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The Christmas holiday started off challenging.
I'd set out all our garbage on Monday night, including three bags of extra junk in extra-special Berkeley bags, because our pickup is Tuesday morning.
Well, Tuesday morning I looked out the window around 9am and saw that all of our garbage bags had been shredded and the contents strewn across our lawn; a homeless looking guy was sauntering off toward People's Park.
While I was getting ready to go out there and deal with the disaster, I saw that said homeless guy was back on our lawn, crouched over with his pants down and peeing. I later learned that he'd pooped all over too.
And that's about when our landscaper showed up, to start work on making our house look better.
And about when I started work making our house look better by cleaning up all the trash. I had to use two more of our precious Berkeley-approved (and ~$6 bags) to replace the two of the ones destroyed by our insane vagrant, and then managed to tape up a third, since I was out of extra bags.
Fortunately, the landscaper had a shovel and bags for the poop.
Yes, it was absolutely disgusting, and absolutely why it's a problem to have homeless people illegally camped all over Berkeley. Because our out-of-touch, blind city council is actively inviting large numbers of them to the city by not enforcing any quality-of-life laws, and unfortunately a notable percentage of the homeless are mentally ill, addicted, or both. And so they tear up peoples' garbage, spread it all, and then poop and pee like it's going out of style. (Or knife each other or sexually assault girls or even occasionally murder someone; the UC police are out at Peoples' Park multiple times every single day.)
I've said before that yes we should help people at a rate that our city can sustain and a little bit more. But this was really the last straw. I'm tired of it. We can't live like this and call it civilization. But we're leaving, so Berkeley can weep what it sows. And I think they're going to be doing that for a long time.
About three hours later, Bob showed up to pick us up. We've gotten rides all the way from Berkeley to San Martin (and back) the last few years, through Kimberly's foot and now stomach problems, and it's been very kind of everyone: Bob, Rob, and Jason at various times. And of course that gave us extra time to talk as well, which we did both there (and later) back.
The holiday was largely like others we've had down there: a shrimp dinner on Christmas Eve, a nice breakfast on Christmas Day, an excess of presents, a traditional ham dinner for Christmas (with traditional tamales from Lisa), and board games throughout (this time Dragon Castle and Sheriff of Nottingham, both games gifted last year, both courtesy of Rob, who I tapped to bring games, since mine are all at the Port of Oakland; Bob mentioned on the way down to San Martin that maybe we should ask Rob for games, and I told him I'd already taken care of it, because that was certain not something I was going to omit).
But the thing was, of course, this was the last one, and we all knew it. Kimberly and I will be in Hawaii next year, and we'll be reluctant to come back for Christmas because tickets will be expensive, and it'll be cold in the Bay Area; and meanwhile our nephew Julian will be two, and increasingly at the point where my sister-in-law Lisa will want to be making their home a Christmas center. But Kimberly and I both expressed that we enjoy Christmas with the Wiedlins so much that maybe we'll come back at Christmas some times ... but very likely not in 2020.
And, as I said, there were gifts. I got a light, breathable raincoat, thankfully replacing one that was getting increasingly ratty, and a few pairs of good-looking shorts, and of course my stocking stuffers. And I think everything else is waiting for us in Hawaii. My siblings told me about what sounds like an excess of books and games, which is exciting, though of course I'm still waiting to discover whether I can play my new games out there. Hopefully!
Somehow the day and a half just flew by, and before we knew it, we were heading back to Berkeley with Bob.
I often regret not staying longer, but Kimberly certainly stayed as long as she could, because she was exhausted and hurting and having seizures by the time she got home. Yowtch.
If Christmas Eve was challenging before we got out of Berkeley, the Day after Christmas has been, after we got back.
I woke up, showered, and immediately set to making the five phone calls I had scheduled: California-side health insurance (cancelled!); AT&T phone line for Skotos (cancelled!), Comcast (cancelled! though being the immoral scumbags that they are, they were the ones to try and make it hard); new internet in Hawaii (scheduled!), and Intuit (business address changed for Skotos!).
I was most of the way done with those when I had to run the cats to the vet. I hated having to stuff them into the soft carriers that we'll be using on the plane (because they're small, and because I didn't want to create bad memories of these carriers before the plane day), but as we'd planned, that's all we had in the house at this point. (It's not like the accidental times when we discovered we should have left something behind, such as when I tried to make Chili for Kimberly and discovered we had no can opener!). The object here was to get them health certificates and get them their flea treatment. And that was hopefully the last bureaucratic hurdle to get them to their new home of Kauai (though I need to touch bases with Alaska Airlines and with the Humane Society in Kauai before we leave to make sure that our t's remain dotted and our i's remain crossed).
And then after lunch I ran around to the five places on my schedule in Berkeley today: UPS Store (Comcast cable-card returned!), bank (Christmas checks deposited! thank you!), Goodwill (a cartful of stuff dropped off! along with the cart!), USPS (a few priority mail boxes picked up! in case we want to mail anything to Kauai!), and the library (books dropped off! though I still have five out! one of which is a novel that I really need to finish in the next four days, and am not sure I will! and more importantly, more garbage backs picked up! to be ripped up by the dangerous vagrants that our city council invites to our city!)
And meanwhile, our heat is out. Again.
Apparently the gas line supplying seven or so houses on our side of the road has mysteriously filled with water. I suspect the cuplrit is the EBMUD work that was going on right about where PG&E started to deal with the problem. We learned about the problem this morning, and 14 hours later, they're still working on it.
So for the second time in the December of our last year in California we've had a night without heat. Sigh. Our cats are cold, as are we.
Tonight was also our last Thursday night game. We got started a little early with Concordia (which most of the folks hadn't played yet), then continued with Wingspan (which we played and enjoyed last week). Two great games, both best-of-class or near so (though I continue to think that Wingspan over values its eggs, and would have a much better endgame is they scored half as much).
It was a great night, and the end of 18 or 19 years of gaming here on Thursday nights. Hopefully the folks will keep it going.
And I've got quite a bit of gaming scheduled these last few days. Tomorrow a few of us are jumping back to Curse of the Crimson Throne.
(And I just have to make sure the gaming doesn't interfere with my finishing to clear out the house, though I continue to make good strides with trashing stuff and Kimberly is doing well with getting things given away on Freecycle.
(And we're sadly no longer leaving most stuff out for "free" out front, because it seems to have attracted the wrong sort of attention.)
(And I'm hoping that I can keep the sickly ickies away while we're in California. A few folks were getting over colds down in San Martin, and the chill of our house this evening got Mike A. sniffling from a cold he'd thought he was over ... and doubtless the rest of Berkeley is sick too.)
I'd set out all our garbage on Monday night, including three bags of extra junk in extra-special Berkeley bags, because our pickup is Tuesday morning.
Well, Tuesday morning I looked out the window around 9am and saw that all of our garbage bags had been shredded and the contents strewn across our lawn; a homeless looking guy was sauntering off toward People's Park.
While I was getting ready to go out there and deal with the disaster, I saw that said homeless guy was back on our lawn, crouched over with his pants down and peeing. I later learned that he'd pooped all over too.
And that's about when our landscaper showed up, to start work on making our house look better.
And about when I started work making our house look better by cleaning up all the trash. I had to use two more of our precious Berkeley-approved (and ~$6 bags) to replace the two of the ones destroyed by our insane vagrant, and then managed to tape up a third, since I was out of extra bags.
Fortunately, the landscaper had a shovel and bags for the poop.
Yes, it was absolutely disgusting, and absolutely why it's a problem to have homeless people illegally camped all over Berkeley. Because our out-of-touch, blind city council is actively inviting large numbers of them to the city by not enforcing any quality-of-life laws, and unfortunately a notable percentage of the homeless are mentally ill, addicted, or both. And so they tear up peoples' garbage, spread it all, and then poop and pee like it's going out of style. (Or knife each other or sexually assault girls or even occasionally murder someone; the UC police are out at Peoples' Park multiple times every single day.)
I've said before that yes we should help people at a rate that our city can sustain and a little bit more. But this was really the last straw. I'm tired of it. We can't live like this and call it civilization. But we're leaving, so Berkeley can weep what it sows. And I think they're going to be doing that for a long time.
About three hours later, Bob showed up to pick us up. We've gotten rides all the way from Berkeley to San Martin (and back) the last few years, through Kimberly's foot and now stomach problems, and it's been very kind of everyone: Bob, Rob, and Jason at various times. And of course that gave us extra time to talk as well, which we did both there (and later) back.
The holiday was largely like others we've had down there: a shrimp dinner on Christmas Eve, a nice breakfast on Christmas Day, an excess of presents, a traditional ham dinner for Christmas (with traditional tamales from Lisa), and board games throughout (this time Dragon Castle and Sheriff of Nottingham, both games gifted last year, both courtesy of Rob, who I tapped to bring games, since mine are all at the Port of Oakland; Bob mentioned on the way down to San Martin that maybe we should ask Rob for games, and I told him I'd already taken care of it, because that was certain not something I was going to omit).
But the thing was, of course, this was the last one, and we all knew it. Kimberly and I will be in Hawaii next year, and we'll be reluctant to come back for Christmas because tickets will be expensive, and it'll be cold in the Bay Area; and meanwhile our nephew Julian will be two, and increasingly at the point where my sister-in-law Lisa will want to be making their home a Christmas center. But Kimberly and I both expressed that we enjoy Christmas with the Wiedlins so much that maybe we'll come back at Christmas some times ... but very likely not in 2020.
And, as I said, there were gifts. I got a light, breathable raincoat, thankfully replacing one that was getting increasingly ratty, and a few pairs of good-looking shorts, and of course my stocking stuffers. And I think everything else is waiting for us in Hawaii. My siblings told me about what sounds like an excess of books and games, which is exciting, though of course I'm still waiting to discover whether I can play my new games out there. Hopefully!
Somehow the day and a half just flew by, and before we knew it, we were heading back to Berkeley with Bob.
I often regret not staying longer, but Kimberly certainly stayed as long as she could, because she was exhausted and hurting and having seizures by the time she got home. Yowtch.
If Christmas Eve was challenging before we got out of Berkeley, the Day after Christmas has been, after we got back.
I woke up, showered, and immediately set to making the five phone calls I had scheduled: California-side health insurance (cancelled!); AT&T phone line for Skotos (cancelled!), Comcast (cancelled! though being the immoral scumbags that they are, they were the ones to try and make it hard); new internet in Hawaii (scheduled!), and Intuit (business address changed for Skotos!).
I was most of the way done with those when I had to run the cats to the vet. I hated having to stuff them into the soft carriers that we'll be using on the plane (because they're small, and because I didn't want to create bad memories of these carriers before the plane day), but as we'd planned, that's all we had in the house at this point. (It's not like the accidental times when we discovered we should have left something behind, such as when I tried to make Chili for Kimberly and discovered we had no can opener!). The object here was to get them health certificates and get them their flea treatment. And that was hopefully the last bureaucratic hurdle to get them to their new home of Kauai (though I need to touch bases with Alaska Airlines and with the Humane Society in Kauai before we leave to make sure that our t's remain dotted and our i's remain crossed).
And then after lunch I ran around to the five places on my schedule in Berkeley today: UPS Store (Comcast cable-card returned!), bank (Christmas checks deposited! thank you!), Goodwill (a cartful of stuff dropped off! along with the cart!), USPS (a few priority mail boxes picked up! in case we want to mail anything to Kauai!), and the library (books dropped off! though I still have five out! one of which is a novel that I really need to finish in the next four days, and am not sure I will! and more importantly, more garbage backs picked up! to be ripped up by the dangerous vagrants that our city council invites to our city!)
And meanwhile, our heat is out. Again.
Apparently the gas line supplying seven or so houses on our side of the road has mysteriously filled with water. I suspect the cuplrit is the EBMUD work that was going on right about where PG&E started to deal with the problem. We learned about the problem this morning, and 14 hours later, they're still working on it.
So for the second time in the December of our last year in California we've had a night without heat. Sigh. Our cats are cold, as are we.
Tonight was also our last Thursday night game. We got started a little early with Concordia (which most of the folks hadn't played yet), then continued with Wingspan (which we played and enjoyed last week). Two great games, both best-of-class or near so (though I continue to think that Wingspan over values its eggs, and would have a much better endgame is they scored half as much).
It was a great night, and the end of 18 or 19 years of gaming here on Thursday nights. Hopefully the folks will keep it going.
And I've got quite a bit of gaming scheduled these last few days. Tomorrow a few of us are jumping back to Curse of the Crimson Throne.
(And I just have to make sure the gaming doesn't interfere with my finishing to clear out the house, though I continue to make good strides with trashing stuff and Kimberly is doing well with getting things given away on Freecycle.
(And we're sadly no longer leaving most stuff out for "free" out front, because it seems to have attracted the wrong sort of attention.)
(And I'm hoping that I can keep the sickly ickies away while we're in California. A few folks were getting over colds down in San Martin, and the chill of our house this evening got Mike A. sniffling from a cold he'd thought he was over ... and doubtless the rest of Berkeley is sick too.)