Sacramento by night

Whether it is a reflection of laziness, the need for convenience, or desperation for a travel adventure, when Roni had the opportunity recently to take part in the California Water Environment Association annual convention being held at the Sacramento Convention Center, she weighed the prospect of multiple days spent commuting through traffic to and from the city versus booking a room at the Sheraton Grand Sacramento Hotel — literally next door to all the action.

Thanks to a great deal for convention participants and an accommodating schedule that afforded Roni the opportunity to commute during a couple of days of the event, she was able to book a room for a single night. That would be Wednesday, April 13 — the one day when she would have to be at a dinner and otherwise need to drive home in the dark just to have to head back to the convention hall the following morning, which she didn’t want to do.

No worries. She simply convinced Glenn to tag along with her and we could make an adventure of it — an overnighter with an opportunity to experience the urban nightlife in one of our favorite cities. Well, that was part of the plan.

See, something else happened in Sacramento this month, before we booked our room, that gave us pause about the whole night scene. In the wee hours of April 3, a mass shooting outside a downtown bar left six people dead, three of whom had nothing to do with the gang altercation that apparently triggered the incident. And while we aren’t so paranoid to believe it could have been us, the fact the crime scene was just a couple blocks away from where we would be staying was in the back of our minds.

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W

HILE THE ODDS of being shot by homicidal gang bangers aren’t especially high, neither is the likelihood these days that the weather forecast will be anything but warm and sunny with a chance of continued drought. In fact, we hadn’t seen more than trace amounts of precipitation in the Delta for weeks, so who could have predicted that the very week we planned our overnighter would find us arriving in the middle of a cold snap accompanied by steady drizzle? Yep, that was our fault for booking.

We were, however, fortunate enough to arrive early in the day on Wednesday while the weather was still decent. Roni didn’t need to be at her dinner until 6 p.m., so we showed up in Sacramento shortly after noon to grab some lunch and hang out in one of our favorite places, Old Town.

Thanks to the pandemic, it had been a while since our last visit to the tourist district. We didn’t plan to stay too long, so we grabbed a parking stall on Front Street that was controlled by parking meters where you pay via a cell phone app. We aren’t tech illiterate, but it did take us several minutes to download the app from the Apple Store, connect it to our PayPal account and figure out how any parking enforcement officers who might happen along would know we had paid when there was nothing to indicate on the meter that we had done so.

What we discovered is that the meter maids use the same app to see if your license plate is registered as having time left, so even though your specific meter may be flashing that you have a parking violation, you’re safe as long as your plate is on the list. We paid for two hours — the maximum time we could purchase — and headed out with the understanding that the app would notify us when the deadline was approaching so we could pay for additional time — sort of like the old days when you fished a couple of quarters out of your pocket to feed the meter, only now it’s more like a couple of dollars and they just charge it to your account while you are kicking back at your favorite restaurant.

Speaking of which, we weren’t entirely sure where we wanted to eat. Roni was interested in something with a view of the Sacramento River, perhaps where we could sit outside to enjoy the (for now) pleasant spring weather. Well, that narrowed our choices considerably as there are only four restaurants along the waterfront. We nixed the Brown Bean’s Cafe after checking the menu, and walked out of Joe’s Crab Shack after learning the wait for a table would be up to 20 minutes. The Delta King, which offers fine dining on a historic riverboat, appeared to not have the outdoor seating we wanted.

So that left us with the Rio City Cafe, where we were seated quickly and enjoyed clam chowder, fish and chips, and a hamburger on the covered deck with a view of the Tower Bridge and the corporate office buildings across the river near Sutter Health Park (formerly Raley Field.)

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A

FTER LUNCH, WE strolled along the boardwalks and visited a couple of the gift shops, although we didn’t have much time left on our parking app. We were inside Evangeline’s when the alarm went off to alert us our time was about to expire. We weren’t done looking around, but when we attempted to add time to the meter we found the app wouldn’t allow us to. Apparently a 2-hour time limit is exactly that.

So it was a quick trip through Evangeline’s and then we scurried up the block to be sure we were back at the car in time. It wasn’t like we had seen any parking enforcement cruising around Old Town, but if there was an app smart enough to alert us to when our time had expired, no doubt it could also alert a meter maid and make their ticketing time more efficient.

Given this was a working vacation, we decided it might be best to leave the sightseeing for the following day and instead check into our hotel room to relax a bit before the dinner. Roni had thought we might want to check out the block surrounding the Sheraton Grand, but once Glenn’s head came into contact with the pillow of our king-sized bed, he was out like a light.

So we just stayed in the room for a few hours watching TV until it was time for Roni’s dinner, or at least her dinner time meeting at which there would be an awards presentation. We made plans to meet up around the time the dinner was over, at a place next door to the event called Cafeteria 15L. The place takes its name from its location at the intersection of 15th and L streets in the downtown. It is a trendy little spot for a drink, but they have meal service as well.

Cafeteria 15L was just two blocks, or about a 10-minute walk, from the hotel. This might have been nice on a warm summer evening, but a cold front was moving through and a light rain was starting to fall, making even the short walk uncomfortable.

Roni’s event ended just in time to be seated in the restaurant before they closed their kitchen. We were still quite full from lunch, so we ordered small cups of potato soup and side dishes. Roni had a chicken sandwich while Glenn ordered mac and cheese.

By the time we left the restaurant, the rain was getting more serious. The lights on the dome of the State Capitol beckoned us as we headed back to the hotel, but the weather was too nasty to entertain any ideas of doing some night photography.

The next morning, Roni checked out early and headed over to the final day of her conference. But we still had the room until noon, so Glenn slept in a bit until the housekeepers got antsy and then switched venues to the front seat of the car in the parking garage across the street, where we eventually connected again after 2 p.m.

Again, another rainy and nasty afternoon. Too cold and wet to go sightseeing, so we drove home. It may not go down as our greatest trip to Sacramento, but at least now we can check off spending the night there from our bucket list and hope that our next visit will be sooner than later. 

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E

LON MUSK BOUGHT Twitter this month, and perhaps we should have too. Not much has been going right on the investment front, with stock markets sliding to new low after new low amid ongoing concerns about inflation and interest rate hikes. The relentless carnage has been especially detrimental to our taxable account, the balance of which has retreated to levels not seen since early 2019.

We sold 100 more shares of Apple (AAPL) ahead of its April 28 earnings call to raise cash to cover a bevy of losing options trades yet still we are deep underwater, raising again the prospect that we may have to liquidate the entire account to preserve what’s left. Margin investing is a vicious beast in a bear market, which is where we are on the NASDAQ and close to it on the Dow and S&P 500. We’d like to believe that we are close to an investable bottom, but we’ve heard that prediction for weeks from a number of experts and so far it has all been false hope. (As an aside, this has been the worst April in the entire history of the NASDAQ, including during the dot-com bust of 2000, so that is saying something.)

But it is not to say that we haven’t been bottom fishing on some of the tech stocks. We now own *two* shares of Alphabet, the parent company of Google (GOOG), which has been devastated like most everything else. Those two shares will become 40 when the stock splits in mid-July — hopefully at a higher price than current levels. We also added 100 shares of ChargePoint (CHPT) to Glenn’s IRA, bringing us up to 500 shares there and 800 total.

We received shares of Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD) when the company was spun off from AT&T on April 8; those shares are down 23 percent since then, as of this writing. We acquired 100 shares of Invesco Mortgage Capital (IVR) that are trading about 50 percent below what we optioned them for. We were assigned 100 shares of Spire Global (SPIR), a satellite data mapping company that is currently 67 percent below our option price. And we added 20 shares of QYLD, our NASDAQ covered call fund, as its price crashed on April 26. One day, if we are lucky enough not to have to sell these things prematurely, they might be decent additions to our portfolio. Right now, they are being treated by the markets as overpriced garbage, mostly.

We continue to hold our breath while we also hold our noses and muddle through these volatile times.

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T

HERE HAS BEEN a little progress on the fireplace project, now almost five months along. Glenn has been working on the valance that will attach to the top of the wall and contain a trio of LED lights. He cut the curved boards for this a few weeks ago, but has been delayed by a lack of supplies as well as a lack of ideas for how it should all come together. It is one of those puzzles where the pieces start to fit together the longer it is contemplated.

The wiring for the light switch is mostly done. Once the position of the valance is fine tuned we can then insert the LED lights and make the final wiring connections. Drilling out the holes for the lights created some challenges because we needed to buy a 3.25-inch hole saw for the job. Our initial purchase from Home Depot turned out to be a dud because we could only find one that was 3.5 inches and unfortunately had been previously used. We didn’t discover that it had problems until we attempted to use it and found it wouldn’t connect with the arbor that attaches to the drill.

So we returned that saw and this time found the proper size. But on the very first time we used it, we learned what had likely happened to the previous one that someone else returned. This saw attached to the arbor and bored three holes in our strip of pine just fine. However, when Glenn attempted to disassemble it from the arbor, he found the saw had locked itself down tight to the metal arbor and wouldn’t budge.

That prompted a visit to YouTube for advice about how to detach the stuck saw blade. It turns out that there is another piece you are supposed to connect to the saw blade to prevent it from over tightening, and we didn’t have that. So the apparent solution involved using an impact wrench to torque the pieces apart. Great advice — if one happens to own an impact wrench.

Failing that, you can always tap the blade with a mallet in hopes of loosening it up. We tried that and had no success. So for now we have given up hope of ever disconnecting the arbor for reuse with other hole saw blades. But if you need a 3.25-inch hole bored for your next project, now you know who you can turn to.  

We are still awaiting the screens for our replacement patio doors nearly half a year after they were installed. We got some good news on that front this week when Home Depot called to say the screens are finally on their way. Woo-hoo! But just because they are on their way does not guarantee when we will actually see them on our doors. Apparently we are on a waiting list with other customers who were in the same situation. We suppose we could blame the ongoing supply chain bottlenecks for the holdup, but Milgard, the company that manufactured our doors and windows, is based in Washington state, not China.

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T

HE EXPECTATION IS that we are in for another year of severe drought and wildfires. Spring is typically one of the wettest seasons in this part of California, but we’ve had nary a trace of precipitation for weeks. What we have been receiving is wind, and with it come the usual worries about whether our yard can withstand Mother Nature’s gales.

One such blustery night during the middle of April managed to take down the privacy screen we have attached to the pergola behind our dining room. We’d installed it about three years ago when our former neighbors’ young son used to love playing in a corner of the yard that looks directly into our dining room window. Aside from privacy, the screen also did a good job of shading us from the late afternoon glare of the setting sun, so we were anxious to get it reinstalled.

It turns out that the screen acts as a giant sail and moves around so much in the wind that the screw hooks attached to the pergola rafters worked themselves free. We headed over to ACE Hardware and bought about $2.50 worth of eye bolts that we drilled through the rafters to — hopefully — provide a more secure connection this time.

While Roni has big plans for a more permanent solution to what originally was intended to be a temporary solution, our makeshift privacy screen will have to continue to do the job for at least a while longer.

 

Glenn, Roni and Ben