Vatican Library Online

I imagine a conversation with a modern Jesus. He is saying, “I’m tired of serving fish. Teach them to fish…remember when I said that? Like, man, no one wants to learn how to fish, anymore. Everyone wants frozen filets.”

February 22. Dense fog conceals the valley, but in the foothills the grass has turned emerald green. Lydia goes with me to the lumber yard and I get a sheet of tempered masonite cut up into small pieces so I can paint some more church pictures. Kate comes by to send some Fax’s and Steve’s been up to feed the horses. There was a band concert in Sutter Creek last night, but no security, so some of the crowd got out of hand after drinking too much beer. Apparently, our city council hired the band without checking to see if they furnished security.

Monday’s highlight seems to be:1. the announcement by IBM that the Vatican Library is now on line;2. Burger King is switching from propane to natural gas;3. there will be a limited menu, today, due to the switchover, which will bring enormous hungry crowds of student seeking burgers. I finished a church painting this morning, and at this rate, I could turn one out every other day.

February 26. I’ve printed the first sixteen prints of the limited edition of Lydia’s portrait on the new card stock. Except for the tendency to be smear slightly, I believe the process will work successfully. Lydia’s in the post office buying two hundred stamps for a post card mailing advertising one of her water jetting conferences. I hope to get that back to the post office, today. To complete the uninspiring picture, clouds have moved in from the east, opposite to the usual weather pattern, and now we are wondering if the weather will break before Friday so we can go to Tahoe for the Tahoe Club’s fiftieth anniversary celebration—and that reminds me, I need to get the button set over on my dress shirt.

I’m loitering in the B.K. while Lydia does the “cooking”. As a matter of fact, Lydia has been driving the car because I feel so poorly. My temperature has been running subnormal, and as much as I want to go to Tahoe for the anniversary party, tonight, I think I will have to go to bed for more rest. After all, the Anaheim trip is next week and I definitely will have to be “up” for that. I recall with pleasure the speech my good friend Jerry gave the Rotary Club in Ione yesterday (Thursday, lunch). He called it a “concrete epiphany”. I wonder how many of the club members got the pun. Jerry is a artist and a contractor who stains and sculpts concrete (among many things), and his speech was both humorous and educational. I could use a little cheering, myself, at the moment.

The first of March find me writing the following in my journal. Sick, today. Lydia gets back from Tahoe at two in the afternoon, Katherine is trying to do captions for her photos. Nevertheless, we are out of toner for the laser printer—there is much to print—and I need to get the slides from the processors in Stockton, so we circle from Stockton to Sacramento and back. Sears is having a sale on men’s clothing beginning on Sunday, so I know we’ll be driving back tomorrow. I have only one pair of dress slacks and we’ll be in Anaheim a week. Now, having got back to the house, I’m completely exhausted.

Sunday morning. Lydia has decided to get new lenses in Sacramento and not wait for our optometrist. The new glasses might not be ready in time for Anaheim. So, off we go to the big city again. I might as well get that new pair of slacks at Sears.

The one hour lens place on Madison says they can make her new lenses in chroma-sensitive, graded glass. The technician is an attractive woman, probably about thirty, wearing the uniform of the day—black skirt, blazer, and white blouse. She has impressive personal skills in making people feel comfortable. She takes the necessary measurements and release us for an hour to wander about the shopping center.

We walking into a small frame shop and I observe a picture of a subway and Marilyn Monroe with a skirt glued to the canvas. The sounds of a train play for about thirty seconds, then a cylinder of gas blows the skirt up over her head. Cute.

We’re getting hungry, so we stop in a place advertising Philly Cheese Steak. There’s a crowd of people smacking their lips and gobbling up this stuff, but we think it’s inedible. I leave most of mine on the plate. I should know that Californians wouldn’t know good food if it were given to them.
A great piece of luck and a terrible bit of luck strikes on March 4.

The great bit: Lydia calls the Airport Hilton in Los Angeles to check on reservations and finds that we have none. Imagine, we could have driven all day tomorrow and arrived with no room for us! Now we can take another day to get ready for the Anaheim trip.

The bad bit: our laptop computer refuses to work, so we dash over to Sacramento to purchase a new one to replace the old Toshiba. While we are about it, we visit our favorite Schlotzsky’s and have the “original” on rye bread. This puts us in such a good mood we go back and purchase a small, portable color printer to complete the travel ensemble. Now we’ll have complete remote access to the office as well as being able to print out reports on the road. I can hardly wait to try it out.