25 July 04
Sacramento Valley Homecoming
We picked our friends Nicole and Mike up from the Sacramento Airport late this afternoon. They have been on a three-and-a-half month long honeymoon—their wedding was in late March—and have been travelling throughout the South Seas, Australia, and New Zealand. They seem very relaxed but are happy to return to these parts. We had them over for dinner for a simple mixed greens salad with bread, cheese, and wine. This worked out well: it’s hard to find good salad fixings in the Pacific and they were craving greens. One fun logbook story: when Nicole was a teenager, she was given a journal from the airlines to record her plane rides, collecting the captain’s signature after each trip. She finally completed it on the last leg of their honeymoon, the flight this afternoon from Los Angeles to Sacramento.
24 July 04
All Over Bar the Champs Elyses…
The final stage of this year’s Tour de France is tomorrow, the processional 165 km trip into Paris. Lance Armstrong has demonstrated once again his ferocious domination of this event, which is leaving lots of people wondering whether it will ever be interesting again. But time gets us all. He can quit while he’s ahead, or eventually lose. The only thing that can change tomorrow is the sprinters’ green jersey; Robbie McEwen of Australia currently holds it, but expect a huge mad rush at the end as Norwegian Thor Hushovd attempts to grab as many points as he can along the way.
The end of the Tour will alter my morning routine—definitely won’t be so much to look for online, which is just as well.
23 July 04
Discover Your Inner Smile
While we’re on the theme of Bay Area New Age eclectica, let’s not forget the dental practice in Berkeley, located near the Claremont Resort, entitled transcendentist. “Imagine entering a dental environment like no other: a wellness spa designed for your comfort and the first eco-friendly dental office in the country.” You too can receive a twenty-minute foot massage while you’re getting a teeth cleaning or a new crown put in.
21 July 04
Nellie
On Sunday, we had two tasks. One was to take the two remaining kittens to Petco to try and get them adopted (we failed-hooray!-, but saw Fernanda who ended up adopting a young adult Siamese cross, Roux, of whom we’ve grown quite fond, and also Virginia and her daughter Alexandria who was visiting and who had babysat the kittens when we first got them and given them names). The second task was to buy a car. (The kittens were MUCH more stressful.)
My ‘86 Subaru hatchback is still running fine but having spent a good ten years in New England ice and snow (and salt), is a bit the worse for wear. It was getting so that I was not feeling comfortable going on long trips—or even relatively short ones out of the way, such as going to Bodega Bay. Blue was my first car, and I bought her for $700 from my roommate back in 1995. Yesterday I sold her to a coworker whose car died a couple of weeks ago and who needs a reliable commute car, which Blue is.
So—this evening we picked up a new Honda Element at the Davis Honda dealership, which was surprisingly low-pressure and even pleasant. This car is the butt of many jokes as being the ugliest thing on the road; it’s fondly known as a toaster, an elephant, and worse. But you can hose out the inside, you can sleep in it, and we can fit our tandem INSIDE. We’ll be rigging up all kinds of gizmos for hitching things in there and are-finally-able to go on a delayed honeymoon for our first anniversary. If only Nellie were a hybrid…
20 July 04
Bird Scheming On Tomales Bay
These past two days I’ve been at a meeting at the Marconi Conference Center on Tomales Bay, near Point Reyes in Marin County. This meeting was about developing a data schema for exchanging bird inventory and monitoring data (one example being Christmas Bird Counts). It’s fun being at a meeting with a bunch of ornithologists. One participant seated at the far end of the room would use his binoculars to read the fine print on projected slides, and discussion came to a halt one time when a Nuttall’s woodpecker called nearby.
I had a bit of time for doing some art before and after the sessions. Above is a sketch I made yesterday looking south towards the landward end of Tomales Bay. This morning I went up to Tower Hill (the former site of a set of radio receiving towers: Marconi, the guy who pioneered the use of radio, had a trans-Pacific station here starting in 1912) and, in the fog, did a sketch and a small painting. One amusing event while sketching was that I heard a goat-like bleating which turned out to be chanting coming from a woman running up the hill. Afterwards I learned that the Motherwave Institute was also having a session at the conference center while we were there. According to their website, “motherwavework opens new multidimensional doorways to the Field that allow it to be perceived not only ‘within’ in some virtual, ‘spiritual’ realm, but in every realm including our bodies, our emotional selves and our outer world.” A very Marin County thing, that.
19 July 04
Post the All-Star Break
Wimbledon’s over, we’re in the final week of the Tour de France, and the circus that is baseball’s All-Star game is finally put away. Now we can get serious about the various standings, start to pay attention when poor Tampa Bay beats the dreaded Yankees, as they did today.
The rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees is famously one-sided. New York smiles smugly at the little provincial New Englanders from up the coast and occasionally seems genuinely hurt by the level of vitriol hurled in its direction. Not understanding why everyone doesn’t automatically love a winner.
Remind you of anyone?
18 July 04
Birds On The Move
Fall migration appears to be getting underway. We just heard a report of about 50 Swainson’s hawks kettling early in the morning near Dixon and heading south. They’re at least a month or more early. And late this afternoon there was a flock of about several dozen swallows, probably tree, overhead and most likely migrating through. Soon there will be good shorebird action.
17 July 04
Too Many Ducks
There was an article in yesterday’s faculty and staff newspaper, Dateline, about the overpopuation of ducks at the UC Davis Arboretum. Apparently the number of ducks that can be sustained in this body of water is about 2.96, given how much water vegetation there is.
There are, however, probably over 300 ducks instead of three, fed by well-meaning people and also by Guerrilla Girl. They used to catch the ducks with nets. I’m not quite sure what they’re doing these days to control the population, but whatever it is, it’s not working…
16 July 04
Cats And Nooks
This is a note for the Ecotone Wiki topic on secret places.
One of the things that has been amazing to watch while fostering our kittens is how cats have such a wonderful instinct for finding secret nooks. Last week I was clearing some space in one of our bookshelves on the floor, and it took the kittens about fifteen seconds to go across the room and be inside the newly created bookshelf space. And of course closet doors are notorious difficult to open without attracting the attention of a kitty or two. It’s a very different world than ours to explore if you’re about eight inches tall, sleek, and graceful.
Here’s a photo of Charlie retreating under our bed, the space under our bed being a very defensible position.
15 July 04
The Secret Garden
Well, it’s not really so secret: this vaguely illegal garden sits at the corner of J and Second Streets in Davis, right next to the railway lines. It changes with the seasons; it’s bedecked with plastic pumpkins around halloween, which morph into poinsettias in time for Christmas; full of pastels for easter.
This garden is tended by someone who-like Al of the 71-doesn’t have a whole lot in the way of possessions. But he (I’ll call him Arthur, though that’s not his name) is of the world, perhaps more than you or I. Because he just decided, one day, to make this little corner of Davis more beautiful so that a benefactor might be able to see it on his way to work by bike. Just like that. (He waters it copiously with a hose from across the street.)
The garden that started out with a couple of potted plants is growing, and now has a second section to the right of the photo. Nobody can really see it from a moving train, and many people who head down 2nd Street barely give it a thought. There is nowhere in Davis quite so colorful.
Which just goes to show. Our gardener friend is colorblind. (It’s a secret.)
This post is for the Ecotone Wiki’s joint blogging topic, Secret Places, for July 15. The wiki has recently been vandalized by spammers; we’re trying to keep it up and running but it’s a bit of a battle.