Monday Meanderings

We joined much of the clan at the Lake Cabin over Labor Day. More about that on Wednesday. We must have been really, really zonked after the trip. We went to bed early, and during the night Barb got up and noticed a couple of red lights, seemingly in the neighbor's back yard. She was puzzled about that, but it was the middle of the night and she came back to bed. The next morning she checked the neighbor's yard and didn't see any crop circles or other evidence of alien invaders, so we set out on our errands, only to find that a short block over, a house had burned to the ground during the night and we slept through the whole thing!



Just down the coast from Carmel is Point Lobos, a California State Reserve. It is a remarkable area of seashore and headlands, home to seals, sea lions, sea otters, birds and, seasonally,migrating gray whales. It is also a favorite area for divers and underwater exploration. The area used to be the home of a turn-of -the-century whaling and abalone industry and a small cabin built by Chinese fishermen from that era still remains at Whalers Cove.




We were visiting that cabin, looking out over the cove when we noticed a disturbance in the water. Thinking that it might be a couple of sea otters, we watched closely, only to be taken aback by two dark objects rising above the surface. Now thinking Creatures from the Black Lagoon instead of Cute Little Otters, we watched with growing concern... only to see two wet-suit clad divers emerge from the depths and begin making their way to the shore.



In the course of a single day this week, the convenience store up the street from us listed the price of regular gas as $3.33, $3.09, $3.39 and $3.20 a gallon. And those were only the prices we saw. No telling what other prices might have been posted. Maybe the person in charge of the big price sign is numerically challenged.



After Barb and I met with our new sleep apnea doctor this week, she said, "Do you think that before we die, all our doctors will be 12 years old?"



Each Fall, we wonder what kind of crop the pecan tree in the front yard will produce. With the on-going drought, I expected nothing of mention last year but the tree fooled us and produced perhaps its best crop. This year I will be surprised if the squirrels leave us any pecans. It's one thing to scurry around on the ground and gather up the fallen nuts, but they are jumping the gun and eating them off the tree before they mature. To make matters worse, they litter the drive and sidewalk with the leavings. It is somewhat unclear, but here's what we face each morning - at least until Barb started a sweeping action.
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