Night Photography by the Lake

While walking in the grass last night near the Lakeview Library in Oakland, the REM song, "Night Swimming" came into mind, especially the first verse.

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago,
Turned around backwards so the windshield shows.
Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse.
Still, its so much clearer.
I forgot my shirt at the waters edge.
The moon is low tonight.


As I do with many songs, I tried to change a few words to make the lyrics match my current activity. One would never go swimming in Lake Merritt as it is pretty gross with pollution and bird crap. We were carrying our cameras and I played around with the words "Night shooting, deserves a quiet night." Although all we were doing was taking photographs, the reality of gun violence is too great here. In fact, after we got home last night, we were watching some KQED short videos and we thought that we had heard a gun shot somewhere in the neighborhood. With that event so fresh in my mind, I could not bring myself to title my post with such a saddening pun.

So where are the pictures that we took at night? Where are the streetlights? Where is the water's edge?

Well, happily and unfortunately, I'm currently in the middle of a reinstall of windows on my computer. My computer is now lightning fast with turning on and shutting down. But, I haven't installed any of the photo processing software and since I haven't learned macbook language yet, I can't use Grant's computer. You'll have to wait a few days to see my pictures from the evening, but for now you can feast on the photos taken by our very talented friend Jane. And if you want to see more of her work, check out her webpage: Kilmer Photography.

Mid-Week Warriors

I stumbled upon this site while reading a blog and found this picture quite funny. So funny that I called Grant over to see it. This joke has kept with us for over a week now so I thought I would share it with you. This joke followed us to Sonoma Valley this week.

For those of you not familiar with California geography, I live in Alameda County (home of cities like Berkeley and Oakland). Across the bay, to the west, is San Francisco County. Just to the north of SF, over the Golden Gate Bridge is Marin County, where there are crazy amounts of breast cancer. Then just north of that is Sonoma County. To the east of Sonoma is the more well known Napa County, but we don't go there because it's a little too "touristy".

The highlights of the trip for me were our visits to Gloria Ferrer Champagne Caves and Sonoma Coast State Beach.

We have visited this winery twice before, once with Grant’s parents and once with two friends of Grant from his time in India. We visited this winery first on our trip north through the valley on Tuesday. We rolled in around 11:30am and decided that this would be our lunch spot. Gloria Ferrer doesn’t do “tasting” for their champagnes. So you either buy it by the glass or bottle. Usually we get a bottle, but since it was just the two of us, we opted for glasses. Grant got the Royal Curve and I got the Rose Brut. This was the best lunch that we have shared in quite a while. We were both so relieved to be out of the city. We haven’t been under too much stress, unless you think the act of figuring out how to best fill your time while on summer break as stressful. Still, it was so nice to be on a mission, checking off another summer goal on my list.

On the second day of our trip, we drove about an hour west from the valley to the ocean and spent the next two days wandering along the coast taking pictures with our twin cameras (that’s a good topic for another post, maybe I tell you tomorrow). It is so strange the feelings that arise when I am by the ocean. I didn’t necessarily want to go in it, in fact most of the beaches in Northern California are not really safe for swimming. But, like snow, the ocean just seems to be a place I need to go every now and then to remind me how life is like outside my city boundaries.

No matter how much fun I have on these trips, by the last day, I’m always ready to come back home. As we were crossing the Richmond Bridge (across the northern part of the bay) about 25 minutes from Oakland, I found myself signing to myself, “oh I want to be back in my city by the bay, whoa, oh, ohhhh.” Who can name that reference?

More picture of the trip can be found here.

In the Garden

I love this time of the summer when the fruit are actually changing colors and getting ready to be eaten. Click on the picture for more from our patio garden.

I'm Back

Well, sort of. You know how these things go. I've been having lots of trouble doing some things on the internet. Some websites have become such a great pest that I don't even try logging in to them very ofter because I get soooo frustrated. These include yahoo groups, myspace, and xanga. Each requires several presses of F5 to get anywhere. Yes this might just be our internet service (which I'm not sure where it comes from... somewhere in our apartment building)... or it might be some weird setting within firefox that I don't know how to fix... or it just might be my computer's own moral judgments about which websites are acceptable for my eyes (thank you, my loving lati610). So my xanga account is useless. And, most of the people that I subscribed to on xanga aren't blogging anymore, so I'm out. It's over (use the teen girl squad voice) there, but starting again here. More updates to come, well, sort of, you know how these things go.

The Big Weekend Report

The play by play run down of a very fulfilling and exciting couple of days!

I’m not feeling sentences right now, so this is more like a list

Friday: Slept in till 8:30 because it was a day off!! Sucked in my lower abs for an hour while my friend Marisa taught her Friday Pilates class (I was very excited that I got to go), met with my awesome Pastor at church for an hour about some work that I’ll be doing for the next 6 months while our other pastor is on sabbatical, came home and ate, checked email, drove two friends to the BART station (they’re in MI right now for two weddings), knocked on Jenn and Craig’s door for our planned evening movie watching but Jenn was too tired, being pregnant and all, so I went home (two doors down the hallway) and watched “The 40 Year Old Virgin” all by myself and ate my popcorn. Grant called around 10pm and I burst into tears because he told me that he was on his way home- a day early, he arrived just after midnight.

Saturday: Got a phone call at 3:30am from Craig asking for some Mylanta and Benadryl for Jenn who was exhausted from not sleeping and thought she was having gas pains from the chili they ate for dinner. Woke up around 9am with Grant by my side (a change from the previous 5 mornings). Headed out to the farmer’s market and knocked on our neighbor’s door to see if they wanted anything, they were in labor, so their answer was no. As we stepped out of the building, tears beaded in my eyes. Today was my dad’s birthday, and now it will be someone else’s birthday and someone’s anniversary. We walked down to the farmer’s market, our favorite Saturday activity, and found that the pluots are in season, and so are the cherries… soooooo yummmmy. Sat on some grass and munched on the cherries while we listened to live music and people watched. Came back around 12:30 and the neighbor’s car was gone so we guessed they were at the hospital, giving birth. At 2pm we attended the wedding of our church’s music director, sat with a bunch of friends for church and had a blast. Came home, checked on our neighbor’s kitties and borrowed a movie from them to watch in the evening. At 10pm we got a call to tell us that the delivery went well and that the world had a new baby boy to take care of.

Sunday: Sung in the choir at church, it was a light service, I’m guessing because it was memorial day. Shared the news with our church community of the birth, came home and enjoyed my husband who had been gone for a week. We started planning our summer backpacking trip to Desolation Wilderness and started making some phone calls to see who else was interested. Are any of you interested? One person who was very interested was Rebecca. Who ended up calling Jenn and got us a visitation approval. We drove the 3 minutes to the hospital and within moments were holding a newborn. Yeah for miracles. Like a little kid, I looked at Jenn and said, “Wow, that thing was inside you,”

Monday: Memorial Day Meditation Retreat (1/2 day) in our home, where Grant and I woke at 6am and followed a strict schedule, with a Treo programmed to play a chime at the appropriate times.

6am: sun salutations (a series of yoga poses)

6:15: sitting meditation/centering prayer

6:45: walking meditation

7:00: breakfast (in silence)

7:30: cleaning activity (Grant did the bathroom… thank you, thank you!)

8:00: sitting meditation

8:30: walking meditation

8:45: reading scripture, book, and journaling

9:30: sitting meditation

10:00: snack on brownies made last night and debrief.

I’ll have to write another time about my observations from doing this retreat.

I then went to another pilates class taught by my friend Marisa, went to lunch with another friend Paul, came home and started on my school work, got distracted and started to write this blog, and eventually got back to my school work. Yeah for 12 more school days with students. 16 more working days until summer vacation!

Anniversary Present

For my third anniversary of being married to Grant, I asked my mom to send me some flowers… the kind with the bulbs still attached. And she did. Unfortunately, UPS and I had a hard time hooking up and the box took almost 2 weeks to get into the apartment. It visited the apartment building daily for about a week and then finally Grant was home one day to let the box into the door.

So imagine a bunch of plants wrapped in wet newspaper, put into a black plastic bag, and stuck in a cardboard box for two weeks. What would it be like to open such a box? I’ll give you a hint. It has something to do with slime. We had to open the box outside because it stunk so badly. I had to use the hose outside wash the decomposing newspaper and plant matter off of the stocks. I then planted what remained into the pots I had prepared beforehand, watered them, and waited. About a week later, there was no change. About a week after that, however, I came outside to find growth! Check it out. (hyperlink to flickr)

In addition to those future beauties, I have planted the typical crop of tomato plants. (hyperlink to flickr) Amazingly, the strawberry plants from last year survived my abuse and lack of watering. Back in April, I “fluffed” the soil, by that I mean I dug up the plant, worked in some new soil and fertilizer, and then replaced the plant. Now we’ll be enjoying strawberries (hyperlink to flickr) all summer.

Growing food at home is great, but it’s not enough to feed us. Going to the farmer’s market for fresh produce has really spoiled us but it has also taught us some lessons about appreciating each season of the year. Once the tomatoes stopped at the farmer’s market in the late fall, the ones at the store were just not as appetizing. I almost felt bad expecting a tomato forced to grow at the wrong time of year, in a hot house, to meet my expectations. As a result, I’ve gone almost 5 months without any tomatoes! I don’t even have a craving for them because I know that it will be worth the wait for fresh tomatoes in July. When the grapefruit hit its peak back in March, I was in heaven. But now that they’re not in season anymore, I can’t stand grapefruit again.

I understand that we live in a country where we feel that we are entitled to have whatever we want, when we want it, including food. Why else would we have these massive grocery stores with the never changing produce sections? But what a difference it has made to me to know that I will enjoy something so much more because I have waited for it to come at its own time. And it is then, and only then, that I will know how it was meant to be, instead of how I would have demanded it be. Isn’t that so much better?

Guilty!

I woke up this morning after a much better night of sleep, although my throat was dry and my nose was wet, just like usual. My goal for my day off was to relax, be introspective, discover the meaning of life and my true vocation. After a short mediation, a crunchy breakfast and doing the dishes, I decided to visit the mold. It pretty much consumed the rest of my morning.

In other news, I walked down to Lakeshore Ave with my favorite pregnant lady. She wondered why my car was in the garage so she knocked on my door. I was thrilled by the invitation to leave my moldy bedroom. We were on a mission for a pedicure and manicure. Not for me, just for her. While I waited, I stopped by a cute little consignment shop, Maribels’s, highly recommended by two good friends and found a cute little top. Sorry, no picture yet.

Home Alone

In celebration of finishing 97% of a challenging semester on time, Grant is backpacking with two friends in Ventana Wilderness (near Big Sur, California) for a week. Yes, I’m a little jealous since it was a last minute trip that I couldn’t go on because I have this thing I do called work. Yes, it was sad when I showed Esther, the daughter of the friend who invited Grant on the trip but who is actually our age and hopefully will become our friend too, how to use her water filter. Yes it is also sad that my hiking pants, which Esther is borrowing, will have fun without me. But how could I say no? This is the last summer of fun for Grant. Come September, Grant signs the next 12 months of his life away to CPE at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in SF. And then the working scales of our family will be more balanced.

So I’m home alone for the week. Night #1 was very restless for the first 2 hours and I woke up tired. I muscled through a day at school, but was angry and my students felt it. I then did what I was dreaming about doing over the weekend: I called for a substitute so I could take tomorrow off. I’m just exhausted. I haven’t been sleeping well, even when Grant was next to me. My nose has uncontrollable sneezing and mucus flow only at night. Tomorrow will be a much needed day of rest. Looking ahead at the calendar, it is really the only day I can take until the school year is done (15 school days… 17 including staff days)

What else am I doing with my time alone? Obviously I’m updating my blog. I’m going to clean parts of the apartment including the mold that is starting to grow around the bedroom window (could that be related to my sneezing? Doctor’s appointment scheduled for June 8^th to find out). I’m going to take control of the alarm clock and sleep on my side of the bed. I’m going to a yoga class and a Pilates class. I’ll probably have dinner with friends. I’m going to try that meditation and journaling thing that I’ve been promising myself that I would start doing for months. I’m even going to paint a 2” x 4” section of a wall in the living room. White.

On the bright and romantic side of all of this, Grant planned ahead and wrote me a love note for every day that I wouldn’t see him. I have specific instructions as to which note to read on each day. So far I’ve been honest and have only read the note for Monday. He also insisted that we make a huge pan of lasagna on Sunday morning before he left so that I wouldn’t be stuck eating macaroni and cheese all week. It is incredibly yummy lasagna, as always, but I’m still going to have mac n cheese at least once this week.

HAIR

I just got my hair cut and I'm excited to share a picture with you. Many of you don't know but I don't get my hair cut very often. So when I do, it is an exciting time. The last time I cut my hair was in August, just before Tim and Anna's 2nd Wedding Celebration. You're going to look at the picture and not see much difference. It's practically the same haircut, but believe me, my hair did grow in the last 10 months to just below my shoulders (more than enough for a great pony tail). This was also the first time I've ever cut my hair in California. (we've been here for two years). The woman who cut my hair is a member of my church. She is so fun. The hair cut experience was like spending an hour with a friend and somehow getting a new do in the process. In other news... summer is here! I've been out of school for a week and have been loving this slow paced life we got going. We had an excelent potluck last night in our home with 12 good friends from around Lake Merrit. It's going to turn into the monthly traveling potluck. I'm excited because it's a really fun group. We had laughter, good food, great wine, conversations and some guitar jamming from Grant and Eben. We're all looking forward to the next gathering. Grant and I are in the planning stages for a July hiking trip to Emigrant Wilderness (just north of Yosemite).

Another Quiz

Another one of those quizzes...

I fell into the trap again... taking another online quiz! These results don't surprise me too much (except #1 and #3 -- I guess I really didn't know much about quakers!)

According to http://beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html

1. Liberal Quakers (100%) 2. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (100%) 3. Orthodox Quaker (97%) 4. Unitarian Universalism (96%) 5. New Age (84%) 6. Neo-Pagan (82%) 7. Theravada Buddhism (74%) 8. Mahayana Buddhism (73%) 9. Reform Judaism (72%) 10. Secular Humanism (70%) 11. Taoism (68%) 12. Hinduism (64%) 13. Scientology (63%) 14. New Thought (62%) 15. Seventh Day Adventist (60%) 16. Bahá'í Faith (59%) 17. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (58%) 18. Jainism (58%) 19. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (57%) 20. Orthodox Judaism (43%) 21. Sikhism (43%) 22. Eastern Orthodox (42%) 23. Roman Catholic (42%) 24. Nontheist (39%) 25. Islam (36%) 26. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (34%) 27. Jehovah's Witness (21%)