Life of Wry

Bernie won Wisconsin tonight. That’s very nice.

Cruz also won Wisconsin tonight, which–repugnant as he is–is also kind of…. satisfying. Not satisfying in a positive way, but satisfying in a twisted sort of hopeful way. Anything that puts a sock in the huge, boorish mouth of the guy who brags about other huge things (delusional ideas, appendages of all sorts), is gratifying. Choices for republican voters have narrowed down to Trump, whose objectionable candidacy has spawned a group whose sole purpose is to aggressively destroy his chances of ever becoming president, and Cruz, who just does not play well with others and is equally despised, but, for now, preferable. And I guess Cruz is only preferable as a foil. If he’s able to keep Trump from the requisite number of delegates, alternatives for the republican ticket could emerge come convention time. Frankly, that gives everyone hope. So… yay Cruz. The reasonable republicans hate you, but hate you less than the other guy, and your winning now will ensure chaos down the road which may be the republican’s only chance to salvage this train wreck.

Well, whatever. You boys have fun with that.

~~

I came upon these Bernie folks tabling today in downtown Davis… warm late afternoon sun streaming through the new spring growth along E Street:

Even with his impressive string of primary victories, with more on the way, Bernie’s still a long shot.

But I’ll tell you one thing: integrity and a genuine regard for humanity rank high on my list. I’m glad there is somebody I absolutely trust in this race. I trust Bernie to speak the truth, I trust that he cares deeply, and I trust that he is looking out for our collective best interest. Period. With pure intentions, a clear conscience and a happy heart, I get to cast my vote for Bernie and feel totally, unconditionally good about it.

Take that, conniving, desperate, ethically-challenged, backroom-dealing, dirty-monied republicans.

Feeling inspired by leadership is refreshing. Going to enjoy this as long as it lasts.

A bunch of unrelated Monday kinds of things.

I’ve taken to pouring my smoothies into a bowl and eating them like ice cream, mostly because they’ve gotten so thick it’s easier that way. I was so hungry when I got home from a long, lunchless work day, I made a supersized smoothie **… and filled three large bowls…and ate all of them.

I was so cold by the time I finished the third bowl, and my mouth so numb and frozen, I decided to take a hot bath. And had a very hard time warming up.. in fact I was still on the edge of my thaw when the dinner bell rang (so to speak).. had to abandon the effort.

It was worth it…

Here’s something else I’ve been loving lately… Jim’s roasted cauliflower:

I know it looks weird, but it is so good it’ll make you cry. Sweet, too, if you can believe it. The best pieces are the ones crispied and slightly burnt. They crunch and ooze a little bit from the olive oil. I’m telling you…heaven.

I had no room for a baked potato, weird for me as it’s the ultimate comfort food…

…so just watched Jim eat.  I’m still waiting for all that smoothie to go down a couple of hours later…

** 1 banana, about 2/3 cup of Strassburg’s organic nonfat vanilla yogurt, about 1/2 cup of milk, about 1/2 cup of OJ, about 2 cups of ice, 2 meyer lemon cubes, a couple TB of frozen cranberry juice concentrate, about 1/3 cup of frozen blueberries, about 1/2 cup of frozen mixed berries/cherries, about 1/2 cup of frozen mangos and, the best part: 1 TB of frozen dark chocolate chips, which mince down to little bits that find their way into every spoonful and provide the most satisfying chocolaty crunch. Killer.

~~

Speaking of asterisks, looking at the above two reminds me that for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been very buried in a project at work… work you will see if you’re registered to vote in the state of California (well, if English is not your preferred language, that is)! Been proofreading election materials for the Secretary of State’s office…those materials the company I’ve been working for has translated into nine languages: the Voter Guide, the lists of candidates and their designations, and a couple other related items. Perfection is required for this particular client on this particular job, so we precision-minded proofreaders (3 of us) have had to step up our already laser-sharp game.

Back to the asterisks… among a billion things one carefully scans for, if one is a [glutton for punishment, or a] professional proofreader, is the type of asterisk used. I see that my WordPress font above uses the 6-sided star. The SOS favors a 5-sided star. I’m sure I’ll be seeing asterisks dancing across the skies of my nightmares for some time to come, at least until the election season is over.

So that bath did double duty… I needed something following six straight hours hunched over some incredibly tedious work (I did candidate designations in Thai, Korean, Tagalog and Khmer today)… a hot bath seemed like the perfect antidote.

~~

In other extremely disturbing news, Peter’s bike was stolen sometime over the weekend–the new (and fairly pricy) one we got him for his birthday last summer, after the one before that was stolen a year before! I’m going to forgo the story and its pathetic details, but I’m just overwhelmed with a sour range of emotions from anger and frustration over the carelessness, senselessness and waste, to a sense of violation. And feel incredibly inconvenienced, and supremely annoyed… UGH!

Perhaps a[nuther] hot bath…

.. of course. And a sure sign of spring.

This is Janet’s dining room table last night:

And this is the iPhone showing off:

Not possible to whine. The DHS Blue Devils have extended their streak to 11-0 (15-0 if you count preseason games, which I do) with a win over Maria Carrillo, a Santa Rosa team that’s traditionally very strong and very competitive.

It took a lot of talent, cool heads and a smidge of luck to prevail (like that Mario Carrillo center fielder dropping a routine fly ball to allow loaded bases to completely clear… that kind of luck).  But hey, win’s a win. (6-4, whew!)

Peter’s still on the injured list, as are Danny and Gabe. Mort and Pierce are back, as is Solly from a brief absence. I’m anxious to see Peter get an inning soon. It must be hard to miss all this streaky fun.

No baseball pictures (you’re welcome), but I must subject you to a few more heavily filtered road shots taken while wending our way through the wine country.

Yes, I must.

Sonoma Valley is lovely anytime of year, but especially when the poppies, mustard and roses are blooming…

Even in the fog…

Love vine rows disappearing and reappearing over hills.. (and loving the nostalgia filter, though see it’s one you can overdo)…

This suited my groggy, post win, dream state…

I’m always a fan of the grunge filter..

Nice when the hills are green, too…

All shot from moving vehicle, sadly through a dirty windshield (don’t ask about the argument Jim and I had last week about overusing wiper fluid (my former tendency)).

I missed throw back Thursday, so I thought I’d modify the meme, call it throw up Friday, and post some pictures from the airplane I took earlier this week.

Maybe I need to work on the name a little.

But it’s late, I’m tired, and it’s all I’ve got, so here are a few of my favorite photos from the air:

Here are two taken as we left LAX:

The ocean was turbulent. I really like the wavy lines in the froth (wavy, get it?):

A little higher, looking back into the basin; the clouds were cooperative!

Here are a few as we landed in Sac.. how green is our valley!

The fields are well saturated:

This one just appealed to me.. I love the geometry of farmland:

This one was sort of blurry and low-res, so I went with it, playing with the colors and textures a bit:

I got the very last window seat available, in the last row, which meant I was the last off the plane, but sitting at a window is so worth it to me.

I say ish because it was actually twenty years ago yesterday, it being the day Jim and I decided to get married.

I always remember the day because March 30 was my dad’s birthday, so that made it easy. Not that our deciding to get married had anything to do with my dad’s birthday.

We just happened to be sitting on the wall in Central Park, on a Saturday morning in March, twenty years ago… and thought, hey, let’s do it, let’s get married! We’d been dating about fifteen months or so, had been living together for about six… and well, it seemed like a good idea. I had just turned 40, Jim was about to turn 43… it seemed about time.

I remember we’d wanted to settle the kid question first–to have one or not–but just couldn’t decide. Both seemed like such great options. (And we know how that turned out, and how we can’t even imagine not having a kid (exclamation point to the billionth power).) At the time, we’d enlisted the guidance of a therapist to help us sort through the pros and cons, but after six months hadn’t arrived at anything conclusive. It wasn’t a deal breaker for either of us, as it turned out. We finally thought, oh, what the heck, let’s just get married and we’ll figure it out later. Which, obviously, we did.

Anyway… twenty years ago. A lifetime. Peter’s as a matter of fact, as he sits on the cusp of turning 18!

So, we had a six month engagement, as it were. In September, we will celebrate the big milestone (our twentieth anniversary).

I went to the photo archive to find a nice picture of Jim and me, or two…  but oh how difficult that was. A few months ago, my photo archive was very well organized, I had dozens and dozens of sorted albums, including one called, “Best of Jim and Kari,” but, as I’ve lamented here before, I lost all of my albums a couple months ago when I moved all my data from my old laptop to my current laptop–the result of iPhoto becoming obsolete and being replaced by Photos (thanks a lot, Apple). I still have all my photos, I just lost the organizing metadata, so my 70,000 photos exist as one huge unsorted database (gratefully, they are in chronological order). Anyway… makes it hard to find particular photos.

Still…   I managed to find a few… and will post at least those, random as they are..

Here’s one at the beach, near Goat Rock.. this was just prior to our receiving a tsunami warning, as I recall (hmm, what to do, what to do.. think we oughta get to higher ground?):

Here’s one that Peter took after about an 11-12 mile hike up to May Lake and down Murphy Creek near Tuolumne Meadows:

This one’s near the grand arch in Arches National Park in Utah; I think Peter took this one, too:

And a couple of nice ones of Jim, just to show that he doesn’t always wear that hat… the first is from my Uncle Bud’s 90th birthday, just a little over a year ago. I like the unposed, uncharacteristic capture, even though blurry:

And this one… I forgot to note the time stamp on it… it’s near a window’s about all I know. I just like it, all nice and glowy:

Happy engagement anniversary, yesterday, Jim!

In my happy place for sure today…

Drove to Yuba City for a game this afternoon and the commute was farmland-beautiful. That means both baseball AND riding shotgun taking a million pictures, like some kinda National Geographic wunderkind (not a wunderkind in the age realm, but certainly in the photography realm). Two amazing loves. Not to mention in the car with another coupla loves. Happy place, indeed.

Jim pointed out this classic water tower… so hadda shoot it..

And this shot of the same tower from a different angle (the above was shot on the approach to the tower, made “nostalgic,” the one below as we’d passed it, shooting back over my shoulder, treated with a filter called Madison Avenue) …

There were road shots…

And this one of the Sutter Buttes…

(…Which I messed up by trying to zoom in.. forgetting I can’t really zoom and maintain any kind of resolution, so decided to just turn it into something more water color-y. I must say, though, those buttes are quite impressive, rising out of the valley as they do.)

I like the orchards, too…

Driving through town…

So, yes, we were there for a baseball game.

Peter, when he doesn’t pitch, has been given a lot of courtesy runner duty. So far this season, in ten games, he’s scored five times! Not bad for someone who is not a position player, who’s not getting regular ups. I think he’s having a lot of fun with it and will keep the job as long as he doesn’t get picked off.

More low-res shots…

On second, taking his secondary?

And now on third, beginning his walk down the line…

Here’s our approach to In ‘N Out… post game, of course…

Some bendy palm trees… #nofilter, I might add, just saw, pointed and shot into the dark sky …

And a goofy one of Peter and Solly in the back seat. They played chess the whole way up and back…

(must have been Peter’s move..).

So.. Yuba: we won 6-5 in our closest game yet. I actually thought this might be the one to break the streak, but round about the 5th inning, trailing 1-3, we put a run on the board, and in the 6th we added three more to go ahead 5-3. We added a run in the 7th which was enough to buffer us from their bottom-of-the-seventh two-run threat… but that’s all that happened and when Kreidler caught an infield fly for the final out, we were all pretty relieved, suddenly very reluctant to break our streak!!  Maybe we’re greedy.

Anyway… we are now 10-0. Yuba duba do!!!

~~

Notes: This was our last commute to Yuba. The drive’s been one of my favorites, for its classic farmland beauty. Yuba’s also been the site of some memorable Peter moments, the most prominent of which was the game, nearly two years ago, when he got his “first look” by varsity as a pitcher, which, because of a great outing, sort of sealed the deal. Dan wasn’t even there, but the reports were so good, he was brought back for another look and off he ran.

I also was so impressed with the Yuba team last night. The announcers, coaches, especially, were such class acts. The announcer, before the game started, devoted several minutes to congratulating the Davis team on its Boras win last week (Yuba won three of four–a very good record there). He mentioned that Davis is ranked: #1 in the greater Sac/San Joaquin region; #3 in the state; #5 in the country … according to MaxPreps. Other rankings, perhaps more discriminating, have ranked us #20 nationally.

In any case, absolutely ANY case, we are playing well and it’s fun to watch. Last night, the play was not so impressive with a difficult pitching outing by Mort, usually so strong, and some silly errors, but they pulled it out, ending the night with 10 hits and great pitching by Bell and Gib. And that first inning home run by Kreider! (The story goes, Ryan texted or snap chatted, or something, the guys on the team in the morning saying he was going to get a home run that day, mark his words… that he just felt it coming on. Uh, wow.) He was amped; also made a killer throw to nail, just barely, a guy at first.. thrilling play.

Later note: Following our win in Yuba City, MaxPreps has ranked Davis, are you ready for this?, #1 in the country. Yes, #1. In the country. The entire USA. Don’t ask me how they come up with this, but there it is. 

Crazy, huh?

Recall a few months ago, I posted a picture of our fallen fence:

Jim has begun the process of fixing said fallen fence:

Here’s a close up of the rigging:

Not sure exactly what the plan is, but at least the fence is upright. That’s a good start!

Go back home day.

We decided to try a new place for breakfast. A greek cafe, down on Hermosa Ave, at maybe 4th-ish, a block from the beach. I’d driven by it on my way in last Friday, packed to the gills, people spilling out on the sidewalk, windows wide open… it was a very inviting-looking, beachy spot. Quiet today, I suppose, because people were brunched out the day after Easter Sunday, and it was a bit foggy along the coast.

A very good find. I had a tomato, onion, gyro omelet, sprinkled heavily with feta and served with tzatziki. Heaven for me. Served also with a homemade bread that is grilled and a little sinful. Mom had her usual very crispy bacon and eggs and we shared pancakes. Oh, and hash browns. We are good eaters.

I saw bottles of retsina up on the counter and moussakas and souvlakis on the menu. Definitely going back.

Here is the proprietor’s dad settling in after the last of the breakfast eaters (us) departed…

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the bougainvillea blooming so thickly on the front fence. Looked great!

The approach to LAX, shot from the back-most seat in the rental car van…

Started the day with a text from John/Alexis that had this photo of River attached.

Our day was more grown-uppy… dinner at Matt and Mike’s:

Clockwise from bottom: Mom, Michelle, Chris, Matty, Michael. Not pictured: me

Mom from the front:

Clockwise from bottom: green beans, roasted onions, pork medallions, scalloped potatoes. Not pictured: baked apples chunks.

M & M have no kids, but they do have four dogs. Here are a couple of them:

Clockwise from bottom: Violet, Chris, Sophie.