Final Day of the Year

I always spend the final week of each year reflecting on our planet's most recent journey around the sun. This particular circuit around Sol was a good one for me, primarily because this year Jeanine and I bought a home together, and then got married. Also, for the first year since 2009, nobody in my family died.

This is my 61st blog post this year, at least on this site. I only managed 28 posts this year on my music blog. Still, 89 separate posts is a fair amount. This has been my main creative output this year, and I still feel like I could really be increasing my creativity in other ways. Something to look forward to over the coming year! On the consumption end of the spectrum, I figured out that I read 15,090 pages this year. That's slightly over 54 books, and doesn't count any online or magazine reading. I can't really compare that to previous years, since this is the first year I've been nerdy enough to sit down and figure it out.

Christmas went well, and the kids were happy (which is really what this holiday is about, isn't it?). There were plenty of colorful lights in our neighborhood too, and we got some good rain last week. As I type, it has gone back to being cold and dry, with no rain in the immediate forecast.

I still have another week off. Tonight, I'm heading up to Oakland to see Neurosis play. Happy New Year's Eve to all.

Currently listening to: Misery "Lore"

Deluge, But No Doom

Willow has now ceased to worry about the world ending. A big sarcastic "thank you" goes out to the media and popular culture in general for scaring kids (and gullible new age adults) everywhere.

I've worked my last night of 2012, and now I'm back on a daytime schedule for a couple of weeks. Sometimes it's easy to make the transition, and sometimes it is hard. Take for instance this morning: I've been awake since around 2:30. It wasn't so bad though, because there was a thunderstorm to keep me occupied. The rain was pretty ferocious at times too, pelting the roof and gurgling in the gutters. Every so often, the room would light up, followed by the distant rumble of thunder. Eventually, I gave up trying to go back to sleep and got up. Currently, I'm watching the sky shed darkness as a seemingly endless stream of crows glides by overhead. A couple of them have alighted on nearby power lines, and one is attempting to wake up the neighborhood. They seem to like the persimmons on the neighbor's tree. So do I, and since many of them hang over the fence into our yard, we have a good supply.

Currently listening to: Crows, the burbling of the fish tank, the gurgling of the gutters, and the ringing in my right ear (I think I have a touch of tinnitus, possibly precipitated by a Wovenhand gig a couple of years ago).

Incinerated In Our Atmosphere

Last week ended with a really spectacular Geminid meteor shower. Every other time I've gone out during a so-called meteor shower, I've seen maybe one or two meteors. This time, I saw at least thirty. Thursday night at work, I was out behind the camp buildings with some of the teachers, facing the darkened field. The sky was mostly clear, and sparkling with little blinks of flaming grit. We didn't stay out for too long at a time. It got too cold to stand in one spot, so occasionally I went back in to warm up. The teachers eventually went to bed, but I stepped back out every hour or so and watched some more. One more reason to love my job.

This week is the last week of camp before the holidays. I'm reading "The Neon Bible" by John Kennedy Toole. For years, I thought that "A Confederacy of Dunces" was his only book, but no, he wrote this one too, when he was only 16. I was a bit dubious about starting it, but I needn't have worried. It's quite good. It helps that it's written in the first person, and that the character is a kid. Being so close to the age of the character, he managed to capture the voice of the protagonist quite well. Too bad Toole chose to end his own life.

Currently listening to Michael Tanner/Plinth "Witch Elder" I've been discovering too much good music online lately, so much that I'm starting to feel overwhelmed by it all.

Friday Agenda

Friday Agenda, originally uploaded by Corbie.

You can lead kids to water, but apparently it's hard to prevent them from drinking.

I don't usually make it to the Friday meetings at work, but I often get a good laugh out of the agenda items. This one was no exception.

Currently listening to: Crippled Black Phoenix "Live In Bern 2012 A.D."

Calisoga Bunk Mate

Calisoga Bunk Mate, originally uploaded by Corbie.

As we wait for the third of three storms to hit, I'll take advantage of the calm between the storms to bring you this little photo of a poor, misunderstood creature who was just trying to come in out of the wind and wet.

This particular Calisoga Spider figured he'd warm himself by crawling into the bottom bunk. He probably considered that since he is such a handsome fellow, the fifth grade girl already occupying the bunk would welcome him.

This turned out not to be the case. Like the frog and the beetle I'd had to evict from the cabin earlier in the week, I had to convince Mr. Spider that the woodshed was a comfortable alternative. I walked around with him for awhile before I had time to get him down there though, since I still had to oversee bedtime for the campers.

I hope he is happy in the woodshed. Like other members of the infraorder Mygalomorphae, he breathes with book lungs, which due to their placement on the underside of the abdomen, make it easy for him to drown in a relatively small amount of water, so letting him go outside in the middle of a storm wouldn't have been very nice.

Currently listening to: William Basinski "The Disintegration Loops"

Close-Up

Close-Up, originally uploaded by Corbie.

Here's a photo taken during our short honeymoon last week. We found all sorts of creative uses for the ducks people brought to the wedding.

Call me an idiot, but I just noticed that I can share photos directly from my Flickr page, not to mention compose the post itself from there, so the main function of this post is that of a guinea pig. Here goes nothing...

Deep Autumn

The wheel of the seasons is spinning towards Winter, but for the most part, it doesn't feel like it. California never really has a Winter, instead skirting the edges of the season with a storm or two, and never staying below freezing for more than a few hours all season long. This time of year, the best thing is the interesting sunrises and sunsets. I think my biggest problem with Summer has always been the boring sky. I'd rather have something more varied to look at, and I'd even rather have things fall out of it than have to suffer through months of pale blue nothing.

The Thanksgiving holiday week is drawing to an end. We had a modest little get-together at our place, which included the Trader Joe's brand of imitation turkey. I forgot to put the gravy on it, but it was still good. Willow was actually here on the holiday instead of a day or two afterwards, which means her mom spent Thanksgiving without kids for perhaps the first time in 16 years. I must note that we celebrate Thanksgiving the same way we celebrate Christmas - from the standpoint of tradition rather than any real agreement with the myth behind the holiday itself - in this case, it's the myth that the pilgrims and the Native Americans lived in some sort of Disneyfied fairytale land where everybody helped each other out. I think most people don't really give it a lot of thought. Sure, everybody comes up with lists of things to be thankful for, which is a good thing because it steers us away from taking too much for granted, but I'm sure nobody has ever uttered the thought, "I'm thankful for this continent we stole from the poor suckers who were here before us." People, I might add, who thought the concept of land ownership was ridiculous. Good for them. Why is it that sensible people always get overtaken by barbarians?

We went to a Harvest Festival the other day too, and bought things from artisans there - candy, tea, ear cuffs for Eva, and a romantic picture to hang on the wall. Willow doesn't think the picture is romantic though. She thinks it's creepy because it has skeletons in it. Oh, well. The whole reason I mentioned the festival at all is that the name signifies another thing we're generally out of touch with in modern society, at least those of us who don't live in rural areas. I'm talking of course about the harvest, the bringing in of the crops, the squirreling away of food in order to stave off starvation during the bleakness of Winter. There was no shipping fruit in from the southern hemisphere in the old days. No, you had to spend the Autumn months stuffing it into jars and cans. We have it pretty easy these days, but as always, this comes with a hidden price. Every convenience does. Think about it.

Currently listening to: William Basinski "The Disintegration Loops"

Moon of Honey

We're heading out for a brief mini-honeymoon in a couple of hours. Despite this being my second marriage, I've never been on a honeymoon before. The first time around, circumstances (read: finances and children) didn't allow for that kind of luxury. Here in the present, we're making it happen.

Traveling with us will be a bunch of rubber ducks, given to us by literal-minded wedding guests who read the fine print on the invitation. Or perhaps people just like buying ducks. Either way you look at it, we have a bunch, and they're going with us.

We're taking the chocolate ducks with us too. They won't survive for long.

Currently listening to: V/A "Benefit For Animals In Need" Follow the link if you'd like to support the ASPCA while at the same time adding 31 songs to your digital library. Go on, you know you want to.

Married!

The wedding went off without a hitch. Over a couple of days, our friend Raul whipped together some fantastic balloon decorations, and Earles of Newtown, a swing band from Nevada city featuring my old friend Chad on washboard and vocals, proved to be so entertaining that adults and kids alike had good things to say about them. The ceremony took place in a hillside amphitheater, at just around sunset. We passed around a speaking stick with our rings attached, and lots of people chose to share their thoughts and wishes for us with the crowd. By the end of the ceremony, it was so cold that I invited everybody down to warm their hands around the fire, which ended up being just perfect. The cake, baked by Walrus, was magnificent, and the company was excellent.

Plus, we have a lot of ducks now, mostly of the rubber kind, but also a nice wooden mallard, a plush duck or two, and some wind-up ones. I'm not sure what possessed me to write "nobody will be admitted without a duck" on the invitation. I'm just glad that nobody brought live ducks (at least a couple of people almost did).

My friend Jellyfish took some nice pictures too:

Currently listening to: Celer "Recumbent In Wishes"

Today Is The Day!

Jeanine and I are making it all official later today. We've opted to keep the ceremony simple, since neither of us have ever understood the need to make things more complicated than they need to be. That said, there will be scenic views, a warm fire, yummy cake, friends aplenty, and good music. What more could anyone ask for?

Currently listening to: Xambuca "Kamuy"

Wedding

In less than 48 hours, Jeanine and I will have rings on our fingers and the benevolent gleam of legality will illuminate our already interwoven lives. I think we've covered all of the pertinent details, and hopefully there won't be any nth hour moments of sudden realization due to overlooked tasks. I'm very much looking forward to the ceremony, and will of course write more after the weekend.

After a couple of weeks in the field, I'm working nights this week and next, followed by a week off in honor of the annual Feast of Gluttons.

Here's a picture taken during field class the week before last. I love how fog utterly changes the mood of the photo.

Currently listening to: Tim Eriksen "Josh Billings Voyage"

What's Wrong With This Picture?

I meant to post this awhile ago, but it got pushed to the back of my mind by more pressing matters.

I often get Facebook messages from friends, usually accompanied by a photo (like the case in point here), asking me to identify some mysterious creature that appeared in a yard, or bathtub, or garage, or somewhere else terrifying and inconvenient. Usually I can identify the critter right away. In most cases, if I can't identify it, I'll at least have a good idea.

The animal in this picture is as well known to me as the palm of my hand, and since I know what it is, I would never actually put one in the palm of my hand. It's a Rattlesnake, of course. To be precise (as a pair of fictional detectives are fond of saying), it's a Northern Pacific Rattlesnake. Fortunately for the kid in the picture, the species isn't very aggressive. It makes up for its lack of aggressiveness with relatively toxic venom though, so it's not something you should pick up with your bare hands, no matter who you are.

In this case, if I remember the story right, the irresponsible party was a grandparent. As adults, it's our responsibility to be knowledgeable about potential dangers in our immediate environment. This particular adult fell down on the job. Hard.

Where living things are concerned, the best advice I can give is: If you don't know what it is, don't touch it.

A Brief Update

After inspecting a couple of antique stores, we found a nice pair of wedding rings today. The ladies who sold them to us spent a moment sharing how long they'd each been married. If I remember correctly, the durations were 41, 47, and 65 years. The unanimous opinion was that marriage works. That's good to know.

This day also marks a somber anniversary, since it is the one year anniversary of my dad's death. It's hard to believe that a year has already vanished, since the day is still so finely etched into my memory. It's interesting to note that my dad passed away on the Festival of the Dead, a festival that became All Soul's Day once the Christians got hold of it. Yet another holiday that now has a deeper, more personal meaning for me.

Speaking of the dead, All Hallow's Eve passed without incident. A row of jack-o-lanterns and a large balloon Frankenstein's Monster greeted the surprisingly large number of trick-or-treaters who came to our door. Jeanine reported that many of them didn't seem to know what to say, instead standing there with mute expectation.

Currently listening to: At Jennie Ritchie "The Communist's Garden"

The Night Sky Springs A Brief Leak

It rained, sort of. It hit the valley in the evening, but not for very long. Up in the hills at camp, I was despairing that I'd been cheated, but a few desultory drops found their way to the ground during the wee hours, and again within the last hour. Early on, I did get treated to a bit of thunder and lightning. There was a flash beyond the hill to the north, briefly backlighting it, and of course the attendant rumble of thunder.

It's not much, but it's been dry for so long that even a few drops seems like a deluge.

Currently listening to: Bernardo Devlin "Sic Transit"

Autumnal

As we move into the heart of October, there's a bit of a bite to the night air. Now, as I type these words, I can see a stately procession of tattered, white clouds moving north, starkly contrasting against the deep blue beyond. I love this time of year. I wish it would rain though.

We're slowly but surely pulling the elements of our wedding together. Jeanine and I collaborated on the invitations, and I'm still trying to confirm a band. All of the local bands I've asked are either suddenly not local or have time conflicts (although one band member expressed a desire to play our 10th anniversary). At the moment, I'm pinning my hopes on a friend who has two bands, a swing band and a blues band, and I'm waiting to hear back about the availability of either. They'd be coming from a bit farther away, but hopefully at least one of the bands will be available on the date.

Another friend, who also plays in a blues band, was surprised that we were interested in having a blues band play our wedding, but if you think about it, the whole point of blues is to make people feel good. Of course, most of my favorite music could be labelled "depressing" or at least "melancholy", so what do I know?

I know that the music draws out sadness and expresses it in a way that nothing else can, so the sadder the music, the happier it makes me feel. Not that I'm sad or anything like that, but perhaps the reason I'm rarely sad myself is because I wallow in musical morbidity.

Lest one think that it's just me, Jeanine is fully on board with having a blues band play. Yet another reason why we're such a good match.

Currently listening to: Tinariwen - YouTube mix, which isn't melancholy at all, and thus doesn't really support the point I was making above, but sometimes life is like that.

The Long Fingers of Summer

The week started out uncomfortably warm, with temperatures well into the nineties, but the thermometer has dropped enough so that once again, a jacket is required at night. I've been watching episodes of Dexter at camp while the kids are sleeping, and tonight I plan on watching the last couple of episodes of season 4. After each episode, I take a palate-cleansing walk through camp, watching the stars wheel through the blackness and the fog drift in. It's a peaceful job, as long as nobody is throwing up or bleeding. There have been a lot of bloody noses this week, probably because of the lack of humidity. Kids often seem so fragile, ill-equipped for anything approaching "roughing it".

As I walk around in the dark, I think. This week, I've been thinking about passion, and about how I feel the need to develop some new creative passions, or perhaps revisit dormant ones. I feel like a lot of my creativity has been left by the wayside over the years, although I guess blogging sort of counts as creative, even if it is more like a chronicle of my experiences most of the time. For the time being, I'll take what I can get, I guess. I'm looking for some new muse or inspiration though, perhaps because I just finished reading a novel about a muse of sorts - Christopher Moore's Sacre Bleu. Of course, with this particular muse, pain and loss is inextricably linked to inspiration. I'm not a big fan of pain and loss, even though a lot of great art and music is born from it. Does that make me some sort of psychic vulture, benefiting as I do from the pain and loss of others? Ha.

Currently listening to: Empty Vessel Music "The Burial",

The Small Hours

Back when I started this blog, most of my posts were created in the middle of the night after I'd gotten home from delivering the Wall St. Journal. It has been over 8 years since that job ended, but once again I find myself regularly awake at that time. My goal this school year is to stay awake all night while I'm at camp, as opposed to napping during the small hours like I've been doing for the last handful of years. So far, so good. It's a peaceful time to be awake. As I type, it's nearly four in the morning, and all is well. The only real drawback is that I now have to sleep until mid-afternoon, which cuts down on my free time at home during the week. Life is always about juggling though, and so I'll continue to keep the pins spinning through the air.

I've got a cold. I think I picked it up over the weekend while I was at the Stella Natura festival in the Tahoe National Forest. The festival was phenomenal, and a detailed report will surface on my music blog soon. For the time being though, I'll sit here and continue blowing my nose.

Currently listening to: Natural Snow Buildings "Live at The Pop, Paris, France 05.11.2003"

Sudden Lizards

Suddenly, we have two Bearded Dragons. Their previous owner tried to donate them to science camp, but the nature lab is already stuffed with critters, so I offered to take them home. These weren't available as pets when I was a kid, or I probably would have had one before now. Over the last decade or so, they've become quite popular and easy to find. Everybody seems to be breeding them. Maybe we will too, since now we also have an incubator.

Currently listening to: Hazy Loper "High In The Murk"

The Internet Makes You Stupid

As I was driving to work tonight, I found myself musing about the internet, and how it seems to create its own reality - a reality that can eclipse the world around us by narrowing and distorting it. At my worst moments, I can feel the claws of this virtual world scraping at my psyche, lulling me into a strange sort of complacency. I was listening to Utah Phillips at the time, which always makes me long for the simple pleasure of sitting around a campfire and sharing stories. That's the best antidote for internetitis - unplugging and backing away. That said, as with everything we use, there is a right way and a wrong way to use the internet. Knowing and seeing the difference is the trick.

Moments after having these thoughts, I noticed the license plate holder on the car in front of me. It read, "the internet makes you stupid". Amen to that.

Currently listening to: Felicia Atkinson "Les Bois Rouges"

Busy

The second week of the current outdoor school season has begun, although my part in it doesn't begin until I get to work this evening.

I still feel like I need to recover from my busy weekend, which featured Willow's soccer photo day and the game that followed (well played, although Willow's team lost by a point or two), a birthday party up in the hills (with live blues band and karaoke - Willow is a karaoke monster!), open house at work (for kids who are coming to camp this school year), and an instore performance by my brother at Amoeba Records in Berkeley (followed by pizza at Zachary's pizza). To top it all off, I seem to have caught a cold.

We walked to get Eva from middle school earlier, and as we started walking homeward, I noticed a kid in front of us contemptuously toss his pencil into the air behind him. Half a block later, one of his friends did the same thing, flinging his pencil into a bush. Do kids these days think pencils are a one-use item? I suppose I did my share of similar things when I was their age, but from my current perspective, it seems kind of senseless. If these kids are sixth graders, we'll be seeing them at science camp in the Spring, and we'll get a chance to teach about not wasting resources. If they're seventh or eighth graders, then they've already been at camp and the lesson didn't stick.

Currently listening to: Nurse With Wound "?"

Back To Nights

This is my first night working as Night Supervisor for the 2012/13 outdoor school year. Last night should have been my first night, but I played hookey and went to see Swans instead.

So far, I've been treated to a Devo concert (I could hear the music from the nearby Mountain Winery) and a couple of bloody noses. The music and the blood are done now, and I'm anticipating seeing the moonrise in a little over an hour. This year, my goal is to actually stay awake all night, rather than try to get my usual 4 or 5 hours of sleep each night. This will mean more sleeping at home. So far, so good. I have to awaken 3 kids in a few minutes, so they don't moisten their sleeping bags before dawn. Then, it will be back to diverting myself with music and literature. I just finished E.R. Eddison's "The Worm Ouroboros", a book that has languished unread on my shelf for years. I'm glad that I finally read it. Next up is "The Jekyll Legacy" by Robert Bloch, which didn't even rate a shelf, but rather languished, coverless, in a cardboard box in various garages and storage spaces for probably decades. I'm trying to focus on what I have, instead of on what I want. This is a good way to start.

Currently listening to: Aural Apocalypse 9/5/12 Podcast, which is chock full of bands set to play the upcoming Stella Natura Festival up in desolation wilderness. I'm officially excited now.

Dinners

I've been digging through boxes in the garage again, and finding the usual mixture of treasure and trash. The recycling bin is close to full, and I have six or seven boxes of books that I can stand to part with. I've found some old photos, and even some old music reviews, written in ball point pen on college ruled binder paper. I'm still debating whether or not they should see the electronic light of day on my music blog.

I also found this book, and it reminded me of Dexter, who would be a six-dinner cat if he could get away with it. Six-Dinner Sid manages it by being an outside cat who fools six different families into believing they are each his sole owner. Dexter is an inside cat, so he mournfully meows at odd hours of the night.

Like he did last night.

Currently listening to: V/A "The Active Listener's First Birthday"

Early Awakening

Yesterday, the weather turned strange. I was near the garden at work when I first heard thunder rumbling up from the direction of the valley. Then, on the way to get Willow, a few fat drops impacted on my windshield, barely disturbing the dust. It has been dry for months now, so even those few drops were cause for rejoicing.

We're in the middle of our set-up/inservice week at camp, and the transformation from summer camp to outdoor school is almost complete. Willow is signed up for her school play this year, as well as doing soccer and girl scouts. She is a busy girl. It must be getting close to Autumn.

This morning, Jeanine and I were awakened by brief, pounding rain, complete with lightning and thunder. By the time we actually got out of bed, it was over. It was a great way to wake up though. I hope this winter is wetter than last year's was.

It just got dark enough for one of the solar-powered lights to blink on in one of the backyard garden bed, which I can see from where I'm typing. The clouds are in the process of losing their pinkish orange underbellies. I think I'll step outside to get a closer look.

Currently listening to: CMX "Melankolia"

Future Additions to the Family

We've been doing research on tortoises recently. Now that we have a backyard, it just seems like there needs to be a tortoise wandering around out there during the summer months. We might get a toad too. We took a trip up to East Bay Vivarium to look around, and we did see some interesting animals. We currently have our eyes on a Gulf Coast Toad and an African Spurred Tortoise, but our purchases for this trip were confined to various supplies for the existing animals (who live up at camp) and a kit for growing glow in the dark mushrooms. The mushrooms are exciting, but I have yet to procure the proper sort of log to grow them in. Ideally, we need a bit of oak.

We also might get a chicken, although we're still not sure if chickens and tortoises willingly share space with each other.

Currently listening to: Miranda Sex Garden "Peep Show"

Deserted Evening Streets

There was much internet excitement about the so-called Blue Moon, which of course isn't blue at all, and only exciting if you live by numbers on a calendar. If the full moon had occurred today, rather than yesterday, I'm sure there wouldn't have been a story on the Yahoo main page about how to "view the blue moon online". What the hell? Why would anybody want to watch the full moon rise online? Have people forgotten that there are doors, and that if you pass through the right ones, you'll find yourself in what people used to refer to as "the great outdoors"? Okay, maybe if you're being held against your will, either in jail or otherwise, with captors who allow you internet access, and if the concept of two full moons in the same month blows your mind for some reason, then you have an excuse for watching the moon rise online and not getting off your lazy butt and spending a few minutes in the unfamiliar outdoors watching the real thing.

Jeanine and I went for a walk, and yes, we saw the moon rise. It was glorious, hanging yellow and gravid just above the horizon. We barely saw anybody else outside on what was a very pleasant late summer evening. There was one guy walking with a small child, and a couple of girls in sparkly outfits running in and out of their open front door, but other than that, the darkening streets were deserted. We reminisced about childhood, about how there were always lots of kids doing kid stuff all over our neighborhoods, and how now many of the kids are inside sitting lifelessly in front of their electronic mood supports.

Currently listening to Natural Snow Buildings "Daughter of Darkness"

Late Summer Trails

the weather slowly gets cooler, we'll most likely be spending more time taking long walks, both nearby and up in the hills. Today, Jeanine and I took a long overdue walk at Almaden Quicksilver County Park. On the way there, it occurred to me that we hadn't been for a walk there since last Autumn, when I finally walked the last stretch of trail that I hadn't walked. That was the day we found the one tarantula we saw in the wild last year.

Today was warm, even at our 9:00 AM starting time. We wandered in from the uphill entrance and walked to Hidalgo Cemetery and back. The cemetery is a plot of land surrounded by a weathered white-picket fence. The wooden grave markers have long since returned to the earth, as I'm sure most of what rests beneath has. There are little rodent holes everywhere, and right inside the gate, Jeanine discovered an owl pellet with a sad little rodent tailbone jutting out from one side. She also saw something spidery duck back into a little webby hole, so maybe today's walk was blessed by a tarantula as well. On the way back, she spotted a praying mantis sitting at attention by the side of the trail. It looked like it was ready to lay some eggs.

We both ended up being more tired than we should have been. It could have been the warmth, but it was probably due at least in part to the fact that we just haven't been doing enough walking lately. I prescribe regular walking for what ails us.

Currently listening to: Nurse With Wound "The Memory Surface"

Bad Place To Sleep

There is a neighborhood cat who usually sleeps on the chaise lounge in our backyard, but yesterday I looked out the window and discovered another place he likes to sleep. He woke up when I peeked out the front door to take his picture, but didn't move. It's a good thing I hadn't planned to drive anywhere.

I'm in the middle of two weeks off, and I think I'll spend today like I'm actually off work, meaning that I'm not going to be productive. Yesterday I mowed the lawn with our push mower, impressing our mail carrier with its silence. She acted like she had never seen a lawn mower that wasn't either gas powered or electrical. Think how much quieter it would be in suburbia if everybody had a push mower. Of course, the lawns wouldn't be quite as immaculate, but I'm all in favor of that too. Immaculate lawns = death.

Currently listening to: Rustavi Choir "Alilo - Ancient Georgian Chorales"

Plotting and Planning

We're gearing up for our wedding, which will take place at my work in the hills above Saratoga. So far, we know when and where, and we've selected somebody to actually perform the ceremony. There are more steps to complete, such as invitations (and what form they will take), and a number of specific details. We have yet to decide on a band, but there will definitely be live music of some kind. We're going to make the wedding as simple and relaxed as possible. Neither of us tend to stress out about things.

On our way to a brief wedding planning meeting this morning, my van sulked all the way up the hill, stuttering and displaying the "check engine" light. I'll have that checked out tomorrow. I remember when I used to get really stressed out about car problems. Not so much anymore. They're still kind of a pain though.

Here's a picture of Willow, hanging out with her pet coconut, Carl. Just because.

Currently listening to: Dead Can Dance "The Hidden Treasures" bootleg

Incentives

This morning, a guy came by with an estimate on what it would take to install solar panels on our house. Even after all of the various incentives, it would cost $16,000 dollars. Eek. Still, it's worth putting some thought into. It's interesting that the only tactic the guy used to convince me was the financial one. I already new that switching to solar wouldn't save us much money in the short term, and I'm okay with that. The main reason I'm interested in finding out more is because I think switching to solar power is the right thing to do, morally and environmentally speaking. The guy didn't mention that at all. Ha. It's not all about the money, Mr. Guy.

I also finally got around to contacting an accountant to deal with my dad's final taxes. I couldn't get hold of the accountant (recommended by the paralegal I'd been working with earlier this year) by phone, so I went down to her nearby office, only to find it close and locked. I tried the phone again, and this time got hold of her and set up an appointment for next week. It feels good to finally make some progress on this front (the delay was partially because I didn't have all of the 1099 forms until relatively recently, and not being able to find the time or energy due to work). I'm glad there are accountants in the world, because I have no interest in having to deal with mountains of mysterious paperwork. I might change my tune after finding out how much this accounting work will cost, but for now I'll be grateful. Again, it's not really about the money though. It's about getting it done and putting it behind me.

Now, Jeanine is out getting Eva, and I'm getting a start on writing some CD/record reviews for my other blog. I would have to start with a 3 hour box set, wouldn't I?

Currently listening to: Eleni Karaindrou "Mousiki Gia To Teatro 1986-2010"

Digging In The Dirt

As we worked in the backyard this morning, I started feeling a bit like a gopher. When walking in the hills, I often see little eruptions of soil as some gopher or another cleans house, kicking dirt out the front door in what seems like a neverending battle against gravity. This is the only evidence of gopher home-building or remodeling that one is ever likely to see, and as I hauled wheelbarrow load after wheelbarrow load of weeds and branches out to the curb, I gained a deeper appreciation for the trials and travails of hapless, ground dwelling rodents everywhere. Much the same as gophers, the only evidence of our backyard labors that the neighbors are likely to see is me reappearing again and again with the wheelbarrow and the mountain of yard cuttings growing in the street.

What were we removing from our yard? Apparently, when plants get too heavy, they break and topple. The bougainvilleas were the first to go, snapping their supporting structures and toppling to the patio. This was followed by a branch of the avocado tree, which snapped and had to be pruned, leaving nearly 50 avocados stillborn. There were also the weeds along the right side of the house, which reminded me of the weeds growing along the right side of my mom's house long ago - an early and fondly remembered playground for me.

I also finally put together a worm bin, although I think I'll probably need to add more worms to it.

During the morning, I was also reminded of the fact that dirt contains a bacteria called Mycobacterium vaccae, which according to this article, "has antidepressant properties through activation of serotonin neurons". Play in the dirt. It's good for your mental health.

Back inside, I can't help but think that Tom Waits disapproves of my reading material.

Currently listening to: Sveinbjorn Beinteinsson "Edda"

The Time Between

Nice shirt.

Two weeks stretch out before me, two weeks of not going to work. Summer camp is over for another year. I worked 8 out of the 9 weeks - 8 weeks of hiking, splashing in the pond, catching critters, and hanging out with a wide variety of kids, counselors, and coworkers. It's nice to be reminded that there is a lot of good energy out there in the world.

I'm sure that the weeks will go by quickly, and I hope that I manage to accomplish some things before I find myself once again tied to a schedule. Right now, it seems that I'm not accomplishing anything of substance, so I'll end this here and get busy.

Currently listening to: Jim Haynes "Okno Non Konec"

That Autumn Feeling

For the first time this summer, I got a whiff of Autumn. It was probably due to the clouds this morning, which capped the valley with a pleasing grayness, but it might also be because I was thinking about it being the last week of summer camp this year. For those of us who have jobs tied to the school year, autumn will always be the time of year when it's time to stop playing around and get back to work. It's actually an invigorating feeling, although in reality my plans often outstrip my progress. This year it might be different though. Having a new home and preparing to get married puts a whole new spin on things.

First, there are still two final days of summer camp. Two final days of playing around, followed by a couple weeks off, although "off" just means I don't have to go to work. There is a lot to be done at home, not the least of which is planning our upcoming wedding. I also plan to finally put my dad's final taxes to rest, which means gathering bunches of paperwork and dumping it all on some unsuspecting accountant. Accountants love that stuff though. More power to them. I have at least two "to do" lists as well. Maybe I should consolidate them and start doing stuff. I'm sure that the weeks off will rip by like monkeys on fire.

Week 9 of summer camp has been good so far. The kids are great, and the counselors are mainly of the returning "superstar" variety. There is a girl in my group who is the daughter of an old friend of Matt's, and I only figured out the connection due to her uncommon name and the fact that the only other girl I'd met with that name was a baby 10 years ago. Sure enough, they turned out to be one and the same.

Currently listening to: Natural Snow Buildings "Daughter of Darkness"

A Tuxedo and a Rattlesnake

This summer, every single time I've taken campers on a so-called critter hunt, we've found at least one rattlesnake, often more. The local rattlesnakes are Northern Pacific Rattlesnakes, which are usually quite docile, a fact that is offset by the relative toxicity of their venom. I don't ever catch them with my hands, because not only would that be stupid, but it would set a very bad example for the kids watching. So far this summer, I have moved five rattlesnakes to new locations farther away from camp. Three of these were under some cement blocks near our garden gate, and two were near one of the driveways leading up to camp. Only one rattlesnake got angry enough to rattle and strike, and that was one of the ones that I didn't need to catch. I'd only caught it so the kids could see it, but it rattled pretty much the whole time it was a captive, and even struck at the inside of the plastic cage. After that, I left that one alone. It's neat how different rattlesnakes have different personalities.

The picture above was taken on Thursday evening, taken because I thought it was a strange pair of things to see on a mattress. For the past week, we had to vacate our usual summer staff room to make way for a youth symphony group that was ensconced in our regular staff room (not to mention most of the cabins normally used during outdoor school), which meant we ended up in one of the cabins ourselves. Each staff member staked out some personal space on a bunk bed. My stuff tends to spread out across the floor, although in this picture I'd already put most of it back into my van, leaving only the tuxedo T-shirt (which I've gotten into the habit of wearing on Thursday evenings for the BBQ/campfire program) and the most recent rattlesnake. This one was actually found by another group, resting quietly a foot from the driveway, nearly invisible in the leaf litter. Not long after this picture was taken, I released it deep in the meadow, where it is less likely to get run over or stepped on.

As I type, it's Sunday morning. We fell asleep last night instead of going out to watch the Perseid meteor shower, and today I'll be heading out to Livermore with Jeanine to help out at a party, and then we'll be traveling up to Berkeley to attend the Dead Can Dance show at the Greek Theatre. Tomorrow, the last week of summer camp for 2012 will begin.

Currently listening to: Murder By Death "Like the Exorcist, But More Breakdancing"

Eight Down, One To Go

the sun is setting on the eighth week of Summer Camp as I type. I have a good view of the west from our bedroom window, which is nice change from my apartment, where the window offered a view of my messy patio and a few dying treetops. The sunset pictured above is from last night, as I prepared to drive home from camp. Its sublime orangeness was appreciated by many.

This week, Alex was my counselor and he did a fine job, anticipating problems and jumping in to help where needed during the week. He's coming up next week with Nathan. All four of the kids where on hand Thursday evening for the BBQ/campfire program, and Willow finally won the raffle, becoming the proud owner of an R2D2 collector case and a Jar Jar Binks poster. At least she didn't get the life-sized George Bush (Senior) cardboard standup. Ha. These prizes, by the way, come about due to our camp director's dedication to the flea market. He finds the most amazing garbage.

Jeanine is out working right now, and I'm home resting after finishing a day of work. Of course "resting" means writing, at least for the moment. There are other things that need doing, of course, and they are gradually getting done. We haven't whipped the house into shape as quickly as I had expected us to, but it is slowly getting done in a more organic fashion, with little improvements happening on an almost daily basis. I have a couple of weeks off soon, and I plan on using them productively, because my summer camp schedule doesn't allow a lot of time (or when there is time, extra energy) to accomplish major tasks.

This week was a hot one, although I shouldn't complain because I recently saw an article noting that this is the hottest summer in the U.S. since people started paying attention to such things. The Bay Area has been more or less spared from this, with temperatures ping ponging around in the mid-eighties for the most part. Today it was in the mid-nineties.

Currently listening to: Murder By Death "10 Years" box set

Of Moons and Scorpions

Week 7 of Summer Camp is winding down. Willow has been at camp this week, climbing, creating, and playing. In the air, there is a palpable fog of disbelief that August has arrived. Many kids are due back in school well before the end of the month. We old folks have been reminiscing about the days when school didn't restart until after Labor Day.

The week flew by without any real distinguishing marks. Nobody got attacked by Yellow Jackets, although I did note a few new locations. More accurately, what I did was confirm a couple of nest locations I'd heard about, and a camper spotted another one. Last night, there was a glorious moonrise, which happened in conjunction with the start of the night hike. This morning, when I opened my eyes, it was to the sight of the moon softly sinking beyond the hilltops to the West. All this and a paycheck too.

The most interesting critter find of the week was a freshly-molted Forest Scorpion under a rock, which is something I hadn't seen before. Uncomfortable in its vulnerable state, it whipped its stinger around in a miniature frenzy, so after taking a few photos, we left it alone.

Currently listening to: Monolyth & Cobalt "E.Co - Boxset Vol. 1-4"

10 Years

Ten years ago today, I sat down in front of an old desktop computer and typed out my first short post for this blog.

Now, I'm typing on a laptop, two residences removed from the one I lived in a decade ago, and searching for something profound to say about it all. Much has changed around me. When I started this blog, I was childless and preparing to get married. Now, I have a 9 year old daughter and I'm preparing to get married a second time (we're looking at November).

Sometimes months will go by without an entry here, but I always come back. It's almost like a responsibility - something I've started and must continue. Not many people read this, but I feel like I can't abandon what I've begun, if only for myself and my own reasons. I actually get a kick out of going back and reading the older posts - they're like a message from the past.

How long this will continue is anybody's guess.

Currently listening to: Monolyth & Cobalt "Eilean"

Caves and Graves, Trees and Wasps

Like last year, this year we ended up spending our summer vacation week visiting an amusement park and a succession of caves. In fact, it was the same amusement park as last summer, mainly because it was on the way to the caves.

The caves were closer to home than last year, and unfortunately all of them were the guided tour type of excursion, rather than like the Lava Beds caves we visited last year, where one is allowed to wander at will. That aside, the caves were fantastic. We went to Black Chasm, California Caverns, Mercer Caverns, and Moaning Cavern, even finding the time to do a night of car camping and Sequoia-ogling at Calaveras Big Trees State Park. I got to do a tandem zip line ride with Willow at Moaning Cavern, zipping down the 1500 foot cable over the dry scrub below. We also checked out nearby Natural Bridge, which featured a creek that had worn a tunnel through the limestone.

While in town of Volcano, which is where Black Chasm is, we wandered through the old Catholic cemetery there, finding a letterbox as we did so. We soaked up a lot of history at every stop, seeing a Cave Bear skeleton at California Caverns, and piles of bones on display at Moaning Cavern (not to mention some still in place on the cavern floor, left behind by people and animals who took the quick way down). There was one skull said to be from a Chinese girl who fell the 165 feet to the bottom of the cavern around 12,000 years ago. In Angels Camp, we checked out the museum, which was full of artifacts from the Gold Rush days, not to mention plenty of history related to the famous frog jumping contest, instigated by the Mark Twain story. The girls generally seemed to like the places we visited, although I think they both enjoyed the amusement park part the best. Ha.

Oh yeah, we also went to the Jelly Belly factory and went on the free tour. Needless to say, we bought some jelly bellies before hitting the road again.

The trip was well documented, of course.

We've been back a week now. At camp this week, Sophie came along and had a fun time. She got to be in my group too, which was nice. The Hognose snake wasn't in his cage on Monday (somebody needs a lesson on how to properly secure the top), but when I was getting food for the other animals on Wednesday, I discovered him crawling across the floor in the Nature Lab. I put him back in his cage, and the first thing he did was get a drink. It has been a parched summer.

Speaking of dryness, I think this is a contributing factor to our Yellow Jacket problems this year. There are so many more of them around than I've ever seen before. One group of kids got attacked on Wednesday as they navigated the narrow trail that follows the creek. I knew where that nest was, because a group I was leading stumbled over it several weeks previously. Then, on Friday, while on a "critter hunt" (an activity that I love to lead), we were looking under some old sections of brick wall that pepper the chaparral area. I had already looked under a few, finding a pretty little baby Rattlesnake under one, when one of the kids pointed to another and said, "I have a weird feeling about that one." It was set in the ground pretty well, so I really had to yank to free it from the dry dirt, and of course when I did, the Yellow Jackets were already boiling out of the ground. 10 people got stung, including a boy that got stung 5 times. Once I got all of the kids to safety and swatted the wasps off of them, I had to go back and get the plastic cage I'd dropped a few feet from the nest. By that time, the wasps had stopped boiling over, and were settling back down. I managed to grab the cage without getting stung again (I had initially gotten stung twice). It took awhile to calm down the boy who'd gotten stung the most, but for the other kids, it proved to be no big deal. One small girl, who couldn't have been more than 7 or 8, was particularly inspiring, shaking the whole experience off with a smile. Some kids are cool that way.

I'll add the location to our ever-growing list of areas to avoid, and the next time a kid says he has a "weird" feeling about something, I'll ask if he means good-weird or bad-weird. I guess he must have meant bad-weird, which is interesting because, as far as I know, none of us actually saw any Yellow Jackets flying around until I pulled off their roof. The kid had a bona fide psychic moment.

Currently listening to: Various "PM50"

Cautionary Tale For Naturalists

Week 4 of summer camp is over and done with. It was a hot one, with temperatures nearing the 100 degree mark (or perhaps surpassing it, depending on which thermometer I choose to believe).

Last night, a kid got stung by a Forest Scorpion while on the night hike. He wasn't with my group, but with the only other group leader who uses a UV light to look for scorpions and millipedes. The kids in my group were a bit older, and our scorpion and millipede viewing went off without a hitch. Apparently though, younger kids are a bit like magpies, grasping anything shiny within reach. Scorpions look pretty shiny when reflecting UV light, so the kid, who I believe is eight years old, reached for the shiny object and got a rude surprise. Fortunately, the local scorpions don't pack much of a punch, and the site of the sting didn't even swell. It hurt though.

When she was informed, the boy's sister (who was hiking with me) sighed and said that she wasn't surprised at all. Later, she told me that he had thought it was a shiny nut.

The lesson is, when hiking with younger kids, be aware of this tendency.

Go figure.

Currently listening to: Common Eider, King Eider "Worn"

Summer Love

Later, I told some kids that I put the frog back in the pond. One kid opined that it would have been funny if it had turned into a prince before I dropped it into the water. It's true. That would have been funny, in a "dignified people getting messed with" kind of way.

Currently listening to: Evan Caminiti "Night Dust" LP

Take Everything and Put It In A Smaller Container

This weekend, I've been pawing through boxes of National Geographic Magazines accumulated by my parents over a decades-spanning period starting before I was born and ending sometime in the nineties. My goal was to set aside issues that had articles I might actually read, and jettison the rest. The bulk of the collection is now on the front step, just waiting for whatever Freecycler responds first. I've decided to keep somewhere between 20 and 30 issues, plus most of the maps and other foldouts. I couldn't convince Willow to hang up any of the maps in her room, so I might have to hang some of them myself. I might also use some at work, either as geography contest prizes or as teaching tools during the school year.

It actually pains me to get rid of so many magazines. The photos are exquisite, and there is so much interesting information in those thousands of pages. It occurred to me that much of the contents of those magazines probably isn't available anywhere else. Not on the internet, in other words. I remember sometime back reading or realizing that every time there is a big technological change (I think I read an article about a lot of movies on VHS not making the jump to DVD), a lot gets left in the dustbins of history. Of course, where National Geographics are concerned, a lot just gets left in closets and garages. Hopefully someone will be able to take the magazines put them to good use, perhaps in a classroom or some other similar place, because realistically, I'm never going to read decades worth of old magazines. Information overload.

Currently listening to: Pentangle "Cruel Sister"

One Third Gone

I realized sometime last night that the 2012 summer camp season is already one third over. Today marks the end of week three of summer camp, with six more to follow.

This week, like the two previous ones, went relatively smoothly. I caught the same Gopher snake three times, which is unusual for a Gopher snake. They're usually not as sedentary as the local rattlesnakes have proved to be. One co-worker landed a dream job at a school over the hill, tons of kids became separated from their belongings, adding to Lost & Found Mountain, ex-campers appeared on the scene as counselors, including Alex, who worked with the Wild Things kids (that's the 5 and 6 year olds) and contributed to the Thursday evening festivities with a song (Heart of Gold by Neil Young) while ex-camper and fellow counselor Sausages accompanied him on harmonica. It's amazing seeing these kids grow up. They all have so much to offer. This is still one of the main reasons I love my job.

Willow just peeked in and said it's time for ice cream, so I'll end this post here. Ice cream is calling.

Currently listening to: Neil Young & Crazy Horse "Rust Never Sleeps"

Strange Wildlife and Cool Kids

Week two of summer camp is behind me now. For two weeks, the kids in my group were mostly ten years old, and next week I'll continue this trend. Some of my favorite summer campers attended camp this week. One of them has gotten so good at spotting animals on critter hunts that he occasionally spots them before I do. A couple of kids spotted a Mountain Kingsnake in the lower field parking lot on Thursday night too, so despite drier than usual conditions we have been seeing some wildlife. The rattlesnakes continue to be everywhere, but we did find a very unusual one on Thursday, with the usual blotches of darker coloration replaced by bars, making it look a bit like a Ball Python. This is the first time I've seen one like this.

Currently listening to O'death "Daytrotter Session 6/28/2012"

Summer

This is the first day this week I didn't get stung by wasps. That's something, at least.

Actually, agitated insects aside, it has been a good week. The second week of Summer Camp has been relatively cool so far, much more so than last week, when temperatures ascended into the uncomfortable nineties for a day or two. At one point, around a week ago, the readout on top of a local Bank of the West branch declared that it was 97 degrees.

Last week went very smoothly when one considers that none of us had run a week of Summer Camp since last August. No big snafus occurred, except for Friday morning when the sprinklers came on at 6:00 and watered a bunch of sleeping campers and counselors. I don't think that's an effective way to get kids to grow faster.

I've hiked to the reservoir both weeks so far. The water level is as low as I've seen it, and everything else is dry too. Today, we found a pile of dead bullfrogs with missing hind legs. Somebody has been expanding their culinary horizons at the expense of our local (although invasive) frog population. Some of the kids were a bit creeped out. We also saw a Rattlesnake in about the same place I saw the same snake slightly over 2 years ago. I've seen him a couple of times over the past month or two, but tonight I compared photos, and it looks like the same snake. Rattlesnakes are much more sedentary than the other local species, but I think this is the first time I've seen a snake in the same location after 2 years.

I got some great pictures in 2010 by taking them upside down over the lip of the rock the snake was under, but today's shots were poor. Here, you can see the rattle as the snake disappears into the darkness.

I wonder if he has lived there all his life, a mere 2 or 3 feet from the main path around the reservoir. He looks old, like he would be in a rocker on a porch if he had the anatomy to fit in one properly.

Currently listening to: Forrest Fang "Seeds of Memory" EP

The Breath Before the Summer Plunge

Summer Camp starts on Monday. I think we're ready. I only worked three days of the set-up week, reserving the last couple of days for a quick trip to Sacramento so Jeanine could see her friend Kim, who was in town from Hawaii. Kim and her husband Dave (who both went to the same high school that Jeanine and I did) were clearing out Kim's mom's house. That was deja vu for us, since we cleared out my dad's apartment in nearby Citrus Heights less than a year ago. I remembered Dave from high school, but didn't really remember Kim. It was fun hanging out with them on the front porch. It was a pleasant way to pass a warm afternoon, with cats underfoot and wasps in the air, disturbed from their nest inside one of the gate posts. There were some impressive Black Widows in the backyard shed too. The next morning, we had an hour to kill before converging on a restaurant to meet with some of Jeanine's other Sacramento-based friends for a balloon jam (no, it's not something one puts on toast, but rather an idea sharing session for balloon artists). As for the hour, we drove aimlessly until I spotted a record store, necessitating a sudden u-turn. We entered and purchased stuff. Eva even bought a couple of records - AC/DC and Edgar Winter, the latter because Eva thinks albinos are cool. She showed her "child of the digital age" ignorance of vinyl when I asked her what AC/DC album she had purchased by responding, "I don't remember, but it has two sides". I like that having two sides is a novelty now. For the record (pun intended), it was "Let There Be Rock".





As for set-up week, the most useful thing I did all week was save a snake's life. While returning a shovel to the garden shed after shoveling out the campfire pit, I spotted a large Gopher snake in the corner, sprawled across the floor like a corpse. Its front end was well entangled in a roll of plastic garden netting, so tightly that sections of it bulged outwards. I was so certain that it was dead that I was surprised that it hissed when I touched it. I found some scissors and took about 15 minutes to cut it out of the roll, and when I finally finished, the front of the snake was still hairy with jutting bits of plastic, making it look like some sort of laboratory experiment gone awry. With the help of a coworker and a pair of fingernail clippers, we finally managed to free the snake from the remaining plastic. After smearing some antibiotic on it, we kept it overnight for observation, and after ensuring that all of the garden netting was safely put out of reach (this is an ongoing issue, but when so many people use things, it's sometimes hard to ensure that everything is consistently put away), we released the snake in the garden. It eventually disappeared down a gopher hole. I'm going to enlarge and laminate a copy of the the photo I took and put it on the wall of the shed as a reminder.

Currently listing to: "Victrola Favorites" 2CD

Transition

The 2011/2012 Outdoor School Year ended on Friday with the usual lines of kids disappearing into the yellow mouths of waiting school buses. I worked in the field the final week, and did the usual sorts of things. There are turkeys everywhere these days, something that has gone from being a rarity to a common sighting over the last year or so. In fact, I don't think I saw any turkeys at all during the first 6 or 7 years of employment at camp. This week, I often found myself being interrupted by insistent gobbling from nearby bushes. One turkey brazenly gobbled his way right past us while I was trying to set up an ecosystem comparison lesson.

Summer camp set-up begins in earnest tomorrow, and summer camp begins the week after.

Our bed arrived, and I only got one blister putting it together. The mattress is perched on top of a 14 drawer dresser, which is kind of neat. The house is still in a state of some disarray, although every day sees a new element click into place. Today, the framed pictures that had been leaning against the wall in the living room found places on the walls. I mowed the lawn with the push mower too, feeling like a stereotypical suburbanite as I did so, sweating under the warm June sun. The push mower is picky. It only cuts grass, leaving all of the weeds standing proud and tall in its wake, giving the freshly mowed lawn a mangy look. Oh, well. We'll have to do some weeding.

Last night, one of my favorite co-workers (actually two of them, come to think of it) got married up at camp. We had a van load, with Willow and Eva being joined by Sophie, Nathan, and Alex. It was one of the rare times that still owning a mini-van came in handy. The wedding was beautiful, and it was nice to see a number of people I hadn't seen in awhile. Happy future to Scooby and Moonlight.

Also, taking the advice of a woman at the local pet store, I tried feeding baby food to the turtle, and she actually ate it! It's strange to have a pet that only eats worms and baby food. Next, I'm trying tofu.

Currently listening to: Agalloch "Whitedivisiongrey"

A New Place For Our Stuff...

When sitting in a rocking chair on a hardwood floor, one must make faces. It is the law.

My apartment is virtually empty of my stuff now. Still remaining is a small pile of dirty laundry, some cleaning supplies, and a few miscellaneous items destined for the dumpster or recycling bin. We're still working on emptying Jeanine's place, but hopefully that will be accomplished by the end of the day. The end of the month is upon us.

At the house, things are magically settling into place while the girls, unconcerned with the piles of boxes, play video games.

Dexter the cat arrived howling, and spent the better part of a day with his tail all poofed up. He's better now, and is making the house his own.

More to follow...

Flux

Boxes pile up both here and there, and at the moment we're waiting for the tent to come down. The fumigators put it up on Wednesday, and apparently neither Jeanine nor I are trusting, because we both drove by at different times to check to make sure that the job had actually been done. It had, but they didn't give us one of those colorfully striped clown tents. Instead, we got a black one. If you're going to tent a house, you should try to make it look like a clown house. I'm not sure why. It just seems like the right thing to do. The world needs more clowns or, at the very least, places that look like they could be clown residences.

Yesterday, since we couldn't move anything, we went for a walk at Hidden Villa. It's Horned Lizard season, but we didn't see any. We saw fewer Whiptails than last year too, although we did see a few, like the one pictured above. Early in the hike, Jeanine spotted a Jerusalem Cricket scuttling across the trail. That's a strange thing to see in the middle of the day. I wonder what disturbed it enough to inspire this atypical diurnal activity. There were fewer ticks along the trail than last time, although we did find a few of them patiently waiting on some trail-side plants. Later, I found one attached to my chest near one of my nipples. Sneaky little bastard. Its meal was cut short.

Currently listening to: The Iditarod "the Ghost, the Elf, the Cat and the Angel"

And So It Begins In Earnest

For me, the act of moving is like going on vacation. It doesn't seem to have any weight or reality until the hour is nigh and the routine of living is shuttled off onto a new track, or to put it another way, until the suitcase (in my case, usually a hastily stuffed backpack) or first box is full of my stuff. It's a sad commentary on my tendency to hoard that some of my belongings only get handled when I'm moving them from one residence to another, but that's a whole other subject. I'm working on it. Really.

I stripped a bookcase of its stories today, and filled a number of boxes with books. I came across one book (Swine Lake, by James Marshall) illustrated by Maurice Sendak, and I plan on sitting down later today and reading it in memory of his passing, the news of which greeted me when I woke up this morning. Lets all hold a wild rumpus in his honor.

The new house is scheduled to be tented tomorrow, ensuring that the dry wood termites discontinue their gnawing. I'm not a big fan of using poison gas on insects, but I think I'd be even less a fan of having the house collapse on top of us at some indeterminate point in the future.

Still to be scheduled is the chimney work, and some plumbing repairs. Right now, if there was an earthquake, the chimney would probably fall on the neighbor's house.

Currently listening to: Accept "I'm A Rebel"

First Photos

The empty house awaits our clutter. Hopefully it will wear the extra pounds well. Jeanine is better at getting rid of things than I am, but I've chucked a few things myself. We're going to have to start a list of things that we need to buy though, so the next month will see a frenzy of jettisoning and acquiring. We're especially lacking in the yard maintenance equipment department, since the postage stamp-sized patios attached to our current residences can't be graced with the word "yard". A new bed will also have to be purchased.

Here then are a couple of photos. Over that last couple of months spent viewing hundreds of online photos of houses for sale, I've been amused to see the various tricks of the trade - photos stretched to make the house look more expansive, low angled shots to make the house look more mansion-like, and other similar bits of trickery. I can't now recall what the "advertisement" photos of our house looked like. I learned to more or less ignore those photos anyway.

Currently listening to: Bowline "s/t"

More Than A Month Has Passed...

My last post was on April Fool's Day, and this one falls on the day after Cinco De Mayo, which was also the evening of the so-called "Supermoon", a moon which my 2012 moon guide (courtesy of the wonderful Nebula Girl, who mails them out for free at the beginning of each year) calls Big Leaf Moon. It was noticeably closer than the average full moon, even though I missed the moment when it first peeked above the East Bay hills.

In addition to all of the home buying activity, this period of silence has been full of activity. Perhaps most importantly, my brother Greg, Willow, and I finally got off of our isolationist butts and visited relatives. This meant traveling to Cape Cod to see my mom's sister and her son, Peter, and then on to Minnesota to see my dad's sister and her family. I had reconnected with my mom's sister, Marilyn, and my cousin Peter, when Jeanine and I were in Boston for a balloon convention in February, but Greg and I hadn't seen our relatives on our dad's side of the family in decades. Willow had never met any of them. I'll not recount the entire week here, because it won't be that interesting to the casual reader, but the trip was definitely a success. Our Aunt Marilyn even got us into the Edward Gorey house before it was open for the season, and while we were on Cape Cod, we visited our friends Matthias and Carla, who live in a pleasingly rustic house right near the beach (although everywhere on Cape Cod is right near the beach). The trip was well documented.

After coming back, I hopped in the car with Jeanine and we headed for Big Sur, where we took in a Godspeed You! Black Emperor show and camped under the redwoods. That week, Sophie's class was at camp, and since the kids' school always attends our second site, I switched sites and worked days. We wrapped up the week with a second Godspeed show, and the next morning, Greg and I flew to Seattle to see the newest Bela Tarr film, The Turin Horse. Perhaps this is how my second childhood has chosen to manifest itself - plane flights to see films. This also meant that we were in Seattle on Record Store Day, so we bought lots of music while we were there. I came back with quite a variety of sounds, from bird songs and a double CD/book collection of old 78 recordings, to Ennio Morricone doing bossa nova and neoclassical sounds that used a previous Bela Tarr film as inspiration. As for the film we had gone to see, it was everything we expected it to be, although at least one audience member must have been expecting something different, because she walked out and didn't come back.

I've started another walking challenge as well. Somebody who is even nerdier than me has figured out that Frodo and Sam had to walk 1779 miles to walk to Mordor. Since I started the challenge, I've walked a mere 11 miles. Only 1768 more to go.

I did a reptile/bug party yesterday, and in preparation for the party, Jeanine and I went on a short bug hunt Friday, which netted me a little California Forest Scorpion and a Jerusalem Cricket, not to mention a Garter Snake (I found two under a board, but only caught one). In addition to the two Garter Snakes, we saw eight Rattlesnakes. After the party, when I went to release the Garter Snake, I discovered that the board under which I found it still had two Garter Snakes under it. Nature hates imbalance, I guess.

Here's Rattlesnake number eight. He was still there the next day.

As for the house, after lots of last-minute craziness involving the lenders, yesterday we finally got the keys. I went over in the afternoon, and when I arrived, our realtor was sweeping the floors (talk about a full-service realtor!), and the sellers were bundling the last of their possessions (and their cats) into the car. They were leaving for Oregon. They left behind a few things for us, including the patio furniture and some yard tools. Later, Jeanine and I converged on the house and thoughtfully wandered through it. Jeanine brought out her tape measure and did a few calculations, and I hauled a few things in from my van. We're having the house tented for termites on Wednesday, so we won't be moving a lot of things over there until after that's done. We have the whole month to be out of our current residences, so there isn't too much of a rush.

So now we're homeowners. I guess I'm a grown-up now. I've lived in my studio apartment for nearly three and a half years now, and while there are some things I like about my apartment, I'm ready to step into a larger space again. I'm ready for our new yard, with its towering avocado tree, garden, citrus trees, artichoke plants, and expansive lawn. There is a compost area and a worm bin too.

Currently listening to: Natural Snow Buildings "Shadow Kingdom"

Another Long Silence...

My last post was on February 22nd, a handful of days before Willow turned 9. A lot has happened since then. The times when I am most prolific with my blog writing always seem to coincide with long stretches of routine, when very little news of excitement or importance occurs.

Jeanine and I, sometimes with Willow and/or Eva in tow, have spent the last month or so looking at open houses. A realtor that we met at the first one we went to has been showing us around. The houses have ranged from dumpy and forlorn to interesting and appealing. Our first actual bid was rejected, mostly because we wanted the owners to take care of a rather sizable termite problem. Our second bid wasn't even in the top 3, despite the fact that we bid $15,000.00 over the asking price. It seems that the low interest rates have encouraged a vast number of people to buy homes. For the third house we bid on, we bid $15,000.00 under the asking price, and the sellers didn't respond by the time the bid expired. The fourth time was the charm. We bid the asking price, and it was accepted. The fourth house is the only one of the four where we actually met the owner, and I think the fact that we're planning to occupy it with our children instead of using it as an investment worked in our favor. The house has been in the seller's family for half a century, so its fate seems important to her. More on the house in future posts.

Needless to say, all of this searching and bidding has taken up a lot of time. Not to mention the fact that I've been working days for the last couple of weeks while Willow's mom has been in the hospital for a planned surgery. While working as the night supervisor at camp, I tend to take for granted my daytime freedom, so now that I'm working days, I'm surprised at how little time I have. I have two more weeks of hiking with kids before returning to my nocturnal schedule - one because my boss asked me to, and one because Sophie's class is coming to camp. Sandwiched between those is a week off which coincides with Willow's Spring Break. Tax day looms as well. In short, much is happening in a short period of time.

We've finally seen a bit of rain too. March had a few rainy days, including yesterday when I led a "reptile safari" along some of the trails near camp. This was for the son of a woman who hired me through Jeanine's website, and despite the rain, the party was a success. Most kids don't mind mud and rain, as long as they don't have to stay out in it too long. The parents were good sports too. The reptiles we found were sluggish due to the chilly temperature, so the kids caught some lizards and I caught a couple of Rattlesnakes. Fun was had, cake was eaten, and I even got a $40.00 tip.

A lot of my childhood literary interests have factored into recent weeks as well. Willow has finally started being interested in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, thanks to the Retro Dome, which has showed the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy on its screens recently. She is currently reading The Hobbit. We saw the Tintin movie too (which was very good), and Willow has started reading the Tintin books. I was so excited by this that I dropped $120.00 for a box set of the entire Tintin series (I reread mine until they were shedding pages). We also saw the John Carter movie (based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian novels, which I happily read and reread as a child) and I quite liked it.

Welcome Spring. This is definitely a Spring during which many things are happening. I feel more or less caught up now.

Currently listening to: Dead Can Dance "A Passage In Time", and looking forward to seeing them play in August.