Fall Festival and Dogtoberfest

Yes, it is past Christmas and I just noticed I never completed and released two draft posts from outings with Alex in October. I will combine them and capture a few of the 2017 memories for posterity.

October 7th Fall Festival at Camp

Alex's camp in Los Altos, formerly called Camp Costonoan but now renamed Via West, holds an annual fall festival and we go almost every year. It is a fundraiser where you buy tickets for food, various games, and activities.

The main hit for Alex is the rabbits at the petting zoo. If Alex is not petting a rabbit...

he is feeding a rabbit in a cage...

... or he is holding one rabbit while feeding another.

We spend a half hour to an hour there each year until Frank or I get bored and cannot take anymore. We eventually do urge Alex to go to the games area where he likes the ring toss and the bean bag toss. He smiles enthusiastically at the attendants and they generally let him place his toes (and whole body) over the boundary throwing line.

Hmmm... see that blue tape line about 1½ -2 feet behind Alex's heels in both pictures?

We watch a magic show and go through a haunted house. Alex makes a decorative striped vial by filling it through a funnel with layered colors of sand then picks a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch. We all enjoy the fancy limousine ride back to the parking lot where we'd left the car. The black lights within are cool and give off a party ambience.

But even better is the view out the double height front windshield.

Here is that limousine-bus parked back at the gravel quarry.

Alex does have a good time and we were one of the last group of folks to leave. Our car was one of the final few in the parking lot. It appeared that we just might have overstayed our welcome and were being shoved to another location by a front loader. After an initial double take we realized we were free to be off on our ride back home. Whew! It was just an illusion of our viewing angle.

October 15th Dogtoberfest

In our home town of Livermore we attended the third Dogtoberfest in which dogs wearing bandanas gather with their significant person or family to be counted - sort of like a flash mob but with barking instead of dancing. We followed the paw prints along the sidewalk to the grassy field of action.

Dogtoberfest is a competition to challenge an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for maximum gathering of canines. Livermore's chief competitor is a similar event held in Canberra, Australia who currently holds a record they earned in 2015 for 764 bandana-bedecked dogs. Livermore first challenged the record in 2015 when they had 371 entries. A second Livermore attempt in 2016 rose to 460 pups. This year, 2017, Livermore gathered 621 dogs so we are nipping at the heels of the Australians. Perhaps in 2018 we will surpass that 764 record.

During the event dogs are vaccinated for free. Pet vendors sponsor doggie giveaways and contests. Adoption pens are set up so attendees may take home a dog (or maybe two?). We took Alex for the fun and the noise and managed to leave without a canine - no matter how cute. Alex had fun but at times even he seemed overwhelmed. So many dogs to pet and so little time!

Ponder Post: Finding Our Forever

Finding Our Forever ©2017 is the first of three novels in the Silver Springs Series by Brenda Novak. The second was No One But You ©2017 (post for 11/10/17) and the third was Until You Loved Me ©2017 (post for 11/2/17). I read them in reverse order but it made no difference. Their commonality was only in the location and that the male hero in each had been a student at New Horizons Boy's Ranch.

I chose to locate and read this book only for completion since I had enjoyed the second and third books in the series. My library did not have it so I went to Amazon. Was I ever surprised! Here is where the oddity begins. I surely do not know what was so special about this book but the price was outlandish – over $60 for a paperback! Now I was even more curious. There was an option where could download a Kindle version for $2.99 and read it with a free app on my Mac so that is what I did. Note though, that the cover image is from a hardcopy version. I do not know if it is normal but the kindle version had no cover image – advertising and excerpts from other books, yes, but cover image, no. And, come to think of it, the cover image has no relation to the book at all other than perhaps being out in the country.

I do have a Kindle but prefer not to use it. There is something more visceral to me about holding a book in your hand and turning the pages. I also am leery of taking an electronic device on a plane and running out of charge right at a critical point in the book. But I was proud of my self-propelled advancement into literary technology. I downloaded the book, installed the free kindle app for Macs, and was reading it on the big screen of my computer within a few minutes. Later I noticed that I could read it on my new iPad Pro as well, once I'd launched the new app on it. The iPad was even smart enough to know what page I had been on when reading off the computer screen. My problem of occasionally misplacing a book-in-progress in some unknown location was solved. My computer stays put and it syncs with my wandering iPad. I am not a complete convert, but I can now appreciate some of the advantages of electronic books.

So my experience with acquiring and reading this book was great! The book was only so-so. The plot is that the heroine Cora gets a job as an art teacher at the New Horizon's Boy's Ranch, a private school for troubled boys with behavioral issues due to a history of abuse, neglect, or abject poverty. Aiyana is the director and owner of the ranch. Cora is interviewed and hired by Eli, the eldest adopted son of Aiyana and the ranch manager. Cora was adopted at birth and her ulterior motive for wanting the job is that she has learned through the research of a private investigator she hired that her biological mother is Aiyana. Cora wants to get to know her biological mother better and find out why she was put up for adoption. Aiyana is a good soul, has never married, and has altruistically adopted eight boys who were former residents of the school. Why adopt eight children after giving up your own biological child?

An unintended complication of working at the school is that Cora is attracted to Eli and he to her. They agree to embark on a strictly physical relationship with no emotional strings attached. Well, it is pretty obvious where this will lead. Unlike the subsequent two books in the series, where plot is the main ingredient and the romance adds a bit of spice to the recipe, this book has a main course of sex. Perhaps that is why the sale price was so high. Does sex sell better?  The mystery behind the reason for Cora being put up for adoption is secondary. Truthfully, if I had read this book first, I probably would not have sought out the second and third in the series. I give Finding Our Forever three stars because it was not a total waste of time. Without pursuing it, I never would have learned about the kindle app, the benefits of electronic books, and – um – a few other things. And I thought a Brazilian was just a citizen of a South American country...