Friday, August 15, 2008

Bigfoot and the Free Press

Friday: (08/15) An interesting day. I picked up Dawn and took her to a class. Dawn is taking a class on how to get a job. I think that should actually be part of the curriculum in school, like balancing your check book should be, BUT ISN'T.

I needed to fix her Internet access at her apartment. It's been acting up due to the buggy Microsoft upgrades that killed the Zone Alarm firewall. It was easy enough to fix with an upgrade to both. The Internet connection has also been intermittent running a day or two then requiring a power cycle of everything to connect again. Even that didn't work the other day for Dawn, so here I am. That problem hopefully disappeared with the re-seating all the cables because the next thing will be replacing the DSL modem. Now, be nice!

It was also a typical day in Palo Alto.

There was a news conference here about finding a dead Bigfoot. A guy here is marketing the "find" for the people who "found" it in Georgia. I'm not surprised that the news conference was here but am surprised that a Bigfoot, with that hairy body, would choose to live in Georgia, a place noted for high humidity and hot summers. It probably died of heat exhaustion?

And then there is our wonderful city. They stole all the newspaper machines downtown for our newest (third) newspaper the Palo Alto Daily Post. The city said they received a complaint from one of the other papers about the fact the new paper didn't have a permit to place the machines on the city sidewalks. Turns out they applied months ago but still haven't gotten one. The machines were delivered to the papers door step. The newspaper immediately reinstalled them. This will likely end up costing us tax payers a bundle. There's little doubt the City is in the wrong here.

One of Dawn's high school friends,Abdul, is in town. He's now studying law in London and is home visiting and working on his dissertation. We all went over to a local Mexican restaurant to have some of their advertised $1 margaritas during happy hour. Nothing like a good cheap drink. Actually, it was nothing like a cheap drink, nor a happy hour. We "failed" to mention we wanted the "house" margaritas so they were $6.50 drinks instead. This was our first visit there in about 15 years. They changed all their recipes then and their food went from excellent to poor so we haven't been back, until now. They won't need to hold a table for us, we won't be back for at least another 15 years. Did I mention it's in Palo Alto.

We really do like this city but there are some peculiarities here, but of course, we're one of them as well.

One of Dawns school counselors and her niece came over just before the gang returned. We all visited a while and then picked up a couple of pizzas for dinner. It was a good opportunity to use a two for one pizza coupon for our local Pizz'a Chicago parlor.

Saturday: (07/16) Lou and Dawn went to their usual weekend rummage and garage sale tour. Abdul was off visiting other friends.

While Lou, Dawn and Abdul went to a picnic hosted by the Vista Center For The Blind I tinkered on the house some putting the house numbers on, repairing the door bell switch and adjusting the position of one of the drain inlets for a down spout so they connected. The mail box slot in the garage wall got in the way so the down spout was relocated. I thought it would look better straight so I told the installers I'd align it later so make the downspout straight. That was enough work so I tinkered at the computer the rest of the afternoon.

About 4pm we all headed up to the San Mateo County Fair. It's been one of the better citified fairs in the bay area. We enjoyed our visit but it looks like this fair is dying like most of the other bay area fairs. Seems like to have a good fair you need to have some farming and its all but totally gone around here.

Sunday: (08/17) We enjoyed breakfast under the arbor and just before noon Abdul was off to other destinations.

Not a busy day today. We all tinkered around. Dawn made a corn tomallito for desert. It's that corn pudding like thing you get at Chevy's restaurant.

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