Life of Wry

I’m not sure why we don’t see these people more often. There were years we saw them more or less monthly because we used to hike on a very regular basis, and when not hiking might be snowshoeing, or celebrating a holiday, or something. Subsets of us have spent weekends in Napa, and certainly Echo Lake. We even traveled with the whole lot of them to Italy once and hung out in a farmhouse in Tuscany, and a couple of apartments in Rome. We go way back (about twenty years or so), but we just don’t see each other as often these days.

But still great friends, still enjoy one another immensely, and still always talk about getting together more often.

We met a couple days ago in Colfax for dinner–about 45 minutes up the road.  It’s an old-timey, Sierra foothills kind of town… both the historic Lincoln Highway (40) and the main east/west Union Pacific rail line run through town. Some photos:

Many nice touches:

We ate at Cafe Luna. I guess they’ve just recently relocated, having outgrown their old digs due to their growing popularity. Food was fabulous–casual, but locally grown and thoughtfully/artfully prepared. No pics of food, but here’s their sign:

After getting kicked out (they were closing), we walked around town, continuing numerous conversations:

It was fun.

I managed to catch this stunning display of nuclear fusion the other day.. a spectacular explosion of great force that filled the sky with luminous reds and yellows–radiation that emanated from a galaxy far far away.

iPhones have really upped their photographic game.

Either that, or it’s a very blurry picture of a particular firework, captured from the top of a 12′ berm in Community Park on Saturday night.

Every town should have its own song. I’m sure a lot do (New York New York, I Left My Heart in San Francisco come to mind). And maybe even some of those were written explicitly for that city. We have such a song, The Davis Song, written by Heidi Bekebrede.
We are one of the lucky few.

Here are Heidi, Dianna Craig, Frank Fox and–drumroll–our good friend Bill Cavins, singing it in the park last night at the Wednesday night Farmer’s Market community picnic extravaganza (a weekly affair).

They’re all so darn cute, especially Bill.

Here are the lyrics:

The Davis Song

16 miles from Sacramento, heading west on 80.
You will find an oasis where avenues are shady.
Laid out on a grid of alphabets and ordinal numbers,
You’ll find merchants selling pizza, cars, groceries and lumber.

Folks go ped’ling to and fro, to work, to shop, to classes.
Others sit and chat at cafes, clinking ice–chilled glasses.
Some would rather jog about, or do some skateboard jive.
Yes I guess, I really must admit, some people drive.

The city I sing of is DAVIS.
It’s the place the UC Regents gave us,
Over hundred summers are the norm I better warn ya.
D–A–V–I–S C–A Spells Davis California.

Aggies, bikes, tomatoes, Picnic Day, green belts and vet school,
Farmers Market and the Rec Pool
Amtrak stops here umpteen times a day,
What more could a person ask for, what more can I say? Oh!

Pu-tah Creek, the Ar–bor–ee–tum, Cen–tral Park, you just can’t beat um.
Solar homes and a sloooow freight train through town,
I don’t understand how any one can put it down.

The city I sing of is DAVIS. Where the peace of mind I crave is
If I ever move I know I’m gonna mourn ya,
D–A–V–I–S C–A Spells Davis California
Some may laim we’re in the sticks…please write 95616
…And now that we are oh so great, we’ve added 95618.

Written in 1987, updated in 2007. Arranged, I’m told, by Wayne Gottlieb.

How ’bout that?

And if you want to hear it sung–not quite able to tease it out of either the picture above or the lyrics–it can be found here or here. Video credits: GovernorWatts (for Dan Wolk) and Bev Sykes. Thanks, guys.

This is why I’ve been getting up early in the morning. Can ya blame me?

Really. About a month ago, I devised a time shift plan. I now set an alarm for 6:00am and actually get right up. I’ll tell you why in a sec. For this to work, or rather, for this to feel good, I have to get enough sleep, which means I have to go to bed earlier. That going to bed earlier thing is a tough customer, however. I am one of those people who can’t just skip off to bed. I have things to do… like: 1) check off all my little tasks of the day–can’t check ’em off unless I’ve done them; 2) organize everything for the next day, including the to-do list; 3) make sure all is tidy and clean; 4) actually turn off the computer and put down my phone (WHAT?!, what about all the stuff to read and news to catch up on, and pictures to look at, email to respond to), and; 5) maybe take another crack at that Spider hand (I can’t move on to the next game until I’ve won the one I’m on, which sometimes takes days).  I might even want to read… like, a book. I know, weird. If only I had the time.

And there are the nightly bathroom procedures…  the things we have to do to preserve our teeth, skin and eyes… I swear. These alone take about fifteen minutes. Jim’s in and out in about 60 seconds. Me…. too many lotions, potions and processes. It’s ridiculous.

And I’m not kidding, until about a month ago, my turn-out-the-light time had slipped to some certifiably wee hours. It was pretty common for me to look at the clock and consider it early if I was turning out the light by 2:00am. Not unusual for it to be 3:00am. There were more than a few 4:00am’s.

I was starting to worry about myself.

Okay, so, I had to really get committed here, roll this thing back. And I did!  I’ve been going to bed a whole lot earlier than before. I still do that whole list above, and all the pre-bed shinola, except I start much earlier in the evening.  Oh, and I made one other adjustment… I made this one little tiny new rule: NO PHONE IN BED.

This one tiny thing has been the single most effective time saver ever–maybe in the whole history of smart phones. At least for me. This no-phone-in-bed thing has actually gained me at least an hour on both ends… I go to sleep earlier, and I get out of bed earlier.

My plan is working; early to bed, early to rise… that really is a thing and I’m actually doing it. Living the dream.

And this brings me to my whole reason for getting up at six. The light is beautiful to look at and I really enjoy the quiet and I just love being up, for sure. But it’s also about making a major mental shift. It’s amazingly satisfying, for example, to be done with the whole exercise part of the day–at least the regimented part–before Morning Edition‘s even gone off the air. To be moving on to other things while it’s still early in the morning is so rockin’ I can’t even tell you. This has been not just about structure (I’m a serious structure person already), but about feeling a lot more accomplished, a lot more in control of my day, a lot more ahead of the game….instead of feeling like a slug. It’s disorienting to be slothing through your morning–even if it’s your exercise routine you’re slothing through. I’m very weirded out by an 11:00am shower. Not the way it’s supposed to be. Slow starts, slipping schedules, and activities that feel random are the bane of retirement and I’m just not having any part of that. Can’t, gives me the creeps.

And I’m likely to shift my day even further. Six doesn’t feel early enough. Plus, I’m really liking these early mornings. Plus I’m feeling like some kind of superhero and am digging myself.

Call me Atom Ant.

It’s odd to feel tired so early in the evening (for example, it’s 6pm as I type this and I’m totally falling asleep and we haven’t even gone to dinner yet). But feeling tired motivates me to go to bed early. Makes me start the whole nighttime operation much earlier. Which feels great.

What a revelation.

Feel like somebody’s grandpa…like soon I’ll be stuffing kleenex into my sleeves, or coming down with arthritis… but wth.

Walking home from the movies tonight.

Hey, how’s that for a Tuesday summer night… dinner at Sam’s (chicken schwarma = perfection) and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl at the Varsity (not perfection, but entertaining enough).

I don’t mean to be cute with this title. Stevie Wonder’s album was the anthem of my freshman year in college and I played the vinyl right off that disk. But the title also made me wonder (did I just say that?) about the key of life. Nothing heavy here, just like the idea of such a thing.

Everyone’s life’s got its own unique key. Even a family sort of plays along in its own key. And this photo immediately reminded me of that, in a literal kind of way.

Maybe you can tell I took this photo while hiding in shadows far far away in the kitchen?

Not all who wizard, wizard well. But we all wizard willingly.

Speaking for myself, anyway. As least as pertains to cooking wizardry.

Cooked a lot this weekend, and mostly it was fun. Usually is. Some of my efforts came out okay. One came out unintentionally crunchy. I don’t have comprehensive pictures, but I have some, so here goes:

For the Fourth of July party at the Bairs, Jim and I contributed a couple of different kinds of toasty appetizers.  So, I started by making some little toasty things–sliced baguette, sauteed in olive oil…

Which became…

bruschetta

(bruːˈskɛtə; bruˈʃɛtə)

n

1. (Cookery) an Italian open sandwich of toasted bread topped with olive oil andtomatoes, olives, etc

[C20: from Italian bruscare, from abbrustolire to toast]

The other one had cream cheese, smoked salmon, cucumber and fresh dill:

Both were good. Success.

The next day, was the mostly-quarterly Divine Divas. This time the theme was southwest cuisine and my thing was drinks. So I made…..

A California peach sangria–dry white wine, brandy, peach puree, sugar, limes, peaches and a sprig-o-mint. I have no pictures, but it was good and lead to immediate head swooning.

I also took these…

Prepared them thusly…

(that’s finely chopped, coarsely chopped and juiced)

…and made a Watermelon Aqua Fresca (just add a little sugar, if needed, and lime juice).

I have to say, it was exceptionally good. Only modification I’d make–unless you like drinking your drinks with a spoon–would be to juice all the melon, rather than have various-sized chunks to negotiate.

The drinks went over well.

Because Madeline, who was to bring dessert, was called out of town at the last minute, I made a southwestern-y dessert, too. Chose a Dulce de Leche Rice Pudding.

Dulce de Leche can be a labor-intensive process that can easily go wrong, so it’s great that someone figured out that if you boil an unopened can of sweetened condensed milk for about three hours, you get a perfect, thick, creamy, rich, brown batch of Dulce de Leche. Which Jim says tastes exactly like the one his mom used to labor over.

I’m not kidding. Look this up.

To make the rice pudding part, I cooked some long grain rice in a quart of whole milk with a couple of cinnamon sticks. It was supposed to be fully cooked after about 40 minutes, but I went 90 minutes and the rice was still slightly crunchy. I figured this was maybe okay, as maybe the rice would continue to cook in one of the later steps in the process. It did not. In any case, I set the crunchy rice in milk aside and proceeded to the next part…

Separated six eggs:

Nice, white-free yolks, huh?

The eggs got whipped together with some more milk, then blended with the crunchy-ish rice. That whole combined mixture then got heated to a very specific 160 degrees, to which was added the Dulce de Leche and some vanilla.

And that was that. Into the refrigerator for at least four hours to set up and completely chill through. It was supposed to be served with toasted slivered almonds, but I forgot them! They may have masked the crunchiness of the rice. Oh well.

I thought it tasted really good, though, and would make it again, but I would make a normal batch of rice and just add it to some hot milk that I’d heated with cinnamon.

Next time.

The rest of the food at both events was fantastic. I am apparently not going to lose any weight before going to Europe this summer. Fitting into my usual hiking and travel clothes is going to require a whole nuther kind of wizardry.

Not traditionally the colors of the 4th of July, I realize.  But it works for me.

As seen near the corner of 7th and G.

No, I don’t know what that means either. But I’m nuthin’ if not bilingually punny.

I just wanted to share a wild adventure I went on today having to do with subjecting myself to a chamber that was chilled to a perfect -166 degrees F.

For half off the regular price, I got to experience cryotherapy for the first (and perhaps last) time. Such a deal. Hadda do it.

It’s not that I didn’t absolutely love it–I did–but I’m not sure it really does anything worth paying big bucks for. It may just be a thing, a trendy thing, a novelty thing, but not a truly therapeutic thing. Which is a bummer, because it’s genuinely wild, weird and exhilarating.

Here’s what the literature says (not just any literature–these are the claims made on the uscryotherapy.com site itself.. so.. I dunno. Wanna believe, but just not sure:

Cryotherapy is the whole-body or localized use of extremely cold temperatures in therapy (-76° to-166°F). The term “cryotherapy” comes from the Greek words cryo meaning cold and therapy meaning cure. The goal of cryotherapy treatment is to offer you better health and a faster recovery from injury. These benefits start with the reduction of inflammation, pain relief, and improved mobility. The cryotherapy process decreases cellular metabolism, increases cellular survival, decreases inflammation, decreases pain and spasm, and promotes vasoconstriction and vasodilatation which leads to increased levels of oxygenated blood delivered to damaged tissue. In the cold temperatures, the blood vessels quickly constrict forming a protective layer while the core body temperature is maintained. The process naturally stimulates blood circulation as the body’s hormone, immune, and nervous systems are activated.

Sound extremely intuitive and rational.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures (imagine that.. not taking your device into a sub-sub-sub freezing chamber).  But I found a couple online that give you an idea…

First, you don a few items of protective clothing…. some plastic under-mittens, some thick wool mittens, a headband that covers your ears, a face mask, and–if you didn’t wear some kind of athletic shoes–some socks and wool slipper things. You remove dangly earrings. You also make sure you’re not wet or wearing excessive lotions. These could freeze, you know.

Tattoos are optional.

The technician gives you a brief overview–how many seconds here, how many minutes there, exit procedures should you feel faint or claustrophobic, and instructions about moving around. Mine also asked me what my favorite song was. Caught off guard by the question, I said the first thing that came to mind: Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car. (I know.. best I could come with under pressure.)

Once safely dressed, briefed, your favorite song established, and mighty apprehensive, you enter the pre-chamber.

This is a space about 3.5′ x 3.5′ which they keep at a balmy -76 degrees. The 30 seconds you spend in this room serves to acclimate you, which you totally appreciate for all the right reasons.

After 30 seconds, the technician comes in over an intercom and instructs you to proceed through another door into the main room. This room is big enough for four people. If you’re by yourself, as I was, it’s big enough to march around in circles waving your arms. Which I did. This is also the room where you hear your favorite song, which is oddly comforting. I sang quietly under my mask. (Please don’t try to picture any of this.) There is a large window so the technician can keep a watchful eye on you. She/he talks to you, as well, counting down the seconds until your time is up. This, as it turns out, is very reassuring.

It starts to feel very cold and you start wondering if this is actually a good idea.

When your two minutes in the main chamber are up, you’re instructed to re-enter the pre-chamber. Coming from a -166 degree room, it feels staggeringly warm in there (and you come to understand how those silly Minnesotans say all those silly things about how pleasant it is outside and how they go out in shirt sleeves when the winter temperatures get all the way up to 22 degrees F, when actually it is not warm at all).

When you finally walk out of the pre-chamber, a whoosh of freezing mist follows you and fills the room, just like the freezing mist that used to tumble out of the freezer in your warm garage.

They quickly scan your skin with a thermometer to see what kind of drop in temperature you sustained (I went from 93 to 47 degrees on my outer skin layer, they said). They noted this as my baseline, helpful for my next visit.

This is what the whole contraption looks like:

This fellow is coming out of the pre-chamber. Note: while he appears a little shell shocked, he is still standing and self-ambulatory!

As I said, this going from room temp to -76 to -166 to -76 to room temp is a very exhilarating sensation. I highly recommend it.

At this point, you shed your protective layers and head over to your choice of cardio machines. I chose a treadmill, and walked the suggested five minutes to re-warm my body.

If you’re there for the whole enchilada, which I was, you then go into a private room where your personal technician blasts extremely cold air on the body part of your choosing (I chose my right arthritic hip) for 2-3 minutes via a unit that looks like a vacuum hose. This is called a localized device and they claim it penetrates three times deeper than an ice pack and, due to its temperature, requires far less time to do the job. That seemed like a very good thing.

Finally, you are escorted into the last of the rooms, this one dark, for five minutes on a hot hydro massage bed (just like a water bed) with some sort of vibrating, rolling unit underneath. This is sublime.

I didn’t see this, but the brochure says they’ve also got a vibration plate. I tried one of these at Davis Swim and Fitness and loved it madly. It’s hard not to smile (or laugh) while you’re standing on it, shaking like a crazy person.

Really, who wouldn’t love all this?

I loved it, but I just don’t know if any of it works. It’s pricy and you feel like you’re part of some kind of late-night infomercial. But wouldn’t it be great if it did do all that they say it does?  Especially the part about reducing inflammation and speeding up the recovery process for damaged soft tissue. I’d be glad to pay if it got rid of this stupid arthritis.

And I could stop cryin’ me a river.

This is one of my all-time favorite New Yorker cartoons.

Men… ya gotta love them.

I was reminded of this today as I watched a few young men work it out at home plate, getting the field ready for this morning’s double header…

Sometimes you’re the guy who traces the large metal stencil thingie in the dirt….

And sometimes you’re the guy who applies the chalk lines to the nicely traced outline….

These guys really crack me up.