Pinnacle Telecommunications Inc. thanks you for exchanging text messages with your BFF from, like, everywhere.

Employees there will never complain that you spend too much time playing games with friends on your smartphone, and if your business uses those quaint old land lines, they'll be there for you, too.

Or, rather, they'll be there for AT&T, Verizon and the other telecom giants that serve you.

Pinnacle, based in Loomis, installs the cables and other components necessary to keep – or get – your phone or computer running. Annual revenue routinely tops $20 million.

The company is in the midst of orienting 35 new hires, most of them engineers and installation technicians, chief executive Cecelia Lakatos Sullivan told me. The workforce is now at 150, she said, and the ever-growing demand for digital technology means that the hiring will continue.

"In the old days, it was just the dial-up phones, and now it's all the wireless activity as well as broadband and U-Verse for AT&T, for example, or all the Verizon data plants," Lakatos Sullivan said.

Pinnacle's employees run cables at new buildings and in data centers filled with servers and other technology. It's a far cry from where 72-year-old Barbara Winters started, servicing rural circuit boxes that she calls dog huts for their shape.

"She started in her garage in Weed in 1984," Lakatos Sullivan said. "She grew it from there, and I came in 2003 to partner with her."

Peddling a little summer

The artisan ice creams created by Rachel Sprinkle-Strong take their inspiration from Sacramento's farmers markets and from Johnson's Real Ice Cream, 2728 E. Main St., in Bexley, Ohio.

Sprinkle-Strong worked there in her youth, and when she took a severance package and left her communications job at Verizon, she decided to return to a trade she'd learned from "Mr. Johnson."

Popcycle Creamery, popcyclecreamery.com, launched six weeks ago, after 18 months of planning.

The 44-year-old Sprinkle-Strong creates ice cream, push-up pops called Popcycles and delivers all around central and east Sacramento on her custom bicycle. Her flavors are seasonal.

"I like to hit the farmers market and see what's going on there," Sprinkle-Strong said. " … I've come up with a roasted cherry and goat cheese, and that one tastes like cheesecake. ... Then I did this blueberry version of it as the cherries started to go out of the market. Sweet corn and blackberry is one I did when the blackberries were in season."

She charges $3 a pop for a minimum order of six.

One customer, Mary Casey of Casey Design, described Sprinkle-Strong as "an artist with flavor."

What happens in winter? "If Mr. Johnson has been able to survive in Ohio for 70 winters, I think I can make it work here," Sprinkle-Strong said.

It's living, Oakmont style

Santa Rosa's Oakmont Senior Living will begin work soon on a $6.3 million assisted living facility at the corner of East Roseville Parkway and Secret Ravine Parkway in Roseville.

It's not the first time Oak- mont has built a facility in the capital region.

"I actually developed one in Carmichael a number of years ago," said Steve McCullagh, a project manager for Oakmont. "It's being operated by Aegis Senior Living."

The Roseville project, designed with a facade resembling a Spanish villa, will have 56 studios, 17 one-bedroom units and five two-bedroom units. McCullagh said the facility should be finished in 12 to 13 months, and it may not be Oakmont's last one here.

The number of assisted living facilities is expanding to meet a demographic shift. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that, on average, one American turns 65 every 13 seconds.

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