11 August 07
Four Years
Four years ago yesterday, I snapped my achilles tendon. It cheated me out of a really fun tandem ride. We went out last night to celebrate our marriage at the same restaurant we’d gone to on the night before our wedding, surrounded by friends and family (a couple of them a bit whackily dressed).
9 August 07
Secession
There is now a bee swarm in the almond tree, and the hive in the nectarine tree is looking a bit depopulated. We wonder what honey bee affairs of state lead to half the hive heading off to a new tree fifty feet from the old hive. Perhaps a second queen leaving the premises? At any rate this afternoon there were definitely some confused bees flying about — which tree do I fly to now?
8 August 07
756
Barry Bonds passed Hank Aaron tonight in the all-time home run record.
I had just finished mopping the floor and turned the washing machine off. They didn’t pitch around him, the Nationals. They went after him, and he got an inside fast ball and hit it far into the graveyard zone.
It was a choked-up moment, when Hank Aaron came on to congratulate Barry and encourage us all to chase our dreams.
Steroids or not, intentional walks or not — it’s an amazing achievement. I’m glad I heard it.
6 August 07
Musicological Podcasts Await
For some reason I was thinking about Beethoven’s ‘Waldstein’ piano sonata today (Opus 53 in C major), all of which led me to discover that the pianist Andras Schiff in the course of performing the complete Beethoven piano sonata cycle in London last year also gave a series of accompanying lectures. Podcasts of the eight-part lecture series are available from the Guardian Unlimited music site.
5 August 07
Slow Food
Fernanda came over today. We had nectarine crisp from the new solar oven and nectarine ice cream she’d made. (It’s nectarine season here in the Central Valley.) Fernanda blogs mostly about food, now, though she’s a veteran Brazilian blogger from back when everyone knew everyone else, from back way beyond when anyone I knew was blogging.
We were talking about the Slow Food Movement — how it has done wonderful work promoting good, locally produced food eaten with friends or family while, gasp, sitting down — but we both wish it weren’t quite so elitist. (The upcoming Yolo Slow Food event costs $65 — out of range of most people, even though it’s a fundraiser..)
2 August 07
Vin Scully Avoids His Fate
The legendary Dodgers broadcaster, Vin Scully, was quite ambivalent about the prospect of calling Barry Bonds’ 755th home run to tie Hank Aaron’s record. No worries though, as Bonds managed only one hit, a single, in the three-game series against the Dodgers. The Giants’ road trip concludes this weekend against the San Diego Padres. Tomorrow’s pitching matchup should be good, the hard-luck Matt Cain for the Giants against Greg Maddux for the Padres.
Meanwhile, I have a new favorite baseball site, The Hardball Times. Insightful daily snippets of news and analysis, nothing too overwhelming.
1 August 07
Laissant Rouler les Bons Temps
Beausoleil played at the UC Davis Quad this evening. The series of free summer concerts continues. Frisbees and hats and lots of lolling on blankets. And then the dancers…
30 July 07
Solar Upgrade
Our new solar oven arrived today. In the picture it is on top of the bricks, above the old cardboard solar cooker, which is definitely showing its age (note the water damage from being left out in the irrigation). The new oven should get much hotter than the old one — they say up to 400° F.
29 July 07
Wonder When I'll Start
These words: I wrote them at age 12 in a red five-year diary you could lock with a key, given to me by my grandmother, who was a great diary-keeper. In the event I had less than a year to wait for menarche, for the encounter with gauze-covered cotton pads that were what was available in Spain in the early 1970s.
My mother and sister have both had hysterectomies, depriving me of family data. My approach of menopause has therefore been just as fraught with uncertainty, and this week I had what I was almost certain were my first hot flashes (I developed a sore throat following two plane journeys home from Maine and wondered whether I might not be having a fever at 1:35 every afternoon in the air conditioning until it hit me).
Wow. It’s sort of interesting. If this is all it is, it’s nothing that can’t be cured by carrying a fan around (and I own many, many of these). If it grows to be more problematic, we’ll see…
27 July 07
Three-Tenths of a Percent
According to today’s simulation runs of the rest of the season over at Baseball Prospectus, the Giants’ chances of making the playoffs are 0.308 percent. The Red Sox, on the other side of the ledger, have a 98.5% of making the playoffs.