Archive for November, 2018

Nov 29 2018

Evening

It was nice having four days off in a row. On one of them, I slept until 10:30 am. I can’t remember the last time I did that. I also went to bed at 8:30 pm that same day and slept through to 6:30 am the following day. Life has been exhausting lately.

Megan and I packed a lot of fun into one of the days off, though. We started off at the crafts fair at the Arts Center in the Village. We arrived at the last hour of the last day, and it was refreshingly uncrowded. We were greeted by some outsize, outside tomatoes:

and a charming little mosaic frog:


He must have been glad to see the rain.

I bought a charming little bird to keep my father the ornithologist company:

and Megan and I both bought hairpins embellished with antique buttons. I put mine on immediately.

Our next stop was Luna Trattoria, where we found a quiet table in the gracious surroundings and were looked after wonderfully. Fresh bread arrived with olive oil in a moon decanter and balsamic vinegar in a star decanter:

Our wine arrived with a standing ice bucket, replete with a napkin for catching drips. Not that we had to pour any wine – the owner and the server saw to such mundane details. We started our lovely dinner with a perfect bruschetta:

It had just enough garlic, and the basil and tomatoes were fresh and flavorful. I followed this up with penne alla vodka with pancetta:

It, too, was just perfect, a great balance of flavors.

We enjoyed a leisurely dinner while catching up with each other’s lives. Our schedules are so far off now that we don’t see each other as much as you’d think, especially since we no longer live on the same property.

After dinner, we headed to the theater and its welcoming little bar:

The bartender creates a special drink for every play, and was kind enough to make Megan the drink from the last play, which featured Crème Yvette (a new ingredient to us) and blue Curaçao. I had this play’s drink, called Heaven Fruit cocktail. It is composed of gin, pomegranate juice, ginger beer, and lime. They were both delicious.

The play was three one act plays by Thornton Wilder, perhaps best-known for “Our Town”, though I also admire his screenplay for one of my favorite Hitchcock movies, “Shadow of a Doubt” (filmed in nearby Santa Rosa). If you know “Our Town” – and most former high school students do – you may not be surprised to hear that all three had a recurring motif of mortality. They were clever and we enjoyed the performance. It was another great evening for the sisters!

A YEAR AGO: I was feeling a LOT more festive.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Celebrating Thanksgiving.

TEN YEARS AGO: Enough with the Thanksgiving already!

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Nov 24 2018

Thanksgiving

Published by under Country Life,Family,Weather

Rain finally made its welcome appearance. When I drove to work the day before Thanksgiving, the Ridge was littered with red needles glowing against the mirror black road in the light of the high beams. I was glad I had replaced my wiper blades.

The office had a ghost town quality that day. I got some filing done, though not all of it. And even though I was not hosting Thanksgiving for once, I left work a little early anyway.

It was still raining as I made my way to Rio’s house on Thanksgiving evening, literally going over the (Albion) river and through the woods to Rio’s house (and she is, in fact, a grandmother). According to the local message boards, we have received about 2.5 inches over the past three days. That’s something to be thankful for, as is finding two errors on the same page in a recent issue of “The New Yorker”. My petty little heart rejoiced.

Arriving at Rio’s house, I met her son, his wife, and their son. Rio has picked up our reproductive slack by having four children and three grandchildren. Erica and Jessica arrived shortly after I did, with tales of packing and moving misdaventures. I think I would have given up on the whole thing, but they are made of stronger stuff, and as of tomorrow, they will be on their way to their new home. I am having a hard time coming to terms with this. My heart is an even slower learner than my head.

Dinner was well in hand: organic turkey, gravy, potatoes, carrots, and delicata squash from the garden. Dessert was wild huckleberry tarts and pie from our own apples. Needles to say, it was all accompanied by the cider we just pressed a few days ago. It’s satisfying to have a mostly home-grown Thanksgiving.

I am pleased to say that I did not burst into tears when saying goodbye to Erica and Jessica. I did hug them a little longer than usual, though, and I already miss them.

A YEAR AGO: Getting ready for Thanksgiving.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Some little treats to brighten up the day.

TEN YEARS AGO: My beautiful girls. I will never stop missing the incredible June.

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Nov 19 2018

100

Published by under Family

The 100th anniversary of Armistice Day made me think about my grandfathers more than usual.

Both the Ernests fought in World War I in France. They may have even been on some of the same battlefields.

My mother’s father, Ernest Raymond, was a farm boy from New York state. I recently came across this photo of him in his uniform, setting off to fight in the war:

He looks like a kid to me, and he also looks like he is off on adventure. He clearly has no idea what’s in store for him. He told me that he saw his boyhood friends blown to pieces in front of his eyes, and that his feet rotted in the trenches. When the war was over, he got shipped back home as if nothing ever happened. It must have been surreal to go from the battlefield back to the farm. He survived it all, though, becoming a high school principal and having a long and happy marriage, living into his 80s.

I don’t have a photo of Ernest Victor from wartime. He was a tough young lad from a tough part of London, Southwark, which would be heavily bombed during the next World War. I happened to make a journey there to see his old neighborhood on what would have been his 100th birthday. It was pretty sketchy, with boarded up council housing, buildings with broken windows, and the old, disused railway stable. I’m sure both the council housing and stables are now multi-million pound condos. Gentrification is rampant and there are no bad neighborhoods now in central London.

Ernest Victor’s early life is something of a mystery, and will remain so since everyone who knows anything about it, including him, is long gone. His birth was registered by his mother, which was odd at the time, and was done long after his birth, also unusual. He never spoke to anyone in his family after WWI, except for his sister Elsie, who was very dear to Dad and to me. I have no idea why he cut them off like this.

He was gassed in the war and suffered from depression for the rest of his long life. He became an international banker at Lloyds of London, taking the train to the City from his home in Surrey. He too was very happily married for more than half a century and died on Christmas Eve, 1977, waiting in his special chair for his beloved wife to make him a cup of tea. Victorian gentlemen did not make their own tea.

They both went through a lot, survived it all, and rarely spoke about war and its horrors. I am thankful they survived and for their service, but sorry for all the young men lost in that war and the many to come.

A YEAR AGO: Car problems did not make me feel very thankful.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A late season BBQ with family and friends.

TEN YEARS AGO: Five year old Jessica already knew what to do in almost any situation.

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Nov 15 2018

Updates

Published by under Bullshit,Cats,House,Weather

Fires:

The Camp fire, located 200 miles away, is only 35% contained. The Woolsey fire is doing a little better at around 45%. It still amazes me that we are having such huge fires so late in the season. Maybe we will start having fires year round instead of a fire season. How scary is that? I am surprised that a fire 200 miles away made the air so unbreathable while smoke from fires that were only 50 miles away didn’t come anywhere near us. I am also perturbed by the fire raging all the way to the ocean in Malibu. I always thought that we were safer here on the coast due to topography and proximity to water, but apparently I was wrong about that, as I am about so many things.

H2OhNo:

Speaking of water, we do have it, at least for now. I still don’t understand what the problem is. It may have something to do with the underground pump or the electricity or something else that is beyond my limited means of understanding. My fear is that it is also beyond the people who are dealing with it, and that they don’t know enough to know they don’t know enough. I am pretty sure we will have to call out the cavalry in the form of Rob, even though they keep saying they don’t need his help. The fact that Rob lived on the property for 20 years and used to maintain the well along with my brother suggests otherwise, as does Rob’s general mechanical ability. We’ll see. In the meantime, I’m keeping my buckets loaded and my fingers crossed.

Kitties:

Audrey has been scarce lately. She no longer asks to go out in the morning, and most days I don’t even see her before I go to work to make money for cat food and litter. She has a mystery spot somewhere. She does still sit on her throne (aka the armoire) sometimes so she can look down on everyone both literally and figuratively. She still hates Dodge and is not shy about letting him know this. Dodge is unconcerned by her disdain. He just looks at her when she growls at him, and maybe this infuriates her even more. Clyde on the other hand has been completely won over by Dodge. They play together and give each other baths. Clyde even shares his quilt with Dodge:

And they often sleep together. Dodge is coming out of his shell and is spending more time downstairs with the rest of the family instead of hanging out on the bed, where he could be comfortable but also have a vantage point to keep an eye out for possible enemies. He slept a lot when I first got him. I imagine living on the streets was very stressful. He was terribly thin and missing a lot of fur when I first adopted him, but now his fur is plush and he has filled out. I think he’s beginning to feel safe and comfortable. Both boys are staying in all the time now, and I’m not sure if that will ever change. It’s nice not to worry about them. Audrey, as the undisputed winner of Survivor: Hooterville, still has outside privileges, but she doesn’t use them all that much.

Holidays:

Basically, they are not happening. The pre-conversion Grinch would be proud. We are having Thanksgiving at Rio’s this year. I have to admit I am rather disappointed that we will not have one last Thanksgiving with Erica and Jessica at my house. They will be leaving the day after Thanksgiving and they will probably never be back for Thanksgiving ever again. They may be able to come for Christmas next year, but who knows? It’s a long way from Nanaimo to darkest Hooterville.

On the other hand, Thanksgiving is next week and I have not had to plan, shop, cook, or clean. Nor will my house be a FEMA worthy disaster on Black Friday, so score.

Due to my siblings’ work schedules and the depressing lack of Erica and Jessica, Christmas has effectively been cancelled. I am not sending out cards or putting up the tree or decorations. This may make Twelfth Night much less depressing. Or it might just maintain the current level of depressingness. As my one concession to the holidays, I have set out the two amaryllis plants from last year, and will be interested to see if once again one is the overachiever and one is the underachiever.

A YEAR AGO: Unwilling to get ready for winter.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Sigh.

TEN YEARS AGO: Libraries past and present. Tomorrow I’m heading to a library Board meeting.

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Nov 09 2018

Smoky

Published by under Country Life,Weather


It’s not looking good. And this is November!

A long string of sunny days came to a crashing halt yesterday with a sudden and terrifying pall of smoke from the fire in the Sierra foothills, 200 miles away. The sky darkened and looked bruised, the sun a frightening, livid orange:

We are so used to clean air and the wind from the ocean that it was especially shocking. My eyes are running and you can taste the air. The smoke is still with us, and there is no sign of rain in the forecast:

It’s late in the season for fires and for there to be no rain. Other than the surprise shower in September, there has not been a drop. This is also frightening. I really do not know how the climate change disbelievers can look at all the evidence in the environment and not think it’s real or that we have a real problem.

There are continuing issues with the well on the property where I live. There was no water yesterday, and I am hoping that there will be when I get home. Just in case, I got several more bottles of water on my way to work today. I should anyway, to be prepared for the winter power outages – assuming we ever get rain, let alone storms.

I was glad that I kept a couple of buckets of water on hand because of the ongoing issues with the well, so I could at least wash my face (in icy water) and flush the toilet, though the sink is full of dishes, which offends my tidy soul.

The guy who moved into Megan and Rob’s house is going to try and fix the well today, so maybe there will be water when I get home.

Update: There wasn’t.

More Updates: Water back on for now, though I don’t know how long it will be. It sounds like the root cause of the issue is going to require expert intervention. Stay tuned…

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Nov 06 2018

Pressing

Published by under Country Life,Family,Friends

Cider pressing day dawned fair for a change. For the first year, it was rainy; last year, it was cold enough to move all operations other than the actual pressing inside Rio’s house.

When I pulled up at Rio’s estate, the boys were hard at work setting up the new (to us) press. Instead of borrowing our friend and neighbor’s apple press, this year my brother Jonathan invested in a 30 year old press. It’s still a hand-operated press, but this one has separate parts for grinding the apples and for pressing them.

Rob washed our organic apples:

Megan, Rio, and I halved or quartered them, depending on size:

It felt like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. No matter how many apples we chopped, there was always more. Here they are in the hopper of the grinder, which was mostly manned by Jonathan, but also manned by Rob and Clayton:

Clayton mostly worked on the pressing part:

You can see Jonathan valiantly grinding the apples in the background.

We went through several wheelbarrows of “pomace”, or crushed apples, which all had to be wheeled to the compost pile.

We took a break for lunch, which was corn chips and salsa made almost entirely from our garden-gown ingredients, including cherry tomatoes, jalapenos, and apples. Apples are great in salsa! Fun fact: the bowl was made by Clayton himself. He’s not just a master painter and apple presser!

Then it was back to work. Jonathan estimates that we made about 40 gallons of cider, or twice what we made last year when we and the rest of the coast had such a poor apple crop.

When we were finally done, we cleaned up and toasted another successful cider pressing. Dinner was garden slop and pasta with garlic bread, followed by raspberry sorbet made from raspberries my siblings grew:

I can’t describe the intense berry taste of sorbet that only has two ingredients: raspberries and sugar. It was the perfect end to a lovely dinner and a hard-working day.

A YEAR AGO: A chilly day for cider prep and pressing.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A busy and action-packed trip to Atlanta. Those were the days, though I didn’t know it then.

TEN YEARS AGO: Voting day, and it was a nerve-wracking nail biter. Again, those were the days and I didn’t know it then. I’m sensing a theme here.

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Nov 01 2018

Dinner

Published by under Country Life,Family

We were long overdue for a family dinner. The last one may have been for Dad’s birthday, way back in March. I was too sick to attend Megan’s birthday BBQ, and the tragedy of losing Erica’s mother so suddenly and horribly removed any festive feelings for the rest of the summer, preempting Junapalooza and any other celebrations.

We had the dinner at Rio’s house. When I arrived bearing wine, she already had a plate of delightful appetizers set out. They were rice crackers topped with Cheddar and neat squares of roasted red peppers:

My industrious siblings had a bumper crop of peppers this year, and had roasted them over apple wood and then preserved them in olive oil. I admire (but do not emulate) their near-constant garden labor. It seems to me that they are either watering and weeding or picking and preserving. They are probably glad when winter rolls around and they can take a break from endless garden duty.

The homegrown theme continued. Jonathan was in the kitchen making what he and Megan affectionately refer to as “garden slop”, which is pasta sauce made from tomatoes, peppers, basil, and anything else from the garden that looks good and can be tossed in, like delicata squash:

Despite its unlovely name, garden slop is delicious and never quite the same. We had it with pasta and freshly grated Parmesan, along with garlic bread. The garden crew cleverly made a big batch of garlic butter from the garlic they grew and froze it in individually wrapped, flattened patties which are the perfect size for a loaf of bread. So making garlic bread is practically instant.

For the first time in recorded history, my brother’s pastry didn’t work out. He had to consign it to the compost pile and instead made apple crisp from apples he and the team had just picked. There were more than enough left over for the upcoming cider pressing:

Plan B tasted as good as Plan A would have, and it was a great evening. I was glad we were all together at last.

A YEAR AGO: Trick or treating with Jessica. Little did I know it would be the last time. Here’s how she looked this year:

Note the terrifying neck makeup!

FIVE YEARS AGO: A happy Halloween.

TEN YEARS AGO: A happy ending for everyone!

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