So much has been happening lately, I’ve not made time to log.
This week our family has CT scans and out-of-town dental surgeries scheduled, with a substantial list of actionable items that need to be done sooner than later in October. So… there’s that.
But today we are going to go walk among the redwoods and let them filter our beings for a bit. We’re gonna need it.
We got through it. It was rough. I slept very well last night.
Yesterday I spent the day playing video games with Clover. We learned you can play “Classic Smash”, a kind of story mode for characters that mostly consist of beating up roughly related characters. Oh, what we learned was you can play it as a team! So we played through a bunch of character stories as duos, and it was pretty cool!
Today we went to REI to make it easier for me to work outside, as our apartment gets very little network connection.
A chair and a container for water! Now my office is wherever there is shade enough to see my laptop screen…
We’re prepping for a busy week of homeschool sessions, Fort Ross day trip, and Autumn Lights Festival… on top of normal concerns. October is tough.
Is it already Saturday?! Yesterday I meant to log about Thursday, but it was spent recuperating after a wild time in Sonoma County.
@susan actually logged all the interesting stuff:
https://susanmagnolia.com/2021/10/fort-ross-and-the-sonoma-coast/
We still have a busy Oct. remaining.
About ten years ago I was exhausted, yet couldn’t sleep because my karma had changed and I was excited to understand what that meant.
Yesterday’s festivities are kinda over, kinda ongoing. It’s been raining for a few days, which is notable! Early this morning I lay in bed listening to the rain, it was relaxing.
Work this week has been interesting. I’ve implemented some new techniques for getting stuff done, and it’s working! 
Yesterday we got stuck on Alameda Island for a couple of hours, as the traffic in the tunnels were at a standstill. I’m fine sitting in traffic, but I don’t do tunnel traffic. It raises too many red flags for me to be comfortable.
Anyhow, we drove out to the former naval base turned spirits haven (of the drinking variety). Neat use of large buildings.
And then we made our way along the waterfront to the Fruitvale bridge and escaped from Alameda there!
So… another normal drive for our family.
Today it is clear and sunny, if a bit cold out. Yesterday it was pouring, all day long, torrents of rain.
Yesterday I took all our clothes to the laundromat.
Meh, starting the day feeling kinda meh.
But we read about the Mojave and Cahuilla people, and that was cool.
Yesterday we went to San Francisco as a family for the first time since before the pandemic. Also, first time since we’ve owned a car. It was a big day!
We went to the SF Botanical Gardens as part of a homeschool field trip with our charter school group.
I saw the Star Magnolia (Magnolia stellata), and was reading the information plate when I saw a funny word: “tepals”.
I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, switching the characters int he word, but the next sentence explains:
When sepals and petals are the same shape and color they are called tepals.
Neat!
Magnolias continue to amaze me! ^_~
That tree contains something…
Now that’s a wizard’s tower!
Can you find Clover in that photo?!
Since we were in SF we decided to visit one of our old haunts: Japantown. After a hilarious half of our commute from Golden Gate Park to Nihonmachi, where we drove several blocks to be deposited in a bizarre one-way lane loop and then put back where we had come from and could not turn left until we returned to Golden Gate Park, we then had a very frustrating experience with folks double-parking in facinating places, such as in the intersection on Fillmore and Geary, which is just wild.
My point is, driving in SF sucks, and we miss taking public transit to places.
Anyhow, we got the essentials from Japantown: Yotsuba&! volume 15, and shoyu.
Yotsuba&! has already been read (and cried upon), and we await volume 16, which is kinda wild that I follow a more than yearly released manga with my kid…
We don’t normally buy shoyu in Japantown, like it isn’t special or anything. We just happened to go to the market there and that is one thing we needed. Surprisingly, we didn’t get anything else! Like, normally we leave there laden with snacks and Japantown only finds. I think it’s a combo of two variables:
It isn’t even Halloween and I don’t think our family is looking forward to a bunch of candy. We’ve just gotten through the cakes… it’s a nice problem to have!
@susan bought Clover a small, simple wooden top, and it provided our family hours of entertainment, just last night. So that’s a magical find, for sure.
I’ve been taking Clover’s photo in that cutout for so many years, we used to have pick them up to put their head in the hole.
For dinner we had Susan’s rice bowls, with tofu, broccoli, and avocado, which really hit the spot, as it’s difficult to walk around Japantown without one’s mouth watering, it’s a whole experience.
Then we wrote messages on guitar picks for our friend who died recently. The picks will be sent to our friend’s family to be included as part of the services. It’s strange to say so little on this subject, compared to the rest of this log, as it weighs more in my mind. So I padded it out with some tangent sentences. 
Yesterday I just kinda… crashed. I needed sleep, after a long month of… a lot.
Today it’s overcast and I’m home alone, so I’ve started the bread machine up because routines help me stay in place when no one is around.
Someone buzzed to enter our apartment building at 5:30 this morning, a guest of a tenant on another floor. But they buzzed my apartment. Now I’m awake.
Tried to rest as much as possible over the weekend, and I think it moved the needle a bit. Not as much as I’d like, but a bit.
But it is rainy today, and I have a lot of work tasks to complete, so it’s an okay start, and I can get through this in low energy mode, me thinks.
This morning we got up early again to make an early doctor’s appointment. These things really throw our family off… we enjoy our late mornings!
At least we got to have onigiri and rolls for breakfast!
Yesterday it was so bright, and the image itself is so washed out, I didn’t know if I had caught the image of two does dashing away from me after I startled them from a nearby briar.
Here’s a cropped version with just the creatures, and then I… adjusted “Shadow-Highlights” in GNU Image Manipulation Program. I’m not sure what’s exactly going on there, but it at least shows what I’m trying to show.
Today we met with our educational coordinator and turned in work samples. Clover has been writing a lot lately, one of the catalysts for setting up a laptop (editing is easier on a laptop than writing long form pieces over and over…).
Over the weekend a long term idea seemed to take a form I can build, so thinking about that.
