Day One 01-01-09

When I looked out the window this morning I could only see about ten feet beyond the glass. A thick fog had rolled in - so much for starting the year out on a "new road"! It dissipated quickly as the sun rose in my area, but clung to the coast all day. You can see it in the pictures I took in San Clemente about three in the afternoon.

Before I drove down the coast I joined the Book Group at Mimi's Cafe in Yorba Linda for breakfast at nine. We have been doing this on New Year's Day for quite a few years now - at least twelve - so it is somewhat of a tradition, as long as someone remembers to organize it. Which merely entails letting everyone know the time and the place, and finding out how many will be there. Mimi's doesn't do reservations, but there are few people there at 9am, allowing us a large enough table without a wait. By the time we leave there is a line waiting outside. There were seven of us today, including a guest from New Jersey who is SIL of one of the members. We didn't discuss resolutions, but we did each tell one project or activity we wanted to do in the next year. And Teresa is requiring each of us to have a report on our progress at our April meeting. She is such a slave driver!!

Later in the afternoon I drove down to San Clemente where a friend was having an Open House, an event that has been held for decades. This was my first invitation and it was fun to go and meet some new people; some darling children who were noisy but seemed well behaved, some cute dogs who cruised the floor looking for tidbits that people (especially the children) may have dropped, some some couch potato husbands watching the Rose Bowl game. I have visited this house before and usually turn green over the fabulous wide angle view of the Pacific, but today the view was a dense grey blanket of fog that obliterated everything. When I left I was struck by the view above and the glowing red umbrellas. With the brilliant green grass in the foreground it is a living example of color theory!

Red umbrellas always make me think of my mother and her admonition to always carry a red or pink umbrella so that one will have a healthy glow when walking in the dreary Portland, OR, weather. Green or blue umbrellas, she would say, make one look bitter and old.

Here is a reminder that the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative online auction for January has opened. This is a disease that touches most of us in some way - wouldn't it be great to find a cure? There are two sites offering some interesting small quilts. Including a few with signatures of some well-known quilt makers.

Quilts 9X12 or smaller http://www.alzquilts.org/quiltauction.html

Little Treasures quilts more than 9X12 http://www.alzquilts.org/ready.html