One of these things is not like the other... Phoenix is doing his best to imitate a Halloween pumpkin, but something tells us he'll have a hard time passing off this costume. Meanwhile, we've got Glenn's two jack o'lantern creations for this year — a spooky cat (not Phoenix) and the poop emoji. You may laugh, but the poop pumpkin was a hit with the trick-or-treaterswho visited us. Photo by Glenn.
November 13, 2019: We just got finished hauling in our Halloween decorations after what has been a crazy few days to close out the month of October. It really feels like autumn finally, now that the days are getting shorter, cooler, and we have set back the hands on all the clocks as part of our annual return to daylight standard time. Our Panama cruise is just days away. Excitement is building. Time is short, so we are rushing this month’s newsletter into production.
We're in Roseville at the All-American Speedway for a little Saturday night racing action. On the schedule is the Pumpkin Smash enduro race and other Halloween-themed entertainment. Sean came in full race attire. Photo by Glenn.
Roseville is a bit of a drive for us, but we came here to watch Sean's work friend Adam Baggett compete in the enduro. Adam didn't win, but he did a great job decorating his car with zombies and fake gore, as did all the participants. Photo by Glenn.
Trailer races followed the enduro. The cars circle the track tethered to boat trailers, the object being to eliminate competitors by knocking off their trailer. Don't try this at home! Photo by Glenn.
We found this coven of witches lurking in the aisles of Home Depot. When the Halloween props start showing up at our favorite home improvement store, we know our favorite fall holiday is not far away. Photo by Glenn.
Roni is happy that she is finally getting the chance to decorate our house for Halloween. Between kitchen projects, work and hospital visits, we haven't had much time for fun like this. Photo by Glenn.
Our search in the garage for Halloween decorations unearthed Ben's old wizard costume. A veteran of cosplay, he couldn't resist trying it on and decided to use it again as this year's costume. Photo by Glenn.
This creepy clown wasn't part of our display, but surely he would fit right in for somebody. He was available for purchase at the local Halloween store, where we went to look for additions to Ben's costume. Photo by Glenn.
This is as dressed up as Glenn gets for Halloween. The Steampunk look fits him well — at least, it did at the store. Photo by Ben.
Glenn got ambitious with this year's pumpkin carvings, deciding to do two of them on Halloween night. We've got the traditional cat-in-the-moonlight carving and the decidedly non-traditional poop emoji — because what else would you carve into a jack o'lantern when your wife works for the sanitary district? Photo by Glenn.
Ben gets into the Halloween spirit while baking a cake to share with friends and family. Photo by Glenn.
Here's the top of Ben's chocolate cake, all decorated. It was a tasty dessert that was a healthy option (hah!) to the candy we might otherwise have consumed. Photo by Glenn.
Roni, as always, enjoys getting creative with her Halloween dinner selection. This year it was candy corn quesadillas, which when slathered in queso cheese and crunched up Doritos look an awful lot like their sugary namesake. Photo by Glenn.
Roni also cooked up some "mummy spiders" — a variation on the mummy dogs she usually bakes. The hotdogs are wrapped in Pilsbury dough and sliced to resemble spider legs. Sliced olives make up the eyes. Photo by Glenn.
Here's the Halloween dinner spread, ready to serve... Photo by Glenn.
...And here are some hungry Halloween revelers ready to eat. Ben and his friend Aaron took a break from video gaming long enough to grab some goodies to take back to Ben's room. Photo by Glenn.
The sun has set and the lights are on for the trick-or-treaters. It's a pretty tame display, but we did get a few younger kids who were hesitant to come up on our haunted porch. Photo by Glenn.
Trick or treat! Roni does the honors, passing out handfuls of candy to a group of costumed visitors. Photo by Glenn.
And this is what Katy thinks of this whole strangers-coming-to-the-door-asking-for-candy thing. She was on high alert in the bedroom most of the evening. Photo by Glenn.
If you're going to hide out in the bedroom, might as well watch some Thursday night football while you wait for more trick-or-treaters. We've got the 49ers picking up their eighth straight win of the season in a victory over the Cardinals. Photo by Glenn.
Roni is on the hot seat as she answers questions during her candidate interview at the Nov. 12 Oakley City Council meeting. Her bid to fill a council vacancy fell just a few votes short, as she came in a strong second. Photo by Glenn.
"Don't even think about taking my hamper!" Judging by the look on his face, Phyre appears to be serious. Photo by Roni.
We sometimes call Phoenix "The Guardian" because he can often be found at the window watching for neighborhood cats and other creatures of the night. His perch of preference this evening is the window in our master bathroom. Photo by Glenn.
Roni, as you may remember, set a deadline to have the kitchen project finished and all the construction tools out of the house before we head out on vacation. We can’t say the kitchen is finished, but it is reasonably complete such that we can stand to be in it without feeling that a lot of work remains. Glenn put a bead of silicone caulk around the backsplashes and window, which means we can now clutter up the counters with kitchen appliances instead of screwdrivers and saws.
All the large tools — table saw, miter saw, tile saw, jigsaw (told you we have a lot of saws), air compressor, palm sander, etc. — have found their way back into the garage, along with a large stack of scrap lumber. No, we didn’t have a good place to put all this stuff, although we creatively arranged the new clutter to fit in with the existing clutter. It was a delicate balancing act, and unfortunately a temporary one as we already are looking to spring for a serious clean-and-purge in the old garage.
Glenn deciding to rid the living room of most of the construction debris just days before the end of October was all the incentive Roni needed to start her own bout of cleaning. Always the more thorough of our housekeepers, she made sure the kitchen was spotless and then went to work on the dining room to toss old boxes and paperwork that were cluttering up our computer desk. And with the garage already open, Roni decided it was high time to put out the Halloween decorations she had been meaning to get to for several weeks. So our house cleaning became more of a cleaning and decorating session.
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DMITTEDLY, WE HAVE badly neglected our front yard this year. What wasn’t already dead from lack of water and gopher activity this summer has begun to lose its leaves for fall, so there was quite a collection that had blown up onto the front porch. We swept out the dirt and leaves, chased away the real spiders and prettied everything up with pumpkins, skeletons and a cemetery scene on the remnants of our lawn. It was the cleanest it has looked since spring, before all the kitchen clutter began piling up on the porch, and we were feeling pretty good about how it all looked, especially because we had company coming over.
Yes, Glenn had made arrangements with his brother Sean to drive up to Roseville on Oct. 26 for an evening of short track racing at the All American Speedway, after which he would be spending the night at our place. We gave him some space in our spare bedroom/den/library to crash, and because Sean had to be at a work assignment early the following morning, it was almost like he was never really here. At least Ben got a few minutes to visit with him Saturday night, arriving home early from his grocery job after working a rare closing shift.
The next morning turned out to be one of those wacky weather days we often get in October, when warm winds sweep in from the coast and wreak havoc on tinder dry hillsides and unprotected flatlands — like ours. We awoke to the sounds of howling winds gusting through our yard, and evacuation alerts for some of the neighborhoods that lie a few miles to our east. Warm October winds bring fires to California, and there was a large one threatening homes along Cypress Road where there is a lot of expensive new construction surrounded by undeveloped pasture land.
We weren’t much worried about fire, but any time the breeze kicks up we grow concerned about our fences. This time the fears were not unfounded. Gusts topping 70 mph were finally too much to bear for one of the large panels closest to the street and railroad tracks, and so when Roni witnessed it starting to rip away from its support posts she awoke Glenn from a deep slumber with the urgent call to effect repairs.
Still fumbling from sleep, Glenn grabbed hammer, nails, screws and cordless drill — all those tools he had just put away in the garage — and did what he could to prop up the sagging boards along both the back fence and the side fence we share with our neighbors to the north. The resulting repairs weren’t pretty, but they were secure enough to last us through the rest of the storm and keep things standing until we could get to the home improvement store to purchase proper repair materials.
Meanwhile, Sean’s early assignment in the Bay Area got canceled because he was literally surrounded by flames stemming from two nearby blazes. PG&E, our embattled power utility that is teetering on bankruptcy because of its connection to destructive fires the past two years in Napa and Paradise, shut down electrical service to thousands of customers as a preventive measure, and so several communities were in the dark for more than a day. We were fortunate enough to keep the lights on through the emergency, but the aftermath of that day has been fodder for intensifying political battles between PG&E and Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is among those ramping up pressure to turn the publicly owned utility into a state-run one.
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HE DAMAGE TO our fence was not the only casualty suffered in the winds; all those decorations Roni worked so hard to set up in the front yard were now scattered in the bushes along with tons of leaves and pine needles from our trees and those of the rest of the block. Our nicely swept front porch now looked worse than it had before we started. Sigh. With Halloween just days away, there was little to do but haul out the broom and do it all again.
Mother Nature’s mess aside, we were ready to go by the time the trick-or-treaters showed up at our door on Thursday night. We had several large waves of kids, and fortunately enough candy to last us through the evening. Ben had a couple of friends over to play video games, Roni cooked her usual assortment of Halloween-themed foods, and Glenn did the honors as chief pumpkin carver. Always in search of new ideas, he elected to carve a poop emoji into one of the pumpkins, and it turned out to be the hit of the evening, especially with the kids who came to our door.
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E BECAME INVESTORS in Uber (UBER) this month, starting a small position in the ride-sharing company after its quarterly earnings report and drop in the stock price resulting from expiration of its IPO lockup period. We don’t normally buy many of the tech names, preferring instead dividend and value stocks, but we think there are big things in store for Uber in the next decade with its interests in driverless vehicle technology and freight delivery, and we are willing to wait for the company to become profitable. Will it be the next Amazon or Apple? We hope so.
We also continued adding to our stake in AMLP, the oil and gas pipeline ETF, as the price has continued to fall to 52-week lows amid seasonal tax-loss selling. The result is that we have now tripled our position, substantially reducing our cost basis, which should make it easier to see some profits when things turn around in the energy sector. The down side is if a recovery is slower than expected, we may find ourselves holding a much larger losing position. But we’re still happy to have the huge quarterly dividend and will in the meantime pray for a cold winter to drive up demand for natural gas.
Amid all the bad news for PG&E (PCG), Glenn took a gamble on a few shares of the stock when it was close to its bottom and saw a 110 percent profit in just a few days. But being that buying is easy and knowing when to sell is not so much, he’s only up 73 percent as of this writing. If PG&E is taken over by the state and the stock goes to zero, he’s only out $40. Worth the risk.
November and December are historically great months to shop for bargains in the stock market, so if you can look past the fear mongering headlines of an imminent recession, trade wars and the Trump impeachment proceedings, you might find some solid companies and funds on sale.
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ONI VENTURED INTO the political arena this month when a seat came open on the Oakley City Council. One of our friends and a longtime council member, Doug Hardcastle, announced a few weeks ago that he planned to retire after the Nov. 12 meeting, so rather than hold a special election to fill out the remaining year on his term, the city decided to appoint someone to fill the vacancy. Roni had been considering a council run for some time, but the rare opportunity to apply without having to campaign proved too attractive to pass up, so she filled out her application and sent it off to City Hall.
Nine people applied for the position, eight of which showed up at the Nov. 12 meeting to be interviewed — six men and two women. The candidates drew lots and were made to wait in a conference room as each of them came into chambers to be interviewed by the four council members present. Roni was fifth in line at the podium. She had three minutes to introduce herself, then each council member asked a question ranging from how would she work to solve a problem to how would she help the council work together. Lastly, she was asked if she would run for office next year if she didn’t get selected for this vacancy; Roni said she likely would unless she gets involved with another cause before then.
Despite being up against some stiff competition, including a three-time candidate for council, a city planning commissioner and some enthusiastic newcomers, Roni still put in a respectable showing, finishing second in the council’s ranked-choice ballot. The winner was Michael Krieg, a 38-year resident of Oakley who had served on the county mosquito abatement board and whose wife was once general manager of Tri Delta Transit bus company. He said he has no ambition to run for election next fall, but several of those interviewed did, so we may be in for an interesting City Council election in 2020.
That’s it for now. We’re packing luggage, grabbing suits and dresses from the cleaners, making last-minute checklists, and we’re ready for our adventure on the high seas. We’ll have lots to write about next month — and we promise there will be no mention of the kitchen!
