Life in San Francisco

San Francisco is my new home. So far I've walked across the Golden Gate Bridge (which is ORANGE, by the way, not golden), gotten lost in China town, sat at the beach and watched the waves roll in, gone to a new car show, an alternative energy show and to the open farmer's market downtown.

It's colder here than Southern California (no duh), but because we're in a drought it's been gorgeous blue skies most of the time.

Work is moving along. I'm adjusting to the new place and ways. I am amazed at how hard it is to adjust to a new unit. Nursing is mostly the same, but different doctors, different equipment, different ways of doing things makes for stressful beginnings. Thank heavens I am getting more and more comfortable in my new work environment and more and more proficient at getting all the paperwork right.

San Francisco, so far so good! Sue

Christmas 2006 and New Year's Day 2007

Christmas day was a great day of rest. When does a parent get to say that? I guess when your kids are grown.

I had a boysenberry apple pie that I bought on a trip to Julian, the apple capital of Southern California, that I was all excited to bake and eat for Christmas dinner dessert. Actually I bought the pie at a store in Santa Ysabel, a wee little town on the way to Julian.

Last October I took a Sunday drive into the mountains east of San Diego. I decided to stop at a store that had a lot of motorcycles and antique cars parked outside it. It was a cool, misty Sunday, but still plenty of people were out joy riding and stopping at this place to get pie and whatever. I settled on a piece of apple crumb pie and some apple cider. Turns out this apple cider was close to the BEST ever.

A few weeks later I decided to go back and buy some more of this great cider. I could have sworn that I took the same route I had taken the time before but I never found the little town or the store with the great apple cider. I returned home empty handed and a little worried that I was losing it. However, not one to be thwarted when something good to eat is in the mix, I decided to try again, this time using a map. All I can say is thank heavens for google maps and the satellite/hybrid mode. I found the place, bought a gallon of apple cider and decided to get a boysenberry apple pie to cook for some later festive family occasion.

So on Christmas day, after sleeping in---way in, I got up, put the pie in the oven and started wrapping gifts. It was great. I so enjoyed going to Emily's apartment in West LA, having some tamales that Emily had and eating the pie I brought. Then we opened presents and sat around and told stories on each other.

Later that night I went to the hospital. No, not for any problems. I was helping my union (yay California Nurses!) with an organizing drive in the hospital I used to work at. We were really hoping that the nurses would vote to join the union, but they didn't. Bummer.

New Year's day I went to Joshua Tree National Park (look for the moon in between the branches of the tree). It's about 2 hours from my house, north of Palm Springs. The second photo is a view looking southwest into the Palm Springs area from the top of Key Mountain. The wind was blowing so hard when I was there taking that picture that I almost got blown off the mountain. I hiked to a little lake behind a dam that was built by ranchers in the early 1900s so that they could have a more consistent supply of water for themselves and their cattle. Water in the desert seems to only come in extremes. Torrents racing down washes or none at all. Either extreme is deadly. Drown or die of thirst. Deserts amaze me. All that survives is so sturdy and so tenacious. I couldn't help but think of our great grand parents making their way to Utah and then actually surviving there. What pluck they had!

Happy New Year to all! Love, Sue (maybe sometime I can figure out how to put the pictures where they belong)

Thanksgiving in El Paso

What a great idea, everyone. The weather was as close to Southern Calif. during Thanksgiving as you can get. I had the top down on my '97 Sebring convertable, and in the house we were watching football games with the doors open. My heart and mind went back to the Rose Park Thanksgivings in SLC, watching Grandma (May) roast turkeyand smelling the baked Parker House rolls. There were two items that my family liked to steal from Grandma's after dinnertime -- the rolls (hoping to get trundles of them that we would carefully wrap, and a pumpkin pie, if we could --). May always made mincemeat pie,. I've never tasted it anywhere else.

I remember Faun and Ken, (John) Scott and Sue -- freckle-faced, pink cheeked kids. Ken would sit in the dining room smoking and telling the funniest stories and laugh up a storm at everyone else's. And BJ would show up with her fiance (now husband), holding hands. I thought she was such sophisticated college girl.

My parents -- well, Richard (aka Dick, and my dad) loved to be the ham. And Virginia would giggle and shake her head that things were so outrageous. Good memories of May sneaking a beer with Dad grumbling at her. I know she felt she deserved one! I remember May's bedroom with the high bed and dark furniture. And the dizzying floral perfume that would linger in her bedroom.

Weren't the walls cement? And the skinny windows? I believe I could hear the train whistles. Those were the days. And Sue! I remember how good your mom, Faun, would look in shorts in the summertime == and I would think how she hated to be cold, and she must be yearning for Spring and comfy clothing again. The good old days of Thanksgiving at Rose Park. Take care, everyone.

A Very Driven Thanksgiving

Howdy. Not indicated in the title is that I'm Jonathan, son of Sue. As is indicated by the title, my thanksgiving was spent in a car.

That's not completely true. There were several hours where I ate delicious turkey, yams, mashed potatoes, and whatever else people usually eat when they drive all over southern California eating Thanksgiving meals.

My simple plan was as such: I would drive south of my home in LA, stopping everywhere I could for a meal (3 places). My sister Emily and I ate a wonderful turkey dinner in Pico Rivera in the afternoon. In the evening, I hoped to meet my mom for some kind of Thanksgiving dinner (these dinners have ranged from non-traditional (the time we ate at a Carl's Jr. near the hospital) to very, very non-traditional (the time I forgot my mom went to Utah, so I just ate some turkey at her house without her)). In keeping with the past, meeting my mom for Thanksgiving proved more difficult than expected.

My mom, being a hard working lady, was at the hospital for Thanksgiving. I, being a hungry person, visited her hospital in the evening after her shift had ended. This is where difficulties began to mount. My phone, having been lost for days, ran out of batteries and was of no use. Worse, my phone has rendered my brain useless when it comes to phone numbers (it remembers them 100% accurately, whereas I remember phone numbers only by accident). So when I needed to call my mom to arrange a meeting place, I had no phone and no number.

After using my wits to get the right number, all I needed was a phone.

No problem, I'll just drive to a nearby payphone where... Oh, that's right, there are 4 payphones left in the continental United States, and none of them are in California. Maybe I'll just use the phone at the information desk... which I've been informed is for local calls only. Moving on.

If my situation isn't rosy enough for you, at this point I've figured out that I've completely lost my car.

Let me say that I have never had a problem finding my car. I do not need an antenna ball or fireworks or smoke signals to find my car in a parking structure (my guess is that having been filled with turkey, yams and various other buttery treats, my brain went into "buttery comfort thinking" which basically just means I was thinkng about more turkey and yams instead of which level I left my car on).

I wandered this lot for a good half-hour, at first poking my head around corners to check if I could see my car, since I was pretty sure it was on 2 or 3 or 4... one of the numbered levels to be sure. This was followed by what we all know to be utter defeat while searching for a car: I went to the top and just walked all the way around the structure. It was on level two, obstructed by two very, very large silver SUVs, which I assume were plated with lead because they blocked my Whoop Whoop (keyless entry remote) every time I used it on level two, holding the button hoping to hear at least a faint "whoop whoop".

Anyway, I went to Orange County and ate some pie with friends, then finally caught up with my mom at 11pm in Corona. We arranged a future date, when somewhere, at some time in that bright, shiny thing we call 'the future', we will eat a meal and pretend it isn't February.

Hooray for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving at Work

Each year as a full-time nurse working in a hospital, I have to commit to work Holidays. Last year I worked Christmas. This year I worked today, Thanksgiving, and I will work Christmas Eve. The good news is that I get overtime. The bad news is that I miss out on the family things.

However, today's turkey dinner was very enjoyable!

We had a whole turkey, yams, potatoes, gravy, and a divine butternut soup. Of course we had the staple of every hospital potluck---potato chips and soda. That's because there are plenty of workers like me who may not know how to cook, but know how to run through the Quickie-Mart.

Hey don't worry, we all took care of our patients in between eating.

I don't recommend Thanksgiving in a hospital, especially if you don't work there, but I will say that it isn't a bad way for a nurse to spend a holiday.

However, I would have rather spent it together with you all. Sue

Happy Thanksgiving!

Come on back here and show and tell how Thanksgiving went!