Life of Wry

Very sparkly hereabouts, especially after the drenching rains of the weekend. If you were standing where I’m standing here, you’d feel the softest, most caressing air… not to sound too weird… it’s just very delicate, warm and pretty out today–six weeks, more or less, before the official start of Spring (and about a week or two before Davis’ usual onset).  I’m going to exhaust myself being all dramatic about the earliness of Spring, so I’ll try to just relax and enjoy.

Second and E Streets, in front of Mishka’s, of course.

I think people’s patterns are interesting, as in, is it ever really possible to not fall into the same old patterns, or are we just blippin’ doomed to be who we are, forever and ever. Despite our best intentions? Despite what we’ve experienced before and vow never to repeat? Despite confident proclamations to the absolute contrary not six months earlier?

Do we really never change?

I’m partly being melodramatic and… and partly dead serious. In this case, I’m referring to the annual, so tiringly predictable end-of-year weight gain. Part of me anticipates it, expects it, plans for it. A huge part of me even looks forward to the abandon with which I approach holiday eating.

This year, though, I swear, I wrote a five-pound weight gain right into the budget (so to speak). I set myself a manageable upper limit and gave myself a range that afforded some reasonable fun. I said five extra pounds would be fine. Five, I can work with.

Somehow, I gained seven.

I’d like to comment on the value of rules and limits and how, if they’re ever going to work, you have to honor them. If you said five, then you have to stick to five. If you go to the trouble of coming up with thoughtful, reasonable, manageable rules and limits but then blow through them you’ve violated yourself and will not respect yourself in the morning.  If you violate your own rules and limits you won’t trust yourself to honor those limits the next time and the whole system just breaks down. And you feel like a schmo.

Well, seven was bad, but not that bad, it was only two pounds beyond the allowable five. So I let myself down, but not that badly. But then a couple of days into the new year, when I’d said, because it was the new year, that it was time to get back into that five pound zone, we had this trip to La Jolla to celebrate Jim’s dad’s birthday. Sensible eating wasn’t really going to happen, not just yet, not until we came back. But, and this was bad, in all the walking we did in San Diego, I somehow managed to aggravate an old injury and, long story short, I can barely walk. Going on five weeks now. Moving slowly and sitting a lot. I’ve seen two doctors, seeing another this week, have had an XRAY, gone to Hideshi five times, Kellie the massage therapist five times, been alternating ice and heat, taking heavy doses of ibuprofen…it’s only gotten worse. I’m having a problem.. but the worst of it: no exercise.

The last month has had a few more food-heavy events, a birthday and a house guest.

Seven pounds have become twelve.

And now that thing that was never going happen again, because I’d changed my ways, happened. I was sure it wouldn’t, and it did. Some was just bad luck, but most of it was a life-long pattern playing out.

[Hangs head.]

And now it’s come to this:

… had to get the ladder out and get that box down from the top shelf … and go back to these:

Because nothing else fits.

So tomorrow marks the journey back to square one. And, patterns being patterns–I know this one so well–there will be the motivation to lose weight, followed by the success-fueled certainty that the weight is gone for good, and the new and improved rules and strategies to preclude a repeat of the pattern down the road. Yawn.

Of course this is far more than a weight issue. It’s a fascinating tease of a human psyche home wrecker that baffles, frustrates, challenges and amuses me. When it doesn’t piss me off. These stupid behavioral patterns that we can never seem to wrestle to the ground and pin once and for all. Even when our brains are so smart that we recognize them, can describe them in detail, see them coming a mile away. We can fortify ourselves.. and still they get us.

Well.. there’s always next year.

Chinese New Year falls on February 19th this year and somewhat in honor of that it was decided that our loosely organized and very non-official wine tasting group would learn to make Chinese dumplings, called Jiaozi. Margy and Wes offered their home. Wes made arrangements for four representatives from The Confucius Institute of UC Davis to come over and walk us through the Jiaozi-making steps. And Andy, the wine professor (also the faculty director of the Institute), and Frances, who works at Senders Wine, offered to bring wines that would pair nicely with Jiaozi.

I loved every minute of this evening–always love a hands-on cooking demonstration and am thrilled to learn a little something about which I know almost nothing (I’ve read this sentence a million times and know something’s off, but 1) I sorta like it and 2) I can’t figure out how to fix it).

Here are our instructors:

Dan “Danna” Cao, Sa “Sally” Wu, Mei “Meg” Liu, and deputy director of the institute Dr. Lixia Liu.

First, we donned aprons and hats. Here are Tara and John trying to unfurl an apron–good thing the wine was already flowing.. on many counts.

Here are Jim and Tobin with freshly washed hands…all ready to handle food. (I’m sure this picture will come in handy one day for something.)

Here is the busy scene in the kitchen as everyone got properly washed up, covered, and assumed their position at a station around the island.

Sally was lead demonstrator and was an excellent explainer. Here she’s chopping Napa cabbage, one of the ingredients in the pork stuffing (which also contained mushrooms, green onions, ginger, egg, rice wine, soy, s/p and a bit of sesame oil):

This is Jim stirring the pork filling. Two things that were new for me: stirring with a pair of chop sticks and making sure you stir in one direction only. Sally had a very compelling reason for this which I can’t quite remember. That is indeed a yogurt container. I don’t think that part’s essential, but the dimension works nicely.

They also made a vegetarian filling, which used all the same ingredients minus the pork.

Then it was on to the dough. They’d made a batch ahead of time because the dough needs to sit at room temperature for a couple hours to fully bind, but they showed us how to make and knead the dough, which is very simple (just flour, water and a pinch of salt).  I’ll always remember “the three smooths,” which signify you’ve kneaded sufficiently: 1) hands free of flour/dough; 2) bowl free of flour/dough; 3) dough absolutely smooth and non-sticky.

At this point, they got out the earlier-made dough, which had a great consistency after sitting for 2-3 hours; very easy to work with. The first thing you do is cut off large-ish hunks and shape them into rolls like this.. about an inch in diameter:

Then cut into pieces about 1-1 1/2 inch long. You turn the roll of dough 90-degrees before each cut in order to maintain diametrical symmetry (otherwise the roll would flatten a little bit more with eat cut), and you end up with pieces that look like jumbo jet-puffed marshmallows:

Then you flatten them with the palm of your hand and commence to roll, using a rolling pin that looks more like a thick (1″) dowel.

There is a lot of acquired technique to this and it’s a little hard to explain, but it involves some quick in and out swipes across half the dough disk with one hand, turning the disk a quarter turn with the other hand, and doing it again–in and out. You repeat this many times–and if you’re good and experienced, you’re going really fast–until you get a round, flat pancake-like sheet that is slightly thicker in the middle than on the outer edges:

You put about a tablespoon of filling in the middle, fold the sides up to meet one another in a half-circle, then perform any number of sealing operations. I have a feeling that each chef has his or her own signature technique.  Here’s what they look like… these are all done by amateurs…

…theirs looked a lot better:

They get transferred to a pot of bubbling hot water and boil until all have risen to the surface. Over the course of this boiling process, you add cold water to the boiling water to try and maintain a constant temperature.

They also showed us how to make potstickers. For those, you put oil in a non-stick frying pan, place the dumplings in the oil, add water and cook until the water is gone. These had a very nice crusty finish on the bottom and a wonderful texture. I favored these. Because they’re stiffer (and less slippery), they’re much easier to negotiate with a pair chopsticks, as well.

When they’re all cooked up, you serve with the dipping sauce of your choice.. soy with chile oil, for example.

The rest of us brought side dishes. Tamala made her wonderful broccoli-cranberry salad, Wes made chicken wings and this was the Asian-Style Cobb Salad Jim and I made (which I really liked a lot..romaine, carrots, red bell pepper, green onions, avocado, mandarin oranges, hard boiled egg, served with a dressing of rice vinegar, sesame oil, soy, sugar, ginger and garlic):

Then we ate:

Jim, Frances, Tobin and Wes:

Tamala and Andy (missed Catherine, home with a dental issue):

Wes got the best picture.. all of us at the table in one shot:

Clockwise from Wes’ empty chair: Danna, Tara, Meg, John, Tamala, Andy, Margie, Lixia, me, Jim, Frances, Tobin, Sally.

Tara made another great dessert, this time a lemon meringue pie. No pictures, shame on me. Too busy eating it. A perfect, sweet/tart finish to a super savory, flavor-rich dinner.

Then we talked ’til all hours.

’twas a really nice evening. Came home with a detailed step-by-step recipe and jiaozi how-to.. sure we’ll give it a try some time!

Guess what we finally did today and feel all puffed up about?

All of it, the trust, the wills, the powers of attorney, the advance health care directives…. the consolidation and commingling of current and future assets. The whole enchilada with mole sauce. Done!

Of course this has been on some to-do list or another for about, oh, sixteen years, maybe more. We can breathe a deep sigh of relief that Peter’s status as beneficiary is now official and all the niggly stuff about who takes care of what, when, is set, and who does it after that, and who after that.  And maybe one more who after that.

This process began last November. Four meetings later, and everything, as of today, is signed and notarized. The binders will soon arrive.

A small funny on that note.  The document-signing operation for trusts, wills etc., is almost, but not quite, as laborious an undertaking as when buying a house. Good lord. And so fascinating to watch a fastidious, detail-minded attorney orchestrate the process for you. In front of him was a neat stack of documents (so many documents) clipped together with post-its flagging key sections, each requiring your attention in precise, due order. He’d announce the document, swivel it around, and place it in front of us. Each document had numerous pages, each of which required our initials. There were also signature lines and date lines to be filled out. Re: the date line, we’d decided that for simplicity one person would enter all the dates on all the date lines and that person would be me. So, the initialing, signing and dating process began. All and all, there were dozens of signature lines and nearly as many date lines. Maybe there were even more date than signature lines, I’m not sure, but there were a lot. As I was the date person, I dutifully, if nervously at first, entered “February 2” on all of them.  As we’d finish a particular document, we’d hand it back to the attorney who would square up the pages, re-clip them and place them neatly, face down, on a new stack, just to the right of the other. We were about halfway through the large stack of documents when I realized (“… hey, wait a sec..”) that it is not February 2nd at all.  Poor our attorney. After a few pained expressions, a bit of head scratching, and finally a smile, he left to have his secretary re-print every sheet of paper that contained a date and we had to go back and redo all of those.  He chalked it up to Friday afternoon and seemed pleasant about the whole thing.

Interestingly, over the course of the nearly three months that all of this took, my Uncle Vic passed away and I got to witness the many ways even a well-thought-out, boilerplate advance health care directive can be interpreted and carried out. Experiencing that, as well as being a part of his beautiful, final day on earth gave me some insight into the process. We also have observed in the past couple of months the ambiance in the room at Piedmont Gardens where Aunt Annita currently lives. Because of these experiences and observations we ended up adding a couple of addenda to our own directives (for example, the peace and quiet addendum).

It’s been a gratifying process that we are both glad is done. It’s interesting that it’s called a trust because, intentional or not, the whole thing requires a lot of it. Trust in the documents, trust in each other to even go down this path together, trust in the people who will carry out your wishes in the end.

Going out tonight to celebrate. It’s actually a late birthday celebration with Paul and Janet, but we will also raise a glass to our soon-to-arrive binders.

Today sort of signified a return to normal. Not just a house-guest-free home, but a return to normal with a whole lot of other obligations also behind me. I like this place. I have a heavy social calendar ahead (why yes, yes I do), but that’s okay…should be a fun few weeks, and little in the way of the other. In a few more weeks, baseball will start with a vengeance. Until then, a few projects to give me something to do while laid up with this stupid torn ligament thing and a slate that cries for filling.

Here then are a couple of ahhhhhh photos, mostly because I was goofing around with my macro setting at coffee this morning.

Nothing terribly remarkable, in fact that coffee looks horrible, and that’s not even my muffin.. but macro.

As I sort of understand it, we were have a conjunction of sorts last night with our full snow moon (I think a full moon in February is called a snow moon) and the planet Jupiter. This rare phenomenon occurred on February 3rd, but I got my photo of the event after midnight so it qualifies as my February 4th picture.  So there.

This is what Wikipedia says about such things:

A conjunction occurs when two astronomical objects have either the same right ascension or the same ecliptical longitude, normally when observed from the Earth.^[1][2] In the case of two objects that always appear close to the ecliptic – such as two planets, or the Moon and a planet, or the Sun and a planet – this implies an apparent close approach between the objects as seen on the sky.

Indeed.

What really happened today: Jay took off, after a really wonderful four-day visit.  I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed having him here.

I didn’t get a picture of him today, but here’s one that sits on the shelf in my office..one of my favorite photos of the two of us.. I’m four, he’s three. (Chris is a pesky infant, Matt’s not around yet.)

Jay is a very nice guy.

Jay and I drove down to have lunch and visit with Aunt Joy, Heidi, Miles in Pleasanton. First visit since Uncle Vic’s passing. Good conversation, everyone’s dealing as best they can.

Mostly it was good to be looking forward.

Ate at this Chinese restaurant (can’t remember the name… Chinese something):

Here we are: Aunt Joy, Heidi, me, Miles and Jay.

Sorry about the title. Must be getting punchy.

After a warm, sunny day in the San Francisco Bay, a visitor to Northern California needs to experience the great Sierra Nevada.. and winters are so beautiful, what with all those snow-covered peaks and such. But no such. No snow.

We enjoyed it anyway because Jay’s been living in the heat and humidity of Thailand for almost five years and pretty much anything below 89 degrees is a novelty.

Headed up I-80 to meet Karen in Reno. Jay drove, I snapped pics, like this one: handsome dog in beat up pickup:

Snow on the California side? Even at the summit? Not so much:

Snow at a ski resort on the Nevada side? Some: 

We arranged to meet Karen at Cabella’s, a huge sporting goods store. We are not in California anymore, Toto:

Sigh.

We ate lunch in a fantastic, fantastic restaurant in downtown Reno, The Great Full Garden. Go there; you will not be disappointed:

Then headed up Nevada State Route 431, the Mount Rose Highway, to get some views, snow (hopefully) and cool temps. We got views, a bit of snow, and really cold temps… like about 32-36 or so… nice!  Here we are:

It was so much fun hanging out with Karen for the day. Since Nepal, I’d only seen her a couple of times (hiking at Tahoe once and in Yosemite Valley one summer), so it was a nice reunion. Jay hadn’t seen her in ten years, since Betty’s memorial service so we had lots of catching up to do. (Brief backstory: the Hesse, Peterson and Osborne families–6 parents and 13 kids among us–were the closest of family friends..our parents having met in the early 1950s as neighbors on 39th Street in Manhattan Beach. Dad and Mr. Hesse were colleagues at TRW and worked together for decades. Only two of the parents remain, the kids are all still buds.)

Here’s what it looked like at the Mt. Rose Summit. This is, by the way, the highest summit open year-round in the Sierra Nevada mountain range (8,911 feet). Not much snow, huh?

And the view back down to Reno:

We drove back into town for a cup of coffee for the road, past this nice barn in what should have been a field covered in snow:

You know it’s February 2nd, right?

We all said goodbye, and Jay and I headed back to California via Truckee for dinner at Moody’s. Had chicken pot pies which were really wonderful.

It was a day for contemplating freedom, or the lack thereof. You’ll see why in a sec.

It was a day in four parts (not counting the usual and very satisfying brunch in Davis, in which Kari and Jim run into numerous friends and impress the visiting Jay with Davis’ smalltownness… and also not counting the commute to the Bay Area, in which the lollypop trees–shot through the backseat window at 65mph–are particularly lovely).

I think the trip from Pier 33 to Alcatraz counts as Part I, because boat ride.

From said boat, San Francisco Bay on a beautiful, warm, windless day.

Part II, Alcatraz tour. First time here for all three of us!

Gotta say, it was truly fantastic, creepy and grim. The audio tour was particularly well done. I was fascinated by the voices of inmates, correctional officers, and guards, and moved by the ambient sounds of clanging, slamming cell doors and wind howling through the cellhouse, all of which transported you a cold, dank and despairing time. I also got a kick out of the tour’s clever choreography–the way you were lead up and down the cellhouse rows in a very non-linear way, each person seeming to be on his or her own completely different tour.

Here are some quick facts about “the Rock”:

The island is 1.5 miles from the mainland.

The land was first developed in 1868 as a lighthouse (now the oldest operating lighthouse on the west coast), a military installation and a military prison.

Alcatraz operated as a federal prison from 1934 to 1963 (29 years).

The island was occupied for 19 months in 1969 by a group of aboriginal people as part of a wave of native activism. In 1972, it became a national recreation area and in 1986 was designated an historic landmark. It is now operated by the National Park Service.

Al Capone, Machine-gun Kelly (George Kelly) and The Birdman of Alcatraz (Robert Stroud) were some of its more well-known prisoners.  

There were an average of 260 inmates at any given time. It was, however, never filled to capacity. They caught most who tried to escape (34), but five were never accounted for. The most famous escape was the “dummy head” escape in 1962, the subject of the movie, “Escape From Alcatraz.” 

Alcatraz had 4 cell blocks (A B, C, and D). They didn’t use A for some reason, and D (42 cells) was the isolation unit. B & C had a total of 336 cells.

Here’s a picture of Jim in one of the cells in “The Hole,” part of the isolation unit:

Remind me never to go into the Hole:

Here’s where the general population stayed:

The inside:

The kitchen:

For fun they played cribbage and bridge (not bad!):

And baseball in the recreation yard:

After having sailed around it countless times over the years, I was surprised by how spacious it was.  It is a huge hill and requires lots of walking around (challenging for those with a torn ligament).

Here it is from a distance (postcard shot):

Lots of stairs:

The views were, of course, stunning:

There were gardens (who knew?):

Here’s a close up of the lighthouse:

There are lots of old buildings. This was either a warehouse or what used to be the officer’s club.. now just a bird hangout:

Okay, moving right along.

Part III of the day was a tour of the Ai Weiwei exhibit, also on Alcatraz and spread out among a number of buildings. We definitely gave short shrift to this fascinating artistic/political statement and will come back before the exhibit closes in April, I hope.

Ai Weiwei, born in Beijing in 1957, is “internationally renowned for potent and provocative work that defies the distinction between art and activism.” He designed this exhibit especially for Alcatraz, but couldn’t be on hand to install it because, a vocal critic of the Chinese government, he is not allowed to travel outside China. He developed the art pieces in his studio in Beijing and they were assembled by hundreds of volunteers and park staff on site.

We only saw four of the seven pieces.  Three were in the New Industries Building (and maybe the old laundry facility):

With Wind, is a rendition of a traditional Chinese dragon kite that hangs from the ceiling…

….and is composed of wooden panels with messages written on them, like, “Every one of us is a potential convict” (Ai Weiwei).  This sheet has an Edward Snowden quote:

In the next room, Trace was a sprawling carpet made of legos that depicted the names and faces of 175 “heroes of our time,” people from around the world who have been detained because of their beliefs or affiliations. This was fantastic.. I took dozens of pictures.. here are a few:

How it’s constructed (this is the mouth):

And what it looks like when backed up:

One more:

A friend, Naomi Williams, commented, “I was amazed by this installation, especially by the way it stretched the definition of ‘art’. It’s not just a cool Lego mosaic: it’s also an enormous research undertaking (determining whom to feature), a writing project (drafting and editing the write-ups about each individual), a computer design endeavor (pixelating and assigning colors for the Lego-ized faces), and a complex logistics problem (the actual Lego panels were assembled by dozens of volunteers on-site using schematics from Ai’s studio). Many, many people were involved in the  piece from beginning to end, including the paid docents who staffed the room and had to remind clueless visitors to please not walk on the installation.”

Here is an artsy fartsy shot Jim took of me looking at the Lego piece:

Refraction was a massive sculpture of a bird’s wing that, “uses imagery of flight to evoke the tension between freedom–be it physical, political, or creative–and confinement.”

Naomi said of this, “Again, there was the irony of being on the grounds of a notorious prison, a prison which not one person is known to have successfully escaped, looking at something so obviously suggestive of flight.”

I didn’t get good shots of this, partly because to view it, you had to look through narrow slots of broken, rusted out windows.. which was part of the message of the piece, I think.. liberation, freedom is elusive. You feel trapped and unable to fully embrace the beauty of your surroundings.

We saw one other part of Weiwei’s show in the dining hall of the Cellhouse, not realizing that it was an interactive part of the exhibit. You were invited to choose a postcard addressed to a prisoner of conscience somewhere in the world and engage in a global conversation, speak to that individual and let them know they are not forgotten. We did not understand this and blew right on through.

We managed to make the last ferry off the island, having spent nearly four hours on the two tours. The views returning to the embarcadero were beautiful:

Here’s Jay on the boat in an intense conversation with Jim. Peter opted out of the day in order to watch the Superbowl with friends.

And finally, Part IV of the day was a great Italian dinner in North Beach. The restaurant was virtually empty because it was everyone was watching the Patriots-Seahawks game somewhere.

Great for us.

Great day all around. Great day to be free.