My dad and Jean made a whirlwind Upper California trip this last week, stopping to see friends in their old neighborhood in Yosemite Lakes Park (near Coarsegold 1/2 way between Fresno and Yosemite), my sister's considerable family in Fresno (including all nine great grand kids), daughter Kathy and her husband, Rex, in Loomis (about an hour from here on the way to Sacto), and us--all in 5 or 6 days, starting from their home in northern San Diego County.
It was fun to have them and their dinky doggie, Shu,shu, seen here on her personal pillow--the sofa not being quite soft enough, apparently. They all arrived mid-afternoon on Sunday and--poof!--they were gone by noon on Monday. Actually, the first in a big series of storms arrived unfashionably early on Monday morning and they wanted to get out ahead of the worst of it.
Good thing they did, actually.
Dad and Jean moved to San Marcos about nine years ago from Coarsegold (said YLP), after which time, 1. my sister Terry's kids--all now living in Fresno near her and H--began to have kids of their own, and, 2. we left San Diego to come up here. Therefore, they are thinking about migrating back into the Central Valley to be a little closer to the family action. We'll see how it all unfolds.
Shu-shu is a little Yorkie with a past. More than a year ago, Dad and Jean found out about puppy mill (bad! bad!) that had been shut down (good! good!) and the possibility, therefore, of giving a home to one of the adult dogs there. They went and fell in love with a little 3-year-old female that had been used as a breeder. Coincidentally, she had been given the same name as another teensy dog they had owned and loved some years before. 
Shu-shu had given difficult birth to a litter by botched C-section, apparently, and it ended up costing Dad and Jean much time, money and emotional energy to bring her back to health. They almost lost her at least once. Then there were the behavior problems with a dog who hadn't been socialized or housebroken and who had generally been treated poorly. Patience. Not Dad's long suit. Fortunately, Jean had enough for both, but just barely. Gradually, Shu's become calmer, mostly housebroken and one-third heavier, weighing in at a hefty 6 pounds. Of course, some cheese (picture) from time to time has helped some. From what I can see, she has them both pretty well-trained.
We're glad they came, if only for a short while. They'll be back. I think Shu-shu likes me.
Wednesday was Tom's birthday.
Given that he'd taken most of the day off--easy, he then needed to figure out what he wanted to do with it--harder. Friend Mark had sent him an iphone gizmo and a gift card for some apps. Oddly, among other things, I also had given him an iphone gizmo (different one, thankfully) and a similar gift card. So, heading to the online apps store was one fun way to spend some time. Here's a nice photo of him as he's playing with one of his purchases. He also picked up a few more freebies. One of them is just a white screen labeled "book light"--so funny--and another which is a simple video of a flame (as on top of a candle) called "lighter". I love these things! He also picked up night-sky charts and, oh, I can't remember it all.
It will change our lives, I'm pretty sure.
Here is an effect of having been married to me for forty years: he enjoys animated and 3-D movies. Have I done my job, or what? It has been long in coming, so I consider it quite the crowning achievement. That and his recently-developed genuine interest in Jane Austen dramas. He's a math guy, remember, not big into kiddie or chick lit. I mention it because the next thing he wanted to do--seriously--was to go see Alice in Wonderland. He had even considered going all the way to Sacramento to watch it in full-on IMAX-3-D. Too much time in the car, though, for a birthday, we decided.
So, we went to a local establishment, squeezing ourselves in amongst the four other souls in that theater for a late-afternoon screening. So cool! He had never read the books, but it didn't really matter, the movie having taken rather huge (but fun) liberties with the stories, anyway. I loved the colors, especially. And the typically-twisted Tim-Burton shapes of the trees and other plant life. Oh, and the delicious Cheshire Cat! Go see it. There's Tom talking to Dylan in front of the theater after the movie.
Then it was off for some Indian food. We've always loved this cuisine, and there is just an outstanding restaurant in Grass Valley, nestled between a nail salon and Monster Gym called India Oven. Crazy good breads! Everything we've ever ordered there has been wonderful. See how happy? We gladly ate it for lunch again today!
We had already smacked down half of the banana cream cheesecake I had made for him the day before, so we ate the other half while watching Modern Family, one of our total favorite shows. Really, it's nearly perfect.
And that was that. A rather nice, low-key sort of a day. I think he enjoyed it. And he doesn't look so much older, right?
Last Wednesday, during a phone conversation with Dylan, it became clear that if he could grow a couple more hands and, maybe, an additional half a brain, the deadlines looming on Friday would be more tractable. What a coincidence! I have two hands and half a brain! So, Thursday morning, I drove to the City (Sacto is only the "city"), ready to jump into DylanLand. Actually, DylanLand is not so different than SandyWorld used to be, so it's a familiar trip. Similar rides.
He hadn't slept in awhile, but after a bit of food, we tackled the finish work on a 5'8"-square table w/four benches that he'd just gotten back from the finisher-guy. It was set to be picked up by the movers early Friday morning to be moved into place in a residence by crane. I did detail work on the stone inlay and waxed, while he worked on the inset piece. You can't see it in the photos, but there's a stainless steel inset box with a walnut bottom that fits into the center of the table. It can be set in one way, to hold ice, flowers or candles and such, or turned over to be flush with the table top. That's Emi sitting with Dylan at the table in the shop Thursday evening--we had just come back from dinner.
The table having been picked up at 7:30am, it had already been craned in by the time we caught up with it at the residence about nine. The interior designer, Stephanie, had met it there and watched it hoisted up to the roof patio four stories up. That is she sitting at the table with Dylan. You can probably see that it's a rather nice residence. I think I counted 5 levels.
He had a bit of other work to finish, then a meeting with the client toward the end of the day. Late Friday night, Dylan drove back to GV with me for the weekend for a change of scenery after an intense number of days.
Rachel's birthday was Saturday, but she's in Uruguay with Mike, so we celebrated anyway. The Question of the Day was, WWRW(UTDFHB)?, or What Would Rachel Want (Us To Do For Her Birthday)? Eat brownies, for one thing. So we did. Sit around and watch March Madness, for another. So we did. She'll be so pleased.
Another one of our family activities was to channel our inner Geek Squad and fix the case on Dylan's computer, which had been dropped and broken at least a year before. He had ordered the parts and found the instructions online. It's amazing what one can accomplish with three people, two (other) computers and a camera (back-up memory) working intensively on such a delicate project. There was some little trepidation about unwiring and rewiring, but we forged ahead. The result? Fixed!
The main events for the weekend were to brainstorm some next moves for Dylan's business (he needs an additional worker) and work on designs for a table commission (I served as a leg-shape consultant).
He uses old-fashioned pencils and paper some of the time and his Sketch Up computer software the rest. Here he is Sketching Up, and there is just a small number of the drawings he makes in the process of developing a design. Fun to watch his brain at work through his hands.
Back in SF, he's been contacted by a career woodworker moving into the SF area looking for a possible gig. Who knows? Stay tuned.
This week=sunny and bright. Last week, not so much. It snowed twice, threw hail a time or two and rained the rest of the time. I feel like we're coming out of our little mole hole, blinking in the light.
The daffodils are popping up! Whilst one can find other bulbs here and there (crocus always first, for some reason), daffs are the fave in these parts. I'll shoot some pics of the thousands planted along the freeway, if I can. I keep planting more each fall and vow to double that each spring (a woman I met at the fair, this year, told me she planted more than 3000-!!- at her house). So, yes, snow does break some of the flowers, but, for the most part, they tough it out pretty well, as you can see (the first two pictures were taken two days before the last three...
)
Meanwhile, rain or shine, shenanigans are always in season...
"1:13 p.m.--A woman from the 800 block of Old Tunnel Road reported items were missing from her apartment and someone may have come in and moved things around to scare her." [ah, "gaslighting"--that's the excuse I'm planning to use]
"11:19 a.m.--A girl from the 300 block of Mill Street reported her friend saw something gross on the computer. She said it was a dead animal. The two were counseled on proper use of 911." [Too bad, because I would have liked to report a Youtube video I saw recently of some middle-aged white women doing hip-hop...]
"11:32 a.m.--A caller from Church Street reported a teen girl running down the street and shouting that she 'just wants to sleep'." [who hasn't been there?]
"9:22 p.m.--A deputy was out on Gracie and Banner Lava Cap Roads with two people dancing in tutus. They were given a ride." [One can guess to where...]
"9:24 a.m.--A caller from a business on Taylorville Road reported the theft of food trays by a man who left in a small red car. Then at 9:57 a.m., a caller from Empire Street reported two people in a red car throwing hot dog buns filled with rocks out the window of the vehicle." [it taxes the mind to try to understand the planning process for this little caper...]
"8:41 a.m.--A woman from the 11000 block of Madrone Court reported someone opened her door and let the dogs out." [We all want to know "Who". Always seems a tough question to answer..."]
"3:59 a.m.--Two vehicles in the 400 block of South Auburn Street had been 'caked'." [And I missed it? Someone let me know when someone is "ice-creaming" cars...]
"9:16 p.m.--A woman from the 10000 block of Dana Court reported her husband had broken all the chairs in the house. She left to stay with relatives." [Perhaps he's a little on the heavy side...]
"4:57 a.m.--A woman from the 20000 block of Ocelot Drive reported her father hit her. Another woman called back and said her granddaughter was drunk and tried to stab her father. Everything was fine and there was no need for a response." [Yeah, everything sounds just great...]
"12:56 a.m.--A man reported a bear was running alongside his vehicle at Empire and Auburn streets, but then it left." [To a bear, does a car look like a catering truck with tasty snacks inside?]
"8:23 a.m.--A woman from Pleasant Valley Road reported hearing someone in her residence. She said someone was in her attic the night before. She said she had located and turned in a terrorist six years ago and the FBI had been staying in her attic since then. Last night, they got drunk and were making noise. The house was searched and no one was located." [No kidding]
Here's some fun! What these two items have in common is that they are all about small stuff and are totally awesome! See if you aren't blown away...
This is from the Huffington Post--got Legos? Tom sent these along.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/19/the-17-most-awesome-lego_n_468640.html?
There are two sites, here. First is a short article about the photographer, which you should read before going to the second. The second is the set of two Flickr pages that shows the photographs. Amazing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/automobiles/collectibles/14SCALE.html?emc=eta1
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24796741@N05/sets/72157604247242338/
You are welcome!
Then, as if we were insatiable fun-addicts, we had tickets to go see Paula Poundstone Saturday evening at the Crest Theater in Sacramento (a block or so from the Capitol--what's the deal with that spelling thing about Capitol/Capital? Really, can't we fix that?).
First, though, we thought we would just drive around the Capital for awhile. I've spent a little more time in the city than Tom has, these last three years, and thought I'd try to show him around a bit. We like Sacramento. Besides the obvious historical/political nature of the town, we find it to be attractive and interesting for other reasons. "City of Trees". While I have no idea who counts such things, it is said that it's the world city with the 2nd-highest ratio of trees to people (the first being Paris). A strange claim to fame, but I don't make these things up. Nice neighborhoods, architecture. Rivers, museums. University (CSU), restaurants. We avoid it like the plague in the summer, though.
Speaking of restaurants, we became a bit peckish and I thought we might try the pizza at Hot Italian, a newish, uber-trendy place in mid-town. Clay and I had gone there for gelato, recently. Very stark black-on-black with white ceilings. Mostly high community tables with stools, plus the bar. Oh, and the sofas. Motorbikes in the entry. Everything is so black/white, that the pizza, when it comes out, is a blaze of color against the void. Interesting effect. Besides being the only color, the pizza is also quite wonderful, and of the hipper, more artsy sort (a two-page spread in the Bee next morning agreed with us). And the gelato--ahhh (that's Tom enjoying his right there). Two other features: An enormous, white ceiling fan in the main room--I'm guessing 15-16' dia.--and very cool bathrooms. They are all black and mirror, with very contemporary white sinks and so-cool Dyson Air-Blades for drying hands. Miraculous (but I'm so easily amused).
We still had some time before the 8:30 show, so we parked near the theater and walked K Street a few times. K Street (the Capitol is on L) is closed to car traffic, but, unlike other mall-type streets in other cities we've seen, it hasn't proved to be a profitable arrangement. They are in the process of changing it back. Besides the classic and newly-refurbished Crest theater, there is the Imax-in-another-classic-old-theater down the block (now showing 3-D Alice) and a couple of restaurants. Other than that, the street is pretty pathetic, even boarded up in some places. Not the nice evening stroll it could be, being "City of Trees", and all.
We like Ms Poundstone's brand of humor. A type of humor, is difficult to describe, I think (and it's unceasingly interesting to me what kinds of humor appeals to which people as individuals and as cultures). Wikipedia, the veritable Receptacle Of All Knowledge, uses "observational" and "improvisational" to categorize her style. Mmm, OK. But she also has a sly, wry delivery that's just funny to me. That voice. As with most good comedians, she has a keen sense of the ridiculous in every-day life. We hear her often on one of our "favorite" radio shows, "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me", a show, by the by, you could be listening to, as well, if you don't already. Again with the NPR.
She started at 8:30. Our seats were better than the iphone photo would seem to indicate. We could see her face. Most fun for her, she said (by way of a local radio interview I had heard earlier in the week), is talking with folks in the audience and spinning her improv and prepared schtick from those encounters and it shows right away. She's quick and engaging. Part of what makes her so engaging is that she seems transparent with her life. A lot of her humor is based on her family life and the challenges thereof. She didn't go into it this time (though I have heard her speak about it a few times before this), but she's had big and public trouble with alcohol. Mostly, she spins off the audience members, which I would think of as being very difficult to do (the "quick" part), and the location (it IS Sacramento, after all--plenty of material there). She finds intermissions awkward and artificial (but the theater asked she have one) and when someone shouted that she spend it in the lobby with the people, we saw that's exactly what she did.
She ended around 11:15 admitting that she's a motormouth and doesn't know how to end a show. I think that's partly because it is such a natural extension of how she is and who she is offstage. I watched her from a couple of feet away for awhile afterward as she was signing cds and books (I "Heart" Jokes), and she carried on quite seamlessly and encouraged folks to take pictures with her as if she could do it all night. She took so much time with each individual, that I'm pretty sure only a handful got to speak with her by the time the theater was pushing them out the door.
We were, fortunately, still awake (night owls that we are) by the time we arrived home around 12:45. That's the disadvantage of old folks like us going all the way to Sacto for an evening do. Well worth it, this time, though, I must say. We "heart" Paula Poundstone.
I don't know how you keep up with us. The fun never stops.
Thursday morning, as I was reading the "weekend" supplement for the Union (our local), my eyes landed on a photo of just about our favorite performance group (I'm really not into labeling a thing as "favorite", but it's sometimes the best way to communicate how high up on the list "x" or "y" might be, e.g. I always respond, when pressed, that Cherry Garcia is my "favorite" ice cream, but I don't know if I really always like it better than, say, Peanut Butter and Chocolate--so please don't make me choose. I'll have both, thank you very much).
Seriously, the Wailin' Jenny's are SO close to perfection--harmonies, choice of material, personality. I've rattled on about them before. We first heard them on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion show some years back. He features them regularly, and, in fact, they will appear on his March 27th show--check your local NPR station (we get it Sunday, for example). They're a mostly Canadian group of three women (somewhere in their thirties?) who have a folk-ish sound in perfect three-part harmony. They all play instruments, sometimes multiple, and travel with a so-fine fiddle player. Their blend and nuanced musicality are, well, I guess you just have to hear them. We stalked them at a local World Fest a year and a half ago, hearing them live and up close several times (I have photo of Tom chatting with them after one session).
So, anyway, as I was leafing through the paper, I saw the ad that they were appearing at the local high school theater THAT NIGHT! What? How could we have come so close to missing this?! I got dressed and buzzed down to the Briar Patch (natural foods market/ticket agency) to get the best tickets possible. The "preferred" were gone and the rest were cattle call.
No worries! We sat right across the aisle from the "preferreds" near the front and were plenty close enough. We loved every minute! I can't really say more. We were so happy! We also added to our cd collection (I know, so "yesterday", but we haven't yet made a complete transition to ipod technology). Here's one sneaky iphone photo Tom took.
If you're wanting to see/hear them (and I know that you do), they have a Youtube page (who doesn't?). Here's one of our favorites (at a venue similar to the World Fest here in Grass Valley) which is "Parting Glass", a song they use as their final for each concert, but check 'em all out.
http://www.youtube.com/user/WailinJennys#p/u/9/ZYGts2TuXLU
And their website: http://www.thewailinjennys.com/home.aspx
Do yourself a big favor and sign up for tour notification. I mean it. I'm pretty sure you will be very pleased to make their acquaintance, if you haven't already.
It was inevitable, of course. It took more time than I would have originally predicted, actually, but our household has now moved on to the next level of Geekitude and acquired an iphone.
See how happy?
Tom has bravely stifled his desire to possess one of these little technical marvels for quite some time, now. Certainly, it wasn't exactly a necessity. But like a volcano about ready to blow, he had lately been giving off puffs of steam. Little jokes. Casual asides. Research. Attention to certain TV commercials. Think Ralphie and the Official Red Ryder Carbon-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle.
I was neutral on the subject.
So, Saturday, we chugged down to Auburn to look at them. While Tom stood in line, I went over to the demo iphone on the wall. I stood there swishing my finger around on the little screen, scrolling, enlarging, typing. What?!
We got the basic run-down from the ATT Guy, much of which I had figured out, already, by playing with the demo. What's taken us so long to get one of these things? All the way home I played with the basic stuff--general layout, maps, compass (!), weather, camera--expertly pushing images around and magging-in and out as though I'd had one for years. OK, it's easy.
Since then, of course, it's all about hanging around in the online Apps Store. There are thousands (millions?) of them, many free or nearly so. Besides the internet access (now we can plug that annoying infomation gap when we-horrors!-don't happen to be near a computer), camera, music-player, and oh, yeah, phone, we now can get super-cool games (gotta download Zombie Pizza!), turn it into a little piano (or guitar) and install motion-sensitive sound effects--who can resist turning one's phone into a light-saber? Not Tom. Not me. It really is overwhelming and I can't look at the App Store site more than a couple of minutes at a time. But it is amazing. Not crucial for a high-quality life. But amazing.
I think there might even be a way to shoot your eye out with it...
My dad and Jean made a whirlwind Upper California trip this last week, stopping to see friends in their old neighborhood in Yosemite Lakes Park (near Coarsegold 1/2 way between Fresno and Yosemite), my sister's considerable family in Fresno (including all nine great grand kids), daughter Kathy and her husband, Rex, in Loomis (about an hour from here on the way to Sacto), and us--all in 5 or 6 days, starting from their home in northern San Diego County.
Good thing they did, actually.
