It was only a little more than eight months ago when he was ousted as Senate GOP leader by colleagues as punishment for signing off on a budget deal that included tax hikes. But he's finishing the year on an upswing. Cogdill is the author of the $11 billion water bond that lawmakers approved this week and voters will consider in November.

The Republican assemblyman was bed-ridden, with what he thinks might have been the swine flu. Still, Berryhill, who has a heart transplant, says he was ready to make the more than hour drive to the Capitol, should leaders have needed his vote.

"I was a phone call away from getting up and coming up there," said Berryhill, whose district includes parts of Madera County.

Turns out they didn't need his vote, as the bond squeaked through with the bare minimum votes just before the sun rose after a marathon session.

Berryhill says he's feeling better now.

But when the Legislature finally passed an $11 billion water bond this week as part of a larger deal, two of the GOP contenders didn't exactly embrace the deal with open arms --despite strong support for the bond from Valley ag groups.

First Belana closes, now the Borders Express store in Sierra Vista Mall is scheduled to close.

The closures come on the heels of this story about all the new shops and restaurants opening up in Fresno. It's a reminder that we're not quite out of this mess yet.

Belana may have faced the same problems attracting customers as other restaurants, despite famed local businessman Krikor "Kirk" Vartanian's involvement.

As for Borders Express, the company is closing mall-based stores in an effort to stay profitable. The Hanford Mall location will stay open.

Both argued that the details of the crime should have been withheld from readers because they were painful -- especially for relatives of the victim.

"Too few powerful interests had too much power to determine the content," wrote Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based think tank. Gleick, a water policy expert, has an interesting analysis.

The law, passed Wednesday by state legislators, sets up a council to watch over the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. It also starts the process to clean up the state's water quality and conserve water in cities, along with a mountain of other goals.

Voters will need to approve an $11 billion bond next year to make this happen.

So what happens when there are too few people in the negotiating room? Organizations not at the table tend to be pressured to fall in line with philosophies and past loyalties, instead of details.

Now there is a swarm of Northern California opponents, such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the River, who have to be brought along.

For Marsden, this is a big deal. The $3,000 represents a big chunk of the grand total of $13,733 he's reported raising this year. The alternatives, though, weren't very palatable. The Madera-based Families Protecting the Valley bills itself as an organization designed to restore water to the region. Its members include some adamant critics of Radanovich.

Radanovich's staff, in turn, were preparing to file a complaint about the group's contribution to Marsden, on the grounds that Families Protecting the Valley was an ineligible contributor. Rather than fight it out, or face embarrassment, Marsden returned the dough.

http://www.house.gov/smbiz/democrats/PressReleases/2009/pr-11-5-09-homebuyers-credit.html

Fresno's architectural heritage will be showcased Nov. 13 and 14th when five homes along historic Huntington Boulevard open for tours.

It is Fresno Historical Society's annual fund-raising home tour. Participants can gather on the front lawn of the A.G Wishon home, 3555 Huntington Boulevard (which is not open to visitors) from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Nov. 13 for a wine and harvest dinner. A candlelight tour will follow.

At 11 a.m. the next day, participants can gather in the Roosevelt High School library for an illustrated lecture by Karana Hattersley-Drayton, the city's historic preservation officer and a panel discussion on how to green up a historic home. A home tour will follow from noon to 4 p.m..

Huntington Boulevard is the heart of one of Fresno's most architecturally distinct neighborhoods. A variety of styles - from modest to grand - face a wide boulevard bisected by a grassy median. The boulevard was a streetcar route from 1907 to 1939.

This year's tour includes the following:

That's not far from Mendota, but it still has not reached the Mendota Pool. This is an initial, experimental flow of water that began Oct. 1 as the start of the river restoration.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plans to slow down the release of water from Friant Dam on Wednesday morning.

Right now, it's going 700 cubic feet per second. It will slow to 350 cfs Wednesday through Nov. 20. Then the extra flow will be shut off until Feb. 1.

Now you might be able to. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have started programs that allow homeowners to stay in the house. Fannie's program, announced this week, allows qualifying homeowners to lease back the house for up to a year, with the possibility of month-to-month leases after that.

Freddie's program, unveiled in January, enables some families to rent the house on a month-to-month basis.

The objective is to ease the trauma of foreclosure and not force families to move. In many cases, the lease or rental agreement transfers to the new owner if the house is sold - although Fannie Mae says it won't list the house for sale during the one-year lease period.

Fannie's program is available to borrowers who don't qualify or haven't been able to sustain a loan modification.

Fannie didn't say how many people will qualify for the program, but roughly two-thirds of homeowners offered rental contracts under Freddie Mac have taken them, according to the Wall Street Journal.

1. Voters next year still need to approve the $11 billion in bonds. It is not a slam dunk.

2. There is an oversight council now to monitor every twitch of every species in the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. But there is no money yet to pay for it. Look for that in January.

3. The state is going to hire 25 new inspectors to catch folks who are illegally diverting water from streams. But right now, there's no real penalty, just a laborious process that could result years later in a fine. And the fine is just about what the thief would have paid for the water to begin with.

Will this new law make any more difference than the Calfed Bay-Delta Program, which flopped over the last dozen years or so?

Health officials estimate thousands - that's by the phone calls they've been taking from people wanting to know where and when they can get the H1N1 vaccine - will show up for shots.

It's the first chance many in Fresno will have to line up for a shot. Vaccine supplies aren't exactly bulging. The Fresno County Department of Public Health got 11,500 doses last week for a county of almost 1 million.

Another clinic will be from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday (Nov. 5) at the retired teachers building on East Saginaw Way. To learn more about the H1N1 vaccine, check out the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Web site.

To find a flu-shot clinic in Fresno County, go to the health department's Web site.

It will be interesting to see the numbers after the 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. clinic closes at the Manchester Center. I keep hearing from people who say they aren't going to get an H1N1 shot. Many of them aren't in high-risk categories - pregnant women, children and young adults, caregivers of infants younger than 6 months or people with chronic health conditions. But some in those targeted groups say they won't get vaccinated.

But I hear that office workers in doctors' offices are getting screamed at daily by people who want to know why they can't get an H1N1 flu shot. Doctors are waiting like health departments for the vaccine to arrive.

So I'm curious: Who's going to get a flu shot (or wants to get one when more vaccine is available)? Who isn't getting a shot? Why?

But people who aren't as technologically inept are now able to use cell phones to search for real estate as the industry starts to dial-up more sophisticated services.

Fresno-based Guarantee Real Estate, for example, contracted with Smarter Agent, an application that allows people to get details and photos of houses for sale.

Once the application is loaded onto a cell phone, it can be used to get information on homes for sale in any area of the country where Smarter Agent has access to listing data.

Now, if I can only figure out how to stop butt dialing my daughter at school.