skip to main |
skip to sidebar
I haven't posted much in a while. But then, I don't think people read this much, so probably no harm done.
Reasons. There are reasons. We just moved, so the last two weeks have been a time-suck of cleaning, painting, hauling and acquiring. We're almost done, yet nowhere near done. Our old house in Brisbane still needs to be cleaned and painted... and there's still some lingering crap of ours we need to collect. The new house is coming together well - we got the stereo hooked up yesterday, which really makes it feel like home, but we are distinctly lacking of furniture, namely bookcases. There's a hulking mound of boxes taking over our living room which speak to this fact.
We already had a guest, however. My good pal Emily came out for a visit last weekend, which was great except when I came down with a terrible case of consumption. Nonetheless we spent some quality time riding the cable car, drinking yummy Irish coffee, leering at cute pickle-selling hippies at the farmer's market, cavorting on the beach and drinking until we couldn't feel feelings. Sean was a good sport and took her hiking on Mt. Tam last Monday while I stayed at home and coughed up my pleura.
Here's a pretty picture of Emily just before she mounted the cable car. (Yup. I said mounted.)
So, I'm back at work (they were very understanding about my plague) and have to say I'm mighty proud of how much work I accomplished at home when I was sick. Our next project is to wrap up this move, buy some fucking bookcases and really get settled in before we leave over Thanksgiving for Hawai'i with my mom.
And, as if Rachel Maddow, leftist pundit extradonaire, wasn't already Queen of my Universe, the Sunday Times magazine had a little article about her and wouldn't you know it? She too has a Watergate hotel ashtray which she too bought off eBay.
I stand in good company.
Work's been busy lately. The academic year is about to begin (Stanford is on the quarter system, so classes don't start until the end of September. Yes. I find this stupid. I heart the semester system.), so our newest crop of Knight Fellows are upon us at the Fellowship office. This involves helping them in a variety of ways: email and computer concerns, grocery shopping, childcare, prenatal care, insurance, purchasing cars, immigration paperwork, trips to the beach where they shiver in horror: "Isn't California supposed to be warm?"
And we haven't even started orientation yet. But, all this insanity has some great perks - I'm meeting incredible people each day and often get to hang out with their adorable kids. There's free food around, too!
Speaking of Stanford, Sean and I are more than actively looking for a new apartment that's closer to campus, we may have found one. I met a Stanford Art Professor who has a guest house to rent - we're still working out the details, but assuming he likes our dog (and everyone likes our dog, the slut) we'll probably be renting it. Sean and I biked there from work the other day, just to time it. Eight minutes. It takes us 15 minutes just to get to the train station in the morning, never mind parking, riding the rails and biking into campus. Eight fucking minutes. It makes me weep to imagine that I can feasibly roll out of bed at 8:00 am and be in work by 8:30. Oh, the humanity. The guest house is a quirky little property, but has two bedrooms, an ample double living room deal and hard wood floors.The professor, Paul, has a lovely family, so I think this will be a good fit.
We're in the middle of a heat wave right now, it's been close to or at 100F every day this week down in Palo Alto. It's a dry heat, but I'm still ready for the cold air to come back. I miss autumn, when September rolls around I can't help but look forward to crisp air and orange sweaters. Typical of San Francisco and the Bay Area, the seasonal changes are more or less subdued. Summer gets going slowly and lasts through October. December and winter in general mean rain, then everything turns green. I appreciate this more and more as the years go by. Fuck winter.
Guess that's all we have going on. My life feels busy and crammed, yet four paragraphs later I'm running dry on news.
I'll tell you this, I'm getting tired of hearing, reading and seeing anything having to do with Sarah Palin. I'm also tired of answering questions about her. I did not live in Wasilla and knew nothing of her during my time in the interior there because there wasn't much to know, other than her corrupt political decisions, which weren't terrilbly notable becuase, well, most political doings up there are corrupt. Oh, she's pro-drilling? Um... most Alaskans are.
I don't blame people for being shocked. All I knew about Alaska before living there was that it was cold and prone to earthquakes. And something about oil... yeah, oil. Now everyone's finding out that dirty dealings go on up there and that evangelicals can indeed survive, nay thrive, in the sub-arctic.
They can and they do. "God bless" my new blue state.
Day 1 (Thursday)
After an appearance at work, I met Sean and we loaded up on camping-friendly food. (Rice, lots of it.) We drive over the Bay Bridge and on up toward Napa. We really enjoyed driving through Vallejo, which appears to be stuck in 1957.
See what I mean?
Napa is beautiful - brown, rolling hills covered with grape vines and huge winery estates. We also drove through St. Helena which, made Napa look, well, ghetto.
The hot springs we headed to is located in a little po-dunk town, Middleton. Their grocery store was impressive (CA grocery stores are a thing of beauty and delight).
We rolled into the resort and set-up camp along a mostly non-existent creek. There were deer and wild turkey everywhere (gobblers, not the bourbon). By this time we realized we were camping on the sun: it was easily 100F and there was no cold water to be had, anywhere.
After a nap we explored and found the hub of the resort, a 10 minute walk away via a deer-laden dirt trail. The main area includes several buildings and cabins, a communal kitchen and a co-ed changing room. Most importantly, this is where the pools were. Six of them, to be exact: a cool one for swimming, a lukewarm heart-shaped one, a small cool square one, a warm pool (100F), and a scalding square box of lava with it's ice bath counterpart nearby. We slept well that night after an hour in the warm pool
Day 2 (Friday)
105F. I didn't leave the tent much. At the bathroom I discussed the weather with a random naked guy and eventually Sean and I headed toward the action. Harbin had an impressive general store stocked with the sort of shit we generally eat, so we foraged there for breakfast and then pickled ourselves for a while in the warm pool. Sean did attend a yoga class, but I stayed behind and listened to finance podcasts on my iPod. (Nature sure is relaxing when you know how the Dow closed.) That night we braved the dreaded communal kitchen that has a cheerful, busy dungeon feel to it. I thoroughly disgusted a couple seated next to us at the family-style tables by eating almost an entire box of Golden Grahams. They were eating a homegrown heirloom tomato and greens salad. That night the moon was almost full and the sky up there is clear - that may have been the highlight of the whole trip.
Day 3 (Saturday)
By this time, the communal, hippie quality of the hot springs were starting to wear thin. The co-ed changing room and clothing optional atmosphere was refreshing, but also kept people from socializing much: it felt like a big party we hadn't been invited to. We also found ourselves lusting after ice cubes and missing home, so on lark we decided to head home that night, instead of Sunday morning. We broke camp in record time and raced home. I was never so happy to see the fog.
Overall, it was a great trip, I'd go back in a heartbeat, but probably on the off-season.
So, now we're back, facing a pretty busy time. Our hunt for a new house will start in September and we have several vacations lined up this autumn to work around. My job is busy - I'm trying to get an online application system implemented before October. In the end it will make my life easier (software vs. mounds of paper applications), but right now it's sucking up all my time. And the new crop of Fellows are arriving fast and furious with their kids and spouses in tow - today one of the Knight kids told me I looked pretty with my nose ring.
And, oh yeah, last week before heading out to go camping, my boss Jim told me that I have been given a 3.6% raise and a bonus! Not a bad way to start a weekend.
High five.
I'm up late due to a surfeit of sleep today. Besides rising late I took a long nap after lunch. This morning I took Frieda to the beach with my coworker, Lisa, and her friends John and Yosh. The dogs had a great time, though I think Frieda overdid it, her hip is sore and being a crybaby, she's acting incredibly put out about it. Me, I feel gritty - there's easily a pound of sand down my shirt.
This last week was busy. Summer is usually slow around university campuses, but I've got some ongoing projects to slog through. Adding insult to injury, I was also hormonal as hell and that tends to suck my energy away. And make me weep uncontrollably. Nonetheless, I had a productive week, poetically speaking, as I entered out an assload of poems into some contests. (Assload: that would be more than "a fucking lot," though considerably less than "goddamn horrifically vast.")
I'm a little disappointed that we don't have any summer vacation plans - all of our travel is happening this fall. Pairing that with my heavy workload makes me feel a little overwhelmed. I'm also bummed that the solstice is behind us - now we start losing daylight. I realize this happens incrementally, but I mourn the loss of sunlight anyway.
We were watching the first of Frontline's two-part series Bush's War tonight. You know, some light, weekend entertainment. It's both impressive and angering at the same time - the horrible march toward war where almost every player in the administration bowed to the whims of fucking Cheney. It's a finely crafted outline with amazing photos and moving interviews. One realizes, watching CIA and Pentagon officials sit and spill their guts out, that these people were burned badly enough to participate in this documentary. These aren't people who would generally run to the media and let loose - they're truly appalled enough by the adminstration's actions to come out 7 years later and tell their stories. Part two begins with the first attack on Baghdad, the actual start of the aggression. As Navin Johnson said in The Jerk: "Roll the ugliness."
Wouldn't Navin be a great name for a cat? I think it would.
Sean's stepdad has been scanning Sean's baby pictures this week (a fucking lot of them) and many of them are unspeakably cute. This is my favorite:
Posts
