It's A BEE-U-TEE-FUL Day In Paradise!

The rain has passed through and things are looking up on the water front here in Northern California. It's not back by any stretch of the imagination, but the lake shown below (Lake Folsom up near Sacramento) has risen by 28.5 feet this winter:

www.dailymail.co.uk

That helps a lot, but there's still water table depletion that has to be restored. Smaller lakes and ponds are still leaking out into the aquifers so they still look dry despite the rain we've been getting. If we can get more and more and more through April we'll be in pretty good shape for the summer. Then we'll need at least another winter like this one if we're going to recover much at all.

This morning coming toward work I looked up and it looked as if Mt. St. Helena had a dusting of snow on it. I was far enough away that I thought it might be clouds, but they just stayed there and I wondered. Coming across the hills I hit the ridge above the northern Napa Valley, a perfect view of the mountain and, sure enough! There was snow - a dusting that's probably gone by now, the time I'm writing this hours later, but it was there and it was pretty.

We are looking at more rain over the next few days - into next week if the weather gurus have it right, so more chances of snow and filling up of dried out things.

Aside from that, looking inside the four walls, my billings are caught up for the moment and I've been able to turn attention to other things. Not quite at The Stack, but close. Perhaps by this afternoon, after I get my Gantt chart project done? Hmm.

I do have a lot of quickie things in The Desktop Stack that I can probably get done in a matter of hours. Then I have The Box No. One Stack. That's a box of stuff I inherited a couple of months ago that I haven't done more than glance through. I'll combine it with The Box No. Two Stack that arrived just before Christmas. That Stack is small and has interesting looking keys intermixed. And they're real keys - as in they fit in locks - but they're more interesting than your garden-variety keys and I'm curious as to what they might go with. Uh oh. I hope it's not the equipment we recently auctioned off. Hmm. That is worth a phone call.

From there I can swing into The Box Nos. Three and Four Stacks. Those are things I received almost a year-and-a-half ago. I pretty well know what's in those, I just have to organize it and make sure stuff isn't inter-mixed with other stuff. All part of the job and part of the interest since I do occasionally find interesting things. Like those intriguing keys I have to call about.

We got the carpet laid yesterday and it is gorgeous! I was worried about the color. It's predominately red and gray - kind of like marbled meat if I'm honest - and I was concerned that once it was laid I was going to have a serious case of buyer's remorse. After all, I didn't want the room to look like a crime scene bathed in blood.

The carpet guys talked to me and I talked to them and we agreed on how to lay it out to minimize the bloodbath appearance and it came out beautifully.

See, I worry about this stuff now after my experience thirty years ago. Then I was office manager for a company that occupied the entire floor of a downtown San Francisco office building. Our landlord's representative came in one day because she was updating the elevator lobbies in the building and wanted to change things up from floor to floor to make it more interesting. She showed me a little swatch and I said "that's nice" and she showed me the carpet samples and I said "that's nice". What I did not do was visualize the end result. Two weeks later I got to the building, got onto the elevator. A few floors later the doors opened and... I swear to god it looked like a whorehouse! It was horrible.

The "soft pink" that she had showed me on the little paint swatch? Glaring! The royal purple carpet had a band of pink running through it as a border. In the context of someone's private home (providing it's a brothel) it might work. In the context of a professional office building? NO! A resounding NO.

I immediately got on the phone to her (as soon as I got into the office and to my desk since this was the days before cell phones) and said NO! She came and took a look and agreed. A week went by and I refused, flat-out, to get off the elevator on that floor. Instead, I would go to a different floor and take the stairs because I didn't want to be associated in any way, shape or form with that mess. Finally, the weekend after I nearly had heart failure, they came in and repainted the walls plain white. The pink was so glaring it still showed through, offering a soft, shell-like pink glow, but it was at least tolerable. Not the full fix since the carpet was still there, but at least I didn't want to die of mortification every time I got off the elevator.

After that I know to visualize BIG. Get the big paint swatch or, better still, get a sample you can put on an unobtrusive spot on the wall so you can get a sense of what the finished product will look like.

This time around, when we were selecting the tile, I got squares - full-on two-foot x two-foot squares in a couple of different colors and styles. Then I had my roomies weigh in and we all agreed on the color. Then it was the execution and, as I say, I did not want the executed room to look as if an execution had taken place. And it doesn't. It's very nice and goes well with the floor in the rest of the space which is brick reddish concrete - a bit redder and darker than the terracotta of a Spanish tile floor.

Other than that, things are quiet and happy and calm. I don't know how long it will last, but I'm reveling in the situation now.

Here's wishing you a happy, quiet and calm day, too.

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

Ah ha! Now I Remember!

grumpgrumpgrumpgrumpgrumpgrump... (<= ellipsis means it goes forever)

I really shouldn't complain, you know, even though I am grumpy right now. My eyes hurt because I have spent the last six hours looking at little tiny number series in two different documents comparing A to B to make sure they match. Am I sick or weird for loving nitsy details and granular investigation like that? I really do love it although I don't know why. I also have to say that I think I'm pretty good at it. However, after spending today with my eyes plastered to a screen staring at groups of little mouse-print numbers and comparing this one to that one, I'm tired. Then, what got me going on the grump-train is that just when I though I was finished, I was asked to look at something new - which should have been instinctive but wasn't. So I get to do it again. Oh joy.

grumpgrumpgrumpgrump...

Lesson learned! Don't forget that little detail in the bigger excitement. Lesson will be reinforced by doing it again, although it will be marginally easier since I know where the bodies are buried in this mess.

Then, when I'm done, it'll all be good. What's bugging me, if I'm honest, is the fact that I'm going back and checking, in minute detail, someone else's work. I don't usually mind checking someone's work if it's broad strokes and broad brush, but when it's detailed and nitsy - like picking fly-poop from the pepper nitsy - that's when I get grumpy because I always think "I wouldn't have made this many mistakes!" Although I probably would have, being human and fallible.

Checking other people's work is hard - particularly when it's work that stretches over two years and across a whole long list of customers. About 1500 Excel spreadsheet lines worth after being filtered, if I guess right.

But you know what? I did enjoy that exercise. It's weird because on the one hand, and probably because I just came off it, I am not thrilled with having to go back. On the other, I am actually kind of looking forward to it. Do I need my head examined? Ya think?

Probably. Along with juggling the knives of moving chess pieces around - disconnecting utilities here, connecting utilities there, arranging for new service and making sure it's all done in a short amount of time.

It's another thing I'm good at doing, though.

Yeah. It is all about me today. But that's okay because if you want it to be about you, you can start a blog, too.

So, I'll finish up the eye-strain exercise this afternoon, and then I'll have the next four days off. I'm looking forward to that. Hanging around the house, eating more than I should, knowing it and doing it anyway. If it's not raining, maybe I'll go for a walk or two or three.

We're "supposed" to get rain tomorrow night and it's "supposed" to be cold enough in these parts that we might actually have a white Christmas! Wouldn't that be cool?

One of my best memories is from about eighteen years ago - 1998 or so. I woke up early and couldn't sleep so got up. It was around four o'clock in the morning - before anyone else was up or out either.

I wandered into the kitchen, not turning on any lights and looked outside. I couldn't believe it! I moved closer to the windows and there, glimmering in the streetlight was snow falling. Little butterflies of snow whispering down in our backyard. I hurried to the front of the house and looked out, down the street, and it looked like a Christmas card. No one had driven in it - it was perfect and pristine, and I had it all to myself.

Even though it only ended up being about four inches, all the schools were closed for two days, so Daughter got a pair of "snow days" here in coastal California while I had the special privilege of trying to drive in it! We still have pictures of her snowmen that she made in our back yard. Ungainly, awkward things with blades of grass stuck in them since she had to dig down to ground level to get enough snow to make them, but they were real and they hung around for three days after construction.

I'll have to dig them up from the photo albums (remember those!??) we have stuck on the shelves in the bedroom and scan them.

Right now, though, the wind is freezing cold but it's crystal clear outside - a beautiful winter day, which makes a nice change from the rain we got.

I heard yesterday that Lake Tahoe, which is way-y-y-y-y down because of the drought picked up "6.3 billion gallons of water". I fact checked that one and one of the people in the know up there said it was probably closer to 4 billion gallons but that is still one heck of a lot of water. And it only boosted the lake level by about two inches!

The following picture taken in October 2014 is from the Tahoe Regional Planning Association's website:

Obviously, those docks are not supposed to be out of the water.

Here's another that's more telling. The normal water level is indicated by the top of the white marks on the pilings under the pier.

www.kcra.com

So, the lake is up two inches. Another few billion gallons and we'll be getting somewhere. And that's what we're hoping for. That and lots and lots of snow pack so the Central Valley will have water for next summer.

We are expecting more rain in the next few days, and even more in January and February if the weather gurus predicting the El Nino have it right. We won't get as much as Southern California, but it should still be respectable and will, I hope, have a pretty solid effect on the dryness around here.

In the meantime, I have to get back to those nitsy details and looking forward to having some time off.

Be well and have a wonderful Christmas if you don't check in between now and then!

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories