A correction to yesterday's air quality comments

Anyone know where to get more timely smoke news? Saturday morning, all the Lockheed fire news was reporting on the ash fall in Monterey. But this morning, the Merc shares, "As winds shifted early Saturday, smoke from the fire wafted into the Santa Clara Valley. In the South Bay, measurements of particulate matter edged over the federal standard of 35 micrograms per cubic meter in the morning. It diminished later in the day as the smoke drifted north along the Peninsula and up the East Bay corridor."

So it was Lockheed smoke creating the unusually thick haze yesterday.

Weekend

Saturday was a good day, although it was not the day i needed to have. I suspect that part of the issue is that the warmth of the day snuck up on me. It wasn't a particularly warm day as reported by the airport weather stations, but our western exposure, as reported by the thermometer now in the shade of the landing, was in the lower 90s. That, in turn, is the living room temp unless we close the doors and the blinds and drop the deck blinds.

I did change my mind and published the images from my walk the other day. I didn't spend the time to do the full photo essay, but i thought of the blogs i enjoy and the walks people share, so i shared. I enjoyed the idea of creating some looping ambient soundtrack for the little video, but did not spend the time searching for just the right samples. So many wonderful things to do: i have to stop somewhere.

Today is a library committee meeting: i've not sent reminders. I'm took my laptop and hoped no one shows up. Someone did, but it was pleasant, and i focused library stuff during that time slot. I also had work i've postponed. It's too late now, what with a 6:30 am call.

I became grumpy and disappointed this afternoon when my new storage drive failed to mount. I worry both that my laptop's USB port is not behaving well enough, and that the mac mini, which must also be reaching a mature point, also is having problems. But it might be the drive's hardware dying. I WANT MY DATA. *Sigh*

Some of the productive work of the past few days has been all around cleaning supplies. We now have well labeled, distinctive supply kits for each area that tends to need cleaning. I hope it will help. Soap dispensers and inserts for soap dishes so the bars don't melt were also set up. I need to run out of hand lotion: when i get a pump i'll rig it through into the pottery dish soap dispenser.

There's something about moving from adequate and coping to "just so," that inspires a bit of hope for me. I think my growing up life was filled with quick-barbed-wire jobs: my dad running barbed wire through the woods and tacking it to trees "just for now" while proper fencing was postponed. It was a consistent pattern, getting things just finished enough so that other things could be done.

The lesson to take on too much was given even then.