Posts in Category: Day in the life
Misty Mountains, Mystical Morning
Looking south from St Nicholas Ranch into the Kings Canyon area of the Sierra Nevada.
Last week we attended the Winter Family Camp at St Nicholas Ranch. The ranch, run by the Greek Orthodox Metropolis in San Francisco, is located in Squaw Valley near the entrance to Kings Canyon National Park. It was the first time I had been to the retreat, after hearing about it for years.
We had a wonderful time at the family camp. The weather was perfect, but with moments of drama as above. We met Greek families from all over California, from the Bay Area all the way down past Los Angeles. We ate, drank, talked and played. It was great to experience the Sierras again; I have always loved those mountains and been missing them for a couple years. Saturday was spent sledding at Grant Grove. The kids loved that, but I was happy just seeing the giant sequoias, the biggest living things on the planet. They are simply awesome, in the original sense of that word.
The site also has a monastery with a dozen or more nuns. Thus, Sunday started out with the Divine Liturgy in the chapel at the monastery. This was an amazing thing. One enters an incense-filled cavern of gold, marble, and medieval iconography, and hears the etherial voices of the nuns. Huddled over to the right of the altar where you can’t quite see them, they stand and sing for hours, occasionally shuffling and moving things. Softly but quickly they weave their way through the liturgy. Colored light streams in from above. The mysticism of the Orthodox Church transforms everything. Suddenly, a pair of nuns emerge with small incensors the size of a genie’s lamp and fitted with sleigh bells, their faces dimly visible beneath their black scarves; shaking bells in time like a chant, they quickly and precisely float around to each of the icons stationed around the chapel, shimmying the smoking bells as they bow before each one. Just as suddenly they disappear behind the altar screens. The singers continue spinning their soft cloud of sound. Outside the fog slowly lifts.
One day in the waiting room
Efrosini Serafimidis
A couple of weeks ago I got a call from the board and care facility where my mom lives. It was late morning. They said she simply woke up complaining of intense pain and couldn’t move her left leg. She had been in bed all morning. I went over as soon as I could. She was clearly not able to move her leg much and certainly could not stand. But as she lay there in bed, she said she would be okay, that she just needed to rest her leg because she had been overdoing it. Then a little later, she said she had fallen down a couple days before and now it was sore. I had seen her a couple days ago. And the day before. This didn’t really quite add up. That’s not really a big surprise considering she has worsening dementia. Nonetheless, I worried that she had indeed fallen and that I wasn’t getting the whole story from the nursing home. They claimed she just woke up with pain in her leg.
She was actually in pretty good spirits and insisted she would be fine with some bed rest. I already had a lot on my mind that day, so I didn’t push it. I decided I would go back home to finish a couple errands and call the Kaiser advice nurse from there. I described the situation as best I could. The advice was to get to the ER as soon as possible. Which we did.
I started to assume the worst, which was that she had fallen and destroyed the hip replacement she had just had done in May, and from which that she had only just fully recovered. In fact, just two days before when I had seen her she was really getting around great with her walker, and taking a few steps here and there without it. This was part of the reason for my increased worry. She has always been incredibly stubborn. I plead with her to be safe and always use her walker. Which she doesn’t.
We spent all day and evening in the ER. They x-rayed her hip. It looked fine. That was a huge relief. She is so small that the x-ray image got about down to her knee, and the ER doctor saw something down there. So eventually they got another set of shots of the left knee. There they saw a bone chip. The location and lack of bruising suggested that she had not fallen. The doctor opined that something like a sudden muscle contraction could have pulled off a bit of her fragile bone. Perhaps she was catching herself from falling. It also appeared that there was not much to be done about it. After finally hearing back from the orthopedic doctors about her x-rays, the ER doc declared that they would put a brace on her leg and that we could leave. But it was now midnight. Everyone would be asleep at her facility. I would have to get her into my car here, and out at the other end—or pay a few hundred bucks for an ambulance. And she was pretty loopy from the morphine, not to mention tired and in pain when she moved. Moving her at the moment didn’t see like a good idea. So, I talked the doc into keeping her there in the ER overnight so that I could come and get her in the morning. Which I did.
We had an appointment with the orthopedists the following week. We sat in the waiting room. I took some pictures. Eventually we saw the doctor. The doctor agreed that surgical intervention was not worth it. But she cautioned that it would be painful for a while. Which it has been.
Hot Water
The Old Water Heater
Hot water has been in short supply around our house for a few years now. The problem is not so much that it runs out, but that it simply doesn’t get very hot. Moreoever, the water heater seemed to go to sleep with the rest of us, and wake up only when we did. This made the first shower of the day a distinctly less-than-hot one. Something needed to be done.
About a year ago, my friend Jason replaced the water heater in his new house with a tankless system. He offered the water heater, which was actually newish, to me. Naturally, I accepted it and resolved to replace my ancient water heater ASAP. There were, however, two problems: the first is that I am only moderately handy and was not confident that replacing the water heater was within my ability to do with a sufficiently high likelihood of success; the second is that my water heater is down in a small utility basement (with the furnace); draining it down there and hauling it out presented additional challenges. And Jason reported that it took more than a few hours to drain the one he’d removed. All these considerations gave me pause. I didn’t want to take such a prolonged time to replace the water heater, leaving both our house and Rocky’s house with no hot water or perhaps any water, and also risk having to call a plumber in on an emergency basis Sunday night if I screw something up.
I procrastinated for months. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing as I embarked on other projects that seemed less daunting, like painting the kitchen and dining room. That took a couple weeks right there. Or running the speaker cables through the crawl space under the house. Yes, even braving unknown insects and critters in the dark was a satisfactory delay tactic. After several months of this, I started feeling like I really needed to face it. This weekend, the threat of severe marital discord made it a forgone conclusion: this weekend was it.
Of course by this time, the “newish” water heater had been sitting out in the yard, white-trash style, for almost a year. Would it be okay? Would I be calling for an emergency installation of a brand new unit?
Draining the Old One and Pumping It Out
The first thing I had to do was disconnect and drain the old tank. The shut-off valve at the tank did not close completely, so I had shut off the water at the main to the whole house. This led to increased risk should things go sideways, but I proceeded anyway. I finally decided to drain it into a little tub and use a portable sump pump to pump the water up and out to the street. This ended up working very well. The only kink was that (those) in the cheap old garden hose I connected to the pump. (I further resolved that the hose would go into the trash after this job was accomplished.) In fact, the draining of the tank went very quickly, much less than an hour.
Drug the Body Up the Stairs
After this was done, I managed to drag the old tank up the stairs and out to the street by myself without injuring my back or reigniting an old shoulder injury incurred 10 years ago while trying to lower a stove on a dolly down a steep set of stairs. Next, I managed to get the new tank down into the basement and into it’s narrow corner with no problems. I hooked up the water. I hooked up the gas. I turned on the water. Leak…
The Old Water Heater - Connections
I took the stupid cold water connection apart and put it back together again three or four times, trying more teflon tape, less teflon tape, cranking it down more, cranking it down less, etc. Each time it leaked. Finally I got a better light and bent the flex tubing so that I could see in there. I finally realized that the washer had completely deteriorated and bits of it were in the threads. Time to go to the hardware store. I bought a 99-cent washer and, after chiseling out the remains of the old one with an awl, installed it. This time it worked–no leak.
The next test was the real one. Did it heat? Well it took a couple tries to manually light the pilot, but eventually it stayed lit. The burner fired up. Three and half hours and 99 cents later, the new water heater was working! Later that afternoon I scalded my hands at the kitchen sink; I didn’t mind it a bit.
The Replacement Waterheater - All Done!
Chimneys of Albany
Albany Chimney #8
The leaning, the straight. The clean and symmetrical, the organic mess. Squared, rounded, rock, brick, plastered. These are the fireplace chimneys of Albany.
I would hate to apply a misleading name to something. Looking on the web and within Flickr, “fireplace” seemed like it would be more misleading than “chimney” which is also a little snappier. If there is a better word for referring to the exterior structure of the fireplace and chimney on a residential home, please let me know.
In any case, it seems that these houses, like most of the houses in Albany, were built by a builder named Charles M. MacGregor. Around here, a necessary and sufficient condition for dubbing a house “a MacGregor” is that it has the following floor plan: split level with garage at grade, main living area up about 8 steps, and two bedrooms and a bath above the garage. The master bedroom is right over the garage looking out towards the street, followed by a bathroom , followed by another bedroom overlooking the back. I suspect this can’t be a correct definition, but it works well with the rest of the local MacGregor mythology. Me, I look for whimsical chimneys.
I’ll try to dig more on the man and the myth soon.
Blog to Remember: A Recipe for Pasta
As a new means of annoying readers–ahem, remembering things I’ve cooked so I can do it again–I will start posting kitchen exploits. This one, involves last night’s dinner. As usual, dinner last evening was a last minute affair. Searching through the fridge I found a couple packages of grocery store ravioli, like maybe Buitoni, with cheese and chicken. There was not much with which to make a sauce, particularly one that Theo would eat, but I dug around the pantry and fridge to see what I could find. While hunting around the freezer, I saw some frozen peas. That caused me to flash on a dish I remember eating at an Italian place in Fresno about 2o years ago. Unfortunately, I can’t quite remember the name of the place. It was out on Shaw Ave near West. It was owned by one of the kids or something of the Fresno Italian Restaurant dynasty, the DiCicco’s. Wait! Lido’s is what it was called, I think. The place was pretty cuisine-y for Fresno in those days, different feel than the old school chain places the family ran, and apparently still runs. It was a pasta course with a creamy tomato sauce with peas. It was good, and the memory wouldn’t let me go. I thought, “What the hell, I’ll play with that idea and see what happens.”
I found a small onion, chopped it fine and threw it in a hot saute pan with a couple Tbls. olive oil. After the onions started to wilt, I turned the heat down and added a couple cloves minced garlic. I started adding some chicken broth, about 2/3 of a cup, but in about 3 or 4 increments, waiting for each to reduce down before adding the next. I learned this from Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s first book, “The Splendid Table”. I used to love to listen to her show on KUOW in Seattle, and still can’t really believe there is not a single freaking station in the SF Bay Area, self-annointed foodie capital of America, that carries the program. At least there’s a Website and podcasts.
I finely diced a couple smallish carrots, and threw those in with the last of the broth. While that was simmering, I measured up a cup of the frozen peas, and found a large can (24 oz?) of chopped tomatoes in the pantry. Chopped would not do, so I got out my aged Cuisinart food processor and zinged them up really well. I still have the first Cuisinart I ever bought, a DLC-10 plus, which was in about 1985 or so. The model was later renamed The Classic, or something like that. I can’t believe it still runs. Maybe it will outlast me. I wonder if the new ones are still built like this. I’d be happy to endorse their products. At least their food processors. At least the ones they sold in the mid-80’s.
Anyway, I threw the pureed tomatoes in to the pan and let that all simmer for awhile. I’m not sure how long. Perhaps long enough to boil 4 quarts of water for the pasta. Then I added the peas and salt and pepper. After a few minutes of cleaning up, I put the pasta on. Then I had to face facts. I had no cream. And I have NEVER had luck adding milk, or even half-and-half to a sauce. It always curdles. And I was not going to the store now. I stood there staring into the refrigerator and finally saw the Greek yogurt–you know that brand no one can really pronounce, FAH-yeh. Damn that shit is good. Anyway, I got brave and finished the sauce with a couple-three big spoons of that full-fat Fage. I added until it looked the right color.
There was almost enough vegetable matter in it to justify going with it as a one dish meal. So we did. And you know, it wasn’t half bad. Sorry I didn’t get picture. You’ll just have to make it yourself to see it.
Community=trust, or is it the other way around?
So, I roll into my new favorite wi-fi enabled coffee office, and as I am about to order I see that they don’t take credit cards yet, and I know I have no cash, and the nearest cash machine will charge me more than the cost of a cup a joe to give me my own money. And the nearest Wamu-Chase joint is a 15-minute bike ride away.
So, as I am thinking about all this, the woman at the counter, who turns out to be one of the owners, sees the look on my face and says, “no cash, eh?” And then she asks me if I wanna do an IOU? She says, “you look familiar”.
So, I am kind of blown away, because you definitely don’t get this anymore. I’ll be honest, i really liked this place anyway. It doesn’t hurt that the coffee is really good, as are the oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies and shortbread squares, the vibe is cool, the wi-fi is provided without an attitude, minimum purchase requirement, or sideways glance like you’re stealing something.
But now, they have a totally loyal customer for life. This is a down economy, and the restaurant business is tough in the best of times. This place is still new and could probably stand to see more cash flow. So, it is really gratifying to see people expressing trust and building community. One might argue that this is just smart business, and I would not disagree. I just think it is not all that common these days. So, you know, come get some coffee and a pastry. Bring cash.
Maker Faire 2009
Fire-breathing Snail at Maker Faire
I attended Maker Faire 2009 this last weekend with Sarah and Theo. I was not quite sure what all to really expect other than “burners”, art cars, and other alt-artists. It is definitely a scene for Bay Area hipsters.The fire-breathing snail truck, motorized one-person cupcakes, tesla coils, fire-arts displays from The Crucible, body art, etc. set that vibe for sure.
If it were just this, it would have been fine, but it was so much more than this. We went as a family, and the number of activities and other things geared toward kids and families was really great. Theo was totally into it. Of course, for a six-year-old boy, the main buzz was word of a large Legoland display and activity area. Theo wouldn’t settle down until we found it, and then wouldn’t leave it once we did. (We could hardly escape to do the things WE wanted to do.) There were many other building, science and educational activities and presentations going on from groups like NASA and Exploratorium. Sarah and I both came to the conclusion that the Weekend Pass is a good idea; the Faire really demands a two-day visit, and next year we thought we’d spend one day largely devoted to kid stuff, and one day to explore all the stuff we really want to see. I was disappointed to entirely miss Survival Research Labs among other things.
Among the things I checked out was the experimental and computer music section, which was definitely cool. There were individuals there with their own creations, like computer controlled prepared piano, home-built electronic zither things, guitars with sound-sensitive color displays built into the body, and more. I also discovered organizations like Sound Arts, which work to support the sound arts community in a variety of ways. I was actually inspired to try to participate next year. I’m eager to start composing electronic music again, and perhaps put it together with photographic imagery. There were several multi-media tools on exhibit, and the possibilities for interactive mash-ups appear to be very extensive. So, we’ll see..
Beyond the fun of electronic noise-toys, it seems to me that the notion of making your own fill-in-the-blank, instead of relying only on mass-produced consumables for furnishing one’s life, is more important than ever. A quick review of the story of stuff should convince you of that. In fact, among the most interesting and yet slightly disturbing activities we did at Maker Faire involved making things out of discarded stuff, mostly computer stuff. There were gigantic piles of computer gear that were available for dismantling and use as raw material. (I’m not really sure which Theo enjoyed more, destroying a computer keyboard, or assembling its pieces into a robot ship.) The fun aside, the sheer volume of discarded material present here gives one pause as to what must be going into the world’s landfills. Thank goodness for groups like the Alameda County Computer Resource Center, which was a participating organization and probably the source of the “art supplies”, for what they do to stem the tide of electronics discards.
Not that everyone is going to build their own computers. But there were exhibits and activities on everything from sewing, to gardening, to “slow food”, to green energy technology, to bicycling, and how to make your own robot. I’m already looking forward to next year.
Memory Dresser
My dresser for my entire childhood.
This was my dresser for my entire childhood — from day one until the day I moved out as a young adult. It contained many memories. I remember digging in the bottom drawer for shorts to wear on the first hot days of summer; and the top left drawer with socks, folded in the special, partial inside-out way my mother used to fold them that made it easier to put them on. I remember hiding cigarettes in the bottom back corner as a teenager. And some other stuff, too.
One particular memory I have is of the time when I was about 13 that my friend Les Wood damaged the dresser. Les was a strange sort of friend. He was in 9th grade when I was in 7th grade. Les was a little scary. He had a streak that was half thrill-seeking and half sadistic. So, periodically I would have to endure some harrowing experience like being being burned on the forearm with a red-hot butter knife while cooking together, or being hiked on the back of a paper bike and plowing through a row of rose bushes.
On the occasion of the damage, which was around the Fourth of July, Les showed up at my house one day with some fireworks. While I was not looking he dumped out an entire box of snakes on to the top of the dresser and lit them. Within moments the room was filled with a choking sulfurous smoke. The snakes curled out into a monstrous heap of twisted ash and burned through the top layer of the dresser, leaving a shallow crater and wide burned area on the top. I was pretty damn mad; even as a teenager, I had a sense of propriety and pride of ownership. My parents, needless to say, were furious. Les just laughed his little sadistic laugh, his small teeth peeking through a thin-lipped grin.
Les’s attitude and behavior never really improved. Two or three years later, when I was about 16 years old, Les had been kicked out of the house and was living around with different friends, or just in the Chevy Vega he drove, and selling drugs for money. During this time, he gave away or sold almost everything he owned. He sold me his once beloved stereo system for about $20. That was my first real stereo, and I set it up on the top of my dresser. One night, I saw Les and Greg Baker, who had been hanging out together, at Geno’s Pinball Palace. Geno’s was a stoner kids’ hangout in Fresno in the mid-70’s. I saw Les outside in the parking lot drinking an Old English 800 Malt Liquor and extremely high on LCD. At one point he was sitting on the curb holding is head in his hands like a vice, his face red and sweating, trying to not freak out.
A few minutes later he was fine, walking around and laughing. Not many people tended to laugh with him. He asked if anybody wanted to go for a drive, go out to the fig orchards that were once plentiful in northwest Fresno and “go figgin'”. That meant driving out into the powdery soft dirt in the orchard and spinning the car around in circles, raising plumes of dust in a whirl of teenage entertainment. The only taker was Greg, who was probably equally high.
They next day we found out that the Vega had hit a giant fig tree at a high rate of speed and exploded on impact. Les and Greg died nearly instantly, we were told. We never really knew whether this was a drug-fueled accident, or Les’s intentional, final act of defiance against a world he didn’t like and that didn’t much like him back.
In any case, we had a yard sale last weekend, and while the dresser was not for sale, it was out because we used it to display other things that were for sale. I had started to refinish it over a year ago, and simply never got the momentum up to finish.The knobs were off, and only the drawers were really done. Three people asked me if it was for sale and offered to buy it, and by the third, I was starting to think that it probably made sense let it go, and do what we were out there to do: lighten our load. The other furniture had not even gotten a second look. I sold it to a woman for $50.
I guess I’ll have to find something else to keep my childhood memories in.
Staying busy part 4: Time well spent vs. time wasted
I’ve spent another hour poking around and I still have not gotten to the bottom of the comment presentation problem that appears when I use the “black hat” theme for the blog. This really disappoints me because not only did I basically like the theme, but I also spent time customizing it. I suppose that means I could be the cause of the problem. Perhaps I should run the original download and see if the still occurs.
I hope it gets sorted out eventually, but in the meantime, I have changed themes. It has a similar look and configuration except for a couple things. For example, the top nav bar displays categories instead of pages and meta links. I don’t like that one bit. But if I have to learn enough php to customize that much of this, I might as well just fix the other theme.
I suppose it could be useful to learn php anyway. If I already knew it, I’d have a paying contract gig helping a friend migrate his various sites into a WP-based site.
But if I were going to learn php, then the time would probably be better spent learning python, for god sake. So much to learn, so little time.
Staying busy part 3: blog troubleshooting
I am finding that just maintaining a blog can keep you busy, and I don’t mean the writing part. I discovered that some older comments from before I moved the blog to this new address are not appearing correctly or at all. I spent more time than I’d like yesterday trying to troubleshoot the problem. All I have found so far is that it only seems to happen with this particular theme selected. If I switch the look to the default WP theme, for example, the comments appear in the correct posts. How can that happen? If anyone has a clue, please let me know. Are there known issues with the “black hat” theme?
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