SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - The sneezing, sniffling, oh-shit-I-feel-like-I-have-a-fever time is raging here in Central California like a wildfire out of control.
At the university, the health center is diagnosing students over the telephone as having swine flu. And while it's normal at this stage of the semester to have a lot of absence, my classrooms are often only half full, with the other half emailing in that they are sick and will take a pass on coming to school that day.
And if they think they are sick, they do have strict orders: Keep thee away from me. A couple of zip codes would be nice.
This entire flu-mania took on special meaning late last week when a Sacramento amiga invited the Admiral and I to come to her house and have dinner. Sure, sounds great, we said. Plans were put into place to bring the ukulele for a little concert for she and her husband and two young children.
Two children. Two young children.
Uh-oh. Children, much younger versions of walking petri dishes of bacteria and viruses that I teach daily. Good kids to be sure, but what illnesses might lurk in that critical three-foot radius around them? And what if I caught a bad cold - or worse - weeks before the Admiral and I are scheduled to make our way south and east, back to coastal Mexico?
We canceled. I think we are still friends.
Someone once told me that you are only paranoid if you think someone is out to get you and they are not.
Hmm...
So I continue to gulp vitamins and minerals twice a day - prescribed by my Canadian amiga Laura - drink enough water to solve the Southern California water shortage, try to sleep a full 8 hours and I hold my breath in the elevators at the University.
CAMP CONNELL, Calaveras County, Calif., USA - We zipped up the mountain from Sacramento last night, arriving an hour or so after dark, just ahead of some cold weather.
Rain greeted us in Angel's Camp (15 miles from here) and for a few minutes, I thought we would be running into snow and sleet. It rained hard enough that I think a new set of windshield wipers is in order. We'll go home tomorrow when it warms up - and no rain is forecast.
Temperature at 11 a.m.
It's always fun to visit Sanders and Pat here and it was a nice night of music, wine and great food. And this morning, the day dawned sunny and bright - at least as sunny and bright as it can be with this many huge trees surrounding the house.
So after the requisite three cups of tea (a la Greg Mortenson), the Admiral and I took a foray out around the countryside, ending up at the Camp Connell store where the locals were sipping coffee (and some sipping beer).
Admiral Fox - got her ears frosted up on the walk there and checked out a few of hats they had on sale.
No ear coverage
Ear coverage - great. Style - not so great
The Camp Connell store is a microcosm of the community - and the place to visit if you want to check out what's going on. Need a handyman to fix the gutters on the house? Check the store. Need to know about the snow in the pass? These people will know.
Later today, we will make a foray to a slightly lower elevation to visit amigos Randy and Karin, amigos from here as well as Mexico. Randy and Karin will be coming to Mexico for two months, living in a house near the church in La Manzanilla.
And, of course, we will likely make another walk down the hill to the Camp Connell store this afternoon, too, when it's time to join the locals for a cold beer.
SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - In the last couple of years, my Spanish language speaking (and listening) skills have progressed from those of an elementary school student to, oh, a not-very-bright teenager.
The emphasis here is on not-very-bright.
Still, I have been generally pleased with progress and by the end of May last year, was able to converse pretty freely with my Spanish-speaking neighbors (vecinos) and friends (amigos) in Arroyo Seco and La Manzanilla.
They apparently don't mind talking to a not-very-bright teenager encased in the body of a 60-year-old gringo.
But Monday I realized that resting on my laurels is not a good idea. I need to begin to push a little harder this year. Maybe I'll learn how to use the past tense. Woo-hoo!
Goddaughter Devani at her birthday party last May
What has prompted this semi-come-to-Jesus-moment about getting more fluent was trying to talk on the telephone Monday with Mimi, the mother of Devani, our goddaughter. When Devani was born, she and her mother (and grandmother and grandfather) all lived in La Manzanilla, eking out a living cleaning houses and running a tiny restaurant out the front of their house. And, being good godparents we saw them often. When needed, we helped out by buying medicine for the baby and sometimes basic foodstuffs when there wasn't much work.
A few months ago, the family picked up and moved to Ensenada where they were able to find work. La Manzanilla had no work for them at all. In fact, if reports are accurate, the village could use a serious infusion of gringo cash to get some pesos in the pockets of the local Mexican residents.
But I digress.
When the phone rang - and the Admiral said it was Mimi - I knew trouble was afoot because I had received an email a few days earlier indicating that Devani had been going to the doctor. But Monday morning, Devani had returned from a trip to the hospital where the doctors said expensive asthma medicine was desperately needed.
Emphasis here on desperate. Emphasis here on expensive.
I would like to say I learned all this because I understood Mimi just fine in our telephone conversation. But I didn't. I picked up that the baby was sick, that Mimi wasn't too hot either, that there was some work but they were struggling financially. And I heard a lot of very-frightened-mother incantations (in-between sobs) and the Spanish verbs came at me faster than dodgeballs in a junior high school gym class.
What I could not understand was how serious things were - and also how to get some money into Mimi's hands for the medicine.
Western Union - they'll take your money
Lucky for all of us, Mimi was telephoning from a home where she and her mother work three days per week. The owner speaks enough English for us to work out the details of how to get some cash across the border for the 18-month-old's asthma medicine.
It turned out that good old Western Union is the transfer vehicle of choice and by late afternoon (and a quick trip by Adm. Fox to the WU office), the medicine for the baby should have been purchased.
In Mexico, you can do the same thing, but by wandering to any Coppel store, which does wire transfers of money, too.
So what's the next step in the search for fluency?
Una pregunta buena ( good question). Perhaps there's a good ITouch app that I can wire into my brain while I sleep.
Or perhaps my amiga Laura Warner can put me into a language training program this spring. (She already has me taking four vitamin and mineral pills a day to ward off H1N1, as well as the myriads of germs lurking around the university.)
Or I could just plain old study, I suppose.
Hmm.. I think I'll try the ITouch first - and download a few ukulele tunes at the same time.
SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - The ankle-deep water in the garage was the first clue. The second clue was no hot water for a hot shower this morning. The third clue was the delivery of the bad news directly from Admiral Fox, who had surveyed the scene.
"Hey Michael. Guess what? The water heater blew out."
Guess what, indeed.
My first instinct - and phone call - went to Chief Engineer Scott Noble, who fixed things on our 48-foot sloop Sabbatical for a several seasons and has mechanical and fix-up abilities far beyond those of mortal men. But as luck would have it (his mostly), his carpet cleaning service had just picked up jobs enough to keep him busy until sometime Saturday.
The Admiral and I did the math and decided that showers couldn't wait that long.
Carcass of the old water heater
On Sabbatical, problems like this seemed to happen damn near every time we went for a cruise of longer than a few days. That's the nature of sailboat cruising and I was used to be called into service at a moment's emergency notice - and usually not when I felt like doing the work.
So I attacked the problem the same way I did on the boat: I ripped out the old water heater (Hand me that hacksaw, please) and installed in a new one. Time to completion: 3.5 hours.
That said, there are two boat/home improvement projects I really dislike: painting and plumbing. And I am not sure which I dislike the most. Depends on which I need to do at that moment, I suppose.
New water heater ready to hook up
The project wasn't all that expensive either - about $400 for everything (Calif. tax included). But, of course, it took two trips to Home Depot before the project was over. One trip was to get the tank, the second to get all the things I forgot (like Teflon tape for the pipe connections).
Santo Crappo!
As I write this, the new hot water heater is warming fast and seems to be operating just as advertising by the fine folks at Home Depot.
But tomorrow I have to finish one final piece of the job so the project is really complete - reinstalling the earthquake straps on the new tank.
We'll cross our fingers that the state doesn't shake rattle and roll tonight. I do not want to have to install another hot water heater tomorrow.
OK, and I would not welcome an earthquake regardless.
Who knows? It might require me to start doing some painting, too.
SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - Today was C Day, (not D Day), the day that I went in for some outpatient surgery to remove three tiny spots of skin cancer that my dermatologist spotted 10 days ago during my annual skin checkup.
Why C day? C for carving, of course.
During that annual skin checkup, Dr. Silva and I chatted (as always) about what the Admiral and I are doing with our properties in Mexico, how much fun we have there and ultimately how much sun we are exposed to for about 8 months out of the year.
"Couldn't you have picked a place like, um, Finland to retire to," she asked, blasting me with beyond-ice-cold liquid nitrogen to burn off some pre-cancers.
That stuff hurts, by the way, and leaves blisters wherever it is applied.
Dr. Susan Silva
The Finland joke didn't seem so funny a few days later when the results of three biopsies came back showing that I did have one semi-serious type of cancer on my chest and two other spots on my back that needed more than just a little touch of super cold nitrogen.
On my chest was a tiny spot of what the laboratory said was some squamous skin cancer that needed to be carved out, because it was likely moving it's way down through the various layers of the epidermis and spreading, not just hanging out on top.
Just the name squamous sounded kind of ominous to me.
Carved, of course, is a gross exaggeration. Dr. Silva used a scalpel to skillfully cut out a small chunk of skin, though it took about 20 minutes, including the stitching me up. (Small stitches, please.) And the spots on my backed were scrapped off using a curette.
Thank God for Lidocaine, several shots of which were injected in my chest and on my back and I quite literally didn't feel a thing.
Heading in for the surgery
With C Day behind me, the Admiral and I are starting to focus on our mid-December escape from Sacramento to return to Arroyo Seco and La Manzanilla.
I already have my order figured out for the first night we head to Palapa Joes in La Manzanilla.
And yes, it includes a Cuba Libre.
Maybe several to toast the death of the squamous cells.
The doctors at the Laser Skin Center in Sacramento
SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - Part of the Sunday morning ritual for the Admiral and I for years has been a visit to the downtown Sacramento farmer's market, a collection of about 75 vendors selling all kinds of farm produce.
The market is under the Interstate 80 freeway, which on weekdays is a parking lot filled with the cars of state workers. At least those that still have jobs.
Today's visit showed that if anything, the market is growing bigger - and better - all the time.
Piles of fresh vegetables
The shoppers were all scurrying about, picking out the best squash, tomatoes, beans and an assortment of fruits that is mind boggling. Vendors selling honey, flowers, freshly caught salmon and sometimes wine also do a pretty brisk business.
And this Sunday the political petition people were out in force, too, with people trying to get registered voters to sign petitions to legalize marijuana and get fresher food into school lunches. (Or was it to get fresher marijuana? Hmmm....)
The usual cadre of musicians were missing, however. Usually at least two of three guitarists take up residence near the politicians (where people gather), leaving their guitar cases open on the ground in hope of getting some cash from fans.
I should have brought my ukulele and perhaps paid for the vegetables.
Come tip-toe, through the tulips with me ...
Marijuana petition
Tomatoes everywhere
A pile of potatoes
What we couldn't find at the Farmer's Market - which wasn't much - we stocked up on at Corti Brothers grocery store, a company that was almost forced out of business last year when the lease for the landmark grocery wasn't renewed by the landlord - and a competitor snapped it up.
Some public protestations - no, make that a lot of public protestations - made the landlord relent, the competitor backed out of the deal and the Corti family was able to renew the lease.
We're happy. Corti Brothers still has the best deli in town.
DAVIS, Calif., USA - In this first 'furlough' day from my teaching at California State University, Sacramento, I studiously avoided any schoolwork, and tried to do anything that was unrelated to my teaching or other university service.
So it was a morning of laundry, reading newspapers, walking Tucker the Dog around a block and chatting for awhile with Berta, the Spanish-speaking house cleaner who comes in once a month to chase away the dust bunnies, among other dirt-related creatures that lurk in difficult spaces to clean. My rusty Spanish proved sufficient to talk un poco...
Tucker, always ready for a walk
But during the morning I also received an email from a Capital Public Radio news guy who had interviewed me a week ago about what effect the furloughs were having on students and faculty at my campus.
And after listening to it, it prompted to me to use some of my CSU, Sacramento furlough day by going to the nearby University of California, Davis campus to hoot and holler in support of the faculty there, who have been furloughed like me, but cannot take off any days from teaching, despite taking a pay cut. (Of course, they teach one or two classes per week, compared to our four, but come on, solidarity is solidarity.)
The protest eventually drew probably between 700-1000 people, with many lurking in the shade of the trees, listening to various speakers thunder about the lack of foresight on the part of the state legislature in slashing higher education budgets so drastically this year.
Many of the students in the crowd - when not shouting slogans like "More Privatization Means Less Education" and "UC Slay-Very" - were debating whether to show up for their classes or cut. In several cases, the decision was easy because the speakers were faculty members who had canceled classes - on the very first day of school - to protest not only their plight but the steep increases in student fees with which UC students were being hit. And more UC fee increases are on the way, just like in my university system.
A physics professor told a longish tale about the University of Texas, which he said is actively recruiting faculty from the UC system, knowing that the furloughs might tip the scale in favor of faculty choosing to teach in the Lone Star State. Such notions seemed far fetched in the past few years, but with the pay cuts, perhaps not.
(But would UC faculty be able to pronounce Yee-Haw properly and name the entire cast of the TV series, Dallas?)
UC physics professor warns of potential faculty exodus
The protest and rally also drew plenty of people with petitions to sign: some supporting San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom for governor, others to be sent to lame-duck Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger protesting the cuts.
And the media was out in full force with TV cameras all over the place, trying to get some good footage of outrage for the evening's newscast.
But at least while I stood there, no one yelled "You lied," at any of the speakers, or even in reference to the University of California Regents and UC President Mark Yudof who may have told a fib or two on occasion.
The protest was quite civilized in that regard.
TV reporter packs up and heads out
A protester and fan of the book, The Color Purple?
As the crowd gathered
The UC Davis campus is no different from any other in one regard - the parking enforcement officers tend to be genetically linked to members of some past Reich and so I was pleased that after sweating for an hour listening to speakers and taking photos I got back to my Little Red Nissan with 10 minutes to spare on the meter.
Whew.
10 minutes left - and no ticket
Below is a brief video of one of the better speakers - Bill Camp of the Sacramento Central Labor Council who got the crowd roaring during his five-minute speech.
SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - The first hint of what was about to happen was when son Dustin Fox called from Puerto Vallarta and said he and spouse Cami and daughter Sasha had decided to come to the U.S. for a 10-day vacation, to visit us - and to escape the insufferable heat of coastal Mexico this time of the year.
Then, because they were coming, son Jason Fitzgerald, (temporarily ensconced in nearby Chico, Calif.), decided to drive south to Sacramento for a visit, too.
And rounding out the family reunion was daughter Anne Fitzgerald Allen and her daughter Kami who live in nearby Rancho Cordova.
All we were missing was son Dylan Fox (who lives in the Berkeley, Calif. area) and Anne's other daughter, Samantha (who was always at softball practice when we were having get togethers) and Anne' husband Steve. We will try to remedy that next week and get everyone together for a farewell soiree before the Mexico Fox family heads back to Puerto Vallarta.
Jason, Michael, and Dustin
Jason, Michael and Sasha
It was a great couple of days, getting the Mexico contingent hooked up with cousins and brothers and sisters and... We almost needed a flow chart to figure it all out.
And one upshot is that after two days of hearing tales of Mexico (and surfing, most likely), son Jason is planning a foray south this winter, either for a short vacation, or for the whole season.
Beach volleyball in La Manzanilla will never be the same. I don't know anyone else who carries around professional volleyball gear everywhere he goes.
Sasha Fox and Kami Allen, the cousins
Below is a short movie of one family dinner in Sacramento - at a Mexican restaurant of course - followed a by short clip of Jason with one of his two much-beloved dogs who travel with him everywhere.
SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - The Admiral and I spent a couple of hours at a luau this afternoon/evening in Roseville, a fundraiser for the softball league that granddaughter Sami plays in.
The mai-tai drinks were, well, industrial strength and we would have liked to sample the food, too. But the line for the food looked like it would take 45 minutes for us to chow down on pork, chicken and rice, so we opted out to go home for dinner.
And dinner at home, cooked by roommate Suzanne, was fabulous. (Still, a third mai tai might have been good, too...)
Luau greeting committee
Son-in-law Steve (Sami's dad) with Nicole at the luau
The party atmosphere was great, helped by a cooling trend of temperatures that brought the usual 90-degree days down to about 75, perfect luau weather, even if I didn't have a true Hawaiian shirt to wear.
Instead, I wore a T-shirt I got in Mexico for the Banderas Bay Sailboat Regatta from a few years ago which seemed festive enough to fit in with the decor and the rest of the attendees. Most of attendees were young families with players on the teams. But the rest of us more senior citizen types enjoyed watching our grandchildren at the party, too.
Luau scene
Granddaugther Kami at the luau
Monday morning I head off to the courthouse to report for jury duty. A far cry from the mai tai drinks and pulled pork dinners of today.
Michael J. Fitzgerald has been a journalist for 35 years, working as a writer and editor for newspapers, magazines and web publications. He writes or contributes to seven blogs: The Backpack Journalist, From Where I Sit, Captain's Blog, The Class of '66, Writing for Money, Tenacatita Bay Bugle & The Four Headlamps. When in Mexico, he works as a stringer for Reuters, where he has been told to keep an eye out for tourists eaten by crocodiles, earthquakes, and potential tsunamis. This fall, he is teaching Column Writing and Magazine Writing at CSU, Sacramento.
