Life of Wry

More on the hall decking front…

Mom’s favorite Charlie Brown:

Well-guarded, because ya never know…

And we lit up the lights for the season…

It’s darn cheery around here!

Quietness on the PV front. Biggest event of the day was Chris’s coming by to hang lights and scatter some of mom’s decorations around the house (adding to some decorating that she’d already done).

Now it’s getting to look a lot like… well, you know… around here.

Here’s Chris through the window, setting up Mr. and Mrs. Claus on the porch swing…

Peter took his final final today–chemistry, 8:00am. Like a bit of fancy clockwork, I departed Palos Verdes and was driving down the off ramp to La Jolla Shores Drive at 11:00am as his text came in letting me know he had finished his final, had breakfast with Ray and was now ready to meet and load the car. I showed up moments later at the dorm parking lot and handed over his giant suitcase for filling. Six or seven trips later, the car was full and he was ready to close out his first quarter of college.

Here are a couple shots:

Walking back for another load…

And yet another load…

Sweet.

Next stop: Huntington Beach for lunch at Legends with Matt… oh how I wish I got a picture of that burger.  I left them to their golf (with Eric) at Little Rec and I headed over to the peninsula to see Aunt Ellie and Uncle Bud.

Had a nice bit of catch up. Seeing the canals at Christmas is always a thrill… this is a shot of on the Alamitos Bay side …

This was a shot in the other direction of one of the oil rigging islands off the shore of downtown:

I retrieved Peter from Matt and Michael’s and we headed back to PV to have dinner with mom. We decided to try a new (to us) place in Redondo for take out..

It was pretty good!

Anyway.. great to be able to pick up Peter, glad finals are over, nice for him to get some time with Matty and Eric (sure the golf felt good after the last couple intense weeks of studying), glad to see Aunt Ellie and Uncle Bud, wonderful that Peter could have a little time with grandma.  We’re missing Christmas down here, so that was all good.

On approximately this day, many years ago….

This was 2007, Peter was 9.

Tomorrow I’m driving down to La Jolla to pick him up following his fourth and final final (chemistry) of his first quarter of college.

Made some deviled egg today.

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In other news, I gave my mom an early Christmas present today–a Kindle.

This is not the first Kindle we’ve given her: In honor of her 80th birthday, all of us siblings went in together to get what was, at the time, a pretty fancy gift (pricey, too; I believe it was about $400 then). We figured a digital reader that was bright and offered an enlarged font option was perfect because it was getting harder and harder for her to read the print on small paperbacks.

She resisted mightily, never used it, and I believe it ultimately found its way to Chris’ apartment.

Seven years later, her eyesight is even more challenged and a Kindle (or Kindle-like device) is an even more brilliant option. Especially when she says things like, “I can’t focus on the words anymore,” and “If I lose the ability to read, life is not worth living,” etc., etc.

Well.

She kinda, sorta tried it, but got immediately frustrated. She then claimed that she was still quite able to read her paperbacks, and that she totally preferred the feel of a real book.

I also realized she’d never be able to troubleshoot if she inadvertently found herself on some random page, or the battery was running low, or, heaven forbid, something more complicated happened (as they always seem to do).

I’d said she had the whole world of books available to her with the click of a button (and ordered one just like that to prove it), but she dryly responded it’d probably take her the rest of her life to get through the book she’s currently reading (it does go very slowly for her these days).

I’d been selling the whole idea fairly enthusiastically, but that  pretty much shut me up.

So, looks like we bought me an early Christmas present.

Jim’s got this phantom odor thing going on. For a couple of months now, on a fairly constant basis, he smells burnt coffee. Jim doesn’t drink coffee. Nor do I burn mine when I make it. No coffee in life… except the smell of it burnt, wafting through his smeller.

He looked up this weird symptom on the internet (don’t ever do this), and found all kinds of references to phantom smells and what they can mean. Few good.

He’s unconcerned, but emailed his doctor anyway and is going in for a head X-Ray tomorrow. He suspects a low level sinus infection. That seems like a reasonable guess and a  good outcome.

Unrelated, here’s a photo I took a few minutes before I hit the road last Sunday…

He plays the guitar a bit every day–during down times, at breaks in the action, while waiting for me to get ready…

When Peter’s gone, Jim’s got the full run of his room. Makes himself quite comfortable there. 🙂

Mom and I watched Fargo tonight. Loved the Minnesota winter scenes, loved a very young Frances McDormand, and, wow, especially loved the incredibly great performances by these three:

You betcha.

Shots of today’s north-to-south road trip:

Cloud formations quite unusual… still in Davis on I-80, looking north, no idea what’s going on here… totally looks like a messy little miss-stroke in somebody’s sky painting:

A few minutes later, driving south on I-5… same deal:

Stopped at the Grapevine for gas… the sunset was spectacular:

The same view, slightly shifted, unfiltered:

And again, some great clouds heading up the hill!

Now, just so you know… I took these without taking eyes off road. Picked up my phone and blindly pointed/shot. Got lots, not many came out.

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Worth noting: This morning, before hitting the road, boosted my iTunes library by an additional and amazing fifteen albums. THAT made the trip really fun. Voice was horsy by the time I got to PV.

Sure I’ve written about this before….

Christmas goods baskets to us are a wonderful gift. Would that we could give them to everyone (though to be honest, I don’t think they’re everybody’s thing… for example, when I’m at my mom’s I find treasures from years past, collecting dust in the farthest corners of the pantry, or buried under jars of newer things in her icebox–she calls it an icebox).

Here’s this year’s collection of yummy things, all local: organic brown rice, fig jam, homemade chocolates, olive oil, a dried fruit assortment and UCD’s sun dried tomatoes.

For the second year, we took advantage of the Farmer’s Market’s free packing baskets and their wonderful packing service:

(Now if we could just get them to do free shipping..)

Here’s Jim hauling all the baskets home:

I tell ya… we got this down.

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As wonderful as getting the basket shopping done… maybe even more wonderful… was driving up the hill tonight to Sarah’s and Gabe’s for what will be an ongoing, monthly salon, of sorts. Soiree super stars, those two! I swear. Rum toddies, fires, soups, candlelit spirals, music, salads, homemade bread, cranberry curd tarts–much of it under the stars on a cold night.

What is it all for, if not that?

The City hosted its tree lighting ceremony last night. We missed it, but tonight we were downtown seeing a movie (Loving) and wandered by the E Street Plaza and got a look.

Um…