Category: Scandinavia and Ireland – 2018

Several years ago my very good friends Linda and Ray bought a second home in Foresthill about 20 miles north east of Auburn, California. It was a very nice house and they spent many weekends there. When they retired they sold their house in Sunnyvale and moved into the Foresthill house. Over the time they have owned the house they have updated it and fixed it up including putting in a gorgeous new kitchen.

Now they are ready to sell the house and move to a more permanent retirement destination. I can't say enough about what a wonderful house this is and how beautiful the setting is. Take a look at the Realtor.com listing or the Craigslist listing or the virtual tour. You will be getting an absolutely wonderful house in a gorgeous location if you buy this house,

I haven't posted a lot lately but I have had a lot going on. My daughter and my grandson were here last week. It was really fun to have them here. Aidan is just over two and he talks and laughs a lot. Laughing with a baby is an experience of pure joy. He especially liked our new truck. Every time we turned on to our street or went outside he pointed out Papa's truck.

Friday we took Aidan and Shannon home and then went into San Francisco and joined friend to visit the new Academy of Science. It was very crowded but it is was fascinating. My favorite parts were going up on the living roof and experiencing the show at the planetarium.

We had a good rate on a hotel room at the Hyatt bought through Priceline.  I know that parking in San Francisco is expensive but having to pay $57 to park overnight at the  Hyatt was still a shock. Having to pay for internet at the Hyatt wasn't a shock but it still really bugs me.

Our friends all had dinner with us at a wonderful Basque restaurant in San Francisco. Piperade was the perfect place for us to have a long leisurely dinner with wine and lots of good talk.

On Saturday we took a leisurely drive up to Petaluma including stopping to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.  Duke's daughter had a crew race on the Petaluma river on Sunday morning. She was in one of the two Saint Mary's boats in her race. They came in first and second. Very cool!!

From Petaluma we headed home to Reno. The very tops of the peaks around Donner Pass had a dusting of the first snow of the year.

As many of you know my Dad recently moved to Reno. His house in Escondido, California is for sale. He was staying with Duke and I while he waited for an apartment to open up at Classic Residence by Hyatt. A beautiful apartment overlooking the courtyard became available a couple of weeks ago and he is now moved in and settled. It is really nice having him near by.

Dad has been working to get established with new doctors in Reno. Last week he found a cardiologist who he likes.  On Tuesday he had an echo-cardiogram. I went with him and got to stand behind the technician while she used the machine to look at his heart. The echo-cardiogram machine looked a lot like like the ultrasound machines used on pregnant women to check on their unborn babies. As teh technician placed the wand on Dad’s heart you could see it quite clearly.

Looking at Dad’s heart as it pumped was so cool. I could see the valves opening and closing like the swinging doors in an old western saloon. Dad’s heart on the screen was about 6 inches long and 3 inches across. I assumed that it was life size but she told me that the picture was enlarged. The upper heart chamber is only about 5 centimeters (2 inches) across. It is impressive to think of such a little organ pumping blood all through his body.

I would love to have worked on the software for the echo-cardiogram machine. My first programming job out of college was working on air traffic control software. I found it fascinating. I suspect that interpreting the bouncing sound waves for the echo-cardiogram is similar to interpreting radar returns for air traffic control. The software has to interpret the returns, display them, and give the operator the tools to analyze what she is seeing.  What a wonderful challenge.

The New York Times (I love that you don’t have to sign up for or pay for the online edition now) has a cool feature. You can double click on a word and a new window opens containing a definition of the word. So when I read in a David Brooks column that "Presidents are buffeted by sycophancy, criticism and betrayal."  I double clicked on sycophancy. A new window opened and it made me smile when I saw  sycophancy defined as "fawning obsequiousness". I do know what that means but just for the fun of it I check to see if I could double click on obsequiousness. You can’t.

A couple of weeks ago we received a letter forwarded by our landlord from the Sierra Canyon Homeowners Association AKA the Lawn Patrol complaining about the dead spots in our lawn. They were there when we rented the house and they are getting smaller and fewer because of Duke’s lawn care. The letter was more than a little annoying.

It really made us wonder why the Lawn Patrol doesn’t do something about the house down the street from us.

As you can see in this picture the lawn is completely dead as are all the trees in the yard. As I understand it the Homeowners Association has a right to put a lien on the house and fix the yard at the homeowners expense. Del Webb/Pulte, the builder, is still selling new houses in this development and well maintained front yards could make a difference in a prospective buyer deciding whether to buy or not to buy. I imagine that Pulte/Del Webb still controls more than 50% of the votes in the Homeowners Association. I’m sure that is why the Lawn Patrol sent a letter to our landlord.

We recently heard some gossip which seems to clear up this puzzle about the house with the dead yard and why the Homeowners Association seems to be ignoring it. What we heard is that the house was sold to some people with a sale contingent on the sale of their house. When their house didn’t sell they backed out of the sales contract. According to the gossip, Pulte/Del Webb maintains that the house was sold and that the contingent buyers can’t back out. So apparently now the lawyers are fighting about who owns the house and the Pulte/Del Webb lawyers have told the homeowners association not do any maintenance on the house or the yard. Presumably because maintenance might strengthen the case that Pulte owns the house.

Just to repeat this is all gossip. I have no idea if the story is true. But is does make one wonder…….