Life of Wry

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…

According to the master plan, today was tree buying day.

Out to Silveyville we went in Jim’s truck. The tree buying part has become a fairly routine matter, and, yessiree, absolutely, it feels like we were just here!  Man… a year just flies by.

We parked, bundled up (so cold!) and headed in.

I thought this was a neat shot of one of many chickens running around the farm:

Then it was right to the pre-cut silver tip and noble fir area.

Quickly picked out a good noble…

We texted Peter this picture, asking if he thought it was tall enough… because he’s always lobbying for something very tall. His immediate response: Perfect. The funny thing about the above picture: Jim’s on his knees…

Here’s a more accurate photo of the about 6′ tall tree.

Hope he’s okay with it when he sees it next week.

And yeah.. it was freezing out there:

Had it shaken and netted, then battened it down:

And.. that was about that.

Brought ‘er home, set ‘er up, covered ‘er in lights, beads and ornaments. As you do.

No overall tree photos yet, but Jim took this one of his new favorite ornament (I bought this replica of a survey monument at the top of Haleakala (the volcano) when Peter and I were in Maui this summer):

(Such a great pic.)

Note to self: next year, let’s get a silver tip. Just for something very different.

Mad Men ended its seven-season run in May of 2015. Tonight, a little behind, Jim and I watched the final episode in that last season.

This scene was actually incredibly moving… Don finds himself in an encounter group at a Big Sur retreat. He listens to an ordinary guy describing himself as an invisible player in his own life and realizes he’s hearing, in many ways, his own story.  He crosses the room to embrace invisible guy..

Mediation brings epiphany. If we interpreted this correctly, he realizes he’s a damn good ad man and, liberated from his demons, returns to NYC to design the best ad in the history of ads: the Coke commercial. The series ends with the song “I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony…”

I hated the see the 60s come to an end.

Silly as it sounds, I learned an incredible amount about the era I grew up in watching this show. I was really young in the 60s and couldn’t process or appreciate the cultural dynamics of the era.  I experienced the elements of my life as just givens, normal, the only thing I knew–the way parents parented, the way men behaved, civil rights, space exploration, the Vietnam war, smoking, drinking, hippies, rock and roll, mini-skirts, Laugh-in. I truly had visceral reactions to the sets, fashions, foods and definitely the songs that closed each episode. Many flashbacks. It was all so familiar. Looking back on the 60s through this show, seeing so much of my life, I saw how it all fit together, fit the times. The series tied a lot of life as I remembered it together for me.

I’m enormously grateful these people recreated my childhood so painstakingly, so painfully, so accurately. It was a gift to look at it again as an adult and come to understand what it all meant. At least in part. Stylized and dramatized for sure, but still. Wow.

Christmas shopping’s not so bad if you choose your stores wisely. It was basically a three store day: 1) REI–which is just like going to the candy store; 2) the Avid Reader–who doesn’t love an independent book store right in the middle of one’s own downtown? and 3) the Artery–a beautiful artist’s coop (I know you know this).

I damn near got everybody’s everything (not counting the things I got yesterday at Davis’ only downtown toy store, and a few fair-trade things I picked up at the Davis Food Coop).

Shopping made easy and fun.

I am not buying any ornaments this year, but if I were looking for something Christmassy to hang in my window, through which the sun could stream and leave rainbows on my floor, I might buy one of these:

They are glass, just gorgeous, about 6-8″ long, and at the Artery.

I also saw this–certainly nothing I’d buy (it’s $2000!)–and it really had me fooled. I saw the sign, but it didn’t compute. Hint: those are not rags:

As I said, I saw the sign, but it confused me. So I touched it, thinking maybe the ceramics were beneath. Heh. Glad I didn’t break it.

Anyway.. today was the kind of shopping where it’s a joy to meander, ponder and maybe buy. Bricks and mortar may be a dying shopping platform, but so far it’s worked out okay for me: between today’s three stores and yesterday’s two, I practically finished all my Christmas acquisitions. Farmer’s Market on Saturday for the food baskets and a wee bit of online shopping and we can call it good.