Life of Wry

It was very, very much later than years past, but as of this afternoon, we are stepping off the holiday treadmill–the last of the Christmas decorations were re-boxed, the tree was taken out, the lights down and with that…. holiday season is fini! Final Christmas chore done.

(I actually have a handful of thank you notes left to write… but then, THEN it’s really done.)

It is sort of a three-month thing, isn’t it? About mid-October, you start the holidays kind of gently by putting out a few Halloween-ish things, which get replaced with more harvesty, Thanksgiving-ish things and immediately following that you’re hot and heavy into the crush of Christmas and a house full of red and green things. More or less.

Feels nice to return the house to its normal state… a little clearer of clutter, more open spaces, more room to move, lighter. Way, way lighter. It seems also to coincide with a touch of slightly warmer weather. Hell, the flowering quince is already out and, when working in the garden this past week, we saw other signs of spring growth.

Well. Sure we’ve not seen the last of winter, but I must say, when the whole Christmas thing is over and everything stashed away, especially this late in January, I am almost, kinda ready for spring.

I took no pictures today so will post this.. it’s goes with the moment, as I am currently listening to Jim strumming and picking out “Here Comes the Night” (Them) on Peter’s guitar…

I went to an iPhone photo exhibit in the main gallery of the Davis Arts Center and I took this picture with my iPhone.

How meta.

It’s a Dave Webb. Dave’s an iPhone photographer, artist, writer, musician and a friend. I love his work. We didn’t buy anything at this show, but I did purchase one at a previous show and hung it here… the east wall in our living room.. a little dark for taking pictures, sorry.

Very hard to appreciate in this photo, but it’s the one in the upper right hand corner.  All work on this wall is local and depicts our region and/or city (with a small exception, which I’ll explain). Clockwise from upper right: Dave’s iPhone photo of a farm house north of Davis; Phil Gross’s painting of a building at the Davis train station; Kevin Maddrey’s painting of the meadow behind the Tuolumne Meadows tent cabins on the Lyell Fork, with Mount Dana in the background (tons of sentimental value for us and the out-of-region-not-quite-local-artist exception I mentioned); my iPhone photo of the “lollypop trees” seen from I-80 as you drive into Dixon; Phil’s painting of the hills outside Winters on the way up to Lake Berryessa; Phil’s painting of 8th Street, right around the corner from our house; and in the center, Phil’s painting of an aerial view of the central valley farmlands.

I’d acquire more local works, but we are running out of wall space.

I was sitting in my car, in a parking lot, with my head down for just a moment, organizing my stuff and myself before driving home. Casually looked up and caught this ordinary but also extraordinary wintry sky.

I just love that.

The reason for the trip south was to celebrate Jim’s dad’s 90th birthday, which was officially on Tuesday the 6th. Peter and I had to leave on Monday, however, because school was starting up again, so missed the main event. Jim stayed back so he and his siblings could be with their dad and together celebrate his birthday. Jim flew back today. I was able to upload his photos this evening, so am sharing them now.

Tuesday night at a downtown La Jolla restaurant, Manhattan, Jim Sr. presiding:

Back to the house for cake–a chocolate carmel cake layered with mousse and pecans. There was singing and other protocol… cards, presents, proclamations (I will provide a copy of the proclamation soon!).

Here are Jim and Elisa planning the cake attack..

This is what I can say about my father-in-law: He is one of eleven children all born in the same house in Lawrence, Kansas. He fought in WWII, an experience that I think really shaped and defined him. He is sharp, knowledgable, informed and quick-witted. He is a man of stories–has hundreds of them at the ready, able to pull out as needed, which is always–and a man of books, reading constantly. He loves to cook, he walks daily, and is thoughtful about his health. He is handy, skilled with tools, and resourceful; he taught Jim to build and fix just about anything. He still does crazy stuff like laying floor tiles and building garden terraces (or whatever); he is slowing down just a bit, but not entirely willingly. Besides a formidable mind, I’ve always been impressed by his skin (I know.. but it’s beautiful and clear). He has been married to Elisa, his second wife, for over 30 years, whom he married after Jim’s mom died. He is very, very sentimental.

And for goodness sakes, he’s still driving!

It was extremely meaningful to him to have his three kids join him in celebration on his birthday!

Was looking at today’s pictures on my phone–in search of a blog topic–and a theme emerged.

Color.

Okay? Here goes…

Color shot #1:  Harvested what was left of lemons from the front yard Meyer today (I can say that now because we have a backyard Meyer)… two buckets full, plus the final peppers–serranos, habaneros, anaheims:

Color shot #2:

That time of day again… late afternoon, sun streams in, this time illuminating the bookshelf and shining through the lights on the tree, leaving colorful streaks, which are not seen in the photo, but I still love it:

Color shot #3:

Jim’s out of town so I get to cook. Decided to make Chicken Ina, also known as Grandma’s chicken: skinned thighs with slabs of butter on top, white wine, lemon (squeezed, cubed and frozen from the last lemon harvest), a bit of broth and tons of lemon pepper. Really, tons. Add to that whatever vegetables you want–in this case fingerling potatoes, carrots and zukes–and bake uncovered for about an hour at 350. It almost tasted like mom’s, but not quite (took this picture before adding the wine and chicken broth, which, when combined with the lemon and chicken fat, makes a flavorful broth):

This is where you go if you are that person who–because she was tired and spacey last night–left her laptop on the airport shuttle bus after getting dropped off at stop 42A in the near deserted long-term parking lot, and didn’t realize it until she got home and then had to call a half a dozen offices (at midnight) until she reached the right one and learned that it had been found, and then had to (more than happily) return to the airport sheriff’s office (today) to reclaim it.

Was pretty sure I’d never see that computer again, especially not being exactly sure where I’d left it, but am quite impressed with the lost and found people and especially that nice guy, Bennie Hernandez, the graveyard shift shuttle driver.

I am now a very happy space cadet.

It t’was a very fun and rich trip to La Jolla. Fun because of a few standout activities–UC San Diego, the beach, the Zoo, some nice meals out, some nice meals in, and today, the USS Midway (see below)–and rich because of a lot of family time spent with Frames and Cheyneys we don’t see often enough.

Jim comments all the time: I really like my sibs. Me too. A very congenial bunch (rice episode notwithstanding).

Like so much of the weekend (and the days that followed my and Peter’s departure, as well), much time was spent sitting around talking, standing around talking, sitting & standing around talking, posing just a wee bit when asked:

Jim and Elisa:

Teri and Chad:

Peter and his Grandpa:

Jim and Chad:

Marty and Jim. Jim looks weird because 1) he’s covering his missing tooth and 2) he needs a haircut. Nice. Marty never looks weird.

Then we headed to the USS Midway for a self-guided audio tour. It was a lot more interesting than I had imagined. I was impressed with Jim (Sr) and Elisa going up and down narrow stairs, through narrow passageways with 12″ threshholds… basically, you climb all over this ship that housed thousands of sailors and dozens of planes. It was huge and warren-like and they just explored with great interest the whole time. Well, until they pooped out, but still… impressive.

Some shots of the ship:

The sleeping quarters for the lowliest of the crew–the lower the rank, the lower the bunk:

Here’s Peter trying one on. They kept some of their stuff in the compartment under the mattress and the rest in their assigned lockers.

A mock up of one of the ship’s sundry stores. Of note, they sold Look bars, which would have been my salvation if I’d have had to be at sea:

The flight deck, massive; first time I’ve been aboard an aircraft carrier. The USS Midway’s been docked in San Diego now for ten years, and was decommissioned in about 1991 or 1992. I have to admit, it’s pretty neatly situated there, right next to downtown:

This is a view off the bow, the end where the fighter planes took off. It’s a bit mind-boggling to imagine a plane landing and taking off on the top deck of a ship. The whole thing’s a clever space-maximizing marvel, I must say. Those are our audio thingies hanging around our necks. It really was an interesting tour.

After a few hours onboard, we went to The Fish Market for lunch. I thought it was a perfect fish house and the food and service excellent. And the views. This is its setting–a photo I grabbed off the web. The USS Midway is just barely in view in the far left of the picture:

Afterward, Peter and I were dropped off at a car rental place, where we picked up a shuttle to the airport. My travel buddy on the shuttle (I know, on the shuttle bus? It’s just that I look at my kiddo and can hardly believe how big and grown up he is and I end up sneaking these pictures when I can, and well… there it is.):

And hanging out in the San Diego airport… I liked these 60s-era, aqua couches, equipped with modern-era charging stations and power outlets. This whole scene made me feel all Jetson-y:

Our trip back to Sac included a detour through Salt Lake City, which added a bit of time to our commute, but it was fine and uneventful (except for the fact I left my computer on the Sac Airport Parking Lot Shuttle Bus, but that’s a story for a subsequent blog post).

Here is a nice pic of me and Peter on da plane… he’s so agreeable, isn’t he?

Jim stayed down in La Jolla and hung with his family for three more nights, and the rest of them stayed yet another couple nights, leaving the following Saturday.

A duly memorable birthday celebration!

When in San Diego….

Jim, Peter, Teresa, Marty and I decided the zoo would be a great place to hang out on a Sunday. Warm winter day, crowds at the end of the Christmas season were down… it just couldn’t be nicer. And it’s a beautiful zoo,

I was sorry not to have had a better camera. It’s really fun to focus on the world through the lens.. really forces you to look carefully at your surroundings and see everything as a potential subject. The iPhone, good as it is, is not the tool for the job.. not at the zoo… there is just no way to get close ups; there is no resolution on these at all. Still, it was fun to take a million pics. These are the better ones:

Orangutans:

Flamingos, ducks:

Bonobo:

Okapi butts:

Polar bear:

One seemingly agitated tiger:

And these things:

If you back way up and look at these pictures from a distance with your contacts out, they may look okay. In person, the animals were stunning, hilarious, dazzling, elegant, heartbreaking…

The zoo is so impressively designed and thoughtfully laid out. Hills, vegetation, clever touches everywhere.

This was fun… the Skyfari:

You are waaaaay up there:

And you get great views of San Diego in the distance:

.. and cute 16-year-olds closeby:

We returned to La Jolla and joined the others for dinner at an Italian place called Osteria Romantica, which was good. Walking home, Marty, Peter and I detoured to walk a little on the beach and gawk at gargantuan houses..

… and then crashed.

The day started with palm-tree-against-bright-blue-sky gorgeousness, as they do hereabouts (the parking lot at the Palos Verdes Inn, once the famed Plush Horse and Plush Pony) …

…a quick breakfast with a few Petersons …

…and then a drive along a once-very-familiar patch of I-5 as we made our way to La Jolla. These are the reactors at the San Onofre nuclear power plant just south of San Clemente (and oh my, driving through Camp Pendleton sure brought back a flood of memories)…

Which brought us to La Jolla and UC San Diego and a rambling, self-guided tour around a campus I barely recognized. Seriously, it took about an hour of wandering before I found a landmark, any landmark, that was familiar. That landmark turned out to be Tenaya Hall, my first year dorm:

There was ONE open window in the entire building, and it turns out it was the window of my seventh-floor dorm room (yes!) … as if to say, “Welcome back, Kari! Remember me? Remember gazing out this window to the sixth floor across the way to that guy David’s room hoping he might see you? And remember sitting in this room and listening to Stevie Wonder’s Fulfillingness First Finale (over and over and over), and Jackson Browne’s Late for the Sky, and America, and Dan Fogelberg, and Steely Dan, and John Denver? And remember your first roommate ever, Katie Sullivan, who was a self-proclaimed marxist, lesbian from whom you learned more in that first year than all your classes combined?”

Walking around, I remembered, barely, the buildings in which classes took place, and more the halls in which I saw concerts, dorm windows from which I viewed the ocean, and cliffs on which I wrote very, very bad poetry. I remembered late night runs around campus and trips into La Jolla, Pacific Beach, Del Mar and Ocean Beach for mountains of junk food. I clearly did not really know how to live on my own.

Anyway.. walking around with Jim and Peter, it was a bit embarrassing not knowing where anything was–in my defense, there’s been a shit load of new construction in the last 40 years–but some of it came back, like, “Oh yeah, that indoor pool, and those tennis courts, and the field where I played rugby, and the dining hall and Five & Dime!” It was great to see the on-campus apartment I lived in during my sophomore year:

I think we were on that second floor… it was such a sweet deal. Five women in a 4-BR apartment with full kitchen in the middle of campus, just steps from classroom buildings.

I have to say, I’m pleased to have chosen the John Muir college at UCSD… I mean, John Muir. Pleased that I lived in Tenaya dorm, that Tioga dorm was next door, that I was a small part of, then, what would become so important to me later in life.. Yosemite and all its wonderful places. I hike in the areas around Tenaya and Tioga every year. They are a huge part of my life now, as then…

I particularly loved two classes I took at UCSD and thought a lot about them while walking around campus: 1) “The Nature of Reality,” an extension course taught by Jonas Salk’s son Peter, that really got my young juices flowing. We had to write a detailed account of what our perception of reality was at the beginning of the class and another at the end, after having read numerous books, listened to numerous lectures, and heard numerous spiritual guest speakers.  I would love to read those essays today.  2)  “The Wilderness,” which was a class limited to 100 students, divided into ten sections, each addressing a different type of California wilderness. John Muir college, right? We learned about the history, geology, flora, fauna, survival within that particular wilderness area. I got the Anza-Borego desert, not my first choice, but which was fascinating. The class included a backpacking trip to one’s wilderness area of study with everyone in your section.. which was fun, and a solo trip (though you could take someone if you wanted) for the “final.” I remember both so well.

And I definitely remembered these eucalyptus forests which were so iconic and beautiful:

I remembered the fancy, architecturally-inverted library, which seemed then to be in the middle of the forest, but is now more exposed.

The landscaping around the library and the views from it are really stunning. And it’s been renamed (in 1995), the Geisel Library, in honor of Theodor Geisel–yes, Dr. Seuss–who supports literacy and who’s given them lots of money.

This building was not here when I went to school… it’s an engineering building; note the house precariously perched on top, and reflection thereof–extremely clever, those engineers:

After a couple hours of the somewhat confused nostalgia tour, we left and hunted down our rental house, which turned out to be wonderfully situated with a nice view of the crashing waves, just up the hill from the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club.

Here’s the house–four bedrooms, three baths, large kitchen, dining and living rooms. Very comfortable, nicely furnished and feature rich.

When we got there, the others had arrived, but were out shopping for supplies, so Peter and I headed down to the beach. On our way down the hill we passed an old 60s-style apartment house with an appropriately-vintaged cadillac parked in front… I thought it was neat:

Weird, but in all my UCSD days, I don’t recall ever going to this beach… It was lovely!

Jim took this shot of the pier a few days later.. I insert it here because it’s a nice pic. The sand was mesmerizing.

This is my version, taken this evening…

Returned home, met up with Jim senior and Elisa, who’d driven over from Tucson; sister Teri and husband Chad who’d driven down from Idaho; and brother Marty, who’d flown in from New York City. Marty, Teri, Jim and Chad cooked up a great dinner (don’t ask me about the rice… this will become a great family story, but not just yet). Everyone was a bit fried, but it was a wonderful dinner and reunion. Everyone was looking forward to a great week and celebration.

Traveling weekend… first, a stopover in Palos Verdes for the evening to see my mom, then on to La Jolla to celebrate Jim’s dad’s 90th birthday.

Today was the tedious kind of travel day. We flew this time instead of driving in order to maximize our time and ended up not maximizing our time that much at all.

Driving from Davis to PV, without pushing it, takes seven hours. I have made it in far less time (in my young, invincible and maniacally-driven-to-beat-my-own-record days when I knew, to the minute, how long it should take to get to each landmark along the way and whether I was on track to set a new record… or exactly how I could make up time if I wasn’t), but with a few stops and normal traffic we usually clock in at seven.

You expect flying to be faster, but that’s not necessarily the case, especially if a rental car is in the picture. We’ve found that it’s almost a push–flying taking nearly as long as driving, and the couple hours you might net by flying doesn’t really make that much difference in the long run, so you may as well drive, save money and have your own car while there.

But this trip, every hour was going to make a difference–on both ends–so we decided to fly.

And… well….the hour and fifteen minute flight turned into a seven and a half hour ordeal. We had long lines everywhere we went and a couple of very long waits, some mechanical issues with the plane, a fateful wrong turn when leaving the rental car place, and a bit of holiday weekend traffic.

And it cost a whole lot more. Bonus!

Still… there were positive aspects to the day:

Beautiful sunrise through mist on the Sacramento River:

Some gorgeous views of the shimmery Pacific Ocean as we were approaching the airport, PV in the distance… iphone shot through scuffed up plastic window.. still, I like it:

While we waited FORTY-FIVE MINUTES for the Fox Rental Car shuttle to show up…. got a shot of the iconic Theme Building, which I think is closed at the moment, maybe in some kind of transition. Have a great memory of eating lunch here with my dad once when I had a couple-hour layover in LA on my way to someplace else… and he introduced me to the Cobb Salad.

Went out to dinner with my mom and Chris at the Blue Water Grill–an old fish house standby down by King Harbor–and Peter ordered his first lobster.

I totally admire his spirit of adventure. He didn’t like it all that much, but I love that he tried it, with no prompting from any of us.

And finally… my best score ever in gin rummy against my mom…

Who beats their 85-year-old mom this badly in cards?

Me.