*sigh, back under 50%

One of the nice things about the people who will actually get the house in Davis is that they want to leave the redwoods. The neighbors wanted to cut them down, which made me sad. The reason I met Gerhard was I gave him those trees, and in the intervening 16 years they've grown strong and tall.

The neigbors had claimed to be interested, but just like the garage sale, they wanted a lot for very little. The one who's been hovering over us for the last year wanted to spend no more than $169,000. Ha.

Today we went to the State Fair. There were the usual great things, and some new stuff. I liked the Presidents and Presidency exhibit about the best. One of the county exhibits had "rustafarians," iron figures. The best County exhibit was San Francisco's, with a huge woman wearing the City as a hat. Placer county was right behind with a "Bee there" animated exhibit.

We got our picture taken as News10 weather forecasters. (One row above the bottom, left picture.)

Gov. Gray's face was everywhere, since he apparently invented California. I passed the Democrat booth and looked with horror at a pin that said "I like Al Gore, Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman, Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, etc." (was Clinton on there? Gov. Gray, Gary Condit, and Cynthia McKinney weren't, but they'd have fit right in.)

We saw brand-new piglets and some tiny lambs. The pregnant cows were overdue, and looked really tired. There were Percherons pulling farm equipment, and an Australian cattle dog herding some sheep quite efficiently.

I got exhausted at the end and could barely make it from one bench to the next. This is the third such event in a week. I think it was just too hot. I need to go out walking more.

Bernadette and Robert were waiting when we got home. She'd brought us Dex shirts! She also had a great book for me about human origens. We're talking about ConJose. (Aha. Fredrick Pohl (whom I've been reading) is still alive!) There are people the dwarf liked, and others he didn't... This is going to be HARD.

As usual, when I actually see Robert, he is forgiven. I do see that it was important he be near a phone yesterday. Nice young man. He's getting promoted to "genius" in November. This will be nice for them.

They brought some DVDs if we want to try them. I also found, when I was looking for the picture, a picture disk from Pagan which plays nicely on our machine. The one Rich made doesn't, so we need new software for him.

Bernadette was showing off her iPOD. Nifty!

The New California Quarter.

Baseball? Shrug.

A September 11 story.