Life of Wry

…. a bunch more to go.  But: ONE DOWN! 

College app, that is. Peter walked into my office a few minutes ago, ever so casually….

Him:     “Mom.”

Me:        “Yeah?”

Him:      “Applied to college.”

Me:         “Wow! You did it! Just NOW? Great! High Five!!”

Then lots of smiles and high fives. And maybe just a teeny tiny bit of whooping at a very high volume.

The first was a Cal State University… Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Deadline is November 30. The UC app is also due November 30, and that’s a big deal for him, but he’s still got some details to wrap up for that one, and will likely finish it while we’re on the road… somewhere down in Florida.

After that comes a whole slew of others.. another one or two in California, some others on the west coast, some in the middle and some on the east side. Those deadlines are later and we’ll have to figure out how many really make sense to spend time and application fees on.

But at least he got one in! This process has loomed large for a long time.

As it all winds down, we shall see a huge reduction in our mail!

That bulging basket contains many hundreds of glossy brochures, postcards, and letters… from colleges and universities all over the country–the bane of high school juniors and seniors everywhere. As soon as you take a college entrance exam, like the SAT or ACT, you get inundated with solicitations. So. Many. Solicitations… a very small fraction of which ever gets opened. Just kept throwing them in the basket…

Crazy business this college thing.

Went on quite a lovely date tonight with my buddy Amy… a friend from way back in the new mom’s group days–wine and [fantastic] apps at Vini (I’m telling you… I’m really enjoying that place), then a dance performance at the Mondavi.

Totally girls’ night out stuff. Jim just would not have enjoyed any part of it… ‘cept maybe that bruschetta with the preserved lemons.

I don’t have a full dance review in me… just don’t have the words, and am too sleepy to find them, plus, while I’ve never attended a dance performance that I didn’t love, just because: dance, the show was something completely outside my realm of experience, and apparently, appreciation.

The  dance company was Akram Khan, and they performed kaash, “Hindu gods, black holes, Indian time cycles, tablas, creation and destruction,” with a focus on “physicality and precision.”

Sounds GREAT, but I didn’t pick up on any of that.

The movement was not beautiful to watch; the music wild, often rhythmic, but not entirely pleasing; there was no set to speak of; and there was a sameness to the whole performance–an uninterrupted hour–all of which just left me uninspired. I learned later there wasn’t even a story being told; it was soulful and powerful and largely coordinated, but also in-the-moment expression, different each time they do it.

But there were aspects that will stay with me, for better or for worse: 1) There were large portions of the performance done in silence… the only sound in the theatre was that of the occasional cough or rustle of programs, plus some stage thumping. It was a little disorienting, but interesting; 2) There was a moment, a very long moment, perhaps an entire minute, where the five dancers left the stage and the sound track was a loud, engine-like roar, which got louder and louder as the minute wore on. Very anxiety-provoking, but I won’t forget it; 3) Two of the five dancers joined the show’s director and a moderator for a post-performance Q&A which we stayed for. It was a very small audience, but it was intimate and extremely illuminating. After hearing details of the dancers’ experience of the show, I had a greater appreciation of what I’d just seen. Nice to make a connection between the art and the regular old humans that produced it. They’re young and fierce. What’s not to love about that?

Not sure I’ll rush out and attend another Akram Khan performance, but I learned a lot and was left with a far more favorable impression of the company and what goes into a show like that.

Actually, the most memorable part of the evening may be the moment when–comfortably ensconced at Vini, wine in hand, an array of appetizers spread before (only partially consumed as yet), talking casually about this and that–we realized it was 7:45, the show started at 8:00 and, according to a pre-show email sent to all ticket holders, there would be no late seatings. We were up shit creek and really didn’t have a prayer, but decided to go for it anyway. Amy ran to get the car–parked deep into the train station parking lot several blocks away–while I paid the bill. We then rushed through downtown avoiding an unusually large bunch of Thursday night revelers, got to the Mondavi and decided, for expedience, to park behind the under-construction museum. We RAN the entire way to the entrance, threw our tickets in the direction of outstretched ticket-taker hands, and were urgently directed to the correct door, whereupon ushers escorted us hurriedly to our seats. With seconds to spare, we made it!

Odd performance aside, nice evening.

Jim has undertaken a major project. After watching the file cabinets in his office multiply like rabbits, and the floor space disappear like Putah Creek under duckweed, he decided to purchase a high speed scanner and convert all of his paper files to digital.

The effort started about a month ago and has proceeded steadily, day in and day out, ever since. He has imposed a robotic method to the crazy madness of his office, filling every spare minute with the task.

It is a much needed undertaking. Jim is now up to four legal-sized, four-drawer file cabinets in his teeny tiny office and mobility has ground to a halt. Seriously, you cannot stand in place and do a 360 without knocking something over.

(I also have four cabinets in my office–well, four and a half–but my office is twice the size of his, and I am pathologically clutter-averse, so floor space is ample.)

If he allows it, I will back-fill a photo of the current state of Frame Surveying and Mapping headquarters. It is truly spectacular. (Not to be outdone by his garage, but let us not go there. Yet.) But I think even Jim is a little shy about revealing this aspect of his personality. Someone might be tempted to turn him into a reality show or something.

But hey, the guy’s got more important things to do than create order. That is the purview of his neurotic (and never judgmental (much)) wife. He can turn out projects like nobody’s business while sitting head-high in desk clutter. He is utterly unflapped by what seems like breathtaking chaos to me. But the thing is, nobody (well, hardly anybody) is more productive than Jim, especially when his sights are trained on a prioritized list. I’ve always admired his amazing GSD (get shit done) skills.

Like, for example, this project.  Cabinet by cabinet, drawer by drawer, folder by folder, he has gathered the multitude of pages contained in client and project files, removed countless staples and paper clips (really, countless) patted and patted them into perfect 8 1/2 x 11 alignment and set them in stacks upon the scanner, whereupon, sheet by sheet, the files are converted to digital PDFs, to be stored for eternity on his hard drives.

And probably never looked at again.

But ya never know.

At least now, he can have the files he needs just in case, but will no longer be suffocated by them.

And what of those millions of formerly important pieces of paper? Well, if the piece of paper in question was one-sided, it went, after scanning, into the scratch paper file. He’s been assembling those in sets of approximately 500 sheets, swaddling them in wrappers made of formerly important maps and stacking them on the chair outside his office, like this:

This is a but a fraction of the scratch paper haul. Jim estimates he has about 40 of these makeshift “reams.” Anybody need any scratch paper?

The vast majority of the sheets, however, were two-sided and have thus been recycled. The scanner’s ticker puts the total number of scanned sheets at 30,000+.  Crazy, huh?

And, as of this writing, Jim has gone through all sixteen drawers. Next he will condense what remains (some files had unscannables contained therein) into likely one cabinet–with a ton of room to spare–and repurpose/relocate/sell/giveaway the others. Yay!

Then, THEN, he can clean up his office… move stuff around on his new-found floor space, reclaim some space on his severely impacted desk… who knows, maybe even recycle or toss a whole buncha other stuff, too.

~ ~ ~ ~

One of the neat things about going sheet by sheet through 10-20-30-40-year old files, was coming across some treasures. Lots of treasures. Here’s one from yesterday:

This was the analysis we did in 1996–when in the throes of house hunting–of two hot prospects… the house we’re currently in v. the house we thought about buying over on 11th.

Check out those prices!

File this in the category: Things I didn’t know before…. 

Spent a very, very nice afternoon on the bay with my aunt, uncle and mom last Saturday. The bay is Alamitos Bay, part of the protected network of waterways and harbors inside the Long Beach breakwater.

First off, here’s the view from their porch:

Naples, Treasure Island, Belmont Shore.. are all off to the left of this photo; the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club to the right; and, across the water and visible here is the Boathouse, the restaurant we ate at a few weeks ago (oh yeah, and owned by Eric).

I LOVE hanging out at their house…have they lived here forty years?! I remember being so disappointed when they moved out of their other house which was so cool because it was three stories! And because the top floor was an octagon! And they lived on an island! And they had a great ping pong table and a boat and their own dock! I was a kid: their house seemed like a castle playground with its own moat. What can I say, I was bummed.

But they didn’t go far; you can actually see their old house from their new house. Bob and Eric were tiny tots, so they decided it was safer to be on the beach. And that actually turned out to be cool, too. Maybe cooler. Lots of beach parties, lots of swimming. We dragged lots of sand through the house. It was great.

Still is.

One place I’ve never spent much time in, is my uncle’s office. It is quite the sanctuary of memorabilia, books, and photos. This is where I learned, today, about short snorters. With the help of Wikipedia, this is what I now know:

A short snorter is a banknote inscribed by people traveling together on an aircraft. The tradition was started by Alaskan Bush flyers in the 1920s and spread through the military and commercial aviation. During World War II short snorters were signed by flight crews and conveyed good luck to soldiers crossing the Atlantic. Friends would take the local currency and sign each other’s bills creating a “keepsake of your buddy’s signatures”.

So, he’s got a long row of short snorters, displayed end to end, framed, that represent all the countries he flew over when he was in the war (WWII). And not just flew over, but piloted the plane over. It’s a lotta paper money–a note from each country.

I’d heard this other story before, but was again blown away by it: My uncle, just a week or so before his 16th birthday (1940) decided, because he knew how to fly a plane (seriously), to join the Air Force. He was welcomed right in and told to report to a base in Burma (I believe). It took him weeks and weeks to get there, a trip he made without any travel experience or money to speak of, just the goodwill of people along the way.

His trans-global journey is marked by a thick red line on a world map that hangs on the wall above the desk in his office. It goes from the US, to Central and South America, across the Atlantic, through Africa, through the Middle East and up into China.

He even took control of a plane for one leg of the journey, somewhere over the Atlantic, somewhere east of Ascension Island, and thus earned his first short snorter.

Can hardly fathom a 15-year-old even contemplating such a thing, much less carrying it out. Which he did. He went on to fly airplanes for the Air Force. Because he was underage (which they may or may not have been aware of initially), his duties were limited, but fly he did. Mostly he buzzed bridges to clear them of civilians, making way for the of-age guys to come in and do all the ugly work.

I’m sure I’m missing some details, but all I can say is, I hope memoirs will be written. Uncle Bud’s stories don’t stop there!

Anyway… we had a nice lunch:

Took a few pictures for posterity:

(Uncle Bud has his own way of soliciting smiles…beware that right hand around the areas of the ribs…)

We moved inside because it was actually chilly (probably in the lower 70s!). I’m a fan of their living room… I have to believe that in designing our own, I had theirs in mind: built-in white bookshelf stuffed with books, piano in the corner (theirs is a player piano), colorful art, ceiling beams, wood floor.

Our house is missing the bay view… but similar concept, no?

Anyway… we talked for another couple of hours. And here’s the second thing I learned that I’d never known: The Long Beach State mascot–Prospector Pete–is named after my grandpa…

Campus founded in 1949 (49ers, gold minors, prospectors…), grandpa founder, first president… thus Prospector Pete. You can actually buy one of these in the CSULB book store. May just have to get myself one!

Anyway, enjoyable afternoon.

Some parting shots:

Uncle Bud coming out the back door:

Typical neighborhood flora:

And a shot on the ocean side of the peninsula driving north toward downtown LB, the iconic oil rig islands just offshore:

I come by my fears honestly. One of my lifelong fears, bordering on paranoia, is of falling trees. Especially being in a house beneath one of those falling trees. Especially a eucalyptus, because they are so dense and heavy.

This is not unreasonable: I grew up in a dense eucalyptus jungle and wind storms were not infrequent. We had both winter wind storms and hot summer storms (you’ve heard of the hot Santa Ana’s that plague the southland?).  Winds during any season could be fierce. Trees that have fallen on houses and cars have done epic damage.

My mom’s house sits among some humongous eucalyptus trees. About a billion are on her property, give or take.

I’ll just say: wind storms are unsettling.

So last night, the wind blew mightily… not as hard as I’ve seen, but enough to make us plenty nervous. My mom’s house is very sound-tight, but we could hear tons of stuff falling on the roof.

Just as my weather app said it would, the wind settled down about 3:00am. Before I even got out of bed, I got an alert on my phone–because I subscribe to a service that tells you such things–that a tree had gone down on the 3600 block of Palos Verdes Drive North, very close to mom’s house–and was blocking the road. They expected it to be cleared by mid-morning.

It was time to assess the damage….

No trees down! Not even any big branches. Just lots and lots of bark and debris.

I’d happened to take a picture the day before–loving that early morning light to go with the sound of peacocks and mourning doves–which makes for a nice compare and contrast:

Here are a couple more.. this one looking back at the house:

And this one of the back patio—usually so immaculately swept and tidy:

I wrote in this blog post about the relationship the Peterson family has with the Osborne family–old friends from the way back.

Which made breakfast today a special event. It’s rare that we manage to get ourselves together, and, mobility what it is, more challenging by the day!

But with canes in tow, we made it down to Polly’s on the Pier for a lively breakfast. It’s a funky place, but the staff is great, the food’s diner-perfect, the sounds of gulls and pelicans make for a nice ambience, and today we could watch a storm hover just beyond the shoreline. Cozy!

Ina, Kari, Bev and Betsy:

Driving home along the Esplanade, got this nice shot:

My Uncle Bud’s sister married Richard Phillips. We called him Uncle Dick, and considered his and Aunt Phyllis’ six kids our crazy, fun-loving cousins, but the whole wonderful clan was not really official, in the absolute relative sense, because my Uncle Bud is technically an outlaw…. my uncle by virtue of his having married my dad’s sister, my Aunt Ellie.

Still…inlaws or outlaws, we’re all part of a great big extended family, technically, bloodly official, or not.

Loved all the Phillipses (including and especially the “Bobsie Twins”–Grandma Hilda Johnson (Uncle Bud’s and Aunt Phyllis’ mom) and Aunt Lil, more or less identical twins, as dear and sweet as they come). They were a huge, ragingly musical bunch. Gatherings at their places in San Diego, Pasadena and the Tehachapi mountains were loud, rambunctious affairs. Aunt Phyllis was a warm, nurturing, gracious hostess who prepared expansive spreads of food that were eye popping–things we never had in our house like jello salads with marshmallows and towers of baked goods. Uncle Dick and Aunt Phyllis have passed away, but their six kids–Susan, David, Jeff, Patty, John, and Jamie (maybe in that order!)–are still around and full of stories and life and humanity.

It’s a few days past Veteran’s Day, but I thought these two photos that John posted on Facebook a couple days ago were worth sharing.

Dick was a commander in the Navy. He was born in Southern California, graduated from USC, and spent a good part of his career in the Navy. At one point, he served in a public relations capacity for the Pacific fleet. After the Navy, he worked at JPL as the public relations director. My guess is he was good with people… which is consistent with the whole Philips clan!

Here are the pictures John posted:

John’s beloved dad is the tall one “with the hairy legs,” (John’s words). Third from left, big smile. In his post, John said it was just after the war.. WWII, I’d guess.

Handsome as ever.

Here is a photo with General William Westmoreland:

~ ~ ~ ~

It’s a few days after Veterans’ Day, and a the day after the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris. It leaves me with questions about our world, the relations between nations, religions, people. The need for power and dominance. Or the drive, insistence just to be right. What happens in the souls and consciences of people that drives them to passionate and compassionate action but in some cases to barbaric acts of inhumanity. And what is the need for and the role of global peacekeeping forces, national militaries and even local law enforcement that keep people in line or on one side or another of a border–physical or ideological or spiritual.

No answers (well, a few), but just heartache.

Literally my view every waking day of my life on Via La Selva.

Only the window was different. Back then, it was a steel casement window. Remember those? It still has a crank opener today, like in the olden days, but now the crank has a handsome wood handle to match the upgraded wood-framed windows.

But the eucs? Still the same.

And the view? Exactly the same.

Because it’s all I got….  shots from my commute.

Or the What I Did With My Phone When I Wasn’t Playing Spider to Pass the Time series.

So, first, there’s this.  Now, I’m a great enjoyer of regular massages (therapeutic, of course), but I just can’t quite get over this hump. Airport terminal massages… no can do. She, however, has no such hump to overcome and seems to be enjoying the hell out of it.

I think there’s a life lesson in there somewhere…..

Moving on.

Being mid November, my late afternoon/early evening departure is now a sunset flight. Here’s a shot of twilight on the tarmac:

And because I can’t help myself–loving patterns as I do–a shot of velvety brown fields in transition:

(It was getting dark, so this is what happens when you add light that just isn’t there.)

Here is what the light really looked like, looking east toward the Sierra:

Then, it was just very dark outside, so in the glow of cabin lights, with my free glass of chardonnay, I played Spider for an hour (and won my game, finally). Enjoyed myself immensely up there in the fast-moving, thankfully-insulated tube, flying high above the state I love so much.

Entered the LA basin, and it got all glittery and exciting. Always wonder what each and every person’s experience is down there in his/her own little universe. So weird being god.

(Really need a better camera.)

I took lots of photos from the taxi, just because that’s fun, but nothing really came out. I did finally get a shot of the LAX sign, though it was blurry, too, so I tricked it up some:

I know.. yawn.

I asked my mom if she’d make that beef stew thing again, and ohmylord she did and holy cow (literally), it was explosively rich in its flavors, just like last time. Beef, onions and potatoes, coated in crusty garlic and herbs, in a deep wine broth..  frightfully good. Those are separately sauteed mushrooms on the side.

Beef stew for breakfast anyone?

These errata are getting to be regular things. Maybe I should stop being so presumptuous in my blogging, huh?.

Yesterday I wrote about my theory that acupuncture needles are spring loaded, and, once tapped, launch forcefully into their target area. They are not. Brian the acupuncturist, usually a pretty professional and restrained guy, nearly laughed out loud when I checked my theory with him. He said they are simply long skinny needles and inserting them properly is an art which takes years and years of training. He went on to show me a variety of needle lengths and explained how long ones are used in particularly thick, fleshy places and short ones the opposite.

The needle I found sticking out of my leg yesterday while walking downtown was a very long one.  He’s been using the long ones on me because he’s sticking them into my butt (well, hip… but for acupuncture purposes, the hip is buried within the butt).

Anyway…  so erase that spring loaded acupuncture needle thing from your knowledge database (along with any visuals of this process, if you don’t mind).

~ ~ ~ ~

Pic of the day… fall in the downtown. This may just be my favorite time of year for sheer gorgeousness.

Don’t think for a moment that that guy is appropriately dressed in his tank top and flips. He is not. It has been in the 30s at night for the last few days, and at the time of this picture, it was still probably in the high 40s-low 50s. I’d say the only thing keeping him warm is the hots he’s got for his gf.

For the record, I was not taking a picture of these two folks. I was just looking down the street and appreciating the splendor of the colorful trees–still weeks from peak color. I was kind of surprised when I uploaded all two of my photos today. The other one had better fall color, but also had an unsightly awning that dominated the picture…so had to go with this one.