ramblings

A Mime A Minute

2008-02-20T23:13:00.000-08:00

Hi, this is me at our recent Valentine's Day Show

I did this act to the tune, "Venez Donc Chez Moi"

I really got my work out!

Cheese Map of Switzerland

2007-11-24T20:49:00.000-08:00

Cheese is such a part of Switzerland that this map is entirely apropos. In the morning we woke up and had tea and cheese with some grapes and dried beef for breakfast. Then lunch was a salad with cheese in it, and dinner was more cheese slices, plus some baked cheese, and a salad and some dried meats. Snacks were slices of cheese with jelly on them, and dessert was ice cream with double cream on it.

Each town is a kind of cheese. We went to Gruyere and had Gruyere cheese. (Which I have now become addicted to.) We visited Neuchatel, but didn't have any Neuchatel Cheese while we were there. (It's sort of like Cream Cheese.)

We didn't have any or even see any "Swiss Cheese" while in Switzerland, which is ironic, considering how much Swiss Cheese we ate, but none of it had any holes in it.

In Provence, the only cheese I saw was a big variety of goat cheese.

Switzerland has started growing wine grapes on every available surface now, just like California. But unlike California, the hills are so steep in Switzerland that's it's impossible to harvest some of them mechanically. We were there right at harvest season, and there were families out on the hills picking grapes the hard way.

Provence had the best Cote Du Rhone wine that I have ever tasted or ever hope to taste again unless I go back to France. (I guess this isn't news to most people.)
In Valance there was an apertif with a name that sounded like RinTinTin. I can't remember what it was really called, or find it on the internet, but it was local to the Valance area, and was quite interesting and delicious.

Of course, in Switzerland, I had the best Hot Chocolate (Chocolat Chaud) I'd ever had, and they served it everywhere.

So, by the time I got back home, I was completely spoiled for cheese, wine, cream, hot chocolate, and dried meat. I couldn't really find the dried meat around here anywhere, and I barely drink alcohol, so I went on a dairy-products rampage.

If I get over it, I'll let you know...

Until then, Bon Apetit!

Tetre-Vache

2007-11-12T23:22:00.000-08:00

In Switzerland, we stayed with a family of artists. Cows are really big in Switzerland- in two ways. They're a big deal, but they're also GIGANTIC! We saw cows the size of mini vans. There were horses across the street, and they looked small and scrawny- sort of like dogs, compared to the giant, gentle-looking dairy-cows grazing serenely on the rich green grass.

So, it's no surprise that cow art would be popular.
This cow is called a Tetra-Vache.

Danny has a lot more at http://www.delaperouze.ch

And this is a sculpture by Sarah.

After staying in a midaeval-looking town, with a castle and a moat, in an apartment with a bunch of fanciful, fun-loving French-speaking artists, filled with sculptures of fairies and mythical creatures,
one could start to believe in magic.

2007-11-08T22:49:00.000-08:00

I don't know why I was satisfied just to put up some photos and call that an adequate travel-log for a 10 day trip to Europe. It looks like nothing happened, but that we just drove around and took pictures.
It may be because I was in a blank fog after two weeks of trying to get along with nothing but French. I hadn't experienced being spoken to like an idiot child very often in my life, but that was the total conversation while I was there.
Why? Because we went to a part of the world where they consider you are illiterate if you don't speak French. Saying "I don't speak French", is equivalent to saying, "I don't speak."
I did study French for years in High School, but that turns out not to have helped for three reasons
1)It was in High School, which was basically before the dawn of time
2) My high school French teacher was old and reactionary even back then. So, of the French I could remember, the words and phrases were almost like, "Prithee, hast thou an idea of the nearest loo?"
3)The main other languages I've been hearing and attempting to speak since then have been Spanish and Chinese. Example of me trying to speak in Switzerland, "J'aime le comer, merci beaucoup, pero je n'ai besoin de mas. Hao de, hao de, tout est bien."

More next time..

Switzerland

2007-10-16T23:31:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is really what Switzerland looks like.

This is me at the castle at Gruyere.

Here are some more views of Gruyere. It is an old-style town built around a castle. It's right down the road from Bulle.
Ellen will be going to a campus in this location for the second half of her training.

We took a trip to France on the weekend, and stayed in a great town in Provence called Valence. This is the hotel we stayed in there- the "Hotel de France"

From Valence, we drove down the Rhone until we got to the Mediterranean. This was Marseilles.

Then we drove back up through Provence to Switzerland. We rented a car for the week, and drove all over. I had a lot of fun driving an Alpha Romeo through Switzerland and Provence.

But when I drove too fast (over 140 kilometers an hour) the car talked to me in German and told me to slow down.

This is the view from our hotel room in Valence at night. We stayed there on the way down, then on the way back up again. This was the most delicious place in the world. We ate at a fine restaurant that served great Provencial food and local Cote du Rhone wine, and on Saturday morning went to a Farmer's Market, which was what every Farmer's Market in California wishes it could be.

And then we got back to Switzerland, with its green hills, cows and peaked roofs.

This is the town we stayed in: Yverdon. It is a little North of Lausanne, on the South end of Lac Neuchatel.

The first school we visited was in Lausanne. Here are some photos of Ellen and me at the lake (which is called "Lac Le Mans" although for some reason people call it Lake Geneva) in Lausanne.

But the school she decided on is Glion in Montreux. It's actually on a hill overlooking the town, which is why it's called "Glion-sur-Montreux".
Did you know they have a statue of Freddie Mercury in Monteux?

Anyway, this is the sidewalk in front of the school. You can see it on the right.

And here are some views from the school cafeteria:

Attitude

2007-09-03T23:39:00.000-07:00

Here are a few more New York photos.

This is the library, not a museum, believe it or not.

Relaxing in Central Park.

Enjoying a delicious dessert.

And a final attitude for this entry.

New York jobs

2007-08-21T23:19:00.000-07:00

I recently went to New York for the first time and I was really struck by the variety of jobs there are in New York compared to other cities.

For one thing, each apartment building has a doorman 24 hrs a day who knows every inhabitant and watches over them like your mother. So thats 3 door men per apartment building times 100s of apartment buildings in New York. There are also people selling things on every corner. People passing out fliers, actually selling newspapers in piles on the sidewalk corner like you see in movies, selling flowers, tourist items, or even old used books.

Then there are transportation workers. Each street is completely full of taxis and limos in Manhattan- almost no privately driven cars. There are also a lot of buses and a huge number of subway stations, lines and cars.
Here's a picture of Grand Central Station, which is just one of the subway stations (although it is the biggest)

Speaking of touristy things, there are a huge number of jobs relating to tourists. People selling tickets to go on the Empire State Building, the top of Rockefeller Center, or ride the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and to go to the top of the statue of Liberty (see picture).

And here is a photo of Kyra in Battery Park, where there are people making their living from tourists, including selling food and drinks, painting portraits, playing the saxaphone, driving ferries, making un-sympathetic announcements about how everything is sold out and don't even try to get on the ferry, and maintaining the bathroom facilities. But this photo shows the big NO sign: NO skateboarding, rollerskates or anything else. Although there is a lot to do in New York, it generally is a place of no sympathy.

There is a HUGE retail business in New York, such that every other store I've been to pales in comparison. And in every store there are a zillion different jobs, including running the Ferris Wheel in the Toys R Us in Times Square. This is a picture of Ellen riding on it.

Then it seemed to me that any musician who is any good has a job waiting for him in New York, or can create one. Everywhere I went had live music- every street corner and in the many many theatres. Here is a picture of a concert in the park at Lincoln Center.

One job in New York City, that you can't find too much in other cities, is working in a museum. They have a whole street lined with museums, and each museum has 100s of rooms, and each room has a person standing in it to answer questions, give directions, and tell you to keep your hands off the objects.

And of course we can't forget the job of buggy driver- there are probably at least a hundred of these. Most of the guys I overheard who were lined up ready to take people on a drive seemed to be Irish. Don't know why that would be, but I guess Irish buggy drivers can find a position in New York.

Another job you can't really get anywhere else is working for the UN. There also seems to be an embassy for a different country on each block.

There are a lot of others, including the Stock Market, and every type of support job for the stock market and banking and investment. I could almost feel the current of the world's money flowing through the veins of the city. And there are public safety and support, firemen and policemen who actually stand around looking helpful and will give directions and be friendly. As well as the antithesis of every type of illegal activity you can want, including shifty salesmen on the sidewalks selling shady shades out of briefcases.

Of course, there are religious workers from every religion there is, including priests working at some of the most magnificent cathedrals in the world.

So overall, I was favorably impressed with the city, and glad to have met and seen at work the people who make it their home.

Kittens!

2007-07-03T22:48:00.000-07:00

We got a couple of kittens, and so I took some pictures of them. This one here, is Panda. He's the most photogenic.

This is Tigger. He rarely holds still. He's always tring to catch something and eat it. Panda is more playful, and find's Tigger's tail an endless source of entertainment.

They always want to go out and play. Twinkie babysits them when they're outside, but we don't make him do it too much.

But they're still young, so they often just curl up wherever they are and go to sleep.

History of the Island of California

2007-06-09T18:16:00.000-07:00

The island of California got its name from the first glimpses sailors in the early 1500s had of waves crashing against its rocky shores with the golden 12' wingspans of the California Griffin soaring above: Kalli - "beautiful" ornis-"bird". They were Spanish sailors, but at the time they were reading a lot of novels which named things using Classic Greek, so the Greek was given a spanishized spelling and pronunciation and became "california".
At the time, only women lived on the island. They were Amazons, descended from the beautiful and powerful Queen Calafia. Queen Calafia had commanded an army which included 500 griffins. Although the number of griffins in royal service were much fewer by the time the island was discovered by the Spaniards, they were still a powerful force, and the Spanish sailors were not allowed to land.
But when they went back and told the story of the beautiful women they had seen on the shore, wearing armor made of gold and pearls and very little else, more ships were sent. Cortez' ship got lost and went to South America. They thought they had found the land of the amazons, and so even named the major river there "The Amazon", and they wandered around for a long time looking for gold, while the gleeful native inhabitants directed them this way and that, always with, "It's just over the next hill!", "You're almost there, only one more day's march!", and other misdirections.
A few other ships actually made it back to California, and were able to land, by power of numbers. The Amazons fought them with their skilled archery, their javelins, and with the help of the lean and powerful griffins. The sailors had brought guns and cannons. With covering fire from the ships, some of them rowed to shore and made their way inland. As they came round a hill they spotted a magnificent city, which they described in their words, "castles of enchantment- grand towers, temples and edifices that seemed to rise from the water, all constructed of stone and mortar." They were looking at what we now know as the capital city of San Francisco.
But they weren't destined to get any further than that, for a large force of galloping centaurs, led by the famous Lord Garlante charged down on them, killing most of them before they could load their weapons.
The survivors made their torturous way back to the ships, and thence back to Spain, with even more glorious tales to tell.
Queen Isabela was fascinated by a country ruled by women, and didn't want to pursue a military campaign against it. Tempted by tales of women and gold, many men tried to get further than the rocky shores, but it took a man who had taken a vow of chastity to finally accomplish it.
Father Junipero Serra landed in San Diego in 1769. This was far south of the most inhabited part of the island, and there was no gold that far south. He brought silks and linens and items made of steel to trade and give as gifts and made his slow way up the western coast of the island until he reached a camp outside San Francisco. (The Amazons called their city Falka, but the Spanish name of it has stuck.) There he met with Lord Garlante, who was now quite old (centaurs' lifespans usually being around 200-300 yrs), and the Treaty of California was forged.
This treaty allowed human men to live on the island for the first time, opened trade with foreign nations, and allowed prospectors to obtain Prospector's licenses (for a hefty fee plus a tax on any gold they find) from the ruling monarchy of California. This was in 1772.
There were several wars going on in other parts of the world, so no one besides the Spanish really started arriving until the 1800s. Then they came in droves. American and English gold prospectors came in the great gold rush of 1849. Chinese saw the business opportunity and started flooding in right after them. Irish, who were finding very little to eat, came over, and loads of leprechauns smuggled themselves on the ships, lured by the promise of gold.
What these people found out after they'd purchased their expensive prospectors' licenses, was that pretty much all the gold in the mountains had already been mined by the griffins, who had been there for 2000 years, were expert miners, and lined their nests with gold. Whatever gold wasn't in the nests of the griffins was worn in the official armor of the amazon rulers. None of the prospectors hit a mother lode, and they all were too broke to pay for a ship back home, so they stayed.

New Pop Song

2007-04-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

Oh, baby, I was feeling so blue,
When you left me I didn't know what to do
Then I checked my phone and a call was coming through
My hopes were rising when I saw it was from you....

But
It
Was
Just

Your Butt Called Me
Your Butt Called Me
Your Butt Called Me
Whoo whoo whoo whoo

Your Butt Called Me
Your Butt Called Me
Your Butt Called Me
Oh-oh oh no-o0

I could hear your voice coming from a far
Laughter and glasses, it sounded like a bar
I screamed into the phone, oh baby it's so hard
To hear your famous pick up lines when I don't know where you are

Oh
No
It's
Just

Your Butt Called Me
Your Butt Called Me
Your Butt Called Me
Whoo whoo whoo whoo

Your Butt Called Me
Your Butt Called Me
Your Butt Called Me
Oh-oh oh no-oo

How to Catch a Cat in the Middle of the Night

2007-03-10T17:31:00.000-08:00

Many people such as I, may have been awakened in the middle of the night by a howling cat who wants to be fed and refuses to go out.
The first step in this circumstance is NOT to act as if you want to catch him. Any sudden move will send him scampering under the sofa with his claws dug into the carpet. So first, walk calmly in the direction of the cat food. Look where he is in relation to your body and estimate carefully, as you will only have one chance. Then, suddenly, fall on him like a rock, full-body, while at the same time scooping his legs out from under him. (This move may require some practice.)
Grasp him securely, with hands round his legs, and get up to your feet. Walk straight to the door, shift him to one hand (holding him very tightly) and open the door with the other hand. Then grab him firmly around his middle with two hands and throw him as far as you can out the door so he lands on his feet far enough away that he can't run back in before you shut the door.
The last step is to stumble back to your bed and fall in.

People eat the darndest things

2007-02-26T23:10:00.000-08:00

I spend my days helping people become better at whatever they want to do, to feel better and improve themselves mentally and spiritually. Unfortunately, something has been coming between me and that aim. What is it? That's right:
Food.
I've been finding person after person telling me they are feeling bad. I ask them, "What did you eat?"
"I had a donut for breakfast, a hot dog for lunch, for a snack I had potato chips and for dinner I had some water and then I had some coffee."
Or "I had chocolate and tea for breakfast."
Or "I never eat anything all day until 3:00 pm. Then I have a big cup of coffee and a muffin. At 10:00pm I have my big meal of the day and have a huge steak and pasta".
Or I've had people tell me they can't sleep or they wake up after a few hours of sleep and I ask what they do before going to bed, and they tell me they eat a chocolate bar or drink hot chocolate or eat sugary cereal.
What ever happened to regular food?
There are SO MANY diet foods, plans, nutrition guides and breakthroughs; books on this, that and the other miracle vitamin or supplement, that I didn't guess that food would need to be addressed at all. Food seems to be at the forefront of national and international attention. You can't go anywhere without hearing about food, snacks, diets, gourmet dining, new recipes or nutritional health cures. There are entire empires built on these things and many people who have gotten rich giving advice on what to eat and not eat.
I wonder if there is still a niche in the market?
The problem is, who would buy a book or diet plan called "Eat Your Breakfast", "Eat Your Vegetables" "Don't Eat Too Many Sweets"?
Besides, it would be a very short book. I'd have to pad it with lots of chapters about what not to do, or just make up a lot of gobbledegook for filler.
This is basically all it would say:
1) Eat all three meals a day
2) Eat protein at each meal
3) Eat vegetables and fruits each day
4) Don't eat very many sweets, try to stay away from junk food and sodas
5) Keep to a reasonable amount of caffeine- try to get your energy from slow-burning food and exercise.
6) Get enough fluids in a day- water is great.
7) Don't eat anything sugary before going to bed. Maybe have a light snack with protein and/or vegies. Warm milk or turkey are especially nice for getting to sleep.
Well, that's about it. It does work, so maybe if anyone out there can think of a hot way to market it, we could have a best-seller.

Saturday Night Dance

2007-02-20T00:17:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday night I went to a local Ballroom Dancing class. It was set up in a brightly-lit High School gym, decorated with red hearts and red Chinese Lanterns, pink balloons and pink pigs; celebrating both Valentine's Day and the Chinese Year of the Pig.
The turn-out was good- about 75 nervously sweating middle-aged men and women had shown up. The instructor Paul had us stand in a circle around him, and each man was told to grab a partner and introduce himself.
One man introduced himself to me as Tom. He was about the same height as me, with white hair and glasses, and stood very stiffly. The instuctor showed us the Salsa, and before I knew it Tom and I were holding eachother tight, hips swaying back and forth together suggestively. I just started to get used to this idea when Paul told the men to rotate around the circle to the next woman. So I said good-bye to Tom, and Salvatore came up to me. He was a little taller, with a dark, balding, Latin look, and an apologetic expression in his eyes. He held me gently but firmly, and bagan to Salsa to the instructor's count, chanting "Quick-quick-Slow, Quick-quick-Slow" under his breath.
The night went on, as the men circled around, each one with a new name and look, but each one holding me close, with sweaty hands and an intense look of concentration. When I was starting to get a little dizzy trying to remember the changing circle of men's names and faces, the instructor had us practice spins. Each man practiced spinning me to the Salsa beat until I wasn't sure which way was up. At which point the instructor announced we were going to learn the Polka. "This is an energetic dance," he said, "And should be done quickly. There are a lot of turns, but we won't do the Constantly- Spinning version of the Polka tonight."
I don't know how much more Spinning the Constantly-Spinning Version could possibly have been, because we were spinning A LOT. Round and round we went, skipping, hopping, dashing in little circles around eachother, and spinning, spinning, spinning.
It was time for the free dance now, and Samba music was put on. I was pouring with sweat and feeling distinctly unladylike. I couldn't imagine any man, no matter how old or desperate, being able to hold me tight, swaying his hips against mine. So I dove for the bathroom and stood for a while splashing myself with cold water, trying to slow down my breathing. Unfortunately, standing in front of a bathroom sink invariably entails looking at oneself in the mirror. My face was a bright neon red, shiny with sweat, with my hair sticking to my face. I decided right there that I would leave.
But I would come back next week, with cooler clothes and more anti-perspirant, to learn the Tango and the Walse.

The Dryad

2007-01-25T00:05:00.000-08:00

Around 1920 in Palo Alto, some new houses were built, and trees were planted in front of them. A family with young children moved into one of the houses. The children used to go out and play around the tree. They talked to it and drew pictures for it, and included it in their games. Eventually a shy girl around their age came out from the tree to play with them. She was a bit tall and thin. She had pale skin and dirty-blond hair that had a greenish tinge to it and deep green eyes. She wore a simple brown dress. They asked her what her name was, and when she responded with the sound of a spring breeze passing through leaves, they interpreted it as "Melissa".
Melissa became their dear friend, and although she could never go further than the farthest edge of the tree branches and roots, she was very good at hide and seek. One boy named Ryan became her special friend. They would sit together and talk for hours. As they grew up, he went to school, and they would do his homework together after school, sitting on the grass beneath the tree. The other children became active in sports and other activities that kept them away from home, but Ryan went straight home every day.
He learned gardening and carpentry from his parents, and kept the front yard in beautiful condition. When he was about 14, his father helped him build a tree house. Melissa carefully guided the work so that the tree house and tree were almost one cohesive unit. After that Ryan spent most of his time in the tree house with Melissa.
He wrote many passionate poems to her, expressing his love in deep spiritual terms. One day he had to turn something in to his English class and hadn't prepared anything, so he turned in one of his poems to Melissa. The teacher was so impressed he asked to see more, and eventually entered him in an English scholarship competition. It was the late 30's and money wasn't easy to come by, so his parents were very happy with the possibility Ryan could go to college.
By this time the tree had grown and was beautiful and shaded the street. Melissa was shapely with brownish hair and a calf-length green dress, in the style of the 30's. She talked to Ryan about all the affairs of the world, but somehow was not seen by anyone else.
Ryan won the scholarship, and not just to any college, but to Stanford. He was able to stay at his parents' house (mostly in the tree-house) while studying English and botany and horticulture at Stanford. In 1944 he was a Grad Student, but they were running out of men in the armed services, and he felt it was his duty to finally go, no matter how much he hated to leave Palo Alto. They shipped him off to Hawaii, where he helped man the fort at Diamond Head, but he never really saw any action. He took long walks in the hills of Oahu every day. Eventually his walk was lined with beautiful brown Polynesian girls who could not go beyong the scope of their tree. They through themselves on him, for they had been lonely ever since the old ways had started to disappear. He had one wild night, and then very so full of remorse he stopped taking his walks and saved all his money and bought a diamond ring.
In 1946 when he finally got home, he ran out to the tree in front of his parents' house, and knelt, with the ring out in front of him. It took Melissa about a half hour before she came out- then she ran and hugged him and kissed him, with sweet tears running down her face.
He made the aquaintance of a lot of ministers, and brought them around to his house for afternoon tea, one at a time, until one of them saw Melissa. This one he asked to marry them. The ceremony was performed in the tree house, with the only sister who could still see Melissa as the witness.
Ryan went back to Grad school and got his PhD in English and began teaching at Stanford. Everyone thought he was a bachelor, but with the impassioned love poems he was famous for, they wondered whether he was gay, or maybe he was secretly a Casanova, but they never saw him close with any man or woman.
His parents got old and wanted to move to a Condo in Los Altos in the 50's, so Ryan bought the Palo Alto house from them. He always spent every weekend in the garden, and his yard was the best-looking on the street. The tree became lush and magnificent, spreading its branches over the house. Melissa was able to come in the house, now, so he made up a bed in the room shaded by the tree, and they lived together as man and wife.
Around 1970 his property value started to sky-rocket, and he was inundated with offers to buy the house, at ever-increasing prices, but he always turned them down. He was middle-aged, wearing the braod lapels and wide pants of the 70's, with short greying hair. Melissa was still a young handsome woman, and strangely still dressed in the style of the 1930's.
In the 90's she had barely changed, but Ryan was so old he needed a cane to walk around. One day he collapsed and she caught him. She carried him to the bed and called 911. The ambulance came, but didn't find the cultured young woman whose voice they had heard. When Ryan was released from the hospital, he announced a contest for the inheritance of his property. Anyone who could write an essay explaining how and why they would take great care of his garden and trees and would sign a legal document that they would never tear down the tree or harm it in any way would be entered. He judged all the essays and had the finalists over to his house for the final drawing. One entrant was a Black Baptist Minister from East Palo Alto and his family. When they came over, they politely introduced themselves to Melissa, and the mother and Melissa talked for hours about cooking, gardening, children and world affairs. Ryan knew he had a match, since none of the other entrants had even seen Melissa. His home, which was now worth 2 million dollars, was willed to the minister's family.
About 2 years later, in 1998, Ryan died. The wind blew for days and many of the tree's leaves fell to the ground. The minister and his family moved in and had a housewarming party. The house and neighborhood were so full of life, and Melissa was in the party, singing and laughing for the first time in a long while. They live there to this day, and have found acceptable ways to answer stranger's questions about why there is a diamond ring around one of the inner branches of their shade tree.

Moving

2007-01-07T23:00:00.000-08:00

Since the last blog, we have been moving.
I know it was 4 months ago, but this is what happened:
1) I posted the last blog
2) A week later, my husband said, "We can sell the house now and make a nice profit, or we can keep it, and live in Mortgage Hell for the rest of our lives".
3) I said, "How about selling it?"
4) Another week and we talked to a Real Estate Agent
5) A week after that we got an offer we couldn't refuse
5) For the next couple of weeks I went house-hunting for a nice rental in the area. This included driving to a different house every day.
6) Three weeks after that, the house wasn't ours any more, but we could still live in it for awhile, and we had the largest sum in our bank account we ever saw.
7) The same day we signed the papers for the new rental, to take occupancy in a month or so.
8) The next week was Halloween and Tommy's Birthday. (He got a snowboard).
9) Then we started planning The Big Thanksgiving Family Reunion, with more food and more relatives than ever have gotten together under one roof in our family before, and we also had Ellen's Birthday( she got all the furniture and cool decorations for her new room that she might want).
10) Kyra and Takeshi came and stayed at our house and we had Thanksgiving and we also went to the SF Opera (The Marriage of Figaro).
11) As soon as they left and the house was a total Thanksgiving-Birthdays-Houseguest mess, we got the keys to the new house
12) The previous occupant was the owner. He was still moving out on the day we got the keys. He hadn't cleaned it, and he was supposed to set us up with someone to build a fence for the backyard so the dog would stay in, but he hadn't.
13) I hired a cleaning service for the new house and frantically called fence-builders
14) We went to furniture stores to get a new living room set and new Master Bedroom set, since the old stuff was hand-me-downs from hand-me-downs, Eric's mother having given them to us "for the interim". I decided that the interim had definitely ended.
15) Packing
16)Throwing out what seemed like a houseful of junk, only to find the house was still full
17)Giving away everything I could, having Saint Vincent de Paul and all my friends come over and take what they could
18) Packing, Packing, Packing
19) Sitting at the new house during a 4-hour time frame waiting for furniture delivery men
20) Getting the utilities switched. This was an adventure in itself, because I've lived in Palo Alto so long I forgot that no other town has all services provided by "City of Palo Alto Utilities" or, as Eric calls them, "The People's Republic of Palo Alto". I had to find the Garbage Company, The Water Company and PG and E, each seperately. I didn't even know there was such thing as the water company until they left a note on the door saying to contact them or the water would be turned off.
21) Somehow Ellen had a huge catering job the day before we were supposed to move. A fancy dinner for 35 guests was cooked in our new kitchen before we moved.
22) Moving Day arrived! The moving company came and moved everything.
23) When they were done, I came back to the house and looked around. It was still full of stuff!
24) I was thinking about hauling stuff to the dump, but it was suddenly Christmas!
25) Bought a Christmas Tree, got some presents and stocking-stuffers, wrapped things, bought Christmas Dinner makings, went to a Christmas party, lived out of boxes.
26) We managed not to wrap the moving boxes, and not to unpack the Christmas presents, and had a nice Christmas, complete with stuffed Cornish Game Hens which Ellen made.
27) The dog got some Christmas presents and had a lot of fun playing with them in the big backyard which had a new fence, and which he was finally used to.
28) The cat finally got used to the house and stopped keeping me up all night
29) Ellen told me about a Junk removal company, so they came and took away the junk on the day before New Years Eve
30) We remembered the stuff in the garage and the shed, and I finally took the last load over to the new house today

So that, in brief, is what I've been doing for the last 4 months. The next blog entry should be much sooner.

photos

2006-07-25T23:10:00.000-07:00

Well, I have to report on Kyra's wedding. I know she'll put up beautiful wedding photos, so I am putting up a few less obvious wedding photos.
Here is a picture of the bride the day after her wedding, after she graciously hiked all the way to the top of Diamond Head with family and friends.

Here is a photo of Ellen and Caitlin at the airport when we arrived in Hawaii

This is Tommy with his new brothers, Kenji and Takeshi

And this is poker night, the night after tthe wedding, with Kyra and Takeshi, with Kenji on the other side of Kyra, and Tommy in the foreground, and Spencer on the side.

The entire trip was a lot of fun. Everyone got along well with everyone else, and you couldn't get a better location. Thanks Kyra for having worked so hard to arrange such a perfect way to join our two families in the company of good friends!

Me and my dictionary

2006-06-26T23:02:00.000-07:00

I've been having fun with my Treo 650, which does about everything. Lately I downloaded the Oxford American Dictionary onto it (My favorite dictionary!) and I've been looking up random words I see as I go around town.
The first thing that struck me was car names. There is a Cadillac SUV called the "Escalade". Typing that into my handy dictionary gave me the following definition:

Escalade: n. historical. the scaling of fortified walls using ladders, as a form of military attack

Did they know what they were naming their car?!?! What does that have to do with a Cadillac SUV? The imagination can run wild trying to fit those two things together!

So I started looking at cars more and really noticing their names. And what did I see? They've started naming cars after colors! There's the Sienna, and the Cobalt... Someone in the car world must've had a nostalic moment and broken out their old box of Crayolas.

I like to think of my car, the Maxima, as being named after a gladiator.

Although I do try not to drive like I'm in the Arena.

Harvey and Sheila

2006-06-23T23:04:00.000-07:00

This is one of my most favorite songs. The lyrics are by Allan Sherman and it is sung to the tune of "Hava Nagila"

Harvey and Sheila,
Harvey and Sheila,
Harvey and Sheila,
Oh, the day they met.
Harvey and Sheila,
Harvey and Sheila,
Harvey and Sheila,
No one will forget.

Harvey's a CPA.
He works for IBM.
He went to MIT and got his PhD.
Sheila's a girl I know,
At B.B.D.& O.
She works the PBX,
And makes out the checks.

Then - came - one great day when
Harvey took the elevator,
Sheila got in two floors later,
Soon they both felt they were falling,
Everyone heard Sheila calling,
"Ring the bell," But they fell.
Harv and Sheila fell in love.

Harvey and Sheila,
Harvey and Sheila,
Harvey and Sheila,
Chose a wedding ring.
Harvey and Sheila,
Harvey and Sheila,
Harvey and Sheila,
Married in the spring.

She shopped at A & P.
He bought a used MG.
They sat and watched TV on their RCA.
Borrowed from HFC,
Bought some AT&T,
And on election day, worked for JFK.

Then - they - went and got a
Charge-A-Plate from R.H. Macy,
Bought a layette, pink and lacy,
Then they had twin baby girls,
Both with dimples, both with curls,
One named Bea, one named Kay,
Soon they joined the PTA.

Harvey and Sheila,
Harvey and Sheila,
Harvey and Sheila,
Moved to West LA.
Harvey and Sheila,
Harvey and Sheila,
Harvey and Sheila,
Flew TWA.

They bought a house one day,
Financed by FHA.
It had a swimming pool, full of H2O.
Traded their used MG
For a new XKE.
Switched to the GOP - that's the way things go.

Oh - that - Harvey he was
Really smart, he used his noodle.
Sheila bought a white French poodle,
Went to Europe with a visa,
Henry's rich, they say that he's a
VIP! This could be -
Only in the USA!

The Player Piano Code

2006-06-14T23:16:00.000-07:00

As long as "The Da Vinci Code" is so popular right now, I thought I'd piggy back a story onto that popularity and get some sales.
It's called "The Player Piano Code". It's about New Orleans (also Tie-in to Katrina which is still in the news a year later- see, I know how to sell stories). A player piano roll has turned up with a lot of additional flourishes which weren't in any of the original sheet music by the author. Everyone thought it was just the musician being fancy- until one mathemetician who was looking over the roll discovered very strangely mathematical patterns in the extra flourishes. He runs it through some mathematical calculations and uses a computer to help him and finds--- a code revealing deep secrets that lead him to the old voodoo creole superstitions! They turn out not to be such susperstitions after all, but a clever camoflauge. Where this leads is a mystery I won't tell- it'll spoil the book! But let's just say it winds and intertwines from New Orleans to Timbuktu, to Morroco and Europe, and even to ancient codes buried in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach! (ha- you THOUGH his music was a little too mathematical to just be entertainment, right?)
Further installments may be coming...

Pinnacles

2006-05-30T23:12:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally made it down to Pinnacles National Monument while it was still May.
I saw lots of flowers and barely any bees, which was what I was hoping for. I did sweat quite a bit, so if any sweat bees had been around, they would've loved me! But I was lucky and my sweat was left to pour off my body unhindered by any Metallic Sweat Bees.

Here ia a famous sight at Pinnacles- the Condor Crags

The real purpose of the trip was to take a lot of photos of flowers, so here they are:

Tommy came with me, and we both enjoyed the trip. In order to take all these photos, we had to hike really far (to the top of Condor crags). This was a lot of panting exertion for me, and kind of a pleasant walk for Tommy.

This is what the day looked like

Here are a few photos of Tommy doing various things while he waited for me to catch my breath:

Do you see his arm?

Indoor Haiku

2006-05-21T22:37:00.000-07:00

As I lay in bed, looking up, I write a haiku about what I see:

Hanging upside down
A spider on the ceiling
Waits for a fly.

The livingroom is full of many other haiku-subjects:

A fluffy red dog
Gazes at me hopefully
While fleas leap about.

Cigarette lighter
Lies in between the ashes
And a cardboard box.

Way too many books
Of every possible type
Crammed in the bookshelves.

I continue on to the kitchen, writing haiku as I go:

Muddy paws made tracks
Across a dusty white floor
Surrounded by crumbs.

A primal odor
Comes from deep within pipes
Buried below ground.

I think I'll stop before I go too far!

kids and sweeties

2006-05-15T23:08:00.000-07:00

Here are photos of my kids and their sweethearts.
What's the first thing you notice about them?

That they're happy, right?-

No?

Something else?

Wo bu dong.

Top 10 reasons to have long fingernails

2006-05-09T23:07:00.000-07:00

I have had long fingernails all my life, mostly because they grow fast and I'm too lazy to cut them all the time.

This is what they look like.

Ellen has recently been lobbying me to try to keep them short, so in defense, I have catalogued a list of uses for long fingernails. They can come in really handy in the following circumstances:

1) Peeling a banana or an orange without a knife.
2) Picking the banjo or dulcimer
3) Turning over french fries or fishsticks on the baking sheet with my bare hands
4) No problem splitting the English Muffin
5) They're good for self-defense
6) Scratching the cat's back
7) Getting a hot piece of toast out of the toaster
8) They serve as a stylus for my Palm Pilot and other touchscreen devices
9) Making details in clay models
10) AND I get compliments "Gee, your nails are so long! Are they real?"

So, I think I'll keep them

PS
I have edited my comments section so more people can leave comments. Feel free to leave a Top 10 list in the comments.

Fighting Terrorism

2006-04-28T22:46:00.000-07:00

This photo may be a little dark, but it is a T Shirt Tommy got in Bandon. The words on the bottom say, "Fighting Terrorism since 1492".

Here are a few more photos from Bandon, as I exercise my new ability to post photos on this log:

This is the dock, with Tommy, Ellen and my Dad walking out towards the river. It was very cold that day.

And here we all are, enjoying eachother's company.

Metallic Sweat Bee

2006-04-23T23:18:00.000-07:00

Down at Pinnacles Park about an hour and a half south of me, there is one of the most diverse population of bees on the entire planet. There are around 400 different species of bees in the space a little smaller than the size of San Francisco.
There are steep hills and places to walk and many different flowers on the hillside- blues, yellows, pinks, purples- it's like a city for bees.
This one is the Metallic Sweat Bee.

I just really liked the name of it. There's got to be some use for the name "Metallic Sweat Bee". It seems like something from some kind of science fiction Star Wars robot society setting. It's actually a very pretty insect, although my first attempt at putting images on my blog didn't really show it in its best light. There are some much nicer pictures of it at a site called "What's that bug?"
Another interesting bee at Pinnacles is below:

This is the leaf-cutter bee. I was able to get a better picture of this one. These are solitary bees that build their own nests in rotten logs by carefully cutting pieces from leaves and using them as building materials for their nests.

They say that May is the best time to go down there and see the bees, when all the wildflowers are in bloom. That's pretty soon. I'll let you know if I make it down there, and if I do, I'll try to take pictures.

Hard Cash Lane

2006-04-15T22:35:00.000-07:00

We recently went to visit family in Bandon Ore. We took Highway 5, and so exited at Highway 42 to go west to the coast and Bandon. Along this route, I learned more street and town names than I had ever heard of before.
First, we exited at Green, to shortly get to Tenmile. We then drove about 40 miles or so to get to Twomile. But to get there, we had to go past Remote. After we passed Remote, we were all the way in Norway. There were several bridges on the route, but only one sign that said "Bridge". It turns out that was the name of a town we passed through.
We passed Cow Creek Road, which is the route to get to the towns of Dad's Creek, Cornutt, Peck and Riddle (and of course, Cow Creek).
The streets are named anything you can think of, but the ones that stand out in my mind are "LEEP" and "HARD CASH LANE".
Somehow the street names don't show up on Mapquest. They're just nameless roads according to the map. But the streetsigns say otherwise.
I recommend a drive down Highway 42 in Oregon. Not only is the landscape beautiful, but it's the only way to see the many and varied streetnames of the Camas Valley.

Random Name Generator 2

2006-03-31T21:39:00.000-08:00

I have found somebody using my Random Name Generator: The people who send spam!
They have to make it look like the sender is a real person, so they just use a randome name generator and put the results in the "From" box. There are Confirmation of Free Gift messages from several people in a row with names like "Kelly Moss" "Laura Proud" "Paul Kent", etc. I wonder how I collect my royalty?

In another bend of the Lombard Street of my mind, I have thought about all the prequels to "Dune". Here is an excerpt from a pre-pre-pre-quel written by Homer Simpson:
" One day Mr Atreides sat down at a cafe and thought about the future.'I wonder what my descendants will be doing thousands of years from now? Maybe they'll turn into a giant worm!'"

Speaking of giant worms, I finished crocheting a baby blanket for my friend yesterday. I didn't really intend for it to turn into a giant worm, it's just that I kept making loops and pulling them through, and pretty soon my hands and crochet hook were out of control and it was a long thin curly fuzzy pink...Worm! I tried to fix it by steadfastly adding layers, but somehow each layer was a little longer than the last, so it started curving in a perfect arch. It was about 5 or 6 feet long and 8 inches wide and I had already used 3 skeins of yarn and my freind's baby was going to come in a week! My only hope was to connect the ends and make a giant circle. Then it looked like a big flared skirt. I resolutely filled in the middle, then joined it all together in a burst of wishful thinking. I shook it out, opened my eyes and... it looked like a nice, oval baby blanket, exactly the right size, and like I planned it to look like that from the start! Yeah!

White People's Names

2006-03-09T00:58:00.000-08:00

I've been looking at my family tree recently, a part of which is of the Cherokee line.
These ancestors of mine were obviously trying to fit in with the white people who were now everywhere, and you could tell they were trying to give their kids white people's names.
"What are white people called?"
"I don't know, they all have names like William or Willie or Jesse or something."
So my great great grandfather, whose name was Jesse, named his kids William(who died young), a girl named Jessie, then William, next was Willie, Edwin/Edward and Sally(my great grandmother).
A couple of generations before that they had an even harder time. It looks like they only found White names from books. These are the names of my great great great great grandfather and his brothers and sisters:
Henry, Mary, Rattlinggourd, Pink (Pinkney), Martin, Mark Anthony, Hardin, Washington,
Jefferson, Susan & Elizabeth.
A different part of my family tree was made up of pilgrims who came to America very early. Many of them married natives, one of whom was very religious-a "praying Indian", and they named their son Ami Ruhami. This is something from the Bible, which I guess is a different way of finding White People's names.
I think they would've been better off with my Random Name Generator, don't you?

Hokkaido Popsicle

2006-02-12T22:28:00.000-08:00

I just read this book by Isaac Adamson called "Hokkaido Popsicle" which is really funny. He goes on wierd little tangents in the middle of the book which have nothing to do with the story. I just have to excerpt one bit for you here- don't worry, it will not give you any clue about the story, but will give you a great example of Adamson's writing style:

" Every time I got a song stuck in my head I thought of Yunbo Umezawa, the lead singer of Autumn Wind. During a free show in Yoyogi park back in the eighties he was leaping around stage and cracked his head on the mic stand. He tried to soldier on, but they had to stop the show because the only song he could remember was "Postcards from Fuji." The condition didn't improve. He ended up visiting neurologists, Zen masters, Shinto priests, African witch doctors, Mongolian shamans, Malibu astrologers and when all else failed even a licensed psychiatrist. But it never got better. He could talk just fine, and even managed to write new song lyrics, but every time he opened his mouth to sing, out came "Postcards from Fuji." His loyal bandmates tried to make the best of it. They went into the studio and recorded the fifteen different versions of "Postcards from Fuji"- including a spoken-word version dubbed "Phone Call from Fuji" and a techno remix called "E-Mail from Fuji." Of course, Umezawa still sang the word "postcard" rather than "phone call" or "e-mail" in all the choruses. The album "Messages from Fuji" managed to chart, thanks to an ingenious marketing tie-in campaign featuring a booklet of actual postcards of Mt Fuji designed by famous artists, but it was a trick you could only pull once. The band split. Yunbo, last I heard, was working at Mt Fuji as a tour guide. "

Valentine's Day

2006-02-10T19:41:00.000-08:00

It's going to be Valentine's Day soon, and according to Tom Shane, time to give your sweetheart a big diamond.
Personally, I don't know what use a big diamond has, except making a really good drill or saw. The inmates of a prison might really appreciate a big diamond, but they're probably not allowed there.
I guess I'll have to stick with chocolates.

All that jazz

2006-02-07T22:51:00.000-08:00

KCSM just finished their winter fundraiser and amazingly made $400,000! I'm glad they're able to keep going since it's practically impossible to find jazz anywhere else. Even in LA where they have a station called KJAZZ, when I tune in on the weekends it's usually Blues and old rock from the 50's. And in Florida- well, it's about as easy as finding sushi.
I've been listening to jazz as long as I can remember, though I didn't always know what it was- lots of jazz on the radio in the early 60s, which I went to sleep by as a little kid. Then when I was a young teenager I sang a lot to myself with sounds instead of words, and my mom told me it was called "scatting" and got me an Ella Fitzgerald record so I could hear how it was done. Then in High School I played the trumpet in a local community band filled with middle-aged men, and we had fun playing Li'l Darlin and Satin Doll and a bunch of Dixieland.
But it wasn't until Kyra was in High School and all her friends were in the Gunn Jazz Band that I started listening to KCSM. Someone she knew was listening to it, so she turned it on one time when we were in the car- and I've kept the car radio preset to that station ever since. (Even when I got a new car.)
One adverse effect of listening to them all the time is that one of their main underwriters is SEES Candies, and I have to say I've definitely had the urge to run out and eat a few SEES from listening to them being mentioned on the radio. Tastey, but not REALLY, strictly speaking, good for me.
I'll try to keep this blog more up-to-date, and I'll have other things to write about-much sooner than 6 months from now.

My New Hobby

2005-06-09T16:17:00.000-07:00

I have been taking people from out of the country on day trips of San Francisco. In planning these trips, I've realized that there are a near infinite number of completely different trips one could take for a day to San Francisco and vicinity.

I'm planning another one tomorrow and I'm actually really enjoying it. San Francisco is really one of the most interesting, diverse, and beautiful cities in the world.

If you would like me to plan a little trip for you, let me know.

Fortune Cookie Laws

2005-05-16T17:51:00.000-07:00

I've always wondered how the fortune-cookie-makers come up with the things in fortune cookies.
I wonder if there's a list of "Don'ts" for fortune-writers. Like:

DON'T SELL MORE CHINESE FOOD
"You will live longer if you eat healthy Chinese food"
"Using chopsticks helps ease carpal-tunnel syndrome"

DON'T MANIPULATE THE STOCK MARKET
"Sell all your Microsoft and CocaCola shares today"

DON'T SCARE A PERSON TO DEATH
"If you see the color red in the next 20 seconds, you will die soon"

A lot of fortune cookies don't have fortunes in them. Just statements of fact:
"You have many warm and loving friends" or advice "Laughter is good for you".
So, there isn't any fortune cookie law that it has to actually be a fortune.

It seems there aren't really any fortune cookie laws, just general guidelines that a fortune cookie should attempt to make the person reading it feel a little bit more happy or optimistic after reading it.

I'm glad I sorted this out, in case I ever become a fortune cookie writer.

Random Name Generator

2005-05-14T22:05:00.000-07:00

Since I like to write Sci Fi sometimes, and you always have to think of names for the people in these future, not-quite-like-now societies, I devised the idea of a "Random Name Generator":

This thing would take a consonant or consonant combination (like "th"), then a vowel (long or short), then another cononant or combo, and that would be a guy's name.

For instance:
The first consonant would randomly come up with the sound |l|, the second would come up with a short 'e', and the third would come up with randomly a |k|. Then the character in the story would be named "Lek".

For girls, it would be the same, but with another vowel at the end, so a girl who had gotten the above random sounds would get a random vowel at the end, and might be "Lecky" or "Leki".

You would get lots of normal guys names like "Ben", "Sam", "Luke", "Dave", etc, but you'd get odd-sounding ones like "Choll" or "Fet", etc, and it'd sound realistic but otherworldy- just the way Sci Fi names should be. Of course if it came up with things like "Shit", we wouldn't saddle our poor hero with that name, but just roll again and come up with something else.

I also thought of writing a book set it a society that named their babies like that, but instead of randomly, just in order. So the first boy born would be "Bab", the second would be "Back", the third, "Bad", and so on. The first girl would be "Babba", then "Babbie", "Babbo", etc. This would be instead of numbers. I don't know how many combinations there would be I'll let someone else have fun with the math on that one.

Animals

2005-05-13T23:18:00.000-07:00

My cat was waiting to escort me into the house when I got home. He walked with me through the door to ensure I made it safely in. Once I got inside the house, my dog took up the post, walking a little in front of me wherever I went, to ensure wouldn't trip over anything but him. They both protected me from talking to any other member of my household, and sat staring at me when I took a seat.
Eventually I bent to their will and gave my dog some treats and opened a can of catfood. I walked out to the porch where the cat's dish was, banged the can onto the dish and then threw it in the recycling. This loud noise startled the bird that had just built a nest on the eave of my porch. She jumped up and flew randomly to the nearest open space, which happened to be through the open door into the livingroom.
She banged around trying to fly through windows and eventully perching on the hanging lamp right above the diningroom table. The cat saw his opportunity and ditched his canned food in favor of something fresher. He was a streak of coiled iron muscles, straight up the chair and onto the table before I could catch him.
I exiled the cat to a spare bedroom while my husband convinced the bird to perch on his finger, and carried her outside.
The bird didn't stop chirping for quite a while, and finally she flew off to find her mate and tell him the exiting story. The cat went back to eating his canned catfood, confident in the knowledge that the bird's nest was right above him, and she'd be back.