English pub. I couldn't verify that because I've never been to England. Central Press went out of business many years ago, but Fox & Goose is still thriving.

F&G's delivery van.

This past weekend I met a friend there for breakfast. I'm not going to tell you who, for reasons that will be explained later. And besides it sounds mysterious.

I hadn't been to Fox & Goose for 20 years. When I worked at Central Press, the railroad tracks down the middle of R Street were actually being used by trains. Now the street is smooth, with genuine fake railroad tracks. There are nice bronze statues of a fox and a goose outside the pub. My friend took my picture with the goose.

Goose and Jan

I took her picture with the fox. I could have called it Two Foxes. But I'm not going to show it to you.

Is this an authentic English pub?

Inside Fox & Goose

It doesn't look much different than Gold Rush-era buildings to me, but what do I know? It has a wooden floor and lots of beer posters and memorabilia.

This note from the menu might interest my readers from England.

Our table was right in front of the dart board. Happily, no one was playing.

I had a great time talking with my friend, who I hadn't seen in quite a while. She had a story she was dying to tell, but didn't want her co-workers to hear. I'll tell you that tomorrow.

Anne's Hay

This year, for the first time in maybe 3 years, it didn't rain on the hay as soon as it was cut. We had nice, clear days and the hay was marvelous when it was baled. My horses, Blue Top and Dusty, are in a smallish pasture that has green grass this time of year and I feed them a little bit of hay each day, too.

They love Anne Tudesko's grass hay. It looks and smells wonderful. It must taste wonderful, too.

I don't feed the horses much because both are rather rotund right now. Usually I keep a bale outside their pen, just out of reach, and give them a small amount twice a day. That's not working with Anne's hay. The horses spend a lot of time standing at the fence, trying to reach the bale.

Please note the sagging fence and the scratches on Dusty's neck. Also the face that asks, "Is it dinner time yet?"

Lizard Bath

My yard is full of bluebelly lizards. Some people call them fence lizards. They are friendly little critters, and very nosy. The ones in my yard are not very wild.

Yesterday I found Stubby Tail, who hangs around the back steps, lying on its back on the sidewalk. It looked quite dead. I was on my way to collect eggs and made a mental note to bury the lizard when I was finished.

But when I got my trowel the lizard had moved. It was upright and breathing, but not moving. I had no trouble picking it up with my hands. (Except that it feels kinda creepy to do that.) I have a nice little terrarium, so I found it and put some sand in the bottom, put it half on a heating pad, and put the lizard inside.

Then I went on the internet to find out what to do with an ailing lizard.

First, it said, don't put it on sand. Lizards might ingest the sand and become constipated. It recommended putting the lizard on paper towels. So I picked it up again and laid paper towels over the sand. Next the internet information said there were three things that are most likely to lay a lizard low (aside from being stepped on): compaction, being egg-bound, or shedding its skin. Sometimes lizards get parasites that affect their brains, but this isn't as common.

The lizard docs recommend rehydrating a lizard right away. The way to do this is to put it in warm water, give it a bath. Because Stubby Tail would occasionally flop onto its back, I was afraid it might drown, and then I'd have to figure out lizard CPR. So I used a wash cloth in the bottom of a bowl, which gave it something to hang onto. The lizard loved its bath. Who would have ever thought that? I massaged it with a damp Q-Tip. No egg. No poop. Oh well. I couldn't see its eyes, though, so thought maybe it was shedding.

Today the lizard is staying mostly upright. I gave it another bath and left the bowl in the sunshine coming through the kitchen window. I put a couple of bugs in the terrarium, but I don't think it can see them. It does have one eye open now. Hopefully by tomorrow it will be feeling good and I can put it back outside. I'm not too keen on having lizards in the house.

Eclipse?

I'm sure there will be countless wonderful pictures of yesterday's eclipse on blogs today. Not on this one. There are pictures, but they are not wonderful. I just didn't care enough to get in my car (as my son did) and travel a couple hundred miles to be in a prime viewing location. I mean, these things happen all the time don't they? If something out of the ordinary happens, like the moon gets permanently stuck in front of the sun or something, that might be fun.

I did go outside with my camera, though, because that's what you do.

I didn't have a special thing to view the sun, so I just watched the reflection in my iPhone. I didn't even need an app for that.

I had let the pigeons out for a bit and they posed for a picture. This is just as the eclipse is beginning. I had no filter, I just pointed at the sun and shot. On "Auto."

This is when I found out my camera has a handy feature. See the purple reflection near the middle of the picture? In all of my pictures there is a reflection that shows how the sun actually looks. Too cool.

This reflection is even more interesting. Must be some kind of scientific information.

The pigeons had gone back to their pen by then. It was just dark enough to trigger their "get home" button, I guess. It didn't seem dark to me.

Thirty percent of the sun is plenty. You always hear about how eclipses affect animals, so I watch the animals closely. Dusty didn't even notice, he just kept eating. And Dusty notices everything, that's why he has bug eyes.

Blue Top and That Goat were also unaffected.

Here's the sun at its eclipsiest, complete with instructional reflection.

I think it's interesting that the sun has little devil horns poking out the top, and it looks like ears on the sides. Hmmm.

Craft Project

My assignment: turn two bowling pins into gifts for people who are retiring from a bowling team.

This project was for my friend Sherry, a former workmate from the Office of Education. The pins didn't look like this when Sherry brought them. They were beat up, well-used. It took 3 coats of gesso to get them to this stage.

Disclaimer: I do watercolors, and I haven't even done much of that in recent years (like 15). I have a stockpile of acrylic paints but do not claim to know how to use them. I have a huge assortment of colored pencils I'd used on gourds. This was a challenging project for me.

When Sherry gave me a list of what should go on the pins, I felt like I'd gotten in over my head. A map of Colombia, a marriage, a travel trailer, a golfer, ice fishermen, a slot machine, bingo. Eeeeek!

I started on the first pin with colored pencils, the same as I would use them on gourds. That didn't work very well. The gourd surface seemed similar to the gesso surface, but colored pencil didn't hold very well on gesso. I decided against acrylics because I'd have to use a brush and my hands aren't as steady as they once were. (Not that I've ever been very good with a brush.)

So I went to Michael's (a craft store) and came back with an assortment of Sharpie pens. Some were the regular ones and some were oil-based paint Sharpies. The oil-based ones worked best.

Anyway, this is how the pins ended up.

Certainly NOT fine art. The style is cartoony, but Sherry was happy with them and I learned a lot. Bob says he hopes I learned to say "no" when someone asks me to do an art project. He got tired of my shrieking when something didn't work. I AM a linear thinker, and can only work on one thing at a time. I didn't do anything else until these were finished.

Now I have to get outside and clean chicken pens.

Overachiever

What's this mass of purple beauty?

It's the little clematis on the chain archway.

It has been taking its job seriously this year.

My Cousin Q

I was just rewatching Star Trek TNG, the first episode. It's about Farpoint and John de Lancie plays that annoying alien Q. There was something about him that I found very familiar. His eyes and his mouth reminded me of someone I know.

John de Lancie

My cousin Ken

Guess which one this is.....

Mystery mouth 1

Mystery mouth 2

Mystery mouth 3

They have the same face shape and hair line, too. And they both wiggle the corners of their mouth the same way when they talk. Ken is probably taller. He knows more about trains. John is probably wealthier and more famous. Ken is more huggable.

Party at the Cemetary

Today there was a party at the Sloughhouse Pioneer Cemetary. 

Our little community has a long (for California) history. Many of the descendants of people who were buried in our cemetary in the 1800s are still living here, or near here. A lot of them showed up today to help celebrate the 40th birthday of the Westerberg family's gift of the cemetary to the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. 

The DUP does a good job of maintaining the historic site, but this year was special. Crews spent a couple of weeks mowing and primping. The Sloughhouse Inn, the local restaurant that has been closed for 3 years, was opened just for the occasion. It was good to be inside the old community building again and say hello to people I went to school with. 

My friend Maureen, and her husband, who happens to be my brother Jerry, came down from Chico. Jerry is a student of history, he's one of those people who can read and remember all sorts of things. I think Maureen was just desperate to come out of the deep woods and attend a party, even if it was at a cemetary.

There were docents available who gave tours in the morning and the afternoon.

They were dressed in costumes of the 1800s. At noon there was a ceremony on the back porch of the Inn, complete with speeches and music by a band of young folks. Our local politician was there, too. It was pretty folksy for a California party, maybe more reminiscent of something in the midwest. That was just dandy. 

Here are some more costumed participants.

I don't know these fellows. They must be Husbands of the DUPs. If they were from Sloughhouse, I'd know them. That's just the way it is, we know each other. 

Maureen took this picture of Jerry and our Aunt Rosie in the cemetary. 

And I took this one of Bob and Jerry with a mural.

The guy on the mural seems to be measuring how tall they are. Note: Bob is taller. Sorry, Jerry.

More Local Wildlife

Most of the wildlife we see in Sloughhouse and the nearby area is common. We do have Swainson's Hawks. I love them. They stay out in the fields and never come into my yard. My kinda hawk! Swainson's Hawks are endangered, so habitat where they live is protected. In the long run this is bad for developers and good for farmers. Like I said, my kinda hawk.

We have snakes. There is a den of rattlesnakes on the levee. They never bother us because the busy highway is between us and them. On this side of the highway it's more common to see a gopher snake or a garter snake. We like them. I especially like garter snakes and have been waiting for the one under the hay pile to wake up and start eating the mice that have settled there.

The most common mammals we have are opossum, raccoon, deer, and coyotes. We hear the coyotes every night but don't see them very often. There was a dead one on the highway a couple of weeks ago. It was beautiful. Sloughhouse coyotes are not ratty-looking. The highway is where we see most of our local wild mammals. Dead. A busy highway through a wildlife conservation area is not a good mix.

A couple of days ago I saw something even stranger. I was on Sunrise, nearing Jackson Rd. Waegell's strawberry patch was on the left and the Folsom South Canal was on the right. I could see something dead near the road, and even from a distance I could tell it was not a common animal.

I don't know why, but I can identify most animals that are dead on the road in an instant. This doesn't work when I'm in Texas or somewhere else, where I'm not familiar with the wildlife. In Texas, Merleen had to turn the car around so we could check out a strange looking dead animal. It turned out to be a jackrabbit, if I recall, its body twisted into an unfamiliar shape. There aren't many dead animals on the road in Texas, there are hundreds in California. In Texas they try to keep the wildlife inside fences so people can shoot them.

When Katherine and I drove across country a couple of years ago, we were baffled by dead things on the highway that looked like flattened fish shining in the sun. They were flattened armadilloes. We never did see one that was alive.

But, anyway, I knew what the animal on Sunrise was because I'd seen one dead on the highway about 8 years ago.

When I saw the first one, it had been dead for a while. It was in tall grass and I couldn't see the carcass until the grass dried and bent over. Bob and I stopped and examined it because the fur quality and color were strange. It had short legs and a fat tail. It looked like a deformed dachshund. It took some investigation to identify the remains as a river otter.

This is a North American River Otter (Lontra canadensis). They aren't very common even down in our riparian valley, where you'd expect to find them. Alice once saw a family of them strolling down the road in the day time near the Pierson house on the levee. Jim once sat and watched 3 of them playing in the irrigation ditch. Mrs. Peterson once had something kill her setting ducks and eat their eggs, and since that was near the time I saw the first carcass very near her house, I'm guessing an otter did that.

But I never expected to find otters on Sunrise, which goes through the drylands. There must be a colony of them in the canal. They mostly eat fish and crayfish, reptiles, frogs, birds, and mice. But they also eat fruit. This one must have been out to dinner in the strawberry field across the highway.

Watch the Birdie

Can you spot the terrorist? He just flew through the yard shrieking. He landed on the fence in plain view of the chickens and pigeons, and stayed there for a while, preening, just to set them all aflutter, I guess. When they didn't fly out where he could catch them, he went back to his tree to plan another attack.

Here he is.

Almost in the middle of the picture, Mr. (or Ms.) Redtail. In the top picture, he's in the third branch down on the right, the branch under the red leaves.

Let's Talk About Airlines

There was nothing wrong with this keyboard before I spent an hour on the phone to Hawaiian Airlines.

Let me say this first, I LIKE Hawaiian Airlines. I have used other airlines to get to the Hawaiian islands, and they were not nearly as pleasant. Even so, talking to an airline is totally frustrating.

I had an $884 credit from a ticket I bought last year. The ticket I just bought was $582. In the real world, that would give me a credit of $302, right? In the reality the airlines have created for themselves, not only do I not get that money back, I get an additional $150 charged for rebooking. Hello, rebooking? I let them know 2 weeks ahead of time that I had to cancel my flight last year. And I'm trying to make reservations for a flight in September of this year. Wow, is that so difficult it actually costs the airline $150? Of course not. Even though I kept their employee on the phone longer because I felt obligated to bitch about the situation, I'm sure her wages were not that much.

So I said, you owe me $300 and I owe you $150, which means you still owe me $150. Math isn't my strong subject, but common sense is.

I talked the booking agent down to a $75 rebooking fee, but that's as far as I could get.

I was sitting at my computer. When I hung up the phone, I beat on my very expensive, professional quality keyboard. The spaceband stuck. So I picked up the keyboard and beat the counter with it. Several of the keys flew off onto the floor. Luckily I have the stupid little flat-as-a-pancake keyboard that came with the computer that I hooked up or I wouldn't have anything to type on.

I don't pretend to have a good temper, I once took off my shoe and beat an errant keyboard with it...at work, but I'm getting so dang tired of being screwed over by one business or another. That seems to be the function of the middle class these days, we're just a gravy train for the greedy.

I got my sample ballot today for the primary election coming up in California. I'm not sure what good it does to have a primary here, the candidates are already chosen before we get a chance to vote. I'll scan a couple of pages of the document so you can see how ridiculous it is. It's written in 3 languages. THREE!!!! I am by no means a racist, but what the heck? If you can't understand English, you have no business voting. It makes such a messy document, it's practically impossible to figure out what it says. Maybe that's the intention...people will just give up and forget about voting?

Also today I found out we need to have another meeting with the county. Solid Waste Mgmt is proposing a 500 foot tower on their property that borders one of the fields Davis Ranch uses. This will make crop dusting a true challenge. We have a Right to Farm ordinance in this county, it's just that the policy makers, who might have a small backyard garden if anything, do not begin to understand what is actually required for farming.

By the time the week is over, I'm sure more than just my keyboard broken and lying in the trash. I think I'll lock up my cameras and a few other things. Usually I don't throw anything that's fragile, I limit that to pots and pans or something that belongs to someone else in the house, but this week is turning out to be special.

Craftsmanship

My generation likes to think that the younger generation has lost the creative spirit we had when we were their age. All they do is sit at their computers and play. Well, that's not entirely true, I've found they just use their creativity in different ways.

For example, here are Brent and Joe hauling something in from Brent's truck. What the heck is it?

Looks like a map of the U.S. from this angle. But it's actually this:

If you're over 30 you probably still don't know what it is. It's a handmade tabletop, made out of 4000 beer bottle caps set in acrylic on a piece of plywood. Brent made it. It's a beer pong table. Take my word for it, the craftsmanship is admirable.

If you're over 40, you probably STILL don't know what it is. It has something to do with drinking enough beer to get really silly then camping out on my living room floor. You can find out how to play it online.

May Flowers

Going to the gym almost every day has saved me a lot of money. Gardening money. I haven't had time to go buy flowers. I have quite a few perennials, though, and I did plant some things last fall. So the garden is staying pretty by itself. Here are a few highlights.

A bright peony (not Photoshopped, my Pentax saturates the colors)

Snapdragon

Clematis. Is much drabber than the picture on the package when I bought it.

Columbine 1 (planted from seed 2 years ago)

Columbine 2 (there are several plants, but only 2 colors)

My irises are few, but lovely.

And finally, this is for Kath. It's my baby Amelanchier. I worried it didn't make it through the winter, but it's back!

Blogger Tech People ... You Suck

I just finished a new entry, complete with lots of pictures. Halfway through the new photos would appear at the top of the entry instead of at the bottom, where they belonged. I could find no way to get out of that mess and while I was trying, the whole entry disappeared. In the good old days, like last week, I could have called up all the entries and just edited the latest one. Well, that feature is now conveniently hidden, presumably in some tech person's pocket. Or perhaps in a dark, dank hole near there.

May Chicks

I'm still hatching chicks, and probably will hatch a few at a time for another month or two. It all depends on what hens are laying. Here are recent photos of the chicks that hatched earlier this year.

Barred OE cockerel

Dominique Bantams, 2 pullets, 3 cockerels

Can you tell the difference between the Barred Old English and the Dominique Bantams? They are all a color called "cuckoo." Barred OE are not really barred, which is a precise feather pattern, with definite black and white stripes. Cuckoo is more random. The OE have a traditional single comb. Dominiques have a rose comb. It takes longer for the rose comb to form, the DB chicks still look like they have no comb at all. The OE has gray legs, the DBs have bright yellow legs.

White OE and OE crosses

In this photo, the babies that seem gray are 3/4 white OE and 1/4 Dominique Bantam. Their mothers are the two "Spot" hens. The really white ones are 100% OE. Those 2 cockerels have been crowing for a couple of weeks, even though they're tiny little things.

There are also some Ancona babies, I didn't get a good picture of them, they move too darned fast.

It's always a challenge to house babies long enough to tell which are show quality and which can be sold. I don't have enough room to keep them all (nor would I want to). I'd like to have about 6 birds that I can show when the season starts this fall. So far there are several that have potential.