Author: Doris

Caroline Lee Wallner

First Congratulations to Brian and Andrea, my sister Margaret’s son-in-law and daughter, they just had a baby girl about 10 days ago. Congratulations to Margaret and Joseph Yao too.
Yesterday, our niece, Caroline Lee Wallner, graduated from UCLA Medical School. Most of our brothers and sisters (5 out of 9 including the younger one who passed away while she was an infant because my family were so poor that we couldn’t affort to take her to see a Doctor) were there to see her graduating.
The followings are from top to right and front to back:
1) & 2) First picture and the second one, Caroline with her parents
3) She was waving to her parents, aunts and uncles
4) Jim Wallner, AuntLiz Lee, Caroline, Aunt Margaret and aunt Rena
5) Aunt Rena, Aunt Liz, Jim Wallner (her father), Jane Lee (her mother), aunt Dianna, uncle Josepth and uncle Joseph Yao
6) Aunt Rena, aunt Margaret, uncle Joseph Yao and Jim Wallner
7) Aunt Margaret, Jane Lee (her mother), uncle Noel, Jim Wallner (her father) and uncle Joseph Yao
She is a urologist and will be an intern for 6 years with Loma Linda University in California. Congratulations to Caroline and her parents.
When we left our celebration dinner table last night, it almost was 10:00 PM. Since it was just too crowded in my sister’s condo. we decided to drive back to Shell Beach, California. When we arrived at our 1/2 duplex, it was 1:40 AM in the morning. A 3 hours and 40 minutes drive, pretty exciting, just like teangers! Born again and born free.

Our Shovel Ready Stimulus Plan?

Where are the results of our shovel-ready stimulus plan? The only thing that I personal witnessed was along Interstate Highway 5 in Oregon. Workers there were pretty busy doing somethings. Probably a lot of them were illegal immigrants. Who knows?

One estimate suggests the bail-out is costing us 30K per American. I would rather the government just give the money to our average Americans and let them spend as they wish within a certain time frame – 6 months?.

In China, they have their stimulus also. Quote it from an article which said that money spent (there) in the first five months of the program to the end of last month had built 214,000 flats for low-income families, with construction also begun on a further 650,000 (units).

About 20,000km of new roads have been built in rural areas, 445km of freeways completed and 100,000 sqm of new airport terminal buildings opened around the country. Safe drinking water has been supplied to a further 14.6 million people. And 6500 health service projects — unspecified — have been funded…

Of course, it may not be true completely. But, at least, something is coming out of their pipelines. Here, I guess that lawyers, officials, insiders and campaign aides are pretty busy to decide what to do. In the meantime, most of the available money, probably has been already spent unwisely. T

Whales at Play

Today after dinner, Rena and I took a walk to the Shell Beach as usual. It was just half block away. At time we came back along the beach. We watched at lease two whales playing. One could see them even with bare eyes. There is a public standing 20×80 binocular at the beach. One could see them even better with that.

A lady told us there were at least 6 of them playing all day. This was the first time we saw whales from the shore. They are beautiful animals. The sunset was as pretty as usual, especially with whales out there.

Today, a rather ugly scene, a very large dead seal was being washed to shore. Its tail was all gone, probably eaten by sharks or something else.

Tuesday night date.

We are trying to set up a regular Tuesday “date night”. Tonight was the first one in the series. It’s always a challenge to figure out what to do – something interesting & pretty cheap. Something adult, but not too fancy, something that doesn’t go on too late because it’s a work/school night. We settled on going to the Natural History museum which was open late – until 7:30 pm.

Parts of the museum are the same as when I was a child and I just love that I can remember standing in front of the same display 30 years ago. I also love the retro font and I’m a little sad because I know someone is already thinking about how to renovate it to make it more up to date with computer touch screens and interactive exhibits.

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Leatherback turtle:

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This is also the first time that I remember seeing the Mall on a weekday evening. The light was beautiful and there were lots of kickball games.

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Self portrait:

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Sunday night dinner.

Every once in a while, we are at a party and someone that I’ve never met before does just the right thing with Edda that just melts my heart. Usually when Edda’s at a party, she tromps around watching TV. If we are lucky, we usually can let her be and hang out with the adults. Sometimes she’s fussy and one of us has to spend some time sitting with her on our lap, trying to figure out what’s wrong..

The action swirls around her, the dogs, the kids, the conversation. You know, everyday I wish Edda could have friends the way most kids have friends, but I know this isn’t something that is easy to accomplish. Anyways, someone who’d never met Edda before spent some quality time with her at tonight’s party, wrapping her arms around Edda and talking to her about the Little Einstein’s show she was watching. It was nice. It was sweet. Maybe the world is OK after all.

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Vincent was a little moody at tonight’s party. He spent some time nestled in the crook of my arm, which is really unusual for him…

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Point Buchon Trail, Diablo Canyon Power Plant, PG&E

Diablo Canyon Power Plant has a 7-miles paved highway to its southern gate where we drive through every day to work. On the north side, it has 3 miles dirt trail to its northern gate. This trail is called Point Buchon Trail. North of its northern gate, it is the Montana de Oro State Park of California. This trail can only access from the State Park, not from the power plant itself. It is open to the public starting this year. However, access is limited to 275 hikers per day.

This morning, we drove to the Montana de Oro State Park, registered at its northern gate and walked to the end of the trail where is very close to the power itself and double back to its northern gate. It took us 5 hours to cover a total of 6 miles walk.
Picture are:
1) shows that at least 4 people have to agree in order to open the vehicle access road on its north side.
2) Mom on a beach along the trail
3) A beach along the trail
4) Mom on the bench at the end of the trail
5) Mom in a dried-out wheat field for the cattle
6) Mom in front of the map of the trail and two nuclear reactor domes can be seen behind her. Our office is a little bit farther out.
7) wild flowers
8) Mom on another beach along the trail
9) Montana de Oro State Park road leading to its northern gate
The last picture shows Mom picked one of our neighbors’ fruit tree :). In China, we ate this fruit a lot but I don’t know its English name.
Btw, along the trail, Mom found a very scenic bay area with a lot of different sea birds congregated on a big rock. Every other second they flew into the bay water and, right away, they scooped up fish. One could heard the heavy sound of its flipping wings. One could also see they flew just barely above water due to its extra heavy weight. Mom immediately figured out it was good place to fish.
On her way out, she checked with a lady guard to see whether fishing is allowed. Guess what, the entire trail is adjacent to a marine protected area. No fishing! Then Mom told the guard that we saw several boats out there fishing. Guard told us that there was a hiker had already got the phone number from her. He called the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard was on her way to catch the boats. These boaters definitively were in big trouble.
After 5 hours of hiking, we treated ourselves in a nice restaurant overlooking Shell Beach and Pismo Beach. It had a million-dollar view but the food was not as good as those of the steak house in Santa Barbara we visited the other day. But, unfortunately, it is 100 miles away.
Too bad, tomorrow we have to work to cover our 50 hours a week schedule plus a trip to Los Angeles on next Friday to see our niece’s graduation from UCLA medical school. Or otherwise, we would hike another trail nearby.