All posts tagged: California

We are petsitting again

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After a several month long break from everything caused by an intrusive health issue that sent me to a Chinese Medicine Doctor while I waited to eventually to have surgery we are back! Petsitting was never really meant to be a career move, but here in San Francisco it really is a sort of low hanging fruit of income options when life allows the flexibility with regards to taking the time out to visit or stay with somebody else’s pets. We are starting to build up repeat clients, who will give us a call before asking anybody else to look after their pets. To get started with petsitting as a ‘side-hustle’ we recommend using Yahoo Groups, neighbourhood message boards & Rover. Build repeat clients over time. If you would like to start petsitting using the booking agent Rover then you can follow this link to become a petsitter: https://refer.rover.com/s/Birgit5 I will get a bonus from Rover if you sign up AND book your first petsitting appointment within 90 days of signing up. Do read about the …

Big Sur Roadtrip

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 • The effects of a wildfire most likely caused by an illegal campfire that was poorly extinguished. These photographs are from our drive back to Carmel, near the Highway 1 which I just see now in the news is closed due to the Soberanes Fire which has been raging for about 2 weeks now. It had just started when we visited Big Sur for my birthday. Just think of the incredible loss of habitat for wildlife, the many people who lost their homes to the fires the irreplaceable damages caused.  • Have you ever seen the sun look so red (as in the last picture) ? •     • Sorry that I have been so uninspired lately to write properly, to add words to my experiences here in California. Sometimes it is easier to just observe and read.. I realise that this is really poor performance.   •   •

It never rains in Northern California…

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…. at all. It’s day after day sunshine here. It is definitely very tantalising and the flavour of opportunities around the corner is everywhere. In our case without a car we can’t really reach them because it is true, America is a car culture and you better have a car here or be limited but the opportunities are there. There is a distinctly different attitude here to everything. An optimism that I am always trying to understand the origin of. For example in real terms being poor here sucks more than In the UK even (!) thanks to this culture of ‘the individual’ this mentality that creates and progresses SO much “everyone out for themselves: ready, steady, go” but it leaves one a bit by the wayside when in the UK (up until ‘Cameron the Coldhearted Opportunist’ came into power) and Europe there would be some support to helps bridges gaps until one can gain a foothold again. This here really is not a model I would follow if I had a say over government …

San Francisco Dreamers? Meeting Diamond Dave

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Yesterday I walked past Pigeon palace, a building occupied by long term, rent control enjoying tenants, who are now threatened with eviction as the city’s building and construction boom is in full throttle over drive due to the seemingly unstoppable influx in Silicone Valley employees pressing on the local market. Really it is an issue that the entire world has some shared responsibility in. After all Silicone Valley provides the ‘toys’ that the entire world plays with on a daily if not hourly basis.. Day 3 in San Francisco 2015

When the dog and I saved a baby groundhog on Land’s End Trail, San Francisco

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We are house sitting in San Francisco, pretty close to Land’s End Trail and with that pretty close to the edge of the world, or so it feels. The air is amazing here, the silence only broken occasionally by soft voiced fog horns. On a recent walk with the dog that came with the house, dog and I discovered a Groundhog laying in shock, exposed by the side of the trail. My theory is that another dog had previously dug the groundhog baby up and now it was petrified to move. Our house sitting dog pointed her gentle nose at the groundhog and then walked away, leaving me to scoop it up in my XL sized sweater sleaves. J and I took a couple of photos of it while I checked out if it looked hurt. And I then carried it to an area with deeper grass, just meters from the finding location, and let it walk off the little impromptu wooly nest that it had been sitting on. Groundhog baby walked without a limp …

The chocolate Candy house of Oakland (these days it’s a second hand shop) *{things to do in Oakland}

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The chocolate Candy house of Oakland (these days it’s a second hand shop) We loved living in Oakland. Telegraph Avenue offered a variety of interesting cafes, shops and communities. Even if parts of it are being taken over by overpriced hipster lifestyle. This pink house used to be a sweet shop. I wish I would have seen it then in it’s original form. But today it houses a second hand shop with some quality offerings, but beware it isn’t a cheap second hand shop with thrift junk, rather a better selection. However at the back of the store is the thrift, the items with kinks and things suitable for a smaller pocket. How to get there? Take the BART from anywhere in the Bay Area and ride to Mc Arthur Bart station, from there it is only a few blocks walk to Telegraph Avenue. If you take a wrong turn on Telegraph you will find yourself passing a pretty great Bagel Cafe specializing in Bagels, freshly baked. So the wrong turn would work out pretty …