Foggy Morning

When I was first making plans to move to Alameda, a gal on my soccer team said, "You must like fog, then." I thought that was odd--I'd never heard about Alameda being a particularly foggy place, nor seen that. Take the Sunset district in San Francisco, though--reputation for being foggy and well earned, IME. Foggy as hell. Which is unfortunate, it being the Sunset district and all.

In all the years I've lived in Alameda (coming up on 20, I think), it is very rarely foggy. But the past two mornings have been like pea soup, sometimes less than 2 blocks' visibility. It's something. Interesting and scary and ooh, goosebumps, all at the same time.

This has been a good week, after a great Christmas visit. As I told everyone at work, we had mostly dry but sometimes damp pavement on the way up (sometimes with plenty of snow on the shoulder), then snow every day were were there, except Saturday night, when it rained almost all night, melting all the snow so we got home easily. Even missed the usual returning-from-vacation traffic!

G had such a good time in the snow, I finally found myself second-guessing my decision not to move up there a few years ago. He made snowballs, threw them at various things that were not OK (and was told so) and finally threw snowball after snowball at my sister's garage roof, aiming, with my encouragement, to get one over the roof peak. He loved it. My ex-BIL took him and his two cousins out on Friday to a new sledding hill. G had claimed he would just play in the snow, not sled, but when they returned, he'd sledded up a storm and had a great time doing it. My sister, mom, and I bought a Papa Murphy's pizza for the kids and went out to a lovely dinner in town (lame--their website is "coming soon"). It is an upscale Italian restaurant that normally serves 4-course meals, but there's a "local special" where you pay something like $13 for 3 of the 4 courses, and of course it's more than enough food. We talked and laughed and had a great, great time.

Mom came down on Christmas day. She was supposed to drive down the same day we drove up, Tuesday 23rd, but the roads into Portland were either closed or chains-only, and she wisely pointed out that it would significantly extend an already long (7.5 hrs) trip. On Christmas, the roads were only slightly better, but she ventured down the OR coast a bit until she could cut inland and take 5 the rest of the way. It still took her about 10 hours and she was exhausted, but we sat her down with wine and cheese and unloaded her car for her.

We had a great Christmas, not the .least because it was a White Christmas--we had a lovely dusting of snow Christmas eve night. Beautiful. G had a hard time waiting to open presents (he pointed out, rightly enough, that he had waited all through Christmas Eve night, and said he'd show everyone what he'd gotten; and wasn't that good enough?) Just as I was out of answers, my sister stepped in with some murmured words of patience that did the trick. We did our usual youngest-as-elf, everyone-with-a-present, opening-in-turn until several of us didn't have any more presents, and then watched others open and continued to Ooh and Aah.

I got many things I'd wanted and one I had never expected: a new camera. My mom had gotten the latest Panasonic Lumix at Costco for me. I had wanted a Lumix like she and my sister have. The only problem was that the new one was kind of huge--nearly twice as thick and larger in the other dimensions too. My intuitive mom saw that and offered to trade hers for this one. Done! I now have a camera I can carry around in my fanny pack and maybe on a belt holster once I find one. It is easy to use and the photos are crystal clear and very easy to upload on my Mac. I can only hope that the battery lasts till my mom gets home and mails me the charger!