urban wildlife

Since coming home from sabbatical town, I've tried to remember that I have super easy access to nature nearby--a gorgeous riparian park full of unlikely urban wildlife. I take long walks there as often as possible. Yesterday, I took MP1 and my camera.

3rd blogoversary and 4th photos

In the spirit of my first blog post, here are few scenes from our Fourth of July celebration: a very casual pool party and bbq with a few colleagues from our two departments, followed by pyrotechnics street-side. I'll NEVER ever understand why our state allows this--but it does--and for TH, this is just an irresistible opportunity to blow (up) some $.  For me, it always brings back great memories of my really early childhood, because my dad also loved to do this kind of thing. He was really a rock star when it came to making memories for the four of us kids:  family barbeques with our cousins on the 4th of July--followed by a long evening of playing with sparklers and setting-off firecrackers that are probably illegal everywhere by now, camping trips in Yellowstone highlighted by unruly bear and clueless-moose visits to our campsites, lots of vacationing in places--like Ouray, Colo. and Bull Shoals, Ark.--where he could trout-fish and then let us safely run-amok in the shallow rocky streams, while he filleted the catch of the day, cross-country road trips that were really all-night driving marathons, with we four siblings stretched out in sleeping bags in the rear of the station wagon (seats all folded down) falling asleep while stargazing in the Badlands or the Smoky Mountains or the Grand Tetons--this after a long day of playing the license plate game and asking 6 zillion times "are we there yet?"  Good times, all.

Wishing a happy & relaxing summer of roadtrips to those of you stopping by...

still struggling to catch up

Here is how I feel about the end of the semester:

Grades are in, commencement is over, and I can smell the freedom (ok, it is rain) in the air. BUT I have lots of loose ends related to the museum to get tied up for the coming year (archive the exhibit, correct student inventory work forms, save them to our shared drive, print out hard copies for a collection binder, etc.). I so want it to be done. And I am working on it (even as I take a break to blog), but I feel like my race toward the actual close of the semester is this slow:

I am on a hiring committee (late, emergency replacement hire), so I am technically on the job through June. Sigh. Yawn. Anyway, that is it for iPh*ne scenes from my front yard in late May. Still have to download April visit to MP2 from my camera and catchup on that. Again, soon, soon. Maybe even Friday.

merry christmas, everyone

from our house--

and town--to yours...

torn up

That's the only way to put it, I've been crying off and on for hours now. This morning a truly sweet and shy and gentle little girl lost her life in a car accident. In truth, she was all grown up, but I still remember her from way back when she and MP2 were in kindergarten. Her parents' first-born, she was driving not half a mile from her house when she struck a tree on a path she has probably traveled hundreds of times by now. We have known this family from our first year here. Our kids were in class together from kindergarten through senior year. We have worked with her parents as room parents and band parents and on school fundraisers for a dozen years. We run into each other only a few times a year now, but we always ask after each others' kids and laugh at how much work and effort and love goes into having children who grow up to be decent human beings. Their pain will be unbearable. As will be that of this girl's younger siblings. I know this because I watched my parents struggle with the grief of losing two sons, and I have lived with the pain of losing two brothers--one of my younger ones to leukemia when he was just 22, and my oldest brother to AIDS when he was in his late 30s. I was sandwiched in between these two like stair-steps, and it is hard, sometimes, to know how life can just go on. Hug your loved ones tight. Life is fragile and fleeting. Rest in peace, J.

uber patriotic display

First, this is my big 2-year anniversary of blogging, so you'd think I'd have something interesting to say. Nope--I am running an infirmary this holiday weekend. TH is down and out with whatever our youngest managed to catch about 10 days ago. He (MP2) is better, I'm mostly better, but TH (who almost never gets sick) has really been socked with it. We're hoping it is H1N1 and that we'll therefore have some immunity next winter.

Second, yesterday morning, I just had to get out of the sick zone, so I decided to go work out. As I was pulling out of the driveway, I noticed that my neighbor immediately to the right had gone absolutely nuts decorating for the 4th. I grabbed my phone and took this photo from the vantage point of my driveway. We had no neighborhood parade this year, and so I thought they must surely be having a big private party later in the day (although even that would hardly explain this overkill of the flag theme). But there was no party last night. So I am clueless.

the traumas of moving

Yesterday, I spent 8 hours driving a new colleague around town looking at rentals, getting a bank account opened and generally trying to orient him to possible neighborhoods that feed into his school choices, and so forth. It was exhausting--calling numbers on rental signs, arranging times to tour homes, weighing the pros and cons of this or that home/layout/backyard, etc. I cannot imagine how he is processing all of this. He seemed really pleased with the rental options we looked at, but does not want to have to rent in July since he and his family will not be moving till August. I don't blame him for this at all--who wants to "waste" a month's rent? BUT, this calls to mind what we did when we moved here on a wing and a prayer--literally no extra dimes to our name, and stuck between a mortgage and unsold house back home and super high rental and home costs here. We returned home from a house-hunting trip with promises from a realtor that she would be on the lookout for the proper rental home for us until we could sell our house. SO, with several people "on the lookout" for us, we trusted a friend of TH's to check out a lead on a condo. He saw it for us, thought it would do, and TH signed papers from afar. But, when we arrived in mid-August with barely two weeks to spare before the kids had to head to their new schools, the place turned out to be disgustingly dirty by my own and MP1's standards (and probably only now would TH admit that this was true by his standards, too--but at the time he was feeling guilty about having not flown back out to find us a decent home). MP1 and I cried at the very thought of living there and we basically refused to move in. The landlord (a woman who had purchased the place 4 or 5 rental families ago!) agreed to allow us to sublet it as a way to get out of our lease. This meant we had to advertise it for rent while we scrambled to find a home in one of 3 elementary school zones that were acceptable. Unfortunately, we had a dog, which further shrank our options, and generally we had NOT much luck. It was incredibly stressful. We felt homeless and were freaked out that we might also have to pay rental storage for all our furniture that was making its way to new city in a humongous moving van. All the "good" homes in the premiere schools zones had been rented from August 1 on. Luckily a crappy looking (old and leaky, but well laid-out 3 bed/2 ba) duplex came on the rental market unexpectedly in our second choice school zone and we were able to rent it. We had to spend 5 days in a motel while it was turned around for us--and having come out of a single family (beautiful by comparison) home that we owned--it was the absolute worst start to our new lives out here. In theory I'm over all this (we bought our own home about 14 months later), but the experience of driving this father of two around yesterday in search of homes in a good school district brought back all these traumas full force. Colleague flies back to Canada tomorrow, then on to N. Africa with the rest of the family (the very same day) and the housing situation is not completely solved. I am crossing my fingers that we manage to do a better job of finding him an August 1 rental than TH's friend (or our realtor--whom we did end up using when we finally bought our home) did for us lo' those many years ago. We know where he wants to live, that 3 bed/2 ba is an absolute must (along with a fenced backyard), and he's done his homework re: school districts. Let us all cross our fingers.

[ETA: SO, this afternoon he rented a really cute house and was able to get a July 15 start date. I am super relieved for him and his family. It is truly a darling house. A small park we just love is just several houses down and across the street--his kids can walk across it to the back gate of the school grounds. The house is also directly across the street from the grandparents of a former school mate of MP2. They are a super sweet couple who are really active in their grandchildren's lives. Grandmother is actually the daughter of Dale Evans (of Roy Rogers fame). We hung out with them at soccer games for way too many years. Boy am I glad we have all graduated from the soccer tournament circuit.]

Adventures in Tortillitas and other babblings

Yesterday, being really sick of eating out (isn't it amazing how this is so much fun on the first day of a trip, and then after that it's the LAST thing you want to do?), I poached salmon and made insalata caprese for dinner. While I was out, I also bought all the herbs, veggies, and other seafood (clams/shrimp, etc.) I'd need to make seafood soup for tonight. Then, this morning, while reading the New York Times online, I saw this yummy appetizer (complete with video instructions). I already had everything I needed to make these tortillitas--except the chickpea flour--so back to Whole Paycheck I went.

Now, I'm all set for tonight. But first, I'm going to check out a nearby estate sale and make up a reading quiz for Tuesday. Oh, and the nifty highlighter sharing the frame in this photo? A very clever freebie from the conference (courtesy of the lovely recruiter who had an outreach table next to us). LOTS of historical music/musical performance/musicology MA and Doctoral programs at her university. No jazz, more churchy and classical, so I picked up a flyer for MP1--who at this very moment is probably thinking of doing anything BUT going on for a doctorate. But, I'm sure she'll take the highlighter and brochure off my hands anyway...

The Writing Grindstone Calls

Sunday hike along the neighborhood river (photo courtesy of MP1's iPhone).

I really need someone to come over here and slap me into writing. Really, I do. It is amazingly difficult to decompress from the entire academic year in the space of a few days, but I have got to shift gears and get busy with a couple manuscripts. I spent the day doing penance (sp. ?) for last night's rich, but delicious dinner. This morning, the four of us went to midtown for a light brunch (took us a longtime to wake up and then to work up an appetite). Afterwards, MP1 came over and joined me and H. for a long hike along the river, and then yours truly spent another 45 minutes at the gym in the late afternoon. I ought to be ready to jump right into my writing, but I keep thinking a trip to Carmel or Half Moon Bay or SB would really help. Since that's not going to happen, let's hope for some divine inspiration between tonight and tomorrow morning. Sigh.

Congratulations all around

Congrats to the home buyers. What a cute place! (I buy a Prius for tenure, you guys buy a new house!!!) It's going to be a great party place. I love the deck and fountain off the den.

And many, many congrats to MFW, who has formally filed her most excellent thesis. (Now, if you would pleeeeez, please, puleez write a formatting supplement to the dept. handbook for the rest of our students. Or you can start a new blog, "a tip-a-day" on "how to get out of Dodge despite the bad thesis formatting info the office of grad studies posts on its own website.") That Comm Studies woman was the best entertainment I've had all day. Not.

A Shock

Over the last couple weeks, we've been having the fence we share with our neighbors in back of us replaced (a portion of it blew down during the last storm) and this has meant we've had more communication than ever before with the couple, Rolph and Hunt, who live in back of us. They bought their house several years ago and have been making great home improvements inside and out. Before our trip, we had a painter come out to bid on the job of staining the redwood (the last phase of work). This morning, just about the time the bid sheet flew through the mailbox slot in our door, the phone rang. It was our neighbor on the right, who is very good friends with our neighbors in back. She was calling, she said, on behalf of Hunt. He asked her to call us and see if we could postpone the staining process. I immediately assumed that they were just financially strapped and wondered why she would be the one to tell us, but she continued on without taking a breath to say that Rolph had suffered a massive heart attack about 11 am yesterday (while working from home) and died. I almost can't believe it. He was in his mid-40s, I think. We would sometimes run into him at the gym. Maureen (my neighbor) was clearly still trying to come to grips with it herself, saying "You know, if someone has asked me who would be the next to go on the circle, I would have said [super elderly woman with a live-in nurse] or one of the [surname of original owners in the area], who are also really elderly. You just never know. It's true that he was an incredible smoker (we used to complain to ourselves about the smoke wafting over the fence while we tried to enjoy our backyard), but he seemed to be in such good shape. Wow...so sad.

Trick or Treat

Too busy conferencing and paper-giving for the last few days, but Halloween inspires a quick post. The traffic was fairly light last night for my neighborhood. I think we probably had about 10 groups of kids. There were almost NO teenagers, which was sort of disappointing. They must have all been hitting the books for those AP courses and other forms of high school busy work.

Our first trick or treaters of the night were Pizza Delivery Man, and his younger brother, Lego Block.

These two wrapped up the evening. Harry Potter (my little neighbor girl) had too much red eye for even Photoshop to clean up, but she looked really cute with her tie and clunky glasses.

Independence Day

Here are a few scenes from our neighborhood's Fourth of July Parade. Except for the visible (though hardly surprising) absence of teenagers, it was quite the intergenerational gathering, with wheel chairs, strollers, tricycles, bikes, and scooters artfully adorned with flags, balloons, and crepe-paper streamers of red, white, and blue.

My neighbor across the street definitely wins the prize for best decorated bike, while the little fellow below probably had the best-looking tricycle. He lapped the adults several times as they traded notes about everything from the latest home remodeling projects to the best and worst elementary school teachers their kids might expect in the coming school year.

The temperature soared to 107 in the afternoon--NOT the best climate for new car shopping and backyard grilling. No new car in the driveway this morning (my tenure present to myself), but I am definitely honing my short-list. I think I may go ahead and sell my old car now, bank the money, and then drive MP1's (musical progeny 1's) until she comes back from Europe. This will also force me to buy a new car. Speaking of MP1, she has uploaded her first round of pictures. Her digs at Cité look fabulous and she is learning how to get around on the Paris Metro. Also eating lots of bread and cheese and playing lots of cello. A tough life to be sure. We should all be living it for her.