Slightly Off Kilter

• November comes in with a splash. Gray and drippy. It's been raining since midnight. California's Wet season has begun. 10:18 AM Nov 1st

• Bought a cat flap today to install in the sliding door between bedroom and screenporch. It's too chilly at night now to leave the door open. 1:31 PM Nov 1st

• @RhodesTer - But of course, cats are telepathic. No need to type to tweet! Just beam your thoughts at the nearest hooman, and back to sleep. 3:50 PM Nov 1st

• Just commented on MacWorld's article "8 Ways to Use Twitter". Confused readers repeating "I just don't get it". http://tinyurl.com/6amnq6 7:56 PM Nov 1st

These are my Treasures for November.

• Rain

• Yes We Can. Yes We Could. Yes We Did.

• Pennsylvania went Blue.

We have had Rain. Otherwise, it's been cool.

We installed a new cat flap in the door from the bedroom to screen porch. Once again, the cats' reaction is "why should I push that with my head?"

Election Day finally came and went (I voted by mail, in October). I ignored the whole thing, checking results on Wednesday morning.

We won. No, we can't relax.

I've been using ecto, a Mac OS X desktop blog-posting application, for several years. I like it a lot. At least, I like ecto version 2.

Recently, the original author sold ecto to a new company that has rewritten it from scratch. I do not like the new ecto 3.

My group at Work had an outing at the CA Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park yesterday. Our official meet-up time was 11:30 for lunch, followed by a "team activity".

Since Rich and I had thought it might be nice to see the new Academy exhibits, preferably together, Rich came along with me and we drove in early, arriving at the Park at 9:00. We found the parking lot (with some minor confusion and one U-turn and loop back). Once we were in the garage, parking was easy and there were plenty of signs pointing to where we needed to go.

We bought Rich a ticket, (at $24.95 for adult admission, we were happy that the Company was paying for my ticket), then waited for the doors to open at 9:30. There were about 20 people in the general admission line at 9:15, as many as two to three times that number when the doors opened. Add that to the number of people waiting at the group/members door and this was a very popular place on a foggy Thursday mornig.

The man ahead of us in line said he had tried to come the day before and gone away again; the line then had stretched down to the street and around the corner. (Third Wednesday is free.) He decided to come today instead.

The building is very handsome with lots of glass and guy wires and stuff. My Dad (an architect) would think it was interesting. A man in line said he'd heard it cost half a billion (with a b) dollars.

At 9:30, the doors opened and Rich went in. Unfortunately, I couldn't go in yet, because I needed my "group" ticket. My co-worker was supposed to be waiting at the group entrance with the tickets at 9:30. However, she was late and when she arrived there was some additional confusion with the tickets and the lunch coupons and the Academy liaison for groups.

I finally got inside at 9:55 and caught up with Rich. It turned out the rainforest doesn't open until 10 so we got in line for that.

I didn't follow the election results on Tuesday. I don't like suspense. (I'm a person who reads the ends of books first.) Also, I knew nothing was sure until it happened. And I remembered November 2000 all too clearly.

But I looked after I woke up and I relaxed for the first time in months. We did it. We won.

These are my Treasures since my last posting.

• A bed full of cats on a Sunday afternoon.

• The whistle of a train in the distance

• freshly grated nutmeg

• movies: The Librarian: Quest for the Spear

• "Cock and Bull" Ginger Beer

• cats on my lap, snuggling