Dear Blog

Poor neglected blog. 10 days since the last post. There’s a lot on my plate right now and maintaining four other blogs – mainly photo blogs – something has to suffer and I’m afraid it’s you.

Around these times you know I tend to be stressed out, dealing with traffic in order to get to and from work and the same thing during the weekend from one errand to another – too much drain on the energy.

I have stuff to tell you, but am too tired to make some sense still. But I have been caring for these little balls of fur that visit every day. This weekend hubs and I got to pet little Fuzzy. Yap, you know it, I have already named 2 of these cats. The other one is Midnite.

Fuzzy is fascinating. She came when she was a baby, brought by Gray, one of the original feral cats that visited us last year. Gray came to us as a baby and grew up a bit. She/he brought Fuzzy to us as a baby. Fuzzy played through the screen door with Buster. So they knew each other from the very beginning.

Gray and Midnite – the original one – were our first babies, they came every night. Because they were babies we used to put out bowls of milk, then they graduated to table scraps and cat food.

All of a sudden Midnite and Gray no longer came to visit. I was constantly worried they might have been run over or you know killed by dogs or something.

Our neighborhood is a safe haven for them, I believe. I know for a fact that our neighboor who we share a back fence with also feeds them.

Now this group has grown. And Fuzzy has grown too. She/he’s probably 3-4 months old now and very sweet little one. We got to pet her and she/he purred for us. Next step is to pick her up. And if she/he’s willing, we’ll get her spayed/neutered, get checked up and given all the necessary shots and we’ll adopt her.

Now all these is based on whether she will be tame enough to allow us to carry her. If that happens, I still have one hurdle to overcome. What will her/his arrival impact on Emma. Emma has been really aloof with all the cats feeding in the backyard. Buster we have no problem, he’s the sociable one. He greets them and plays with them thru the screen door.

We have put up an interim shelter for them since it has been raining lately and the temperature has dropped. Fuzzy has that wonderful long hair and it appears to have doubled since the weather has changed. What a beautiful cat.

However, the cats don’t seem to know how to use this interim shelter. We’ve been extremely busy with our weekends that we had no time to make their house. We still plan on making them some sort of shelter when the weather is lousy.

See how busy I am. I am not even mentioning about work, as I don’t want to say anything about it.


Love,
Me

Feeling the Season

Finally cool enough to be fall, and the leaves are starting to change colors.

This image was shot in Plumas County 10/22/11. There are some trees like this around my neighborhood, but not quite this showy yet.

The cool breeze is very welcome and the chill in the air is very comforting. I want to light a fire tonite while hubs and I cuddle in the couch laughing our heads off while watching BIG BANG THEORY on syndication.

Now I have a plan.

Happy weekend. Hope you're enjoying your fall season.

This and That

A week had gone by again without a post. Yes, I was busy with stuff - aren't we all?

But I was mainly staying away from writing down my feelings, or anything for that matter. Except that I had drafted a post last week to coincide with my dad's birthday. It was a very emotional week - mainly because I still miss my dad despite all the years of his passing. Additionally, my system is full of hormones (undergoing fertility treatment) which makes me really emotionally imbalance. So weepy. And so the post I crafted last week will remain unpublished.

How was your week? Were you busy with Halloween parties? Not once did I attend a Halloween Party or don a costume, although seeing the receptionist dressed as a Minnie Mouse,at the fertility center today where I had my ultrasound earlier,I was a tinge envious that they wear costumes to work on Halloween. May I add, she's such a fine cute Minnie Mouse in her red polka dot dress and her mouse ears.

Last week also we had a little dinner in connection with church business and this Sunday we'll have luncheon also. This quarter of the year is always so full of something to do.

Still affected by the hormones, I managed to help my husband prep the linen closet this weekend. On Saturday, he stripped the carpeting and we installed wood laminate floors. We're quite pro at this after having installed all the wood floors downstairs.

On Sunday, despite all my whining and weepiness, we were able to paint the walls of the linen closet. This is in preparation for our custom built closet that will be installed this Friday. I am so excited. The master bedroom closet will also be redone. We worked with the closet company a few months ago when they were running some sales so we thought that we made a good deal. Well, I mean we had a budget in mind before we approached them and when the design was on paper and all the materials and labor costs were totalled and they were within our budget range, we gave them a go signal to complete this work order.

Why it took so long to get installed? We purposely did that because we were taking that vacation in September. So this Friday my new closets will be installed.

I hope this would make my closets really neat and tidy. Except that with this new installation all the other boxes we have there would be all gone, and Buster, my cat, wouldn't be very happy with that. He likes to nap in those boxes.

Oh I almost forgot my little nephew (my niece's only son) age 17 months came for a visit so we stopped installing floors to visit with him. He was so energetic and was playing with Buster. Poor cat, he is so patient with toddlers but he gets beaten up - whap here, whap there. And poor Buster he could only run away from this monster of a toddler.

We spent a couple of hours over dinner at a friend's house last evening. Her husband was here for 2 weeks and was leaving again and we thought we had time to spend more time with them, but 2 weeks came and gone and we only had 2 times to be with them.

I guess this would do. I just had to document these things that are happening in my life right now. Thanks for reading my nonsense.

Street Photography #11

Just a little update:

*** Discovered THE BIG BANG THEORY - a real laughfest. Been watching it on ON DEMAND and syndication.

*** Found 2 little kitties, approx a week old, in the backyard on Sunday. I could guess where they came from, but they were from a pack (do you say pack with cats?) of feral cats or stray cats from this neighborhood. We bottlefed them and put them in a box in the garage overnight. Then husband surrendered them to the Animal Shelter the next day. Will go and visit tonite or sometime this week. I missed them already. Our hearts broke when we had to give them up. Much as I'd like to add to my brood of 2, we cannot take care of that young an animal since we both are at work all day long. The kitties will just die of starvation.

***Went to Plumas Co. on Saturday for our annual leaf peeping drive, except that the leaves were late in changing this year. The explosion of colors wasn't there but we managed to salvage some shots with fall colors.

***Am thinking of reviving my other blog - which is solely for random photos. Let me sleep some more on this.

Shaken and Stirred

Yesterday was a day full of excitement. Not all good excitement mind you. Yesterday we had two earthquakes, the first one at about 3 pm was a 4.2 and the second one at about 8:16 pm was deemed to be only 3.9 in magnitude.

This is earthquake country and the last big one that hit this area was in 1989, 22 years ago. Whereas the major faults around the globe had big ones lately, we still haven't. It is inevitable to have a big one. One is expecting it, but also fearing it.

Living in this region certainly makes one always on the lookout for the big one. The first earthquake happened when I was at work, near the epicenter (Berkeley). Our building shook once or twice, but not the sideways shake, I thought it was the up and down movement, which was scarier. Now our building made so much noise that nerves were rattled more than anything in the building. This reminded all of us that well we never had the big one.

The irony of it is yesterday was statewide earthquake preparedness drill. Every gov't offices and schools performed safety drills a few hours before the first one.

I recovered well from the excitement of this shaker, but the second one was a bit more difficult to get over with in my case.

We were dining in Berkeley, of all places. Who knew there would be another quake after the mild one earlier this day. We were having a good time getting together with friends who moved in the area from New York 3 years ago. We knew each other from church but we didn't really see each other outside of church functions until last night.

We chose to eat at TASTE OF HIMALAYAS, which is a Nepalese and Indian restaurant. The food is superb by the way. But this post is about the temblor so I'd forego the food descriptions.

We were done with our dinner when the quake hit. Everyone inside the restaurant paused and you could see that no matter how savvy these people are having lived here and experienced the shaking, you could tell the nerves have been rattled. Mine was definitely frazzled. My heart skipped a beat and I felt ill :). I was thinking was this going to be the big one. Because the shaking took longer than the first one and more noisy.

I couldn't wait to leave the restaurant and go home, which is about 15 miles away. I was worried that mom felt it and panicked, that something fell on the floor, glasses broke, and that the cats were spooked.

Luckily when we got home mom had no clue what just happened. Neither did she feel the first one. Good thing. And the cats seemed to be behaving normally.

Now this calls for preparations for the big one. While we always keep a case of bottled water in the garage and we have some first aid kit, we don't have the emergency preparedness kit. That is the next in line. We also must have food set aside for when we couldn't cook. It's scary. And I'm still frazzled.

You can't blame me. I had a big one experience. I was in the Philippines for the 1990 earthquake that hit Central Luzon. That was the scariest experience of my life and I don't want to repeat that.

Eleven Hints for Life

1. It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return.
But what is more painful is to love someone and never
find the courage to let that person know how you feel.

2. A sad thing in life is when you meet someone who
means a lot to you, only to find out in the end that it was
never meant to be and you just have to let go.

3. The best kind of friend is the kind you can sit on a
porch swing with, never say a word, and then walk away
feeling like it was the best conversation you've ever had.

4. It's true that we don't know what we've got until we lose
it, but it's also true that we don't know what we've been
missing until it arrives.

5. It takes only a minute to get a crush on someone, an
hour to like someone, and a day to love someone-but it
takes a lifetime to forget someone.

6. Don't go for looks, they can deceive. Don't go for wealth,
even that fades away. Go for someone who makes you
smile because it takes only a smile to make a dark day
seem bright.

7. Dream what you want to dream, go where you want to go,
be what you want to be. Because you have only one life and
one chance to do all the things you want to do.

8. Always put yourself in the other's shoes. If you feel that it
hurts you, it probably hurts the person too.

9. A careless word may kindle strife. A cruel word may wreck
a life. A timely word may level stress. But a loving word may
heal and bless.

10. The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best
of everything they just make the most of everything that comes
along their way.

11. Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, ends with
a tear. When you were born, you were crying and everyone
around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die,
you're the one smiling and everyone around you is crying.

Why I love San Francisco

Just a few of the reasons why I love it here.