October Feast -- That's Debatable Too

Well, it's the second of October and it actually rained a bit for the first time in weeks. Early in the morning there was some moisture detected on the deck and I thought that might be the extent of the forecast rainfall for the North Bay . . . but, no, a couple of hours later there was more -- not a huge amount, but more.

The vineyards around our town and area lend to the "feast" of this time. Crush is a big deal here and this year is no exception. And tonight we add to the "feast" with a rib-eye steak, roasted new potatoes and corn-on-the-cob . . .

Besides the rainfall, we actually turned the heat on early this morning to "take the edge off" . . . while writing this I can tell that the edge is off and so goes the heat.

The searching this week was all over the board and tree. I spent a lot of time browsing through the pages of school yearbooks -- what a great resource that Ancestry.com provides.

Once I find a yearbook that applies to a school and year that I figure that I know some folks, I browse. I found a lot of friends of my siblings in different books -- names that brought back memories -- e.g. Adler, Gothard, Castrodale and so many others. And then also some folks that are in the tree like the Dame kids, the Best kids and the Rot kids and many others.

But I also went back over some of the items in the pictures from my mother -- and I looked at this:

How nice it would be to know more about this obvious letter written in Swedish.                                                                                                                                                                                      Does anyone read and understand Swedish. I have more pages and what I think is the envelope that this came in originally.                                                                                                                      It was written as best as I can tell in October 1884 and I believe either mailed to/from Marinette, Wisconsin.                                                                                                                                                My mother's mother's family was from Marinette and they were Swedish.                                                                                                                                                                                                        I believe a family name might be Erikson, but I do not have that name connected in our tree -- yet.                                                                                                                                                                This type of "brick-wall" is prevalent over our tree and it sure would be nice to break through some.

I spent a lot of time having fun in the search mode without a real objective other than to "find stuff",

which I usually always do. 

A lot of my time this week was spent transferring files, lots of files from Picasa -- which Google this year stopped supporting -- transferring them to Dropbox.

I was "sick about" Google's decision to drop Picasa because that was the main program that I used every day, all day, for a variety of things from photo editing to organization of files -- thousands of files.

So now, I am using Evernote and Dropbox to pick up the pieces . . . 

What's happening today and going forward?

As I write this, the above game is being recorded for us to watch as we eat our lunch of hot dogs and maybe some peanuts & crackerjack . . .

Today is the last regular season game for the Giants and it is the third of a three game series against the league rival -- Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Giants were so very fortunate to win the first two games and now they need to win this third game to possibly be in the playoffs. Our fingers are crossed and it is an "even" year. The Giants have won the World Series in the last three "even years" 2010, 2012 & 2014.

We watched our across the street neighbor yesterday with the mom and the son, all dressed in Giant gear waiting to join up with others and head to the game. The trip from here and back pretty much involves all-day. We watched to see if we spotted them in the stands -- but we did not.

Here's what the MLB post season schedule looks like so far:

You can see in the above schedule that on Wednesday, the 5th, that it will be either the Cards or the Giants playing the Mets depending on today's results. 

What else is coming up?

The Vice Presidential Debates are on Tuesday night and then the 2nd Presidential Debate is coming up next Sunday. 

It is hard to imagine watching the 2nd Presidential debate after the horrendous exchange of questionable material that is being thrown around by both sides.

Where is Harold Stassen, Alf Landon or even Ralph Nader when we need 'em ? Harold, by the way ran for the nomination 9 or so times. Alf & Ralph also ran, I think Alf ran just the one time against Roosevelt in a hugely lopsided election and Ralph, I am not sure -- but I am thinking they all look better than what we have currently . . .

And finally:

Besides this being the last regular season game for the Giants, it is the last baseball game that will be announced by Vin Scully -- who is retiring today.

Vin Scully was "the" announcer for 67 years, he is nearly 90 years old and I had the pleasure of listening to him announce the Dodgers games for the 19 years that I lived in the LA area.

Apparently Vinny has the second most years associated with a team -- Tommy Lasorda has one more than he has. Amazing.

In today's game, broadcast in San Francisco, I believe it will be the third inning that the SF broadcasters will turn it over so that we can hear Vin call the plays -- he still has it after all these years. We wish him the very best in retirement!

So, October feast will begin tonight with a rib eye steak, lookin' forward to that!

That is a bit of our week. See you all "in a few" !