14 October 12
A Trip to New York
I took my mother to New York last week. She turns 80 this year and to my surprise jumped on the opportunity for a trip.
Moving slowly seems anathema to this high-octane city but we did. A full day at the Met, focusing only on Flemish painting and Islamic art, mostly Persian miniatures — there’s no way to do the whole Met no matter how much time you have so you have to be selective. We were just very selective. Moving slowly.
I got on the bus back to Davis from the airport. Two large suitcases marked “Heavy” careened around the bus while their owners, weary with transcontinental travel and a small cranky child, looked on helplessly. They got off in Woodland and in their place a bearded man, well-dressed but belligerent, got on the bus after a lengthy argument with the bus driver about whether he was going to Sacramento. He emanated a patronus of stink: vomit, stale tobacco, urine, repelling riders to the back of the bus or even off if they preferred to wait an hour rather than stuff their faces down their sweatshirts. I am cursed (or blessed, in this case) with a poor sense of smell so I made it to Davis, where a new passenger in his 80s in a wheelchair boarded the bus and was strapped in—incarcerated, really—across from the man with the stench by the driver whose plumber’s crack mooned us like some 90° rictus.
I should ride the bus more often.
3 October 12
Bay Area, Baseball Capital West
The baseball season ended today with an outcome nobody was expecting, both Bay Area teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics, winning their respective league’s West Divisions, finishing with identical records of 94 and 68. The Giants clinched their division a week and a half ago, having taken over the division lead about 40 games ago. The A’s path to their division championship was far more astonishing. On June 30th the A’s had a record of 37 and 42 and were 13 games back of the Texas Rangers. Since that time the A’s won 57 games and lost only 26. They finally caught and tied for first place the Rangers last night, and beat the Rangers this afternoon 12-5 to take the title in the last game of the season. In so doing the A’s just won six in a row and eight of the last nine. (For a nice graph showing divisional standings by date see here). The 2012 A’s are a perfect example of why baseball teams are not just the sum of their parts: the players for the A’s are barely known outside of the Bay Area, yet this has been an amazing season for the team.
Baseball has expanded the playoffs this season, adding on a second wildcard slot for each league to make 10 teams in the playoffs all told. The two wildcard teams from each league are to meet in a one-game playoff to determine which team advances to the best-of-five divisional series playoffs. Since one-game playoffs are practically flip-of-the-coin things, no team wants to go through one to reach the rest of the playoffs, so this format increases the importance of winning the division as opposed to settling for a wild card slot. I hope the baseball powers that be don’t further expand the playoffs (I don’t want to see baseball look like basketball where nearly half the teams end up in the playoffs) but this new format has made for an interesting season. Though it’s especially sweet now that our two local teams have made the playoffs without having to go the wildcard route!
28 September 12
Chickens
I’ve wanted chickens for the longest time, ever since before I started caring for the ones across the road. When a friend of Robin’s mentioned she was looking for a home for some, I volunteered.
The coop, an English chicken tractor of very ingenious design, was a big incentive. We have turkeys, coyotes, raccoons, possums, at least five hawks, owls, dogs, cats, etc. willing to get at them and I needed to have a way they could be safe, at least until they figure out what’s up.
I’ve named them Fortunata y Jacinta, from the Galdós novel of the same name. Fortunata is the Ameraucana, right up top, lays light green eggs, flashy, tetona, brash. Jacinta is the more delicate Faverolle, who made a beeline for the bare patch and promptly turned it into a dust bath.
Happy to have them here. Chickens keep it real.
25 September 12
Axle Quest
I cycled home from work Friday thinking I had an awfully loose and creaking front hub and that it was time to adjust it but when I inspected it the axle turned out to be broken. Not so good to cycle on. Rebuilding a front wheel hub is a relatively easy task if one has the parts so finding myself with a spare hour on Saturday afternoon I went over to Bike Forth. This is a bicycle repair collective and DIY tool shop just east of downtown. They have lots of tools and very good spare parts bins, for which they ask a nominal donation to use.
I was reminded of a couple things during my visit. 1) There are always Tricks to repairs. In my particular case I just couldn’t untighten the nuts holding the cones in place. One of the volunteers showed me just how to get the right leverage to loosen these. That’s the tale when I do bike repairs: I know the goal but don’t have the experience to have the tricks to be efficient. 2) There really is quite a diversity of bike parts. Rummaging through their drawer of spare axles I ended up with one that was almost but not quite right. I didn’t finish working on the wheel that Saturday afternoon, but took it home to finish the job, only to decide yesterday I needed a better match for an axle after all, so best I go to a new bike store for a replacement.
The first bike store I stopped at this afternoon was unable to help — it was too old and oddly sized to have it in their parts bin. Maybe I should try going to Bike Forth, they suggested. Better luck this evening at the second store: the mechanic spent about four minutes looking through their collection of spare axles, testing these on a nifty thread socket board, to come up with one that seems like the right match.
I’ll try to finish the job tomorrow — let’s hope my axle quest just ended.
9 September 12
Return -- Canidly
Apologies for the long absence. I have many half-written-in-my-head blog posts strewn over the past month that never made it onscreen. Rather than trying to gather them up, I’m going to jump in again.
I spent time with one of my vet friends on Friday evening. I like vets: they see the world in an entirely different way. For instance: any black-and-tan dog (Rottweiler, Doberman-type) is at huge risk of parvovirus; lumps on boxers should be removed immediately because they often turn malignant, and sighthounds (greyhounds, Afghans, wolfhounds, the big guys) have the reputation of looking for ways to die.
Mixed breeds obviously are the answer, but poor Molly from next door is terrified of gunshot and broke through the fence twice this morning (it’s dove season). She’s a pit bull mixed with a larger breed — boxer? — and is amazingly sweet. Just neurotic. I’m guessing this is not genetic, she was probably shot at before the landlord picked her up at the shelter.
The foxes at the Wildlife Health Center have moved on, possibly because of the parasite loads in their former dens. (Lots of my coworkers have been suffering from flea bites.)
Dog days of summer are over, and I’m trying to figure out how best to preserve the feral tomatoes…
28 July 12
A Day At The Fair
We went to the California State Fair today because Pica was helping Robin Lynde of Meridian Jacobs sheep farm with her stall in the livestock hall. Pica spent much of her time drum carding wool at the booth, an activity which a lot of people were curious about, and I was free to wander all about the fair. After doing an initial pass through the exhibit halls, I started sketching, beginning at the western end of the fair, where all the rides are (at left) and ending back in the livestock hall (see below at right).
15 July 12
This Week, Not on Facebook
1) I went to the Delta, twice, to sample ducks for avian flu. The second time we saw a mink run across the path and I strained my left large toe trying to extricate my foot in a wader from some black mephitic ooze.
2) I wore some lipstick, for the second time in about five years, to a retirement party. It lasted through half a glass of lemonade, so I feel it doesn’t really count.
3) I started rereading Ulysses.
4) I got stung by two bees in the sunflower field while looking for the runaway Charlie in 104° heat (Charlie’s escapades did appear on Facebook, thanks for the mojo everyone). The second bee sting left a big red welt under my right eye which has still not really gone away.
5) Our hot water heater was leaking gas and had to be replaced. This is very bad if you’ve been sloshing around in, and then fallen into, mephitic ooze (see 1 above) and need to get ready for a retirement party with lipstick (see 2 above). Showers trump lipstick in this case. (Actually showers trump lipstick in all cases.) (Lipstick also does nothing to distract from large red bee sting welts, either.)
6) The pocket gophers have eaten three eggplants, two chile plants, one green pepper, three tomato plants, and are working on what’s left in that patch. They seem to be avoiding the basil, which is something of a consolation.
7) Charlie is never going out again without a leash if I can help it, so he will not be available for gopher control. This patch may be a lost cause.
8) I have spun yards and yards of merino silk but the bobbin seems never to grow. I am strongly reminded of Penelope.
9) During yesterday’s Sketchcrawl, which WAS on Facebook and is pictured above, I felt all smug when I actually knew what Pete was talking about when he invoked the famous Uruguay World Cup team of 1930 in Paris. I’m still not sure Spain’s light blue alternate kit is a homage to that team (why would it be?), but it’s fun to think about.
6 July 12
Developing Meaning
I spent last week up at Calligraphy Northwest held at Reed College in Portland, this year’s edition of the largest calligraphy conference taking place in North America, with 500 participants. Workshops ran 2 1/2 days and 5 days; I took a 5 day course entitled “Developing Meaning” taught by Brody Neuenschwander, which was an exhilarating workshop on improving the textual content of our calligraphy works. Prior to the workshop we had a homework assignment to write three short texts about a significant recent event in our lives, something that shook us to the core. I ended up choosing the pepper spray incident from last November. We used these texts initially for a series of calligraphic riffs and wrote these on good paper to be bound into a book. Towards the end, we started writing out the texts in full into the books. I don’t think anyone completed this task during the class, and I’m still working on writing in the texts. Here are a couple of images from my book in progress. 
27 June 12
More Gray Foxes
So the gray fox family is doing well. Five pups, now about 12 weeks old. I was able to catch the male this evening as he was guarding the whole territory. They make a funny kind of bark, like a terrier but much deeper, growling in there somewhere. (Below is a photo of the male barking at me.)
Having wild creatures like this so close to an urban area is thrilling but also worrying — too many cars going way too fast. For now, they seem fine.
17 June 12
Footie Overload
We just returned from The Graduate, the biggest sports bar in Davis, where we were watching the final matches in Group B of the Euro 2012 soccer tournament. The teams playing were Germany versus Denmark and Portugal versus the Netherlands, and the two matches were going on simultaneously. The two games in the final round of each of the groups takes place at the same time so as to avoid having the results from one match bias the play of the last match, and the concurrency makes for lots of drama. Going into play today any of the four teams could advance, though the scenarios for certain combinations were complicated.
All this makes for an interesting media experience, with half of the many screens in the Grad tuned to one match, half to the other match, and trying to pay attention to what is happening in both matches at once. I don’t think I have ever tried watch two sporting events like that before. I am pulling for Germany and Denmark to go through. But that means that who I root for at any given moment depends upon the scores in both matches. Let’s see — Netherlands are up 1-0….that means that if scores stay the same in the end Germany and Denmark go through, but we don’t want Netherlands to score 2 goals, because they would then go through, but now that Portugal has tied it up, we want Netherlands to score again…and wait, now that Portugal has taken the lead, if Denmark by some chance scores a goal, Germany would be going out…
In the end Portugal and Germany both finished strongly and won their respective matches 2-1 apiece. Portugal will play the Czech Republic in the quarterfinals, and Germany will play Greece. It’s a good atmosphere at the Grad to watch these big footie matches, with quite an international crowd always showing up.