Life of Wry

Walking through Central Park, following lunch.. it’s a beautiful day.

He [singing goofily]:

All the leaves are brown,

and the sky is grey,

I went for a walk,

on a winter’s day..

She: It’s I’ve been for a walk.

He: What?

She: It’s BEEN… I’ve been for a walk.

He: Are you sure?

She: [Long sideways glance]

He [singing thoughtfully]:

I went for a walk… I went for a walk... That sounds right.

She: Nope. Been.

He: ??

She [rolling eyes, reaching for iPhone and addressing Siri]: What are the lyrics to California Dreaming?

….seconds later….

She [reading from California Dreaming lyric sheet]:

I’ve been for a walk,

on a winter’s day…

He: Let me see that…

She [thrusting iPhone in his face]: hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

~~~~~~

I did not take a picture while strolling through our beautiful downtown park (too busy sussing out song lyrics), so went a bit backwards in the recent archive to see if I had one handy. I did not. But I found a couple I’ve taken near the park in the past couple of weeks, which speak to 1) the beauty of a Davis spring (wowsers!) and 2) the fact things are, as my friend Elliot said they would when I got over the flu: looking up!

Very nice to be over the flu. Yes.

I’ve become a great fan of the look down shot.

I’m guess this happens to people who use their iPhone cameras a lot and who find themselves walking from place to place with the camera app at the ready. As we seem to do these days, we are carrying our phones, glancing at them as we commute, even if just from one room to another. This is very embarrassing to admit. But we all do this, right?

Anyway, I’m always looking down thinking, ooh, that’s a cool shot. Why.. I love those angles. Or I’m thinking how it is we never really see what we are looking at until we see it through another lens, in this case the iPhone lens. It always looks just a little finer.

Case in point:

Having just made the bed, I grab my phone off the nightstand and commence to head off to my next adventure, and whoa, what a nice shot that is! All geometric, and the colors and textures I just love.

Rounding the bed, it just seems even better… will ya look at those floors!

Peek around the corner to my office, another nice colorful view:

Well… a series to work on perhaps.

** This is what happens when you’re housebound for a few days, down with the flu, and are a little desperate for something to break up the tedium.

At least the view’s better today.

Yesterday:

Today:

I guess sickness brings up bastardized movie titles.

Me with flu, in nest:

Feeling cockoo:

Best I can come up with, under the circumstances.

How about some of this for a Friday…

Shot in South Davis.. corner of Cowell and Washoe. I don’t know who does this each year, but someone should take them out to dinner or something.

A baseball game on a lovely spring afternoon is already about as good as it gets… but when you add the perks of baseball in the wine country, you raise the bar just that much more.

DHS played the Vintage Crushers today. Wish we’d won; but for a few fewer errors, we certainly would have.

We scored one run the classic way: get on base on a nice hit (in this case a gorgeous line drive double up the left field line in the very first inning), and come home on another nice hit (in this case a hard hit single up the middle). They scored two runs, both on a pair of errors. Their second and winning run came at the bottom of the eighth inning (games are regularly seven innings). You hate to see a walk off run scored on an error.

But hey, our guys earned their one run. Their two came on over-exuberant throws (even good guys make bad throws). Isn’t that the story of baseball?

Still… it was a beautiful day in Napa Valley.

Here is the driveway that leads up to the Veteran’s Home ball park (one of, if not the oldest Veteran’s facilities in the United States, and certainly the prettiest and most fully featured). Domain Chandon is just off to the right:

We dropped the boys off, then, with our usual hour to kill, headed into Yountville for some pre-game iced tea at the Bouchon Bakery… we ran into Wes who had exactly the same idea:

Back to the field in time for the National Anthem. Trees surround the field (and I’m sure the sky is always blue):

The bleachers are fully shaded, which is awesome for the fans. By the time the game was in full swing, the bleachers were nearly full. They attract a lot of veterans who live onsite so it gets pretty lively. They serve ice cream, hot dogs and all the usual stuff, have fun announcers and play organ music, so the whole experience has a nice old-time feel to it.

A few of us went to Habit Burger for dinner after the game. It looked like the entire JV team was in there (they won their game). Then we headed home with the sun setting behind beautiful rolling hills and trees.

This was the only game during the Spring Break. We return to full schedules next week, when we’ll conclude the pre-season with the big fancy Boras Tournament. Peter will likely get some mound time then.

“Uber-hip Brooklynites take great pride in their secular humanist approach to parenting. But when their 17-year old daughter decides to become a Christian, their laid-back, open-minded facade comes crashing down. Oblivion takes a wry look at Nietzsche, famed film ciritic Pauline Kael, and the nature of belief in the 21st century.”

Uber-hip Davisites take their 16-year old son to a play where marijuana is smoked on stage, the f word flies, people roll around on stage in marital affection and a few other potentially squeam-inducing things take place (squeamish if you’re the 16-year old flanked by your mom and dad).  The teen in the story and her parents really go at each other and I wondered if Peter thought, wow, my parents are far more sane and reasonable…Or did he find a lot to relate to.

Here’s the show:

Afterward our whole group, “the Placer County Democratic Hiking Group” (so named by Rick many moons ago) had dinner at a Sacramento Bernardo’s.

Jim, Jimmy Johnson, Linda, Heidi, Susan, Rick, me and P.

I enjoyed the play a lot, especially loved the idea of a play and dinner with old buds, and of especially having Peter along.

Yay.

I’ve still got my head in that memorabilia drawer. I see there is much richness to rediscover–it’s a deep drawer and there are a couple dozen files with very tantalizing labels, and I think I’ll save most of this for a future rainy day…

…but I did get a wee bit sidetracked with one of the Junior High files. I found a collection of notes passed between my friends and me, during class, no doubt, full of teenage girl angst and drama.. and thought they were amusing.

It’s a little strange to actually get inside one’s own 12 year old head (or the heads of one’s friends). As I say, I found a lot of these notes, as well as some cards and post cards.  Girls like to write to one another, it seems. So.. just a sampling (some were not as kind as these):

Editor me wants to make a few corrections!

Boys factor big…

It was definitely interesting to be looking through these files while living with my own 16 year old. He’s either far more mature than I was, or boys are just entirely different beasts. Probably both.

And then I poked a little into a file from the high school years and found (among other treasures), my first ballot stub from when I voted in my first election. In a Facebook post on this subject, I learned that this was a primary gubernatorial election, with a few propositions. The winners in both parties–Pat Brown and Houston Flournoy–squared off in November and Flournoy, as we know, lost. I guess I voted for the loser. Which serves me right.

By the time 1976 rolled around, I’d re-registered as a democrat so I could vote for Jimmy Carter (who won against Gerald Ford– certainly because of my informed vote). I was living in Sweden at the time, so re-registering was no trivial task.

My voting record was improving.

I know I was heavily influenced by my parents when it came time to register to vote. I have strong memories of their support for Richard Nixon. I’m pretty sure my heading in the opposite direction shortly after voting the first time was in part an effort to follow my own conscious, but also an act of differentiation and independence. I’m hoping Jim and I have given Peter the sense that his opinions are his own to develop and how he chooses to express himself politically is his business. But I also hope we’ve raised a person with intelligence and morals and that that will lead him in the CORRECT direction (and not the right one).

Did a bit o’ college touring today, what, with it being Spring Break and all.

For the first time in the history of the universe, Davis High’s break coincides with UCD’s and apparently UC Berkelely’s and San Francisco State’s. So, like, nobody was around. Depending on your point of view, that was either a good thing and a perfect time to explore a college campus, or a bummer. I, myself, was a bit bummed, as Berkeley was lacking its usual crazy energy and Peter had a hard time imagining Berkeley was anything but a serene, quiet place for serious studying. No bullhorns, no gauntlet of religious and political tables on Sproul Plaza to get through, no vendors on Telegraph…. just the occasional jogger and an utterly quiet campus.

Still? We had a blast.

I was in heaven from the moment we pulled out of the driveway; a whole day hanging with Peter, who, when way out of his element, is totally solicitous and on his best and most grown up behavior. We talked and talked and he listened and I didn’t lecture or preach.. because he listened, and we actually conversed. Loved it.

The day was smooth and easy. Easy parking, easy to find bathrooms as needed, easy to find a good place to eat, easy to get around, get questions answered, find what we were looking for, go to the top of things, you know. Nice.

Here are some shots:

Entering campus from the Telegraph side.. through a very quiet Sproul Plaza and Sather Gate:

The redwoods and eucalyptus are so beautiful here:

We covered most of the main part of campus, zig zagging around most of the buildings, then headed across the street (Gayley Rd or Piedmont Ave, not sure what it’s called there) to the new stadium:

Peter really loved this part. Wandered a little inside, where the UC Berkeley Athlete Hall of Fame photos hang. He actually looked for a couple of athletes whose names he knew. Huh. We also saw lots of studs hanging out inside as well..there’s a cafeteria of sorts inside. Pretty nice facility.

Then headed over to find the physics building…and while in that area decided to go to the top of this:

Which was EXTREMELY cool. In all my years of looking at the Campanile–using it as a landmark for sailing, locating Berkeley from all over the Bay Area–it was awesome to go inside, and up! Here are the bells, which typically go off three times a day (we arrived literally seconds after they’d sounded at noon.. would have been great to be at the top for that!):

Here’s a view west and a bit south:

Here is a view of LaConte and Birge Halls… the physics complex, adjacent to the Campanile… Peter was most interested in seeing this department:

Inside Birge Hall is a bust of this guy (Peter wanted me to take a picture of him next to it.. which I did.. but it’s on his phone):

We also hung out at the baseball stadium and track… here is some baseball art, a bat carved right out of the stump on which it stands: Pretty neato.

After a great lunch of pastrami and BLT sandwiches and cookies at a place on Bancroft, we decided to head over to SF State:

It was a lovely campus… I’d never been there, nor had I been in that area of the city, quite… so that was fun. We spent far less time there, but found a neat building (the Cesar Chavez Student Center) with exterior stairs that sort of served as an architectural feature, kind of like a Mayan pyramid, so we climbed that for a great overall view of the campus:

I found this picture of the student center on the web, since mine didn’t come out. This one’s blurry, as well, and it’s hard to appreciate the cleverness of the building. There were actually a lot of really interesting buildings around; I was impressed.

So… tours of two Bay Area universities. Productive outing, I’d say.

The truth is, Berkeley’s way out of reach for Peter, at least as an undergrad, and he has no real interest in SF State. But we figure it’s all good data for later processing; it helps him think about what appeals and what he’s looking for. It’s all context.

Plus, it gives me a lot of time to spend with him.

In order to avoid I-80 rush hour traffic, we returned home over the Golden Gate…

…through Marin, Napa and over the mountain to Berryessa…

It was traffic-free for sure, and really pretty and green… but took longer.

I had been wanting to get up in the hills outside of Winters for a few weeks now, having heard the wildflowers were going nuts out there. The hills are lush and we saw some pretty good lupin action.. as well as some other purply and yellow flowers:

Very green hills..

And maybe because of the rain last night, the mighty Putah was full and raging.

And a final of Peter, who was patient with all the stops:

Love that boy.

This whole business of getting together with one’s friends from kindergarten has really set me down the nostalgia path. The easily-amused me has gotten herself lost in the Kari Memorabilia file drawer, organized by the ever-anal me. I am enjoying, in particular, the My Life 0-10, My Life 11-13, and My Life 14-17 files. 

Inspired by conversations that took place at Saturday’s gathering, and curious about some of the people we talked about, I went in search of class photos, and found a few in Elementary Years files…

Here’s kindergarten, 1961-2, as much as I have (I seem to have cut myself and selected others out… not sure why):

And most of the first grade class, 1962-3 (again, no me):

And I guess we were sometimes allowed to bring our cameras to school and take pictures, so this is one I took with my Brownie of some of my first grade pals on the blacktop (Wendy Cooper, Sarah Beukema, hand on heart guy, Bruce Jewett, Missy Neal, Jeanie Larson, Loretta, Donna Bennett, Lori Spader, Carroll Speich, Patty Keifer and Heather Lewis).

Then we have a nice, largely unadulterated one of second grade, 1963-4 (but again, no me):

While I don’t have my fourth grade class photo (or third, for that matter), I do have a button that my buddy Jeff made many years ago for me… on which he used my fourth grade photo.. if that counts:

And then we skip a few years ahead to fifth grade, 1966-7, the last of the Valmonte years, and this one does have me, and some artful additions, as well.. sigh:

Please forgive me, you guys.