On my morning walk after the storm on Sunday I saw lots of branches and a few trees down at the side of the road. What made it eerie was that the entire neighborhood I walked through was dark and the only sound was of generators. The huge tree that fell around the corner from the house was still down, the burned electrical cables were looped up on the sidewalk and the street was blocked off. There were a lot fewer cars than I normally see on my walk and no dog walkers were out, which was very unusual. It took a couple of days to restore power to that part of the neighborhood and the tree wasn’t cleared from the road until Thursday.
The weather made an abrupt U-turn on Tuesday with beautiful blue skies. I had lunch with my former boss from the Contra Costa County Bar and then had a lovely walk along the Benicia waterfront. Mom got a surprise visit from my cousin Tyee and they got caught up on the family news.
One evening I was looking for something in the living room and stumbled across the record albums that were stored in the bottom of the stereo cabinet. I had not looked at these albums in literally decades. There were an assortment of classical albums that were my mom’s, 60s surfer music that was my dad‘s, soundtrack albums from the 60s and 70s (Dr. No, Fiddler on the Roof, Dr. Zhivago, some kids albums and recorded children’s stories, such as Pinocchio. Then there was a large stack of 80s albums, including I think every single Duran Duran album! There were a variety of styles – ska (The Smiths, English Beat), Depeche Mode, hard rock (AC/DC, Foreigner), pop (Whitney Houston, Cyndi Lauper), Human League and a couple of 45s (Doctor! Doctor! by the Thompson Twins and Hazy Shade of Winter by The Bangles). I found my three favorite albums from high school – Synchronicity by The Police, Songs From the Big Chair by Tears for Fears and Foreigner 4. Memories!
