Orangevale Farmer's Market

I live in Orangevale, CA. It's one of those unincorporated backwaters of Sacramento County, stuck between the more prestigious zip codes of Fair Oaks, Roseville, and Folsom. Where they have new home developments, manicured lawns, and higher-end retail, we have horse property, farm animals, wild turkeys, dusty roads, and a bit of a reputation for being quirky. I kinda like that about it. We're close to everything but without the burden of having to host any of it. Of course, I'd rather be downtown in a big city, but that's a whole other conversation. As far as areas of Sacraghetto go, it's one of the better ones.

Recently, the local Dairy Queen (hub of Ovale, second only to WalMart, of course) decided to start a Farmer's Market. You know how these things go: you show up ready for some major fruit and veggie deliciousness and find one, lone dude peddling funny looking strawberries. Well, my parents showed up expecting more a couple of weeks ago, got talking with the owners, and hey-presto the Farmer's Market became fruits, veggies, and "crafts".

And that's how my parents wound up with a 10x10 outside Dairy Queen tonight, selling little bags and trinket-type things that they couldn't sell in previous retail ventures.

We turned it into family night. Burgers, fries and blizzards on the dusty pavement.















Yeah, we know how to have a good time around these here parts.

Daisy's Sacramento: July 24 2010

Cough and cold be damned! Ms. Daisy and I were not going to be stopped by a few sniffles from making this weekend the first in our quest for world domination. Ok, well, let's reel that back a bit and say just Sacramento domination.

(If you've no idea what I'm talking about, then you're majorly CAPTURED. You missed a post, dear friend. Catch up and read more often!)

I had originally planned to drive us to midtown Sacramento for the new "Midtown Bazaar." Well, I executed that plan and it was bunk. One small parking lot of uninspiring jewelry and t-shirt vendors. Poor Sacraghetto tries so hard to have these little community/cultural shindigs but seems to come up short every time. Enough of that, though: one of the reasons for this new photo project was to stop bagging on Sacramento and start finding some interesting stuf... from Daisy's perspecitve.

It started off rocky, I don't mind telling you. Trying to find something for a sick, cranky toddler to engage with on a fairly dead mid-town street on a Saturday morning, was hard. We walked blocks and I took some pictures here and there, me trying desperately to ignore some folks who looked at me strangely. Some even stopped their conversation to stare at me as if I was being rude! And no, I wasn't taking pictures of them just near them. After said blocks, we ended up at Starbucks. I was thirsty and hot and missy was cranky, plus I needed a distraction to get a binky out of her mouth since she doesn't interact with her environment when she has the darned thing in.

After Starbucks, an apple juice and some bread with mayonnaise (hey, you do what you got to do), Daisy started to lean out of her stroller and point at things. That's when I grabbed my camera and began snapping.

So, artistically or not, these are the things that Daisy found interesting today on J street in Midtown Sacramento...

Fishy Tiles... on the side of the OfficeMax building, of all places









A Tattoo Parlor Building and Sign
(SNAKES AND TATTOOS!? This does not bode well!!!!!)















"Man!" Which she would yell at any man she saw within 50 feet
Again, not liking the trends here. Tattoos, snakes, men...





Herself, in reflection.
Oh, gawd... the list is not flattering, is it?





And a few other random things along the way...

Tiles...


A pole smothered in flyers, old and new...


A colorful booth of kids' clothes...


Sacramento Memorial Auditorium


Murals on the The Bread Store


Everything was either taken from Daisy's view-point (stroller-level) and/or because she showed an interest in it. Much of it required shooting on-the-go because, every time I stopped, Missy started thumping her feet agains the stroller.

You can see the whole set here

3rd Anniversary Celebration

Although our actual anniversary isn't until Wednesday (the 11th), Hubby and I decided to do something this past weekend to celebrate.

Those of you who were around on December 2nd, 2005, know that we got engaged on the roof of the exclusive Sutter Club in Downtown Sacramento, at a Lyon Real Estate Christmas Party (during the days when the housing market was good and they had swank things like that.) That night we walked gleefully back to our hotel room at the Hyatt hotel, just opposite the Capitol building. (For those of you who don't know Sacramento well, the Hyatt is where Schwarzenegger stays when he's in town. ) It follows that the Hyatt has a pretty special place in our hearts. (Not because of Schwarzenegger but... ok, you probably got it.)

So, when we were thinking about what to do with ourselves this anniversary, we turned to a friend with "connections" at the hotel and landed ourselves a super-swank suite with a killer view of the Capitol from the 8th floor of the Hyatt for one night and at an unbelievable price.

We checked-in late on Saturday afternoon, had drinks and licked the plate of a bad-for-us appetizer (chips with stinky, melted Roquefort cheese) in the hotel bar and then head-out at the crazily late hour of 5:30 to meander around downtown and old town Sacramento. We browsed some shops, stopped for a drink in an Irish Pub and then walked back to an Asian restaurant we've been dying to try for a while called Ma Jong's, just up the street from our hotel. (I highly recommend it, by the way. Well-priced, seat-yourself restaurant with the feel and food of a high-end establishment. Yumm!) Then it was back to the hotel bar for a night-cap...and in our room by 8:30pm, where we languished on the couch watching the big-screen TV until we fell asleep.

And now for the really cool part that every parent out there will totally appreciate: we didn't get up until 9am. That's right. NINE. IN. THE. MORNING. Wow! Yes, that felt AWESOME!

Our final hoorah was a walk back up L street to my favorite breakfast spot, Crepeville where we got to sit outside in the cool, sunny weather, and have a side of people-watching with our scrambled eggs.

Random sightings of the weekend:

1. Two Jerry Garcia look-alikes on a deserted downtown street corner on Sunday morning, blasting reggae music and holding signs that said "One Love" and "Bring them Home" plus something about health care that was either for the public option or against it, not sure. Talk about mixed messages!
2. 100 cyclists dressed in period costume (circa 1930s/40s) and pedaling silently down L street. Later research revealed it to be Sacramento's first annual "Tweed Ride". Who knew it, but there is actually a club for people who shun the modern bicycle uniform of tight-fitting Lycra! http://www.tweed.cc/

Overhead at breakfast:

"Sacramento is such a fascinating city!" Uttered, one can only assume, by someone who doesn't get around much.

Wet and WILD!

Yesterday fall literally fell on top of Sacramento.

50mph+ winds and torrential rain pouring into blocked storm-drains was a recipe for a pretty crazy day. Last night's news was full of flooded streets (particularly the I-5, downtown, which was supposedly fixed for this exact issue to the tune of $40 million last year), downed power lines, and cars or homes crushed by falling trees.

Sometimes it is NOT an advantage to be the city of trees!


Photo by Andy Alfaro / aalfaro@sacbee.com


Of course, it happened to be the ONE day every two weeks that I had to head into the office for our management team meeting. Yup. One day out of 14 and we're experiencing a 40 year storm. That's my kind of luck.

Unfortunately the "good" day did not start and end there.

First, I couldn't find a SINGLE umbrella as I head out the door. Now, I know that we have at least 100 umbrellas lying around in our house somewhere because, when it's not raining, I run into them all the time. But, of course, when my hair is done, my make-up is on and I'm trying not to get soaked in a torrential downpour, not a single one of them can be found. (Also, as usual these days, I'm running late, so I don't have time to instigate a full-on search.)

Then, just as I was about to fly out the front door and into my car as fast as humanly possible, I realized that I had left my wallet in my mum's bag from the other day. Since it seemed entirely possible that some idiot in his pick-up truck would go slamming into me that day, I thought it only prudent that I have my driver's license and insurance info on me. So I jumped in the car and head-off to mum's, where I also hoped that I would be able to snag an umbrella. (My parents did, after all, just move out from England.)

Mum had the umbrella (a nifty aqua-striped number that went sooo well with my pink car coat) but not the wallet. Ack! Oh, but she remembered me taking it from her at the store on Sunday! Back to my house to check my "evening" bag (which is anything other than a diaper bag these days). Score! Found wallet but now was VERY late.

Then I drove all the way to the office in torrential rain, braving the 50 freeway which was basically hydroplaning all the way - it was coming down so heavy and the ground was so saturated that the spray from the cars made it almost impossible to see more than 10 feet in front of you. It was like thick fog. Fun.

It was as I was toodling along uncharacteristically in the slow lane when I realized that my stomach started to grumble. CRAP! I forgot to eat breakfast! Fantastic. I was heading into a 3 hour meeting with nothing but caffeine and sugar in my stomach.

Despite the rain I pulled into the office with just a minute to spare. Whew! Ran through the front door and.... stopped. Everyone was sitting in the lobby lit in only emergency light. The power was out. Great! The big boss was sending everyone home because the storm was supposed to be in for the day and, if the power was already out, it seemed unlikely that it would return with any reliability.

A power outtage for our company = all servers out. All servers out = no service to our customers, no website, and no email. (Yes, we need off-site back-up servers... it's in the works.) Since everyone was in the office and the phones work on electricity only, I had to call my brother in law (who also works off-site) to get him to send a message to all our customers to alert them of the outtage. Only, my cell phone had no signal. I had to borrow a phone on a different network and call him.

Our management team decided to meet anyway and offsite. Since I skipped breakfast, I suggested a local cafe and off we went. Things had started to look up. Hot coffee, ham and eggs... ahhhh!

Three hours later we were still meeting. I called Brandy, our nanny, to see how Daisy was doing. Unfortunately, the answer was not good. She was fussy, irritable, would cry for no reason, and nothing could satiate her. She wanted to be picked up but then she would cry and arch her back to be put down. She would lean forward to sit but didn't want to stay there. She would lunge from sitting to her tummy and then get mad. No temperature, eating good, pooping good... the cause of her "issues" were a mystery. So, then I started to have mommy-worry, even though our meeting had yet another two hours still left in it.

I finally got out of my 9:30am meeting at 2pm and zoomed home through the still-crazy weather.

By the time I responded to emails it was 3:30pm and I had only 30 minutes of baby-sitting left. One of the emails was from Hubby who was communicating with our new tennants at our townhouse. As "luck" would have it, they had taken their first shower and it had busted a leak that resulted in water dripping through the ceiling. Fantastic!

It was at this point that I realized I had skipped lunch, so I went to put and English Muffin in the toaster to tide me over until dinner.

That's when the power went out. (So much for the English muffin)

Brandy left at 4pm and I started to pool my candle resources in the living room. No TV, no radio, no light, and a cranky 6 month old. Going for a walk or a drive was also out. To top it all off, Hubby was working late. (I was trying real hard not to let the panic set in.)

Fortunately, Hubby's late appointment cancelled and he came home to participate in the all-out attempt to figure out what the heck was wrong with Daisy. By 5:45pm, we were out of ideas, out of light, and HUNGRY, so we packed our screaming munchkin into a fleece hoodie, strapped her into the car seat and started to head out to my parents' house (which already had power restored a couple of hours prior.)

Just as we had our handle on the front door, the lights came on.

Since we had already put so much effort into getting Daisy in the car seat, we certainly were not going to let it be wasted. We went to Mum and Dad's anyway, where Daisy returned somewhat to life, riding her pink pony and smiling at her Grandad. Meanwhile, Mum made us a ham and cheese omelette (ok, not a varied diet for me yesterday) and we got to eat it hot, together, at the same time (quite an achievement in the world of parenting, we have discovered.)

And so our wet-and-wild day ended better than it began, thank goodness.