Rome away

Such a beautiful set of days! Trevi fountain, Vatican, colluseum, pizza pasta pizza!









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Picking Apples

We spent a wonderful day with Becca and Luke out at an apple farm yesterday. It was hot hot hot. 92 degrees. We ate a slew of apples - socha, Molly delicious (mealy) - from trees that 5 year olds could have reached. It was so hot in the shade that I think I paid for water with a ten dollar bill... and somehow got $14 back, with farmer and me both thinking I'd underpaid. Hot to make you addle-brained!

It's not often that the heat around here makes me long for a bit of fog or air conditioning. We stopped at a place on the way back that had the best and most beautiful seeds - the Petaluma Seed Bank. Heirloom seeds abound in this beautiful old bank right in downtown Petaluma. And whether from actual AC or the cool dustings of previous cold hard cash, it was lovely and mild inside. Favorite varieties included the "Love-Live-Bleeding Green" Amaranth, and some cucumbers the size of quarters.



To top off the southern-feeling day, we stopped for barbeque on the way back and they had actual pulled pork. Top that off with blackberries from the side of the dusty road, and you have a day to be reckoned with.

Chart Porn and Daschunds

I've become a bit obsessed with charts and graphs. They have the allure of lists - lots of information, little space - and they also have colors!

While thumbing through my favorite site for charts, Chart Porn, which has real, if not always lucid, data, I found Graph Jam, which has very lucid data. (I'll let you decide for yourself about its reality/subjectivity.)

And that is where I found this chart about The world as his or her daschund sees it. Daschunds always remind me of Shawn, and Shawn + Dog reminds me of Skeledog. Oh, that equation feels like a chart coming on. Gotta get to it!


see more Funny Graphs

Shane and Jen's Baby Party

Arne and I had such a fun time this weekend hosting a Baby Shower for Shane & Jen's soon-to-be-here little Miss. Some of the highlights were:

1. having cleaners come clean the house (and me not having to do it),
   
2. the "How Big is Shane's Sympathetic Belly" game (what a hoot!),
   
3. and having over 20 people comfortably in the house on a standard San Francisco summer afternoon (foggy & cold, then sunny & warm, repeat).

Pin the diaper on the baby didn't get played, but the kids in attendance sure had a fun time drawing various excrement on the construction paper "diapers".

Lastly, we tried to do a "Conception Pool" to "guess when it all began" but couldn't really get that off the ground. Maybe the price was too high - $5. I did have a chance to deflect my nephew's question, "What's that?" to his dad (my brother-in-law). (Cheers, Dino!)

Here are some fun pictures of the shindig. We'll know next time to set people up to open presents on the side of the room across from the windows. Wish you could have been there!

Hawaii Here We Come

Headed to Hawai'i for the See Change & Hawai'i Community Foundation's youth-led Youth Empowerment Stories video program. So very exciting! This is where we'll stay for the first day or so until the youth join us. Mission Pictures (Arne & Shane) and Ed are coming to be part of the team. I'm starting to get fired up about it. Until now, it was all-logistics-all-the-time, and there was always something that needed to be done. We're in the calm before the storm, when there's nothing more to do until we get there and are on the ground with the youth!!!


Well, nothing more to do except work on my tan. Ha (who are we kidding!?)...

Chillin' with the Ballards

I spent a lovely Sunday chillin' with the Ballards. Or more appropriately, I ooh-ed and coo-ed over the littlest Ms. Ballard. She's my partner in crime in the picture.
We all went to All Saints Church for a lovely service and a tiny little 18th birthday reunion with Kat and Noelle (who is a priest there now).
Happy Palm Sunday!

Tuckered out

I'm a bit tuckered out. Stayed up way too late playing my first ever round of Settlers of Catan and eating Arne's homemade Earl Gray and Butter Cookie icecream. Yum.

Before that there was a party for Arne and Shane's DVD release.

And before that a week working in Hawai'i when I didn't even have time to put on my bathing suit! I had time to do lots of other fantastic stuff... including work with See Change's fabulous client, the Hawai'i Community Foundation, see a humpback whale spout and tail, visit an 800-year-old fishpond, get some yummy greens (thank you Summer and pals) at Ma'o Farms, take the secret (unpaved) back way from Hana to Kahului, see 4 rainbows or maybe more, and bond with my delightful boss, Melanie Moore Kubo. Here's the fishpond below. Oooh pretty!

Unexpected Rewards

Sometimes, the rewards in life are a little different than you may have expected. Arne's movie, Girls Rock!, has been a lesson in getting various and sundry unexpected rewards, and also about not necessarily being rewarded in the way you *did* expect.

Rewards he got: me. He says all the time that once he was doing something he loved, he was ready to get loved by me! I don't know of anybody else who started off making a movie with the goal in mind of finding the love of your life. :)

Rewards we get: Some people *do* get it. And it makes my heart swell 1) that they do, and 2) that what they get is a vision that lives somewhere between my husband, his best friend from 4th grade, about 100 little girls, and 25 passionate women (and now on-screen, too)!

Here's somebody who gets it:
My ears are bleeding: little grrrls are gonna rock ya
Rock on, Matt (the author of this post)! With feelers out like this when you write and when you live, life is going to hurt for sure, but it's also going to be well worth it.

"imagine a day when all children regardless of ethnicity or gender, are given pragmatic-yet-encouraging environments in which to grow. maybe..."

The Rose

I've been getting this great "natural spirituality" publication for a few years, The Rose, since my friend Kat worked at Emmanuel Episcopal Church where it's published. I don't quite know how to work in synchronicities and other psuedo-Jungian terms into a sentence. They feel a little like business jargon: "Don't be so siloed! We should synergize to work together". But throwing away some of the loaded language, it warms my heart to spend an evening or two a quarter pondering dreams and connections to the divine, and other things I can't quite explain.

So recently they had an article about how everything is connected. It was pretty technically advanced - Fourier transforms and the holographic content of quantum fields - but I think the gist is that we're connected in ways we can't quite comprehend (but almost can). The one twist on this is that now science is beginning to see the evidence of this connection.

Anyway, I love that I read this article just this weekend, and then this morning called a dear friend who was just going through old negatives from high school and thinking of me. In a non-local, non-temporal holographic plane (that connectedness we can't quite understand), that's basically the same thing as tapping me on the shoulder. Well, almost. :)

Tired

Sometimes sleeping makes you more tired. Why is that? You sleep and sleep and then you wake up and you're far more tired than you were when you went to sleep.

I slept far too much last night, and now I'm paying for it. Go figure! My only saving grace is that I ran for an hour yesterday. Maybe I tuckered myself out...

Anne of Green Gables

A friend of mine from way back - we may have been in choir together when we were 6 years old - put a quick note up that I happened to catch this weekend: "feeling more like a Marilla and less and less like an Anne."

It took me a moment to realize she was referring to Anne of Green Gables. And then it all came back. Many many rainy Saturdays spent watching the 6 hour mini-series with my mom, and when he was little enough not to protest, my brother.

I can't say that I've ever been a Marilla. Practical, rigid, caring in her own "I know what's best and you'll do it!" way. She was maybe a lot like my grandmother, who I adored.

I have very much been an Anne. Impractical, lost in reverie, dreaming big, frequently hot-headed. So much an Anne that for the longest time I simply hated my hair (Anne hates her hair passionately). I believed for many years that my hair was permanently on a bad hair day - even though it never really was.

The funny thing about all this, though, is that of the two, I think at this point, Marilla is a far more exciting name. In comparison, Anne is just plain vanilla.

Surprise, Surprise

I've gotten elaborate with my surprises, recently. I went away for a weekend women's retreat with my church this weekend, but got a little under the weather about half-way through and came home. Maybe I was homesick, or Arne-sick a little too. I thought I'd surprise him, and boy did I. He thought I was an intruder, and I had to wait about 15 minutes before I could even give him a hug!

Then, Wednesday, Jennifer Kain and I cooked up a good surprise for our guys. We surprised them with reservations at Range, our favorite restaurant in SF, to celebrate the release of the Girls Rock DVD. We'd planned to meet at a little Burger Joint around the corner, with our men, and let them in on the surprise (and the fact that we'd *all* be having dinner there). So I lolligagged at Little Otsu, and when we got to Burger Joint, I insisted that since this date was my idea, that I order for us at the counter (so I could just order us fries). Then the fries came! What to do?

I told Arne that we had reservations at Range. He had the biggest smile on his face, but when Jenn and Shane came in, mass confusion ensued. I had to tell Shane that I had reservations for four 3 times before he figured out that we hadn't just happened to run into one another...

Regardless, dinner was delightful, the service was stellar, and our men were truly surprised (and perhaps also a bit bewildered)... :)

The Tour

I got a fun tour of MobMerge this morning very early. Basically, it's a quick and easy forum for using judgments from real people (a la Amazon's Mechanical Turk) so you don't have to do them all yourself. In technology, and search in particular, it seems pretty obvious that there are some good applications. But what I'm breaking my brain over right now is how to design a study with MobMerge that could be valuable for Non-profit Evaluation (which is what I'm currently mixed up in - and really enjoying)...

I can tell that I've most likely gone off the nerd deep end. It's just pretty fascinating. I like all that technology leveraging human intelligence business.

Hair!

Went to see a rough cut screening of what is tentatively called "The Beard Project" yesterday. I quite liked it once I got there. Getting there was all about me trying to turn the wrong way onto one-way streets, but the popcorn I had made and ate nervously while driving helped make it all ok. By the time I'd arrived, all the popcorn was gone, though. I'd hoped to bring enough to share.

I like how good stories are about one thing, and invariably another. This movie's story was obviously about beards, but it was also about being on the margins of society, about how men are asked (or demanded) to conform, about the little things we all do to protect ourselves and about the filmmaker herself.

I can't remember, or better yet, I don't remember because I've never actually seen it, but I feel like the musical Hair might have some of the same themes. How is it that it can mean so very much to do something as simple as not shave your legs (think of the country song "Did I shave My Legs for This?!?")? I remember cutting my hair very short within a month after I moved to San Francisco from Athens, Georgia, in part because I wanted people on the street to leave me alone. It worked, or the attitude that I wore that haircut with worked.

Now that I think of it again, though, I could very well have been cutting my hair when I moved here as an act of mourning. At the time, I didn't have any large bowls of olive oil and brewers yeast covered popcorn to keep me sustained as I kept trying to turn into oncoming traffic.

Scared of Mike

I'm scared of Mike. He makes people vomit. At my wedding, he made about half of the extended bunch of wedding party and party wedding beg for mercy... Well, they would have begged for mercy if they had been able to breathe.

I have totally miscalculated my husband. I now believe that he told Mike that I didn't think his class was super hard. I did forget to mention that I *am* absolutely walking most of the hills and that I'm being very easy on myself, but it has to do with the following. For about five years now I haven't been able to run more than 20 minutes without only being able to walk at a shuffle due to I.T. band problems. (Turns out, the trick is rolling your hips and thighs out on a foam roller. Hurts like the dickens!) So when I posted last that the SF Outdoor Fitness class didn't kill me, I meant that I was still able to walk. What I hadn't yet experienced was the calf soreness that was so intense in the following days that I revolved my entire schedule around how often I had to go up and down our one flight of stairs. And I do *like* to sound badass, even if I'm not.

And now we're off to class, where all my terror come to fruition. If you see me hobbling down the sidewalk in the next few days, know it is *definitely* my fault. I never should have stared/blogged the dragon in the face! Didn't I know when it vomited back at me it would vomit fire!?!

Pondering Web 2.0

You know, we may be the only generation that as a whole is allowed to forget their terrible, terrific, frightening and fabulous childhood and teen extravagance, only to have everything thrown back in our face in our early middle age by social networking connections. There's a reason we forgot about C. Whatsername (she frightened us) and K. Whosywhatsit (how appallingly mean/self-centered we were). And now there is a reason that we dream of our childhood archetypes again. In the end, is it worth the present-moment-connectedness to also have to endure connecting whatever we've become with whatever we've been?

Love it!

Last night we had Notorious V.E.G. over for dinner, and as happens a lot these days (and not just with him) the conversation turned to houses and whether sooner than later might be a good time to buy a house, at least in the previously terribly expensive Bay Area. My lovely husband and our fantastic chef, advocated that it was a good time, but only if you were ready to *love* a house. Notorious pushed and pulled on that concept from various angles, and I dissolved into what can only be called an "I don't have a house and I want one" temper tantrum. Thinking about the whole issue this morning during a swim, I think if I have to pick a principle about house-buying, I'll stick to Arne's: plan to *love it*, or else wait to buy.

I guess what I'm saying is that especially in the current market, which has inevitably hit below the belt of any trend and any reputable forecast, without actually loving the place you'll be living and being in it for the long-haul, you seem to really risk your sanity and definitely your financial well-being if you're not thinking about a big investment like a house with love as a first defense.

This love it first attitude is one of the things I really like about Arne, and something I hear that he likes about me. He's got a lot of love in him, and when he focuses it on something he really wants, I believe wholeheartedly that the thing he loves will begin to exist and enrich him. I'm speaking specifically about his movie now. Girls Rock! Movie is so great because you can see how much Arne and Shane loved the stories of music and a smidge of freedom transforming the lives of girls. I am continuously overwhelmed by this work of his, and so very proud of him. Just a few days ago, he said to me that he was so very glad to have had the experience of making Girls Rock! and that having worked on a subject that meant so very much to him was really a gift. How else would you get through the crazy ups and downs of creating, producing, and distributing a movie?! The industry is full of hyper-excited individuals who never call you back, and a kind of continuous negotiation that it turns out is never done. I'm really proud of Arne for honing in on the thing that makes the craziness worth it: Love! And with the DVD release having also been such a wild ride, it comforts me that at least some of the time, Arne's passion for the subject and the love he put into the movie make him feel just giddy about the accomplishment of sharing this work with other people. Love seems to be really the only approach that makes sense right now, anyway, since everything feels so unstable and unknowable!

I remember the story that my parents told me about the house I grew up in, on a little lake in Georgia. They hadn't even seen the house yet, but as they were driving around the lake, a flock of around 80 geese (some years we counted as many as 120) flew over the car to land in the lake. At that point, before seeing the actual edifice, my mom loved the house. It was a truly fantastic place to grow up, and a great investment for my parents, though a struggle to keep from time to time. In retrospect knowing how close they were to not keeping it, I wonder if looking through love only was the best plan. But then I think of really every childhood memory being tied to that house and that place, and I feel pretty darn good about their decision to put us there.

What I know

They say you should write what you know.
I know I had Borscht for lunch today (but I don't know for sure how it's spelled).
I know that after I went to bed at 3 on Saturday morning, I continued to get serenaded (ie screamed at) for the next hour and a half. And I liked it... :)
I know that my calves are sore. Been running with Arne's running group SF Outdoor Fitness. Don't tell Arne, but I thought it would be a *lot* harder than it is.
I know that waking at 6:30 to exercise is not my forte. Actually I'm terribly bad at it.
I know that having a back up plan is a good idea, and also something I enjoy working up. It's been a trip to know that in the event that Arne and I only have enough money for seeds and canned goods to last us through until growing season, we've got a plan.
Lastly, I know that there's a lot more hard work to be done, but some of it is being whittled away at. Makes me feel good to know things are in process.

Stuff I'm Reading

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Although the tone kept me very skeptical at first, it's a powerful and thought-provoking book. And now I'm enjoying reading it again, starting on any page in the evening and shortly falling asleep. Not to say it's boring, but that thinking makes me tired.

I have to say that I'm also impressed that Goodreads, where I put this review, prompted me to put the review on my blog. And they make it look so pretty. This kind of experience makes me think of the business word "synergy" though for some of the first times, not in a bad way.



View all my reviews.

That Dress! That Tux!

That Dress! That Tux! That Man! Give me libertines or give me death by champagne... What a dashing New Years Eve, if I do say so myself...

New Year's Resolution

At Montclair Presby Church on Sunday, Karen asked "What practice would you engage in [during the next year] to bring light into the world?" I think that sounds like a great version of a mix between a parlor game question and a new way to think about New Year's Resolutions.

It's really practice and light that strike me about this question. What am I going to do over and over and over and over (practice) that will make things brighter or not as heavy or more detailed or better visible? The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is to change my go-to phrase to "Thank you." I've been trying it out a bit recently and I like it. Any time my sneaky self-doubt or anger (we'll deal with where in the world does THAT come from sometime later) jumps into action in my head, I try to think of all the things I'm thankful for. A lot of the same ones keep coming up, but I have yet to run out.

Email to a Friend about what to do in San Francisco

I'm cheating. I already wrote this for a friend and I'm merely posting it here for you. If you're in the city, you already know these routes, and if you're not, you'll just have to get out here, or mop up your drool and get back to enjoying wherever you are.

Two ideas for San Francisco:

Golden Gate Park (1/2 day to get there and back at least):
from downtown (Market) take the N Judah muni train to 9th Ave.
1. to the right in the park is the DeYoung art museum & the brand new Academy of Sciences
2. 1/2 block to the left on 9th on the far side of the road is Arzemendi Bakery - great pizza, but get there early. perhaps cash only?

Castro/Mission ramble:
take the F train into the castro (look for the enormous rainbow flag)
1. 18th, Market and Castro is gay central. cute shops on market btwn 15th and 18th st. Castro Theatre on 18th is a landmark. Castro wakes up late, so maybe hit the next stuff first by getting off F @ church and walking left on church to 18th
2. walk down 18th (left on Castro, left on 18th) to Dolores Park (on right) (5-7 minutes)
3. Food! 18th btwn Dolores and Guerrero. Best ice cream EVER (caramel sea salt & roasted banana are my faves) Bi Rite Creamery (on left). Best pizza + wine lunch @ a fancy counter - Delfina's Pizzeria right next to Delfina's restaurant. Best breakfast or pastry goodies (and amazing pressed sandwiches on homemade bread) and coffee (and famous) at 18th & Guerrero -Tartine.
4. View! the high side of Dolores Park has a great view of the city. Tartine breakfast goes great with that view and the benches at the top.
5. Valencia corridor 16th to 22nd on Valencia (next st after Guerrero). Cute/local shops. 826 Valencia Pirate Shop. Very hip, but still neat stuff. It's a front for the 826 Valencia, a writing workship for kids started up by the author Dave Eggers. Paxton Gate right next door is very strange + cool housewares (sort of) shop.
6. End at Monk's Kettle - lots and lots of beers on tap and great pretzels 16th st btwn Guerrero and Valencia. For dinner you can also have amazing Normandy-style crepes across the street at Ti Couz, yummy and cheap Indian at Pakwan (cash only), or the Mission's specialty, the Burrito, at La Cumbre around the corner on Valencia between 16th and 17th.
7. Take Bart (16th and Mission - one street from Valencia) back downtown & then the train home...

Proof!

This is proof that I ran up Bernal Heights today. Fast!

In San Francisco, and perhaps anywhere, there are lots of folks into S & M. I think runners have them all beat. Or at least I do. I know when I'm running it's to get something dark and insubstantial out into my skeleton so that I can pound it, shred it and make it shriek.

Lost and Found

We lost my boss's dog for a moment this morning... just after we'd dropped my dad off at the airport. His back went out earlier this week (just before New Years Eve, actually), so he had arranged for a wheelchair in the airport. But it certainly felt strange depositing him inside the check-in area where he was to wait for the wheelchair. It felt just a little bit like when you realize you've left the door open and your boss's decrepit and daffy dog just waltzes out. It also felt a bit like leaving the door open intentionally.

Racing around in the rain and fog up on the hills in Glen Park looking for a lost dog should be terrifying, but somehow it was really peaceful. Very nice to know exactly what you need to be doing exactly at what moment and exactly for what purpose. Very nice to have a reason to be up on a wind-swept crag squashed in between layered residential roads yodeling out "Sasha" every few moments. Also very nice for Sasha to come right on back home, without the help of scouting the neighborhood and the broader area in our civic.

This honing in on a sense of purpose is how I know that in any true crisis I could be perfectly clear-headed, if not perhaps also cold and unfeeling.

My two favorite new years eves

Last night Arne and I went out to a great party at Dan and Dayna's. We were decked out! Arne wore his tux! Such a nice time drinking champagne, hearing about new years resolutions and eating caviar.

Favorite NYE 1:
2007 - Massive karaoke party at Arne's house. Dad and Nick were on-hand. Nick and I cleared a room with a screeching rendition of Toto's Africa. The Cassoulet was wonderful. People caught all falling champagne flutes just before they hit the ground. Four of us lurched and sang alone in the room on the street until 3AM. Favorite songs: Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini & Love Potion #9.

Favorite NYE 2:
1988(?) - My intact family stayed at the Chattanooga Choo Choo in a train car room that connected to our friend's, the Ramseys. Erin (their daughter) and I played mermaids in the indoor pool (which had a waterfall! and was heated!) for *hours*. We dried our hair on hand dryers in the bathroom of the hotel. We barely could keep our eyes open for midnight. Perfection!