California here we come

On the 30th of December 2007, we touched down at SJ airport.



A year in California! A year of occasionally singing "Do you know the way to San Jose?" and as we've gotten used to the place, usually being able to find our way back home.

One of the things I've learned better whilst living in America is it is all about expectations. I've learned not to expect the same things as at home. Most of the time. This is a different place, one I am learning to call home. It is not Home - I think that will always be Melbourne - but it is a decent substitute.

You need to manage expectations. You might get promised this:


but in reality it turns out to look like this:

In fact, it might look like dog vomit but jeez it is blasted good dog vomit! Very tasty indeed. :-)

Things aren't always as they appear.

Good things about where we live?



The availability of good fresh (organic) fruits and vegies. California is the vegie foodbowl for America. Here we can buy vegies grown 50 miles away and chat to the growers. All. Year. Round. It is fantastic.

The availability of public transport - we deliberately chose this place for that reason, and the closeness of Wholefoods. Plus we can walk to the library with our red trolley and unload books and dvds and cds and load up with new ones :-)

I definitely appreciate the weather. I just do not cope well with cold. I muffle up well but my skin goes horrid - fingers and face dry out and start peeling and cracking no matter how much moisturiser I use. I much prefer temps above 10C. Visiting cold and snowy areas is fun but I think I'd curl up into a little cracky ball of chapped skin if I had to live in a place that stays cold. But one never knows!

I don't appreciate the cars. Too many cars. Over Christmas they have been everywhere and aggressive too. Just like home - people start getting really aggro cos they feel stressed I guess. But cars are necessary to get us to the spectacular sights around the place.



The food - well Nathan is sick of American food but he doesn't remember he was rather sick of the food back 'ome as well. Even with 50 different cafes and restaurants within walking distance of our modest manor.


(Why they are called chipmunks?)

The people have been lovely, in general, except when some of them get in their cars and turn into morons on wheels. California is a place of immigrants, just like me. Finding a native is difficult quite frankly but I am getting better at picking local accents.

I feel I understand how the land here works better than I did in Colorado. Weather patterns are more explicable to me. I am used to a land that dries out under the fierce summer sun and then grows madly in the damp winter. The plants are different - eg we don't have native oaks at home, unlike the lovely tree in this pasture.



America is seen as a land of opportunity. We are seeing a lot of dreams go bust here at the moment. The people who work two and three jobs just to keep their home ownership dream alive are watching it all go down the gurgler. One of DH's friends moved to the US, thinking it would all be fabulous, a dream come true, but he and his family are now poorer in both time and money than they have ever been. We see infrastructure problems - roads so rough that they jiggle you off the seat in the bus, make you feel like you are driving on square tyres, unrepaired sidewalks.... (I said sidewalk! Not footpath! Argh, turning into a local!) Too much emphasis has been put on things that have torn the heart out of America. Too much money has gone into the pockets of a few, all in the name of the many. Too much money has been sent away from this place rather than fixing things that need to be fixed. Too much emphasis on oil. Not enough focus on America's greatest strength. (That'd be her people.)



This coming year is going to be full of challenges. Thank heavens DH has a job. Thank heavens we have met some really lovely people that we can happily call friends. Thank heavens a new president is stepping up to the plate. (And remember, I'm agnostic! ;-) It will be interesting to see if Yes We Can becomes a national slogan, if people work together to pull themselves and their country out of the mire.



Wishing you and yours a happy, safe and fulfilling New Year.

Hooray for Solstice!

Yesterday was the winter Solstice. Gosh, today we gain less than a whole second here in San Jose.

Dec 20, 2008 7:18 AM 4:53 PM 9h 35m 21s − 04s 12:05 PM 29.3° 147.163
Dec 21, 2008 7:18 AM 4:54 PM 9h 35m 20s < 1s 12:06 PM 29.3° 147.154

I usually try to get a pic of sunrise and sunset on the shortest day. Ooops, missed sunrise, but here's sunset. It started well:


but didn't redden up much at all, sorta just fizzled:


But it was indeed a sunset - it could've been wet and dull - and we got to see it in town. More on going to town later!

A year ago, we were in Canada on a train! I never posted those pics - shall have to remedy that :-)

Uewesual and noice

We've had some quite cold, for the Bay area, weather recently. Mebbe not as unusually cold as further south, but cooler than expected. Maximums have been reaching 9C, mins down to freezing. The frosts have knocked around my baby basil but given they haven't done anything for two months, I am not fussed. The cold hasn't knocked the tomatoes on the head yet - I have flowers still and some baby tomatoes are growing slowly. Stupid things. I should just pull them out cos I want the pots for winter veg.

The other day, we saw this on the hills around San Jose




(Do you like how I got the light rail bridge in there for my FiL? :-)



Yep, that'd be snow. By the time I remembered to get out and take pics, it had melted off quite a bit. I am told there was snow on the Cupertino hills, just a sprinkling and it looked really pretty.

There are a lot of Chinese Pistachios (Pistache chinensis) planted in our area. They like them as street trees. Not totally sure why - they have pretty leaves and pretty autumn colours and pretty bobbles

but they make a helluva mess on the ground. Of course it mainly affects the bike riders and pedestrians, and bike riders and pedestrians are third class citizens. The trees are prettier than the local sycamore (plane tree) but plane trees don't drop as much crud, just leaves and the odd branch.

I'll be able to torture you with more pics now that we have our hard disks sorted. We had a heap of pics on an old machine and it is playing up badly, but now the disk is in a current machine and I access more pics from last year and four months of this year. Hooray!


I was all ready to go for a good bike ride on the day I took the snow pics (Wednesday, I think), but the wind was sooooo cold that my ears threatened to fall off. It is hard to ride when your ears are killing you (mental pic of ears reaching around and throttling one). I am knitting a head band but I've got more than one thing to knit so it is taking a while.

Memory? What's that?

I just had to look up our phone number at home.

We occasionally have to "prove our ID" for stuff back 'ome and well, the phone number got shuffled out of the deck. It has not been important so it dropped off.

The good ole White Pages came through for us. It's not often that I like a Telstra product but really it is the only option for us.

LOL