Us, December 25, 2021: Leo, Roy, Ondine, John, Shadow
Us, December 25, 2021: Leo, Roy, Ondine, John, Shadow
HAPPY NEW YEAR! It's time once again for our annual Kuraoka Family Year In Review! We've been poor correspondents on this journal, mostly because John's desktop, which has all the files and credentials for this website, desperately needs an upgrade. He thought he could move things to his (relatively) new laptop, but it hasn't been so. Keep up with us on IG, where we post far more regularly (John is @archaeoka, and posts frequently, Ondine is @ondine.alegra).
THE BIG NEWS from 2024 is that we did our long-anticipated Wainwright Coast to Coast Walk, a 192-mile trek across England from St. Bee's on the Irish Sea to Robin Hood's Bay on the North Sea. Having worked hard to get there (this trip has been about seven years in the making), we took our time, with 16 walking days, four layover days scattered throughout, and several days at either end. We both took a month off work, from mid-May to early June. Except for the first week through the Lake District (torrential, record-setting rains), the weather was perfect for us: cool and overcast most days with some rain and drizzle but nothing major, and even a few hours of sunshine. We explored lots of the English countryside, finding ruined monasteries, Roman forts, and bronze-age settlements and burial mounds right off the trail. In addition to the Lake District National Park, the trail meanders through the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors National Parks, making for ever-changing scenery, terrain, and livestock encounters.
In other travel news, we had a weekend getaway to The Willows Resort and Spa at Viejas, to celebrate John's birthday. We ate and enjoyed lounging around a very luxurious suite. Roy and Leo joined us for an excellent lunch at Panda Machi in Alpine.
We got season tickets to Lamplighters Community Theatre, and enjoyed several plays this year: The Crucible, Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, Spitfire Grill, a gender switched version of The Odd Couple, The Revolutionists, and I Hate Hamlet.
Leo and Roy are living next door and helping get Barbara's house ready to rent out a couple rooms. They took Shadow in while we were gone on our month-long Coast-to-Coast adventure and again when we were at Viejas.
Leo started attending Grossmont College on an AA track that will fast-track him into either the SDSU or UCSD Electrical Engineering program. He's two semesters in so far, working hard, and doing great! This last semester, for fun, he took a ceramics class and made some cool stuff! His travel included a train trip with friends to San Francisco for several days.
Roy took a few trips this year, including one with Danielle to Big Bear and another with his buddies to Las Vegas. He's still working at Resilient Roofing, doing marketing; in 2024, he was put in charge of an offshore call center as well. He competed in judo at the California State Games, his first judo tournament in nearly 10 years!
Ondine is still working at Kaiser in the Continuing Care Department. She ended the year on strike, though, a strike now in week 11 with renewed negotiations supposed to start up again January 9. It's a long time to be out of work! She's been on the picket lines every week. In other news, she took a short story class, had a short story accepted for publication, and participated in a public author reading! She's also in an online writing group.
John had cataract surgery in early April, so now he can drive without glasses but needs glasses to read. He still loves being an archaeologist in cultural resource management. He's been very lucky this past year to have had a steady local gig monitoring construction on a big pipeline project, especially with Ondine on strike. He had jury duty this summer, for the U.S. District Court. He ended the year with a couple local data recovery projects, including one where he's back digging holes!
Barbara is well settled at Sungarden Terrace, in the memory care facility. Ondine visits her every week, and last week was there four days in a row! Barbara still seems very happy when we visit.
Frances is doing great at Arcadia Living, a senior living community. She still gets out with John or his sisters, and in fact for Thanksgiving she went to visit John's sister Patty in Arizona for 10 days!
Shadow is a 15-year-old dog, but still very energetic and able to hike with us up Cowles Mountain and over to Pyles Peak and back, about 7.5 miles. He's getting hard of hearing, though. We've taken him to Coronado dog beach a few times too.
In other family news, John's nephew Andrew and his wife Salo had a second child, Daniel!
Another noteworthy event was that our homeowner's insurance was "non-renewed" due to our proximity to a potential wildfire zone. After some scrambling, John found insurance with better coverage for a lower premium, but it's with an out-of-state ("non-registered") insurer; no California registered insurance companies would cover our house. The other option was to go with a FAIR plan, which would have offered significantly less coverage at a significantly higher premium.
New acquisitions include renewed vision for John after cataract surgery, right before we did the Coast to Coast Walk. We bought a used gray 2012 Chevrolet Volt for Leo. Minor acquisitions included lamps for the living room and Ondine's office area, a paper shredder, and a set of glass food storage containers. We also got a lot of hiking equipment for the Coast to Coast, including trekking poles (buy Leki, not Black Diamond!), boots, gaiters, and raingear (Snugpak ponchos, plus REI rain pants and, off the REI clearance racks, a Marmot Precip Eco jacket for Ondine and a Patagonia Torrentshell 3L for John), all of which got a thorough workout on the trail. In December, we bought a new washing machine, an LG WM5500, one of Consumer Reports top-rated machines. It seems to have more capacity than our 2007 Whirlpool Duet washer had, and makes a lot less noise.
Discards include John's cloudy old eyeball lenses, our old washing machine, and several skiploads of old furniture and clothing from our house and next door's.
Global and domestic news for 2024 continued the end-game for our species, with the further rise of anti-science, religious nationalist politicians including, in the U.S., the historic re-election of Donald Trump over Kamala Harris. Natural disasters linked to climate change, including devastating hurricanes, floods, droughts, and wildfires, are continuing to rise, even while climate change itself is actively denied by those in power and environmental protections are being slashed as too costly to corporate interests. Book-bannings are now mainstream, religious doctrine is now mandated, LGBTQ+ protections are being rolled back, billionaire megadonors dominate politics and public policies, and mass shootings barely make the news (although the murder of a United Healthcare Corporation CEO on his way to an investor meeting triggered a massive manhunt and calls for special protections for corporate executives and special punishments for those who threaten them). On the other hand, the massively rich have never been better off, nor have they had better prospects for further acquisition of lucre. Should be a good few years for the stock market.
War continues between Ukraine and Russia, and Israel's genocide of Palestinians continues unabated. Universities both in the U.S. and elsewhere, including in San Diego, successfully suppressed student-led anti-genocide demonstrations, at least partly through crisis fatigue.
On the plus side, in the UK General Election, the Labour Party soundly defeated the Tories, in Syria the Assad regime fell, and, closer to home, Claudia Sheinbaum became Mexico's first female president. Also, Alex Jones' "Infowars" right-wing conspiracy theory website went under and was bought by The Onion, a left-leaning political humor website.
California is something of a bright spot, while it lasts, passing laws protecting LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights, and some consumer rights including capping some banking fees and extending evicted tenant protections. Notably, Proposition 3 passed, which repealed Prop 8 and incorporated into the California state constitution language protecting the right to marry regardless of sex or race.
Here in San Diego, the median resale price for a single-family home hit $1 million, and average monthly rents hit $2,490. Yes, the rich get richer. Massive floods in residential areas in southeast San Diego were caused by deferred storm drain maintenance, raising the importance of infrastructure funding, although since it was the poorest parts of town that were hardest hit it's unlikely we'll see much real change. We'll see how the drains fare with this season's storms. On the plus side, our zoo has pandas again, and The Outsiders, a musical that debuted at the La Jolla Playhouse, went to Broadway and won the Tony award for best musical!
2025 Preview: What's coming up this year? Well, Roy and Danielle are planning a trip to Japan next winter. Leo may finish at Grossmont College and transfer to either SDSU or UCSD in Electrical Engineering. Ondine is looking forward to getting back to work when the union settles with Kaiser; it's been a strain being off work for so many months. John hopes to keep working steadily. We're not planning any major trips for 2025, but we are starting to look into a family walking holiday in Europe next; it'll take us a few years to save up the money though!
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