Calvin and Hobbes did very well at Benicia Library’s Cuddle Club yesterday! They met two other dogs—a super sweet and gentle husky named Georgia (in the picture below), and Barney, another small dog they played with among the children there.
Here are some other videos taken by others at the Cuddle Club that day:
Sweet Georgia the husky:
Vallejo panoramas from Crockett:
Frenetically feasting butterfly:
Mixed team getting ready to race:
Women’s team approaching the causeway:
Women’s team finishing the race:
While waiting to compete in the Coast Guard Island whaleboat race, I re-parked my car and checked out the area which is between Jack London Square and the Causeway to Coast Guard Island. These cute coffee shops and restaurants were not here when I was growing up.
My friend Bobbie and her daughter have taken our foster Jonah and he seems to be doing well with his new foster brother Ollie!
In April 2024 I was invited to attend the End Game Summit hosted by Action on Smoking in Health in Washington DC. It was a wonderful experience and I really got to see a lot of DC that I hadn’t seen before. That was my first real “trip” after the fire.
I also met Dr. Jeremiah Mack when I was wandering around the national mall. He had recognized my beard and me from the summit. He also lives in the Bay Area. We hung out a bit at the museums and then he told me about this symposium, which I was not aware of in time in 2024. I’m so glad I went and that it is on my home turf. I took the day off my remote job and went into San Francisco like a real commuter, which I hadn’t done in many years, taking the ferry both ways. I was a ferry rider for four years in New York City years ago.
Not judging well how long public transportation would take me when I got off the ferry, I did cheat a little and take Uber in both directions, but I did not want to be too late to the symposium, nor did I want it to miss the next of the infrequent ferries back to Vallejo.
Here are pictures from my commute and the lobby of UCSF:
Here are pictures from the symposium itself, with just a handful of the amazing fellow activists in this area, from all over the country. Some of them are involved with tobacco control globally, too.
Tuesday night row with some strong current getting ready for our next race around Coast Guard Island.
I love it when Snoopy crouches like this as he’s engaged in chewing on something like he is here (a twig). I saw foster Jonah do something similar today in a sort of copycat fashion, but I didn’t have the camera ready in time. Snoopy is quite the character and loves visiting his previous home, which will soon enough be his permanent home again.
The contractor had me put a ton of potted plants up in the tiers but it was getting a little messy, especially since I didn’t have access for a few months. I’m always impressed with the height of some of the plants that I barely touched. The succulents grew so tall and leaned over in some cases from their sheer weight. I pruned a bunch of them and put them in positions that will hopefully stabilize them.
We did even more gardening at the house under renovation today, clearing a major path and really ticking up the chop-and-drop method that I have come to love, which is optimal when you have curious animals stepping on the clippings. Shea really got a workout shoveling some of the erosion, so he certainly earned the desserts he’s picking up at the store right now! We went with Snoopy and Bonnie and the foster dogs wearing their “Adopt Me” vests because we thought we’d go to Wardlaw Dog Park afterward, but they had such a great time exploring in that yard, and we were so tired after gardening that we just came back to relax at the rental.
We watched a large barge come right through the Skipper Whipper race in Napa River from the Vallejo Yacht Club yesterday. We were worried a member of our team would be caught when the drawbridge went up (and he was) but he still made it in time for the masters division.
Mixed team returning to Vallejo Yacht Club:
Men’s team first turn from the Vallejo Yacht Club perspective:
Shea took some great footage from the Mare Island side of the Men’s Team and the Masters Team that I was on. Solano Rowing Club’s Men’s and Mixed took first place and the Masters team took second place out of about 5-6 competitors in each race.
BAWRA after party at Mare Island Brewery.
Pictures:
