10 February 06
Vanishing Winter
I actually have a hankering to watch some of the Winter Olympics. Since I always ignore the Olympics, there must be some explanation for this, and probably it has to do with the fact that winter seems very far away here, with it being clear and the temperature reaching the low 70s. But we don’t have a telly, so the hankering will have to pass, though the kitties are a bit disappointed they won’t get to see any of the cat skating.
1 February 06
Why I Like Shopping at the Coop
Because a third of the way through your list which you left on the counter but can pretty much remember you run into Susan who messed up her knee but still wants to go for a bike ride and by the way could you please send me any info on the wildlife programs she says and we yuk it up and then up shows Warren the Arboretum Superintendent and Susan says hi Warren and I say Warren I was just going to call you to ask you about gray pines like specifically how did the Native Americans use them and he says oh have you seen the painting of them on the wall over here and we all say botany botany here in the coop and he says they ate the seeds but you’d need exactly the right kind of groove on a rock so they don’t smash and then they cooked the whole cone when it was green but then his cellphone goes off and he says they didn’t use them as cellphones and then in the checkout line there’s Julie and she says you didn’t come to my chocolate tasting event tonight and I say well no I’m doing Weightwatchers but just then Numenius slaps down a Chocolove Dark with Orange Peel on the belt and we all laugh and complain how after forty nothing quite works right but chocolate makes it better.
28 January 06
Sister Spa
While Numenius was installing Tiger, and my mother and brother were browsing in an independent bookstore in Calistoga, I wallowed in mud with my sister-in-law. “No mudpies,” said our cheerful attendant, leaving us in the company of a rubber ducky and a rubber froggie.
Rain here. It was a perfect day for a mudbath.
25 January 06
Bagali Polo and Guinness Truffles
Ron and Joe came up looking for mountain plovers but got skunked, so we met them at Bogey’s and then went to Ali Baba for dinner. Dessert was at Ciocolat, where Ron cut three truffles into four pieces with her trusty swiss army knife and we each tried a piece of cinammon, triple sec, and guinness truffle. Much jollity ensued. Because we could talk about depressing things too, but tended not to.
24 January 06
Joy and Death
It turns out they are frequent coauthors. I am sitting in on a seminar this quarter and one of the recommended papers for tomorrow’s session has the following citation:
Joy, Michael K. and Russell G. Death, 2004. Predictive modelling and spatial mapping of freshwater fish and decapod assemblages using GIS and neural networks. Freshwater Biology 49:1036-1052.
19 January 06
A Swearing-In
I went because I hadn’t been before. I went because she didn’t have anyone going with her. I went because I was curious. I went because of my ambivalence about my own American citizenship. I went to stand in line and stand in line again and watch Bureaucracy in Action.
What I saw was this: generations. I saw the generations of people, alive and present and dead and gone, who waited for this moment. My forebears (well, some of them). Numenius’ forebears. Generations from around the globe. Diversity is what makes us be our very best, said the judge swearing everyone in. It’s what Dr. King taught us.
The oath they swore is one I wouldn’t take: but my privilege is having been born here. So I needn’t worry about oaths. It was something, seeing 400 people suddenly becoming American, laboring through the difficult consonants. It was something, this evidence always around me, suddenly concentrated, of how this is a culture of immigrants.
We had lunch, I the English/American designer and she the Russian soil scientist, at an Afghan restaurant, representing a culture none of the three of ours has ever managed to subdue. It seemed like an appropriate thing to do.
Today, as I went to lunch at the Iranian restaurant just up the street, I saw the man we had been standing behind in line. He became a citizen yesterday also. I crossed the street to shake his hand, congratulate him. He looked like a French lefty from the 80s, which probably makes him a Bulgarian economist from the 00s. His name, he said, was David. He was very touched I had bothered…
13 January 06
A full day
I’m just back from a day of a) Macworld b) going to the SF Center for the Book on the bus (plus very long walk) to retrieve my Art Bin I left there on Saturday, only to find it closed c) Macworld d) SFCB again, got bin, minus camera which has mysteriously disappeared in the interim e) sharing a bustop session with a Peruvian con artist on the way back from SFCB f) sharing train seats with two furniture buyers for some unspecified department chain, probably Neiman Marcus (GOD how boring AND stressful their lives are) f) a rejuvenating visit to the Coop g) arriving home and finding that Numenius had gone looking for a frickin’ snowy owl without me (he does NOT chase birds so this is something of a first).
I did take my sketch book and will post a sketch once I’ve gone for the snowy owl myself tomorrow.
12 January 06
Green Eggs and Ham
Or at least the green ham bit. Taiwanese scientists have bred several pigs that glow in the dark and whose skin has a greenish tinge. They accomplished this trick by introducing jellyfish genetic material into the pig’s embryo.
The aim of this research is not improved forest camouflage for the hogs, but rather to aid in tracking pig genetic material when their cells are introduced into other animals, for instance in stem cell research.
11 January 06
Memed
I was reading this over at Sister Spirit and was thinking about doing it even before I knew I’d been tagged by Chris, so here goes:
Four Jobs You’ve Had
1. Interpreter for a project of hail suppression in southeast Spain
2. Bilingual secretary (yes, that was shorthand in FRENCH) in a reinsurance office in Paris
3. Clerk in the electoral offices of Santa Barbara County
4. Administrative assistant in the liver transplant section of the UC Davis Medical Center
Four Movies You Could Watch Over and Over
1. Casablanca
2. The Rookie
3. The Singing Detective (I know this was made for TV but I saw it on the big screen)
4. Lord of the Rings
Four Places You’ve Lived
1. Madrid, Spain
2. Montpellier, France
3. Cambridge, UK
4. Cambridge, Mass
Four TV Shows You Love to Watch
I don’t have a TV…
Four Places You’ve Been on Vacation
1. Barrow, Alaska (life yellow-throated loon)
2. Bisbee, Arizona (on the way to life buff-breasted flycatcher)
3. Gibraltar (yep, it really is one of the craziest places in the world.)
4. Opatija, Croatia (I think; it was Yugoslavia then)
Four Blogs You Visit Daily
1. Via Negativa
2. Toad in the Hole
3. A Brit Abroad, though he’s in a different abroad now and doesn’t post as much, are you listening, Richard?
4. Fezoca’s Blurbs
Four of Your Favorite Foods
1. tofu cilantro
2. the veggie soft tacos at Mariachi in Davis
3. the veggie soft tacos at the roach coach on the UCSB campus
4. Jefferson Davis pie
Four Places You’d Rather Be
1. anywhere in Sweden, anytime
2. at the dinner table with good friends
3. a baseball game
4. with my sleeves rolled up, making mudpies (literal and metaphorical)
Four Albums You Can’t Live Without
I can and do live without lots of albums. I think as a couple we need music therapy. But I seem to be recreating some kind of iTunes collection which is in process and I’ll report back at a later date.
Four Vehicles You’ve Owned
1. Subaru GL hatchback (my first car I got at 37)
2. Honda Element (bought two years ago when I donated the Subie to a coworker in great need)
Four people I’m tagging
I’m not tagging anyone. Whoever would like to take this on, please do. Jenny ? Fer ?
27 December 05
Teff Luck
We went to Oakland to meet Ron Sullivan and Joe Eaton to go to the Baseball as America exhibition at the Oakland Museum only to discover they are in fact closed on Tuesday. (Before doing any more long-distance museum jaunts, do check the website!) We regrouped quickly to fetch up at Cody’s and Moe’s books on Telegraph, and then went for an early dinner of Ethiopian food.
We went to Cafe Colucci near Telegraph and Alcatraz, and having almost no exposure to Ethiopian cuisine, didn’t know what to expect. Thankfully, Ron and Joe served as good guides, and explained what to do with the injera pancakes made of teff grain. It’s not a cuisine for the fastidious, but it makes a very yummy vegetarian meal. Our favorite dish of all was the collard greens (gomen).