Life of Wry

A beautiful spring at the creek continues…

We are having exceptional weather right now, mid-70s, a gorgeous spring blooms everywhere. Enjoyed my (and Vicki’s) Tuesday walk around the creek today. Lucky us.

I did a bit of a search on yellow lupine and found this.. not conclusive, but close enough, I guess:

Yellow Bush or Coast Lupine is a species Fabaceae (Legume) family native to the western United States in California and Oregon, where it is widely distributed in coastal scrub and sand dunes.

Or maybe this:

Lupinus luteus is known as annual yellow-lupin, European yellow lupin or yellow lupin. It is native to the Mediterranean region of Southern Europe.

This is the bike part sculpture at 3rd and University. It glows at night, it reaches for the sun during the day. It’s a pretty awesome obelisk. (Now, while I got the spelling of obelisk right on the first try, I may be wrong in describing this prominent, impressive, super tall thing as an obelisk. It may be that an obelisk is only an obelisk if it’s made of stone.. preferably a single slab-o-stone.

Whatever it is, it’s cool.

T’was my turn to host the Divas (the Dining Divas, that is). My turn comes up about every 15 months or so. This evening’s theme — chosen by the host (me) — was dishes with lots of antioxidants.

Yup.

• Tracy, app: endive with a filling of parsley, celery, walnut, parmesan, garlic, salt, mayo, lemon, olive oil.
• Madeline, salad: spinach, celery, pomegranate, apples, walnuts, blueberries and a honey/lime vinaigrette
• Carol, side: black beans, avo, tomato salsa, and I haven’t seen her recipe yet
• Kari, main: curry chicken, apple, walnut, mandarin orange, mint, coconut, golden raisins, mayo
• Rissa, dessert: chocolate/cherry granola bars w/ ice cream and chocolate chips, cherries and choco sauce

Plus wine and coffee, and it was all pretty good! Here are at least a couple pics… the raw ingredients and the finished main course:

And Madeline’s salad (Madeline had to drop and run b/c she has a cold) but she left us with a great dish!

(just realized those fingers look a bit creepy up there in the corner.. not sure whose they are…)

No pics of the app (beautiful), the black bean side dish or the dessert. But it was all colorful and tasty!

…. because every day is a good day to feel nostalgic and in love with your kiddo.

Came across this photo yesterday and love every inch of it.. the umpire, the catcher, the tuft of dirt that Peter has kicked up as he begins his journey to first base (hope he made it before the throw!)

Jim and I went to hear a lot of people du wopping tonight at the Melon Ball… Watermelon Music’s performance venue. T’was a fun night. Mostly, we went to hear our good friend Bill, who’s been a singer in many groups, of many styles, over many decades. There were a couple of other du wop groups, who were fine, but the main draw for us was Bill and, thankfully, he sang with two different groups tonight, both pretty good!

A couple/few pics:

This was the best my iPhone could do (with me an an operator.. I think there’s a better way to get a longer exposure for low-light situations, but I don’t know it). Let’s just pretend that I applied a fancy, artistic filter and that this is a stylized and totally intentional effect.

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It was also a fundraiser for Watermelon, who lost a whole bunch of money during the pandemic. Davis, being the generous community that it is, and a community that loves its homegrown businesses, has responded to pleas of help from Watermelon, including donating at concerts like this. So that’s pretty nice, too.

Ima reaching back for a photo for today’s blog. I quite literally could not find a picture of Peter EVER taken on a May 25 — and I looked through 85k photos (from 2001 to 2022) to find one (thankfully they’re date stamped and in chronological order, so, while this was a tedious exercise, it was at least a precise one, if non-productive!).

This was from May 30, 2010. Peter and I attended a Giants game in San Francisco. Love this shot.

I’ve probably bragged blogged about this before… but today is kind of neat for me because today I gave my thirtieth pint of blood.

Can I get an exclamation point?

This is the kind of email that makes it all worth it:

You’d think the donut would be the selling point….. but in fact, it’s the email above that motivates me. And besides, there are no donuts. I keep meaning to talk to the management about this sorry situation. Raisins, yes. Goldfish, yes. Cranberry juice, yes. Packaged cookies, yes. DONUTS?? No.

I mean.

I’ve never had the nerve to ask someone to take my picture while nestled into the blood-giving lounge chair. But I found this image in the Googles and it’s pretty close. I chose this image because: she’s blond, she’s all happy, she gripping a red rubber item (just like we do at the Davis Vitalant), AND, she’s wearing blue jeans and a white shirt (which is exactly what I was wearing today!).

Or is that a pretty purple pop of perkiness?

As seen on University Ave…

Peter gave a presentation today to his lab colleagues at U Mich. It’s an update on the research (and write-up thereof) he is coordinating with a team from UC San Diego (of all places!).

He called today and when we asked about it, he shared the presentation with us via Zoom.

It’s not that Peter is a bad explainer…. It’s just that no part of this is ever going to make sense to me, no matter how clearly he explains it. That said… I could listen to him trying to explain it to me all day and all night long.

Anyway. I love him and love that he’s so into it. I’m just incredibly happy for P these days, as he loves his work, and is in love with M, We heard about a meaningful weekend they’d just had in Indiana with M’s family honoring her dad who’d passed away last Christmas. We also heard about their summer travel plans (including Europe!), a week of which will include hiking with us in Yosemite. These are the good things that are going on.. and make a mama happy

But there are other things, too.

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As a placemark: I’d like to write about this morning, but … again … I’m feeling overwhelmed and not really ready to put things into words. I attended what was to be the preliminary hearing for the stabbing murders that occurred in Davis almost a month ago now. The hearing was suspended as the defendant’s lawyer asked for time to conduct a psych evaluation, stating that his client is not fit to stand trial. It turned into a ten minute procedural exercise. But being in the courtroom with the guy who murdered David and a UCD student Karim (and severely injured another woman), AND the families and friends of all three victims, plus the family of the murderer, was surreal. Following, I agreed to talk to the press who were there (Bee, KCRA, CapRadio). Those accounts showed up this afternoon in their respective places, though I haven’t been able to actually read/hear all of them.

Oh, and our good friend Sam was the presiding judge.

So.. I do want to write about it. Just not now.

It’s easier to focus on Peter’s math.