Czesc!, we heard on the telly this morning of a Polish Festival in Roseville, with camera in hand and drooling at the mouth at the thought of grilled Kielbasa with Kapusta, Perogies, Paczki, Placki Kartoflane and Okocim Polish Beer we headed straight for Roseville and the 17th Annual Greater Sacramento Polish Festival. Now, we have yet to visit Poland, our planned visit to Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary in 2007 was re-scheduled for 2009 so, this is as good as it gets till 2009. In any event, we visited Poland vicariously though the Polish American Club of Greater Sacramento. The event [View Full Entry]

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After spending a few days relaxing and using Lake Summit Lodge as our home base, we headed out to Oceanside to spend a week-end of sailing. This may very well have been the best and most relaxed week-end we've had in a long time. We spent two nights and three days on Hugh (Hollys brother) and Nickis new 42 foot Catalina sailboat, "Island Girl". Hugh and Nicki are our in-laws and devout Jimmy Buffet Parrot Heads finally living out their dream of living on a sailboat. Island Girl can accommodate and sleep up to eight persons in her spacious quarters below [View Full Entry]

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On this day we visited the seaside City of Laguna Beach, it also happen to be Donnas' Birthday, so after spending the day taking in the sights around Laguna Beach we celebrated Donnas' Birthday at "Las Brisas" Foods of Mexico Restaurant overlooking the Pacific on Cliff Drive. The food was excellent and the Mariache Band played Happy Birthday to their Birthday Guest, we had a wonderful time. Laguna Beach is a well known beach community and artists colony only about 9 miles square. With a resident population of approximately 23,000 it draws about 3 million visitors each year to its beaches, [View Full Entry]

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After arriving at Long Beach Airport we headed to Costa Mesa to visit and spend a day with Donna and Larry (Donna being Holly's long time friend) and we all decided to spend the day taking a look around Fountain Valley, Costa Mesa, Balboa Island, Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. We lived in Costa Mesa till the Autumn of 1993 before moving north to Cool and the Sacramento area, many things have changed in the OC, and many things have not; like Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Fountain Valley, where Holly, Stacy and myself were members for many years. As can be [View Full Entry]

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Hello again family, friends and everyone: We spent our 4th of July week-end in the Mendocino - Fort Bragg area on California’s Northern Coast. We stayed at Grandma Edna’s home in Willits, CA as she was vacationing in Edmonton, Canada visiting Irwin and other family members. Holly and I had the place to ourselves, thanks for the free lodging Edna, we watered the plants and left the place in good repair. We loaded our new truck (our old truck was stolen from the local K-Mart Shopping Center and recovered three months later) with our cross-over bikes and headed out to Mendocino [View Full Entry]

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We hosted another fine couple, Art and Kira at our home in Cool, California USA. They are from Portugals' west coast town of Cascais, just west of Lisboa on the Atlantic coast. Art works as a graphic designer and part time movie maker with several short comic movie clips and one major film to his credit “Bad to the Bone” - a slapstick comedy about a wanna be rock & roll star and social misfit who goes around pushing small children off their bicycles and throwing his pet cat around after swinging the poor creature by the tail (animal lovers, please [View Full Entry]

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On this particular occasion it was Stacys' 21st Birthday (Monday) and Hollys' birthday the very next Wednesday. It all started a couple weeks before, when the phone rang. It was Hugh, Hollys brother. Hugh thought it would be a good idea if we could get together as one big happy family and celebrate Stacys 21st and Hollys birthdays at Luigi's - a good local Italian restaurant which we both had visited before. We decided to keep it all under wraps and put together a surpise party/family get-together. Hugh and Nicolette would invite Aunt Florence, Jared & Carly while keeping both Stacy [View Full Entry]

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Well, it being St. Patrick's Day here in the States, Holly and I decided we would go out for some good ol' Corned Beef and Cabbage for dinner. There being two Streets of London Public Houses (not Irish, we know, but close enough) within a short drive from our home we went to check out the St. Patrick's Day party action at the Folsom location (there is also a SOLP in mid-town Sacramento). For all die-hard Anglophiles/Europhiles like Holly and I, or if you're a Limey (please take no offense, none intended) living in the States and are somewhat homesick, Streets [View Full Entry]

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Today we hiked the West side of the South Yuba Independence Trail, just North of Nevada City off of Highway 49. The Independence Trail is built on the original water course of the 1856 Excelsior Ditch. This canal carried water from the South Yuba River to the hydraulic gold mines in Smartville about 25 miles away. The Excelsior Ditch is an ingeniously designed and constructed facility made up of a combination of earthen and rock walled ditches and wooden flumes. Because the Ditch was designed to transport water, its nominal gradient makes it well suited for an easily accessible trail. From [View Full Entry]

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My human captors (Al, Holly and Stacy) are gone, this will have to be short as they will be back soon. Allow me to introduce myself, my full name is Monticello Gato Grande - you can just call me Monti, for short. I sometimes study French as a Second Language. My stats are: I'm an 18 month old Ragdoll, approx. 42 inches in length and weigh 18.5 lbs. I'm still growing and can weigh as much as 24 lbs. when I'm all grown up! The pictures were taken by my captors during a recent modeling session, I may escape to Hollywood [View Full Entry]

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