Thanksgiving 2008 In The Hills

Thanksgiving was a wonderful experience all around. We got up (thanks to Audrey for the multiple wake up calls) at 6am Thursday morning and showered and dressed for our trip south to the ranch. Audrey showed up about 7:00am and we packed the car, drank a copious quantity of coffee and headed for the hills. The fog was rather thick between Suisun and the 5 freeway some 30 miles east of here which slowed our progress a bit. Once on I5 We headed south in rather light traffic at a quite decent clip and l'viola the fog cleared by 8:30 and we jetted along towards the turnoff to Merced to visit hospital bound Uncle Jack. We arrived exactly at the right hour, 10 am, and spent about an hour chatting among the gathered relatives (Kelly's cousins) and Uncle Jack, now 94, presided over the event. He was charming and friendly as ever and always had a twinkle and a jokester's mood in his speech. He's Kelly's uncle on the Lixwiler side of the family. Afterwards we fell in line driving eastward out of Merced towards the Sierra foothills to J&A's stone house in the hills. The road going up was the MOST potholed, damaged, flooded out disaster of a road I've ever driven on for so long a time. 10 mph was a good rate but I sped to 25 occasionally to test both the shock absorbers and my tooth fillings. The countryside was gorgeous. the grasses green and the cattle shiny black, and the dark green almost black live oak trees dotted the landscape high and low.
It took about an hour to make the 18 mile drive to the entrance to the ranch. The gate was open and we drove through onto a smooth dirt road with about 2 miles to go to get to the house itself. The lake was very low with a huge blue heron fishing from the shallows. The usual gathering at the cars commenced, happy chatter and questions ensued and I realized we hadn't been there in 10 years. We all gathered inside the house and had a substantial lunch of clam chowder in rustic french bread bowls, delicious and very, very filling! Burp! After lunch, not to rest and prepare for the dinner to come some 6 hours later we "took a little walk".
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Out of the ranch house into the meandering cattle trails and access roads of the 6000 acre property we went like a herd of turtles. Up and down the hilly and sometimes muddy track we went ogling at the trees, rocks and magnificent scenery of the ranch. Down the hill to the tuolumne river. Audrey and I broke off from the rest and spent time together photographing the environs, finding much to see and she laughed out loud at my throwing of large rocks down the gully into the water below. Overland to see some miner's stone cabins built in the 1840's when there was gold in these hills to be had for lots of back breaking and sometimes thankless as well as worthless work. We climbed up the hill to the dense oak forest and the grinding rocks used by the Indians, long since gone, for grinding acorns for food.




We crossed another creek and climbed yet another hill to spy a distant lake and watch the hawks circling overhead. We came upon a carcass of a recently dead cow, maybe killed by a broken leg or some other misstep of fortune, now a meal for a family of large buzzards it's bloody rib cage splayed out before us. Back along the fence line of which there are many to divide the property so cattle cannot wander everywhere unchecked, we came finally to the house about 2 hours after we left having walked a distance that felt like 10 miles but was actually about 3. A good hike, my hips complained but we sat in the living room of the stone mansion and drank beers and whiskey and filled the rest of the afternoon with happy family chatter. About 6 we all sat down to a wonderful meal of Turkey, mashed potatoes, Waldorf salad, peas and onions in a mini-pumpkin, a swell white wine, rolls and butter, a lovely green salad. We ate like kings! What a feast! We all spoke of dinners past, other family gatherings and the future of our dear beloved United States amidst this financial disaster.
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7 trillion dollars now in bailout monies...what? 7,000,000,000,000 is the number but what does it mean? That is a subject for another time I'm sure but not now. If I've forgotten some zeros, I apologize, it's easy to do with numbers like these!
10 to the 12th Power
(1 000 000 000 000; 10004; short scale: one trillion; long scale: one billion)
ISO: tera- (T)
BioMed — Bacteria on the human body: the surface of the human body houses roughly 1012 bacteria.[1]
Mathematics: 1.1×1012 - The approximate number of known non-trivial zeros of Riemann zeta function as of August 2005[update].[4]
Mathematics — Known digits of pi: As of 2002, the number of known digits of pi was 1 241 100 000 000.
Marine biology: 3,500,000,000,000 - estimated population of fish in the ocean.
BioMed — Cells in the human body: the human body consists of roughly 1014 cells, of which only 1013 are human.[2][3] The remainder of the cells are bacteria, which mostly reside in the gastrointestinal tract, although the skin is also covered in bacteria.
Computing - MAC-48: 281,474,976,710,656 (248) possible unique physical addresses.
Mathematics: 953,467,954,114,363 is the largest known Motzkin prime.
Computing — magnetic storage: 1TB largest 3.5inch hard disk as of 2007.