Life of Wry

Three tediums today.

Tedium #1: Got a huge job at work today: to proof a fairly dense 120-page document in French with lots of formatting. I have three days to finish it and only got through 22 pages today. Gonna have to step up my game tomorrow.  (Total hourage: Four hours and fifteen minutes.)

Tedium #2: Stuffed, stamped, labeled (in two places), and sealed 190 Christmas cards, only twelve of which I’ll write on, but still. (Total hourage: Three hours and forty five minutes.)

Tedium #3: Flipped through (and through and through) a four-inch-thick stack of hand-written index cards, quizzing Peter on 250 government and judicial definitions in preparation for his AP Government final tomorrow. Good old fashioned memorization of terms. I’m serious, were I to take that test cold, I’d fail spectacularly… and I think I’m a pretty good student of government. Jeez. I will say this: I’m very impressed by the absorbency of the teenage brain!  The kid rocked it. (Total hourage: One hour and fifteen minutes.)

That’s over 9 hours of tedium on the day. (So grateful for the late afternoon 90-minute massage!)

And pretty much I loved it all, too. (Well… love… I don’t know, but I was totally into all of it.) I have a reasonably high tolerance for tedium, don’t know why. It may be the rush of endorphins one feels upon completion of a tedious task. I just made that up, but there is some truth to the feeling of satisfaction one gets… amirite?

My day was so head-down, I barely looked up to see anything, much less take any pictures… so here’s a shot I took yesterday of the sky as I walked out of the Davis Food Coop… it took my breath away:

We are all loving this rain. We don’t even mind that the Richards Boulevard under-crossing was seriously flooded and we had to carefully navigate our way through the tunnel lest we stall out …

We passed a gnarly accident on I-80 and had to detour our way to Rick and Linda’s.

Other than that, it was a great day of food and buds.

First, brunch with these guys:

Rick and Ricker are in another room. (Rick and Ricker.. that’s weird.)

An incredibly enjoyable few hours

Then raced home and made a couple of apps for a Creole-themed dinner with the Dining Divas (I guess that name is sticking):

I made chicken creole deviled eggs…

And zesty marinated shrimp…

Both just fine! And, both firsts for me. Honest to god, I’ve never made a deviled egg in my whole life. Also, to my knowledge, I’ve never cooked a raw shrimp.

More adventure than I expected for a Sunday.

Quite pleased with our little effort today. After maybe a dozen or more years of doing baskets for relatives near and far, we found the easiest way yet to get the job done… thanks to what we think is a newish feature–surely seasonal–at the Davis Farmers Market.

In an area rich in locally grown, organic produce, baskets are a no brainer. The whole thing is kind of bonus on bonus. Buying at the farmers market supports local farmers, the stuff is mostly interesting and hopefully fun, and, not trivially, it’s one-stop-shopping for 6-8 people in one swell foop.

Aaaand there’s pretty good variety: olive oils, honeys, nuts, herbs, dried fruits/vegetables, jams, wines, vinegars, chocolates, soaps, soup kits, nut butters, …not too perishable nor breakable. We’ve bought all of this over the years, or some subset.

Also not cheap, but what the heck, right? The rest is so perfect.

We usually haul everything home (heavy!) and package it all ourselves in baskets and stuffing and ribbons and cellophane we’ve bought at Cost Plus or wherever.. super labor intensive.

We realized a week ago that Farmers Market has a basket packaging station; they do all the packing for free, including the basket and all materials, as long as your basket includes at least three items purchased at the market.

Oh yeah!

So we wheeled Jim’s cart over to the park, bought a millions things, took them all to the booth and let them do all the packing. We then hauled it all home in the cart. Easy peasy.

Here’s Jim wheeling through the market…

Filled up, on the way home…

And here they are: 8 baskets ready for shipping and delivery…

Unrelated but worth a photo, I saw something I’d never seen before.. fresh turmeric.

Hard to believe that something so mutant, so swollen-looking, is actually a natural remedy for inflammation.  But it is.

We did not put turmeric in the baskets.

Sometimes, all ya got is meatballs.

Don’t judge me.

#funatikea

About 8:00 tonight, Peter mentioned that he had to take gazpacho to school tomorrow for his Spanish class. He said they were going to have a party and everyone was to sign up for an item to make and bring. He couldn’t think of anything but had heard of gazpacho, so he volunteered to bring that. He didn’t know what it was exactly… he thought it might be a rice dish.

So a Google search and run to the store later, he was making gazpacho. I got to help and it worked out pretty well.

He assembled and blended the base (tomato juice, garlic, vinegar, olive oil, fresh tomato, salt and hot pepper sauce). Then we worked side by side on chopping more tomatoes, onions, cucumber, and bell pepper to be added to the blended tomato base. He actually needed a lot of guidance on how to properly chop the vegetables. For example, he was to peel, seed and chop two cucumbers, so I did one and he did one and he followed my suggestions on how to do it. It’s not something you would necessarily know how to do.

He’s got a nice technique…

He’s got to work on his onion chopping technique, however..

We ended up with a lot… so part of the batch will stay here.  Which is great for us!

Meanwhile, after nearly a week of staring at a bare naked tree in the living room, we also finished the tree trimming, decorating and inside lights:

Shopping’s all done, too, and Jim finished the card design tonight, so I can get that out … wrapping, baskets, shipping and baking remain.

On December 10th in 1948 the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was an effort that Eleanor Roosevelt championed and one which she considered to be her greatest professional and life accomplishment.

The Declaration has a short preamble (seven whereas’s and a proclamation) and 30 articles that affirm the values of global human rights, dignity and freedom.

It has no binding authority, but it is a powerful and inspiring document.

So, our neighbors Verena and Ray put on a event annually at the International House in observance of the document’s adoption. They organize a multi-cultural, multi-lingual reading of the declaration, followed by a short discussion, followed by cookies.

Sixty-one people participate in the reading: a person to read the preamble, and two people to read each of the articles–one who translates the article into the language of his/her country, and another to read it in English. I counted 21 different languages (some languages repeated, like Spanish, Arabic and Farsi). The reading is hugely symbolic and therefore pretty moving.

This is Barak Zilber who is reading Article 7 in Hebrew. Article 7 has to do with all people being equal under the law and entitled to equal protection against discrimination. To his left, Bengali, French and Chinese; to his right, Czech, Spanish and Japanese.

And so it went.

Peter and I participated this year (our second time). I read Article 27, Peter 28.

Maybe not surprisingly, I saw lots of people I knew–bunches of neighbors, a couple city council members, an old friend from the way back, the son of one of my first bosses, some old work contacts… it was fun and all community-ish.

And, thankfully, Peter ran into two friends who were also recruited as readers: Sam and Madison (“M.E.” whom he’s known since they were in the same kindergarten class!).

This picture is funny to me, not because of Peter’s half-annoyed, half-bemused expression, but because I had expressed all manner of displeasure at his wardrobe selection, explaining to him that an event like this deserved the respect of nice clothing, something OTHER THAN a hoodie. He disagreed (What does he know!, I thought but didn’t say). You will note that both Sam and Madison are wearing hoodies.

One of my favorite parts of the night was the post-reading discussion. A couple of people spoke about Trump–one said he’d violated about half of the articles and undermined most of the intent of the Declaration. Sam stood up and said he was aware of the relatively privileged life he was leading, being a white guy in an affluent community with easy access to basic and essential amenities and freedoms. He went on to say he was prepared to dedicate his life to reaching out to people in other parts of the world who struggle for even the most fundamental of human rights. He was absolutely serious.

It gave me hope.

Jim has this cool project coming up for the university. He’s been contracted to measure and map the depth of Putah Creek. Not just any Putah Creek…the Putah Creek right down the street…the stretch that runs from the east end (Whole Foods parking lot, shovel gateway) to Spafford Lake (right next to Mrak Hall).

To do this, man needs a boat.

Exhibit A:

Maybe I could help to trim the sails?

Hallelujah.

So, last night, I’m up late, sitting at my computer, and I begin to fiddle with my rings. I rarely remove my wedding band, but I’m reading some article online, probably a recap of President Obama’s address on terrorism and gun violence, and maybe I’m agitated, or nervous, but I’m sort of mindlessly playing with my ring… I’d pulled it off and was spinning it around on my finger.

As I spun it around, I realized it felt weird. The edge was too sharp. The ring felt too light. I looked at it and noticed it was too narrow. This is not my ring!

It was 1:00am and I may not have been processing well, but a million thoughts and theories were flying. I thought perhaps Jim had switched rings: maybe he was going to take mine into the jeweler and do something exciting with it. (I know, with a wedding band?) Or maybe he was going to use it to have a new ring sized, a special Christmas present! This didn’t make any sense at all, but it was the best I could come up with.

I went into the bedroom. He woke up. I asked. He grumbled something that was the opposite of affirmative. I went to sleep baffled.

I woke up this morning baffled and resumed my theorizing. I followed one lead to a dead end (Spa Central).

I’m already out of leads.

And I am truly, truly flummoxed.

First off, I rarely take off my ring. When I do, it’s only for a moment, or it’s because I’m getting a manicure or massage, and even then I rarely take it off. But of course, being nearly 60 and getting all kinds of forgetful, it’s possible I took it off somewhere. But if I did take it off, and then found myself without it, it would be lost. Or at least misplaced. Or even just left behind somewhere. So.. it’s possible that I could be without my ring. Remote, but possible.

But what makes NO SENSE, is that not only is my ring gone, but I’m wearing somebody else’s. So not only did I lose my ring, but I somehow acquired somebody else’s in the deal. That suggests a switcheroo. But WHERE? HOW? WITH WHOM? I must have left it in the company of another ring/s, and then picked up the wrong one.

Naturally, I have ZERO recollection of anything of the sort.

Here are a few ideas I can rule out:

I haven’t had it cleaned in years, so it didn’t happen at De Luna’s;

I don’t take it off at airport security.

I didn’t try on or exchange rings with anybody for fun and then forget and wander off with their ring. 

So here it is…

Mine looks just like it, of course, but is slightly wider.

I have to say, knowing it’s not mine kind of gives me the creeps… I’m not sure what to do with it. I’m also not sure how long I’ve been wearing it. I guess I’ll keep it on, at least for a while…  but anxious to have my ring back.

Any ideas are welcome.

Head’s been down most of the day…busy sorting photos for most of it, looking for good ones for both our Christmas card and calendar. Took a break from that to spend a couple hours with Peter reality checking his college application list.. a conversation that started trickily but ended productively.  These are difficult choices.. but as choices go, are probably pretty good ones to have.

Anyway… it was a productive head down kind of day.

But it does pay to look up once in a while..

I’ll say this: After looking at maybe 7-9,000 photos today–the entire 2015 archive–I can say without question, I take a lot of sky shots. There are a lot of recurring photographic themes over the course of the year, but sky shots are definitely one of the big ones. Sometimes I’m looking up to the sky, and a lot of the time I’m in the sky looking down.

You probably already knew this.

(I’m titling the post ^ thusly so that I can remember what kind of tree we got this year. I’m always forgetting and feel like we start from scratch each year with the conversation: “What kind of tree shall we get?” “I don’t know, but something that smells good.”)

(Actually, last year was a Silver Tip and it was great, but this year, their Silver Tips were too short, so a noble it is; Peter is a tall tree kinda guy.)

The other thing we seem to mess up each year is finding our way to Silveyville…. we drove apparently aimlessly for awhile, unintentionally circumnavigating our destination. Well, almost.

Saw some nice countryside..

Finally went to the googles and got a bearing… posted on Facebook, too, and got a quick navigation suggestion from Don Shor, who happens to live out that way. Pretty funny.

Anyway, we did find the Silveyville Christmas Tree farm, after our annual, unplanned tour of the farms and ranches in the area.

We decided to visit the teeny museum they have on their property… really more of a tribute to Jerry, the founder of the Silveyville Christmas Tree farm, who died last year. We learned a little about the farm’s history: Jerry, and his wife Alberta, decided that after his retirement from some kind of machine building, they’d plant a tree farm, and name it in honor of the village of Silveyville (history of that is later in this post):

In 1979, they removed eleven acres of almonds, amended the soil, and planted their first crop of trees, and by 1981, they opened for business. The place has been a beloved local institution ever since.

Long ago, it looked like this:

The two wide dark strips are the rows of trees. We typically park in a large lot to the left of that red barn. This is looking south, Silveyville road in foreground.

This is it now. Some directions give you a nice, peaceful scene…

What you can’t see in this picture are the hundreds of saw-wielding patrons–some on sleigh rides; the huge (and very young) staff; Santa Claus; the giant fire pit; the store and museum; the games; apple cider, hot chocolate and popcorn venders.. and the music, decorations and general festive atmosphere.  Peter hasn’t gone with us now for two years… but we still go. Sigh.

We made quick work of our tree purchase–a 7′ noble fir. Shaken and netted.

What an operation.

Then, we headed out. We turned left, instead of right, following another suggestion Don gave us–to take a look at the historic marker for the once-village of Silveyville.

We found it and here’s what we learned: Silveyville was a settlement considered the halfway point between Sacramento and Benicia/SF Bay Area.  It was first settled by Elijah Silvey in 1852 and, in its about 16 years of existence, grew to include a post office, a church, a school building, a store and a telegraph office.

Here’s the marker on Silveyville Road, near the intersection with Schroeder, that basically says all that.

Later, in 1860, a Pony Express station was established in the village. It was called the Halfway Station.

Even later, when the California Pacific RR was finished in 1868, all the residents packed up and moved to Dixon.  They even took their church with them; it still exists as a place of worship in Dixon.

The Pony Express was pretty short-lived. But here is its historical marker:

Quite the historic morning, huh?

Found our way back to Davis using a much more straight forward route (I mean really… this tree farm is only ten minutes from Davis), catching a few nice fall scenes along the way:

And that was that.

The tree’s in and anchored in its place. I’d love to leave it as is.. undecorated… just a nice smelling fir..