california trip - last day

i spent my last day in california with my son and his wife. we went to fry's electronics and poked around for awhile. i found some really small in size jump/thumb/usb drives. my son bought one for me and i bought one for my sister.


we decided we needed to go to ikea where we found some desks that did not take up a lot of space but had space for stuff. ikea is very good at designing for small spaces. i wish there was a store like that around here! fat chance! installing the desks meant taking down the the old ones which resulted in a pile of cords. they are little house snakes slithering around. the desks had a little nook where most of the extra cordage could be hidden.


we probably should have stayed home. my son was up all night the night before recovering data from a crashed server.


it all came to an end much too quickly, but i was glad to be back home in my own room with my books, my cats. glad to be back home with my sister, too! --she has her own room and books and cat.!!!!

california trip - next to last day

one afternoon my daughter and her husband took me to the wild animal park. my camera batteries were almost dead, but my son-in-law managed to coax out another 128 pictures. lots of turning on and off! too many pictures for a blog, so i just picked a few of my favorites.


the bonsai forest was my favorite of the bonsai exhibition. there was also an ephyphyte exhibition which at first did not look all that interesting, but a closer look revealed many beautiful flowers. the colors ranged from white through dark red. no blues or purples.

we managed to catch the condor spreading his wings. i don't know if he was cooling off or just dreaming of floating over the hills on an updraft.

several places in the park had fans blowing mists of water down on the hikers. you did not actually have to walk through the sheet of mist, but it did feel really nice. it was fine enough that it cooled without drenching you.
it was a rather warm day for someone who just came from snow country, so frequent rest stops with a few snacks thrown in made the day enjoyable.

i especially liked the birds at the end of the day--flamingos, assorted ducks and geese, and a kingfisher up close (and african birds in a separte cage).