nate-in-the-box

...so many things I meant to tell you.

2012-01-31T16:06:00.000-08:00

I had this all planned out in my head: a gripping account of the transition from student to teacher-played out in several parts over the course of a semester.

Alas, as you may have noted I have been all silent-like since last fall.

I can't give that play-by-play I had intended. (unless you're my mother-who got it over the phone each week)

Suffice it to say that I learned a lot about teaching, and teachers, and students in the last several months. Today was my first day as a "non-student teacher" (It doesn't feel right to say "teacher" until the paperwork is in and I have a credential, but that still is a few weeks away). I got up at 5:45, took the dog running, and was out of the house by 6:40 headed back to school. I spent the morning finishing grading the finals from yesterday's classes, inputting grades, and finalizing conduct scores and comments for the semester report cards. I got done around 12:30, and said a brief "thank you" to my master teachers-who were busy teaching, and went to turn in my keys.

I did not wear a tie today, my students took note. I told them that I was off duty.

Last night I went out with a small group from my credentialling cohort, to catch up and decompress. I am a person who bristles at group interactions, but I sincerely love all five of them (even if one couldn't make it) and feel comfortable with our shared experiences and enjoy their company.

I think the overarching lesson I learned during student teaching was the importance of collaboration, and relationships, and opening yourself to the lives of others. I came in with a very militaristic view of education, and I still find value there, but I learned that teaching is an inherently social activity, and to ignore that and internalize yourself renders your lessons--however well crafted--ineffectual.

I HATE people. Groups of people are somehow half as intelligent as the sum of their individual IQ's. I love individuals. I want to connect with everybody on a one-to-one level, and there is some difficulty to that when dealing with a class of 35 kids. But it can be done. This is the area of growth that has most surprised me. I wanted to be the ring master and run my own little circus, but when I saw teachers who did that... let's just say they were not the teachers I want to emulate.

Metamorphosis: step 1

2011-09-10T11:55:00.000-07:00

This has been quite a week. It began with the end of my career at starbucks, which was bittersweet. That was accompanied by the inevitable sense of doom associated with leaving the familiar and embarking on the unfamiliar.

I had not considered the psychological effects of my vocational change. In the space of a day I went from respected elder statesman in a world of 20 year olds, to neophyte in a world of 40-50 somethings. All of a sudden I was a grownup (or at least expected to be). For the last few semesters I had jokingly referred to my teaching/observing persona as "Mr. Bruce", and spoke of him as a separate entity. On Tuesday I had to wear "Mr. Bruce" most of the day, and then the rest of the week.

Mr. Bruce wears ties. In fact, he more than wears them, he loves them. He feels sorry for people who don't.

I remember one of my odd phases while I was in the military, at age 19/20 feeling very grown up and having a fixation with ties. I used to sit around the house watching tv on my days off, in clothes that my new coworkers would think are too "dressy" to wear to work. I was doing my best "grownup" impersonation. In a way I still am, but I have gotten better at it.

This past week has been an eye opener. I am hooked and I want more. This week wasn't work at all (which is good, because nobody is paying me). I took home papers to grade for the two classes I taught on Friday, and laughed and enjoyed the process of covering them with red pen. Some kids write/say the darndest things (others just sit there and stare at you) and you can make them do things (its amazing).

I am also adjusting to a new daily schedule. I have been getting up at 530/545 to run with the dog, and then I have to leave by 645 because of traffic to get there around 730. Then all day long I am figuring out which bell is what, and because the school uses block scheduling I only have each class every other day. And I have no 7th period, it is my prep, which means that I am done with students around 150 and am then at the mercy of my master teacher. With few exceptions I am not allowed to leave before her (this is not a serious problem, as she has 2 school age sons and is not particularly keen to hang around past 3pm). I have a weekly class for student teachers at CSULB on Wed. evenings, and a few miscellaneous extra curricular activities that I must observe, but otherwise I am usually home by 415-430. I have the evenings to myself and go to bed around 11. It is bizarrely normal when compared to what I have done for the past several years.

The science department head, who in the short time I have known him I have come to respect quite a bit, asked me on Friday, "So, you feel like a teacher yet?"

My response was, "A little more every day." which I followed up with "Hey Bob, where's your tie!"

P.S. Mr. Bruce uses capital letters.

The upcoming New World Order.

2011-08-23T22:01:00.000-07:00

I am not what you would call a "nervous person". My response to stress tends toward the narcoleptic rather than the manic. And while I lack anxiety, i am chock full of anxiousness. I have a desire to get things going that makes me crazy waiting for a new adventure. The worst part of bungee jumping was walking up the stairs. So i find myself in this situation presently, running the clock out on my 5 year stint at starbucks, and waiting to start student teaching--exactly 2 weeks from today.

I feel ready to jump into it. I have no idea what to expect or have prepared, because I have no idea what is on the other side of that two week wall. I will learn quickly (i suspect) what is necessary, but at this point i have so little to go on that i have been watching movies and starting a new book--which i will undoubtedly not finish until after the semester is over. (Its a history of the papacy, so i kinda know how it ends--its a german guy who says questionably offensive things).

My preparations have included: packing an unpacking my briefcase, trying to break in said briefcase (thanks mom and dad, i will love it forever), polishing my shoes, buying some new "grown up" clothes, and occasionally looking at the teacher's edition of the textbook-which, to be honest i do not care for (i wish i had the student edition, too much extra crap in the margins). frankly i'm a little bored.

But i will come back here in two weeks and let you know how it went.

Gone to be with Jesus

2011-07-28T12:22:00.000-07:00

For the third and (hopefully) final installment of my morbid summer: My grandmother passed away suddenly on Sunday morning. I have been at pains on how to address it here, or even whether or not to, but I felt this might give the appearance of a slight to my family, as i have rambled on about those unrelated to me and their recent passing.

If you want the story of her life-read the obituary.

If you want the story of how she passed-ask my mother.

If you want to know how amazing a woman she was-attend the service.

I am only going to tell you why her absence hurts (me).

She was the last of my grandparents to die. Which gives her death a false sense of importance over all the ones who went before. I miss her as a person, and Colleen, Clayton, Darlene, and Karl, as one conglomeration of generational sadness at the loss.

My grandparents died at large intervals, and my memories of them shift like shadows as my perception of them ages. My understanding of them as people, complex and interesting, developed with time. I regret that Colleen who passed when I was barely into high school, is the least colored in of all of them. She died when grandparents were only satellites that orbit around their grandchildren-or at least that is the view from the grandchild's perspective.

Grandma Lois lasted long enough for me to appreciate her on an adult level. There would always be some deference to the familial roles we represented to each other, and the vast disparity of our ages, but i could talk to her, and she to me. we lived at a distance that maintained the gravitational attraction of conversation and visits, and kept the desire to see each other from being crushed by the mundanity of constant contact. I knew how she felt about me, and she knew how I felt about her.

I will always wish I had more time with her, but that is a sign of love. If I could have been satisfied with our time together, i wouldn't miss her as i do. You don't really love someone if, when they die, you say "well, i'd had about enough of them anyway."

We had lately discovered dominos, and would play into the night after my parents went to bed. It was something we could share, and work at together. I will miss those hours.

She was a sweet and generous soul, who loved Jesus, babies and her family. It sounds trite, I know, that's what all little old ladies love, but it is the truth. And if I know anyone who has ever deserved to be with Jesus it is my Grandma Lois. And she'd want you and i to join her.

customer service

2011-07-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

Today was the funeral service for one of my regular customers from starbucks. And while i will mention her name (Margot Harvey), this post is larger than her loss. I will be leaving starbucks to begin student teaching at the end of the summer, and have been reflecting on my 5 years with the company. Margot represents the best that the job had to offer. Over the four years at my first store in Tustin, I got to know a wonderful group of people who have all left a mark on my heart. Some of those people were coworkers, and some were customers who could have just come in for their morning cup of coffee, paid, and left. Some of those thousands of people who waited in my line did more than that.

As a job, starbucks was a steady predictable (if occasionally menial) part of my life. I was fairly compensated and treated well by all, and allowed to be my own peculiar self ({mostly}within dress code). What i will take away was the community i felt with my customers/neighbors, who i genuinely looked forward to seeing each day (and some of the ones i didn't).

Margot, the star of today's post (if there is such a thing), once caught me riding to/from work without a helmet, and gave me a hard time about it for a week, and then turned up one day with a brand new helmet she bought for me. (i did briefly wear it when i thought she might see me).

Harry loaned me his flatbed truck for a few days when we moved across town to our current apartment.

Sal got me a case of pig's feet on short notice so meg could teach a suturing workshop. And always remembered me around the holidays.

These are only a few prominent examples, and there are many more who offered me nothing more than a sympathetic ear, or pleasant conversation, but all of them generous in their own way. These are the people I will miss. The people who made my job pleasant.

I encourage you, dear reader (using a plural here just seems like hubris), to be one of those people to somebody insignificant in your life. make them more significant. it's always good to have one more person speak well of you when you are gone.

in passing

2011-06-24T20:44:00.000-07:00

Today i attended a memorial service for meg's boss/mentor/friend. Her name was Dr. Marianne Cinat, and she was by all accounts an impressive woman. i knew her only socially, we had dinner a few times and sat at the same tables for hospital functions, and she was a humorous and kind person. the world is a little worse off for her departure.

While all of the above could certainly justify my attendance, i mostly went in support of meg. But i would be ignoring my curiosity, and selfish reasons if i did not disclose them: I wanted to see the future.

I have been to what i imagine are an average number of funerals/memorials for my age. I still prefer them to weddings--nobody goes to a funeral unless they want to, its not really a "can i bring a date" scene. But i have never been to such an enormous service. It filled two conference rooms in the doubletree hotel (across the street from the hospital). Multiple fire departments had firetrucks out front in an impressive show of force, many of the firemen in dress uniforms filled the hall. Police officers, city officials, hospital staff, friends, only her sister made the trip out from the family home in Michigan, where the funeral will be held. Many of her patients were actually in the audience, or had sent in emails and cards with their condolences, some got up to speak.

It was impressive to consider the impact of this one woman on all of the people in the room. I can only imagine that throughout a career in trauma and burn surgery (even a tragically short one in this case) you play an important role in the community as well as in individual's lives. Part of my going was to see what meg's funeral (eventual, i'm not planning anything untoward) would look like. If their friends and coworkers are to be believed meg and marianne were very similar, and i think an apt comparison can be made.

People respect doctors. some of them even deserve it. I had never been to a doctor's service before, and it was touching. particularly for hard working, no nonsense doctors who put their patients before their own family and social obligations at times, it was reassuring to see that people do appreciate their efforts, and they do affect people's lives.

Which is nice, because that's the kind of doctor i married.

The REAL catching up.

2011-05-28T21:35:00.000-07:00

I am a bit adrift with thoughts about graduation, and finishing school, preparing (mostly mentally) for student teaching in the fall, and increasing my hours at starbucks. I finished school a little more than a week ago, and I took the week off to celebrate/prepare for graduation. So I have had a lot of free time to finish a novel I was reading, clear off my DVR, and watch some movies on netflix. I've also started a training program with my dog (so we'll see how that goes over the summer). What I have not been doing is thinking about the fact that I am done with school as we (I) know it, and what that feels like.

Apparently, I should have been because that is exactly the question that everyone has for me.

So here it is, my written reflection on graduating/tion:

It doesn't really feel like anything. Yet. The feeling is indeterminate from every other summer vacation of my college career. In fact I had to register for my last batch of classes (student teaching=18units=$3200) the other day. It places an odd significance on things when you realize that it is "the last time" you will do this or that. So finals week was punctuated with a series of these insignificant milestones. The last time I would trudge the 300 yards from/to my car from class, or buy a scantron, or clamor out of a silent lecture hall while struggling to collect my things after taking a test.

These are things I will forget to miss.

I have been doing this in one form or another for 7 years. I have learned mostly that there is not time to learn everything, or even everything you want to, there is only enough time to learn that which is on the test-and a little bit of what is interesting to you.

My graduation day started early. I got up before my alarm at 6:15, put on my flip flops and took the elevator down to the ground floor and jaywalked across six lanes (and a median) to the starbucks I work at. Not to work (i was still in my pj's) but to get some coffee beans for Joy and get my schedule for next week and my tips from last week. I went back home, got dressed, and finished cleaning the apartment. Meg and I went for breakfast at the pancake house, I had some wonderful pecan pancakes, and came home. Since it was Friday, we had to take the dog to the dog park. We had Joy and Mikayla meet us there. The dog and the goddaughter had a good time, and we came home. I changed shirts and grabbed my cap and gown and went to the school. Meg and Joy followed in Joy's car later. I had to coordinate two sets of parents traveling to my school from two different cities in opposite directions, so I got there a little earlier. Although both sets of parents had already arrived.

Other than "fill out this card" we were given no further instructions. I found my good friend Charlene, a fellow prospective biology teacher, nerd, and all around kind human being, and we got into a blob of biology students we kinda recognized from some of our classes. They started the processional and walked us into the "stadium". On the way in, for about 50 ft, the walkway was lined with people throwing armloads of confetti into the air above the graduates.

This was the most magical moment of the whole day. For a brief 50 feet I was filled with such childlike joy that I am at a loss to express. After that it was anticlimactic.

I won't bore you with the details of the ceremony. If you cared about the goings on you would have been there, but really, nobody cares what they say other than your/your loved one's name.

Highlights: During the address I received my results on the state testing from earlier in the semester-the timing was uncanny (I passed, by the way). The announcers were AMAZING, they made every name sound like they were participants in the largest WWF smackdown in history, sooooo awesome.

Then it was over.

My inlaws, my parents, my grandma Lois, Joy and Mikayla all came back to our place to meet all the birds and regroup after the ceremony and before heading back home. It was really fun, grandma Lois had never met Meg's parents, and she enjoyed playing with our bird squeaky. My parents had to go early to make the long drive back before getting stuck in traffic. We went out to dinner with the Kaisers, and then they left. And Miki and Joy stayed into the evening and wore out both me and Wren chasing Miki around.

It was a wonderful day. I was so tired I went to bed at 9:30.

10 years ago I went to Meg's graduation. 7 years ago was Mark's, and 5 years ago Cory graduated. It took a while but its finally my turn. I am catching up.

Catching up.

2011-05-28T21:17:00.001-07:00

There have been a few exciting developments since I last posted. The abbreviated list is, new bird, state testing, finals/projects, and graduation.

The new bird in question is seen directly above, with my dad. His name is William. He's a hyacinth macaw, and he is the awesomest bird I have ever seen-and I've seen some birds.

We've had him for about 6 weeks. More on him later, I'm sure.

i wish there were more to say...

2011-01-12T10:55:00.000-08:00

At first it was copious amounts of school work that kept me from updating the blog, then it was the holidays, now it is just laziness and disinterest. even on facebook, you may have noticed that while i have occasionally commented on your posts, i have had few interesting things to say of late.

working chronologically forward from my last post, as memory serves...there was a lot of schoolwork, then it was thanksgiving, which i spent a pleasant weekend before the holiday in hanford. Meg was on call the weekend of thanksgiving so i wanted to be home with her-and the dog. We had a nice time, it was supposed to rain but it held off until i got home, which was nice as i took my be-walkered mother (fresh off back surgery) and my grandmother to morro bay for the day. it couldn't have been more perfect weather, and the old gals did pretty good. though i couldn't talk either of them into a canoe ride across the bay. it was a great trip until i was pulled over for speeding in the middle of nowhere on a mostly empty highway, with my mom and grandma in the car (not cool CHP!) mom has photos of all of that on her blog (available on your left)

Then it was finals and school nonsense, interviews, exams, etc. I took it as a compliment when my professor said " you are going to rock those kids' world!" in regards to my future students.

After that my mother-in-law was in town for surgery (at meg's hospital, down the street) so i spent most of that week getting things done around the house, decorating, and visiting her. she did very well, and is fine. we had long talks about classroom management and how it varies from the australia of 40(?) (she may kill me) years ago and today's american methods.

Then it was christmastime! again, meg drew the short straw for the holiday, so i made a whirlwind tour of hanford on christmas eve and then spent christmas afternoon cleaning before meg's family showed up for christmas dinner. first family christmas in our new place, it went very well, much more space than the last time we tried hosting. The big gifts for me this year was a new LCD tv for the living room and an appletv with a netflix membership. I love it, the picture is amazing, and i have been averaging 2 movies a day and my muscles are starting to atrophy. I also got a new universal remote that blows my mind. I love, LOVE, programming remote controls. its such a small tangled little puzzle and when you get it just right it makes your life better. if you want me to come over and program your, just ask!

The dog is incredible (you literally cannot believe anything she tells you). I love her so much, and i can only dimly recall the horrific emptiness of the house between Dory and Wren. I spend a lot of time at home, the burden of being a trophy husband/student i suppose, but she is good company. having never had a puppy before i am fascinated by her development, and she is very clever and ornery, like me, so it gives me something to do. that and clean up after her, she's part tasmanian devil, i swear. we go on lots of walks, i recently gave her all her shots, so we have been taking her out to meet other dogs and get her socialized to them. we've been to the dog park and beach, and she had a great time.

i spent the last two days building a bird cage for our outside finch collection. taller and roomier than the store bought one we were using. plus nobody designs bird cages for ease of cleaning, changing bird papers is annoying, yet the solution is so simple. I thought i could do better, and i think that overall, as a trial run it went pretty smoothly. if i do it again, and i probably will (for different birds), i will use poplar and modify the design slightly, but it works. Also i got to use cordless circular saw, which i am still convinced will someday take my finger, but it was pretty cool to use.

please permit me to post a video, i don't generally like to, but this seems worth sharing. it was on a rainy day in the angel's stadium parking lot.

Our new bundle of joy!

2010-11-06T19:20:00.001-07:00

As you may know at the end of September we (Finally) got our puppy from the breeder.
Her name is Ren (renny, renny monster, renata, puppy terrier, and any number of other things we call her).

As of today she is fully vaccinated and in a week or so we will finally unleash her (not literally) on the world and its dog-friendly locations.

The photos above are chronological, the first 2 were from the day we picked her out (she fooled us by being very sedate) the next one was around midnight when I finally got her home. The last two are from the last 2 weeks.

She is a maniac. but she is cute.

Meg and i have both been very busy the last few months, my credentialling courses are killing me with homework, observations, and other nonsense. So there really is very little else to report.

What i have not been telling you...

2010-08-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

my posts have been as sparse as ever this summer, and i'd like to take the opportunity before the school bell rings to clean house. Things you may or may not have heard about this summer:

we (meg) got an 07 miata (her dream car) in june. it has been a great addition to our family, and we both love it more than we could have imagined.
i have been living without tv for the summer, subsisting only on a steady diet of movies. (up to 13 a week). i have been working my way through the american film institute's top 100 american movies, plus a smattering of foreigns and new releases. i have less than 25 to go on the top 100, so maybe next summer...

our dog, dory, became very sick in june, with the help of meg's father, a team of veterinary specialists, and a diligence to administering medications and 4x a day tube feeding, we kept her comfortable, scrambly, and alive until the end of July. At which time she started to get worse than before, so we euthanized her ourselves, at home. it was one of the hardest days i can remember. She was 14, and a great companion, and we miss her very much.

after much debate the decision was made to get another dog-our house seems a bit empty these days-and after a brief but fruitful search of breeders we found a litter in san diego, right next to where meg was a camp counselor. We are getting a cairn terrier (think "toto"), a female, and at the time of posting she is exactly 4 weeks old. we went down to see the litter at 1.5 weeks, and there were 3 girls, one is spoken for, so we'll have second choice, we don't get to bring her home for another month.

we are very anxious to get her home. i have never had a puppy before, and am slightly afraid of what awaits me. meg on the other hand has had numerous puppies in her family and teases me for being a nervous expectant puppy owner. believe me, i'll post a photo as soon as we get her.

we got away for the first weekend of august. We stayed in ventura, went to the ventura county fair, and wandered around town. we also went to santa barbara to wander around town, go to the zoo, and just generally hang out. it was a nice little "throw a bag in the trunk, put the top down and head toward the ocean" kinda trip.

school starts next week, and it will be good to get out of the empty house some. meg has a conference in boston in late september, and i will be joining her for 4-5 days it will be a nice last little vacation for the year. the plan is to get down to ny to see the brooklyn bruces for a day.

8 yrs.

2010-07-20T09:17:00.000-07:00

i have been married a long time. or at least it seems so. maybe i'm just getting older, and my long term memory is dimming more rapidly. it just seems like we have been together forever. (in a good way!) my wife, Meg, is still a fascinating woman, and i am lucky to have found her. i love her in ways that i never could have imagined eight years ago, when marriage was only a curiosity that promised sex.

Let's face it, young people are stupid; and sex can be very expensive.

But we are still together, and the reason is love (or stubbornness-when is one not the other),
we are lucky.

The annual birthday post.

2010-07-08T12:53:00.000-07:00

i have recently been coming to grips with the gradual realization that, well, this is it. Which is to say, "this is who i am." The promise and plasticity of adolescence is long gone, and yet i had a hard time grasping that. The hope that tomorrow i will be cool, have more friends, like all the things that "everybody else" likes, is gone. despite my iconoclastic attitude i have harbored a desire to "fit in", and the recognition that there is nothing to "fit into" was slow in arriving. you do what you like to do, and you will (probably) find others who share your interest, along the way you meet people who don't and you may like them anyway. such is life.

i have never been one to blindly follow. i am stubborn, and plagued by suspicions that other people (particularly those in large groups) lack the ability to think for themselves. I will never be a sports fan, or view politics as anything but theatre (where you only boo or applaud, but NEVER participate). and that is who i am. i don't want to wear red and paint my face, drink beer, shout or any of the other things people do at sporting events. i am never going to be that person, no matter how i secretly wish i could be "part of the crowd".

i am not Cory, i cannot wear whatever i want and be cool. i also cannot wear what everyone else is wearing and be cool. we lie to children and tell them that what they wear doesn't matter, its what's inside that counts. we should tell them not to stick out too much and maybe they won't get picked on. (if you are having the conversation at all, the child does not fit in already). no outfit will make me irresistible to women (my wife included), or the envy of my peers.

i understand that we want to give kids the idea that they should strive to be the best they can be, and that they can accomplish whatever they set their mind to-its the american way. what we should tell them is to find something they like doing and try hard to make a living at it (don't specify what "a living" is it will only depress the artists) "i am what i am, and that's all that i am"to quote the 20th century philosopher popeye. i can only do what i know to do. for me that is talking a lot-most likely in a classroom. and even that has taken large amounts of time, effort and money to get to a position where that is possible.

at 31 i have created a nice rut for myself. i am not in my profession yet, but soon. i can see the rest of my life from here, it looks nice and mostly peaceful.

spoiler alert: i never do become a cowboy or an astronaut, but i do find a really good restaurant in china, i don't want to tell you where or it will get too busy before i get there.

What measure a year.

2010-06-17T09:17:00.000-07:00

There are many ways to measure a year, January first being only the tip of the iceberg. In our household the summer has always been very important. The medical education system, under which my dear wife labors, across the country uses July first as its official start date. So each year on 7/1 our lives change, sometimes more perceptibly than others. This year that is almost over, has been a good year. It was our 3Oth year on earth, and it was a year of research for my wife (instead of the usual chaos of residency). The chaos comes back in a week as she begins training med students and interns. It was a year that brought a surprising normalcy to our schedules that at times was a bit too normal. We ate dinner together a lot!
Meg also got her dream car, a miata. We moved into a "grown-up" apartment. We went to Hawaii, and had a pleasant little vacation. And with the exception of the loss of my grandfather, had a pretty good time all year.
I hope your year is going just a well, however you measure it.

"He has an inordinate fondness for beetles"

2010-05-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

an apocryphal response by J.B.S. Haldane to the question of what studying nature has taught him about The Creator.

Today, as was well publicized by me, was the bug fair at the LA natural history museum. this year i went not by assignment, but for pleasure. its hard to describe the scene, lots of people, very full. Less strange than the reptile fairs, less expensive than the bird fairs. nice mixture of kids/families and enthusiasts. I watched a guy pay $70 for ONE dead insect-mind you a beautiful specimen. i bought 5 beetles for $18.

just before i went i spoke to my brother. he had in mind butterflies, and while they are beautiful, they are very delicate, and frankly, a pain to curate. I prefer beetles. most people think black and crawly, or june-bugs, but there are some incredible metallic and colorful ones around the world.

I asked how much this ornately designed collection of beautiful beetles would cost, and though it wasn't for sale, the owner said about $5000.

Maui! (or 'The benefits of being a trophy husband')

2010-04-21T18:13:00.000-07:00

Back in Feb Meg went to Maui to present her research at 2 conferences, so in the week between them i flew out to have some fun. It is an amazing place. i wasn't all keen to see hawaii, there are far more interesting places on earth, but having gone, i would definitely go back. what we can't show you is the amazing snorkeling we did, so many fish. like swimming in the aquarium-which is the name of the spot we went to.

Here's some of the excitement.

MAUI IS COLD AT SUNRISE!
catching a lizard
Charles Lindberg is buried there
hunting for bugs

spelunking- maui underground
And Maui from the skies- meg goes zip lining

The passing of a good man.

2010-03-28T15:34:00.001-07:00

My grandfather, Clayton Bruce, just passed from this world. He was a kind, funny, and worrisome man, who was never satisfied that i was driving slow enough. I am forever in his debt. I love you, Grandpa.

All the best stuff comes from china...

2010-02-27T16:34:00.000-08:00

i have been meaning to post this for some time (like after christmas), but well i have been alternatingly busy and lazy. But now as i wait for the laundry to finish, with my wife back to being on call in the hospital, and little homework this weekend, i am finally going to do it.

Here's some new teas that i have accumulated in recent months:

Starting chronologically, the two holiday blends from Peete's were vastly different, Holiday Blend which incorporated orange rind, cloves, cinnamon and smelled like a potpourri sachet-to be fair it didn't taste as strongly as it smelled-was not my cup, 3 tries and i gave up.

But Holiday Breakfast Blend was very nice, a slightly malty and smokier version of Scottish Breakfast which finished cleanly, if a bit acidic. it was slightly too smokey for meg, but a far cry from straight lapsang souchong (which provided the piney-christmasy flavor of this tea)all told slightly better and more interesting, but not as smooth as scottish breakfast. I remember taking cups of it down to sit and chat with meg at the outdoor fireplace in our pajamas on mild december evenings-you wouldn't do that in new york.

Then as we went in to christmas there was a trip to san francisco and china town that provided everything a tea totaler dreams of. I went into a tea shop in the morning and asked for yunnan tea, but was given pu-erh, that was unsatisfactory. the woman was not particularly adept at english, which ensures her knowledge of tea, but increases the challenge of finding what you want. it was a tasting store anyway, so you were expected to pick several types and try them. I also had come prepared and researched the chinese name, and pronunciation, of my favorite variety. "d/tee-ann-hong". "Oh...tianhong cha, yes just a minute" then the woman briskly walked to a shelf and brought back a golden painted tea container roughly the size of a sparkletts water bottle, with a sign that said "golden monkey". She took it to a tasting table, and prepared it, inquiring when we had been to china. apparently this tea is not a common request of westerners, but I assured her we hadn't been, yet, and that it was my favorite.

a word about tea tastings in chinatown. i assume they are similar to wine tastings, but for two main points, 1. the tea is prepared for you right at the table, so unlike wine it is subject to the preparers skill, and the water's qualities. 2. you drink it plain, the same as wine, or coffee tasings, but really, who drinks their tea and coffee without "additives"? wine you drink plain, straight from the bottle, maybe decanted, but you don't put cream or sugar analogs in it. so a tea tasting really is less specific to how a tea will taste in your own home with all the fixins, its really just a ballpark.
it came in a bag, the bag ripped-its in a metal tin now.

The store was called Ten ren teas and unbeknownst to me at the time they are the taiwan based company that owns "cha for tea" the tea bar that meg and i frequent. and furthermore, they have a store a few miles away in anaheim-which i have yet to visit, but i'll let you know. Golden monkey is the best tea i have ever had. it tastes like warm honey, it is so mild and smooth. i prepare it in a french press, and resteep the leaves 3-4 times over the course of a couple days, and it gets milder and milder.

also on this trip we stopped in another tea store, and tasted quite a few teas with a big spender/regular at the store. he didn't like the type of teas i enjoy, he favored oolong and ti kwan yin, which aren't hearty enough for me. but it was interesting to taste the differences in a half dozen types of the same variety. one in particular was interesting, called "milk oolong" it tasted like butter. and that was fascinating. also pricey, but meg liked it so we bought an ounce for $12. when you sweeten it the taste is like buttered popcorn jelly bellies.

Then for christmas my brother and sister-in-law, in new york, sent 3 teas from a store called mcnulty's, which is supposed to be one of the largest tea stores in the us, and has a diversity that is shocking when you look on their website. they used my blog against me, and cobbled together a few types that they thought i would enjoy.
gunpowder on the left, normal whole leaf on the right

First up, was "golden gunpowder", it was the same type of tea as golden monkey, but "gunpowder" refers to a preparation where the leaves are rolled into loose clumps prior to oxidization. "pearls" refers to tightly rolled balls, and is common in green and occasional in black and oolong. "gunpowder"is also common among greens. the purpose of this preparation is that the tea brews stronger than regular whole leaf because of the damage done to the leaf tissues in the rolling process, it releases more tannins into the hot water faster. i like this tea a great deal, it has the same flavor as golden monkey, but at a strength that is almost that of a very smooth coffee. its a strong brew, but only good for 2 steepings as they tend to empty the leaves of flavor very quickly. it was an excellent choice for my christmas gift.

The other two were assams, which i have mentioned are probably my second favorite variety of straight black teas. and i am lumping them together because they give an interesting (at least to me, possibly you-if you made it this far) lesson in leaf quality/grading. I am sorry for any hurt feelings this may cause, and i assure you i enjoyed the adventure and anticipation of trying every new tea i have ever tasted, but one of the teas was not good.

Golden assam, is a whole leaf assam, malty and smooth not the best assam i have ever had, but certainly among the better, the counterpoint to this was Assam B.O.P. the difference was the grade.

There are many grading systems for teas, but the simplest is leaf condition. whole leaf is the highest, it brews smoother due to the relatively undisturbed nature of the leaf, less surface area is available to let out the tannins.
BOP on the left, whole leaf on the right

broken or parts is the middle grade and it is what it sounds like, broken leaves. more surface area, allows more and larger molecules out of the leaf and that makes it much less smooth but more flavorful.

dust or "fannings" again is what it sounds like, really tiny pieces of tea leaf. huge amounts of surface area, super bitter, and not much more flavorful than broken leaf. this is what most bagged teas are made of (filterbags, not sachets-more on that later) think Lipton.

Assam BOP, was rough! bitter as lipton, but better flavored. the kind of tea that makes you pucker. maybe it is better with milk to smooth it out, the british-and my wife and her kin seem to think so. but i tried understeeping this and it was almost as bad as drinking coffee.

(not) a baby pelican

2010-02-03T22:10:00.000-08:00

meg called me from santa barbara to tell me that she had found a baby pelican in the middle of the road after the weekend of hard rain, and furthermore that she was bringing it with her. when she showed up i informed her that the above pictured bird was not a "baby"! it was a first year, or in people terms, a 16 yr old-not quite adult, not really helpless. we then drove it to her father (a veterinarian) in san diego. the bird seemed healthy but oddly calm. it was very relaxed on its first car ride. we fed it a little that night-as evidenced by the second photo-and after giving it a once over Dr. Kaiser took it to sea world where they rescue marine animals.

apparently after large storms with lots of run off entering the wetlands and coastal areas the fish behave differently and the adolescent birds have a hard time coping. it is likely the bird was starving and disoriented. so as crazy as it seemed at the time meg actually did the best thing possible and probably saved the bird. she is an odd, and good hearted woman, my wife. so that's the story of henrietta the pelican from santa barbara.

p.s. i finally got rid of the mites that came with the bird so you can once again hug me when you see me.

something silly for grandpa

2010-01-20T16:13:00.000-08:00

as the southland braces for what is sure to be wet weather rivaling biblical disaster, i decided to finally keep my promise to my grandfather and send a picture of me swimming in the pool on the roof. so here it is.

p.s. my ark is ready, and the animals are all aboard, see you on ararat.

The ghost of christmas past...

2010-01-14T12:15:00.000-08:00

I suppose it all began 2 weeks before school ended, when i said to myself, "self," I said, "its gonna get ugly." and so it did. I had two mostly aweful last weeks of school, punctuated by an undesirable trip to las vegas, and then finals. but i made it through. and had a week to work before i took 5days of vacation christmas week. That's when the new manager arrived at my lovely little starbucks store. she was abrasive and overzealous in changing everything about our store in a matter of a week. i seriously began to consider my options for alternative employment. but then came vacation.
monday, we drove from anaheim to san francisco, got in around 330pm, and proceded to take a nap until 8pm. went into chinatown in search of dinner, found some. did a bit of reconnaissance to determine where we should stop the next day. and went back to the hotel to bed. The plan for the next day was the zoo, the asian art museum, more chinatown and pier 39/ghirardelli square. the zoo was nice, right on the beach, which was odd, but nice, it was cold and windy. we took the train back to downtown to go to the museum which had a special exhibit on southeast asian art of the 14-18th centuries, it was amazing, but small. then shopping in chinatown. we went into a couple of tea shops, and tasted many different types of tea. i could go on at length, but that's another blog. it was a long, fun day, and we were beat when we got back to the hotel.
the next day (wed) we drove south to visit my family in hanford for a couple days of christmas. we were surprised to find that christmas eve (when the bruces traditionally open presents) had come a day early. it was very cool that cory and annie got to be there via webcam, and it was a lot of fun having them to interact with. They got a nice selection of teas from a shop in new york which i will discuss at length in another post. my parents got me some nice sweaters and an original penguin shirt-that i saw (just this monday night) on an actor on tv, so you know its cool. my grandmother got me a set of small remote control helicopters, which were hard to learn, but so much fun to practice with. Due to a miscommunication my parents were under the impression that we would be leaving early on christmas eve to spend the night with my inlaws. we were spending the night, but we were planning on arriving after midnight. so my parents made other plans that afternoon. we spent some time with grandma after they left, and then headed south to home for a brief stopover.
it worked out well, as we got a chance to empty the car and our suitcases before heading to meg's folks. we spent the night with them and opened presents with them on christmas morning. I got a really nice remote control helicopter that i destroyed after one flight (it was a really hard landing) and a sewing machine.
(a moment to defend the sewing machine) yes, a sewing machine. I cannot count the times i have thought, "it would be really handy to have a sewing machine right now." I always end up taking things home to have my mother repair or hem. or in a pinch i hand stitch them, which is fine, but it ain't always pretty. don't get me wrong, i didn't rush out and buy a bunch of patterns so i could start making my own clothes. its just something i think every household should have.
christmas night, we had to return home because we both had to work early on boxing day. it was a good christmas and we enjoyed seeing everyone, and i enjoyed all the driving-because i'm crazy like that. after christmas, we spent some money on feathering our nest, new bed and bath linens, and stuff like that. we also went clothes shopping, it was a magical time.
Our friends Joy and Jeff moved into a new(old) house right before christmas and i promised to help them between the holidays, so i went down to do that on newyear's eve day (i didn't realize that was the day i picked until the night before), traffic from san diego wasn't bad, and i was home plenty early to do nothing to celebrate the new year. it was pretty boring. nice, but boring. we both had to work the next day, again.

sorry it's been so long...

2009-12-20T20:57:00.000-08:00

Before we hit the road i wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas, and share our photo for this year.

Leftover candy...

2009-11-10T17:03:00.000-08:00

...here to stay, is the new bird...

2009-10-31T22:19:00.000-07:00

We got a new bird last weekend. Its a moluccan cockatoo. He's 15, and gently used. (he had some feather picking problems, and his legs are bare) Meg has wanted one since she was a little girl and her family's moluccan died very prematurely. he's a big bird, twice as large as charlie, our amazon. This will be the last bird we get for a while.

The birds' (new) name is Sherman, meg pronounces it "charmin". his age and previous owners mean that there will be an adjustment period. he is hand shy around his face, but is okay with scratching and petting. he leans in and touches his beak to your mouth, "cockatoo kisses" this is an unusual and pretty common behavior among certain species of cockatoo. getting him on your arm was tricky for a few days. and clipping his nails was a bloody and messy endeavor that took 2 different days. but we are settling in, and he is a very calm and quiet bird if a bit nervous of the new surroundings. (he isn't aggressive toward the dog, which is good cause they're about the same size)

Tea Blogging

2009-10-16T21:56:00.000-07:00

i owe this to lena, my tea connection at peet's. its time to catch up. and my father requested pictures, so i'm trying this out.

Ti Kwan Yin is an oolong tea. it is light and tastes of green leaves with a dark undertow. it is a good afternoon tea, but it finishes almost bitterly.

i get the teas in large batches and i am at my friend's mercy as to which teas i get. i wouldn't have selected these next two because they are blends, but i was pleasantly surprised. they are interestingly related to each other, to describe them separately would be pointless. Russian Caravan and Scottish Breakfast are both black teas, Russian Caravan is a china black, and Scottish Breakfast is an indian/china blend. I like assamica teas, or indian black, i prefer them to most of the chinese blacks for its malty and rich taste. I also like lapsang souchong, the first tea i tried on this little adventure, the one that tasted like burning christmas trees. Scottish Breakfast is an assam with lapsang mixed in it is bold and malty with a smokey finish. the lapsang is specifically pine-y. The Russian Caravan uses a base of yunnan which is syrupy and honey flavored and adds keemum which is smokey but not as overpowering or pine flavored as lapsang.

which amounts to a shootout between two blends that are both black tea bases with smokey aftertaste. i prefer the Russian Caravan for its milder smoke. Smokey teas are fine, i would once in a while enjoy a lapsang, but you have to be prepared and committed to it, its just so potent that it overwhelms the other flavors. not to say that Scottish Breakfast is undrinkable, just a milder form of actual lapsang souchong, like burning christmas trees with training wheels on.

i also recieved some interesting darjeelings, one of which is relatively pricey and only produced in limited quantities. as you no doubt recall, i was not crazy about darjeelings in my last review, but these two really changed my perception. Darjeeling extra fancy Kalimpong is the better quality version of what i had last time, much less peanutty, a decent evening tea, somewhat lighter than i prefer, but nice as a change. First Flush Darjeeling Namring Estate, is the expensive fancy one, in fact, it is unavailable. first flush refers to the first leaves that grow in the spring, they are often plucked early to allow a fuller flush the second time around which is usually larger in output. Kalimpong is a second flush tea. the first thing i noticed was the green leaves of the dry tea, they are processed like regular darjeeling teas but they have a bright green color that indicates their early season. it is a great afternoon tea. namring is what i had hoped ti kwan yin would be, light enough to drink during the day, but not so curt an aftertaste. and there is almost no peanut flavor to be found.

The final tea of the group is Snow Leopard. this is a big leaf white tea, with white fuzz on the leaves. in fact i couldn't steep it in my usual fashion with a ball infuser. the large leaves would have gotten all broken and crumbly, so i opted for my french press. i even made some extra for meg to try, she usually stays out of this unless i really think she needs to try something. this tea is great, it lacks the crisp acridity of green teas, and if steeped long enough likens more closely to an incredibly mild black tea. there is also a hint of white grapes in it. meg requests it most nights now. in fact, it was the last i recieved and it will be the first to run out.

so good you need to see it twice...

2009-10-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

this is me and that long-suffering soul in the background is my grandma. my mom took the photo, and i stole it from their blog. its my new favorite grandma photo ever. (it helps that i'm in it) i should clarify, she does NOT wear a hat unless i put one on her, so if you see her in the streets she might not look the same.

you may have noticed i come from funny hat wearing stock. its a genetic condition, look it up.

grandma lois, you're awesome, i love you.

weekend with the bee

2009-10-12T13:41:00.000-07:00

went to hanford town over the weekend to see my niece (and her parents) just before her 1st birthday. she's adorable. and fun to play with. the next time i see her she'll be awesome! walking on her own, talking, borrowing my car and bumming smokes off of the 3 year-olds at the mall or trying dairy for the first time, just running wild.

they grow up so fast.

misc cellphone pictures from various adventures

2009-10-09T16:10:00.000-07:00

at the angels game with nancy (thanks Archie)

Meg smuggling a parrot out of her parents' house

Meg on the side of a bus (look under the pointing man's nose)

drawn on the inside of the door in a bathroom stall at the grand canyon

artwork from one of my mother's former sixth grade students

Nate vs. The mechanical bull

2009-10-04T00:15:00.000-07:00

i have always wondered how hard bullriding could be. I know on a practical basis that if the gold standard is 8 seconds that it has to be pretty difficult. but i can't imagine that it could be that hard to hold on (with one hand) to an animal.

let me say now that i have learned a lesson.

i finally found a mechanical bull to ride, apparently the ones in bars are only for girls in tube tops and skirts (who knew). but there were two bulls, one for kids and one for adults. i saw 2 kids go before me and thought, just kick it up to full and let me ride until i get tired. i got on and wrapped my gloved hand around the rope handle, and assumed the position.

it started up slowly enough, back and forth, and a little spinning. after a minute of that it got harder. i was struggling to manage the bucks and was holding my own until the guy operating it threw in a spin that rolled me off the back and landed on my head. it will be sore in the morning. my inner thigh muscles and right arm are already feeling the effects.

it was a lot of fun. i want to have an afternoon with one of those things to practice. that would be awesome. but for now i can cross off "ride mechanical bull" from my bucket list. hope you had a great saturday too.

New Place: Later

2009-09-26T11:48:00.000-07:00

well, its been 3 weeks of new apartment bliss. i finally have most of my crap where it belongs, and life is settling back into its comfortable rut of school, work, and napping. let me say out front that i LOVE our new apartment. on a daily basis, i love it, i like driving into the underground parking, taking the elevator everywhere, cleaning the hardwood floors (even dory's "accidents"), the bathtub is phenomenal (it looks all angular and coffin shaped, but all the angles are in the right places, there are armrests), the kitchen is easy to clean, and big enough to cook in, the list of little things goes on. truly, once i get home i am glad to be there, the environment is perfect.

now for the rest of it. i went out for a bike ride last night-mind you there was an angel's game going on-and so traffic was awful, and the place was crawling with cops. after my last $450 brush with the law on a bike, i feel pressure to behave myself, which is tough. i rode toward disneyland and tried to go to the gardenwalk (food/activity mall) it was very pedestrian friendly, and there was ample parking(if you were a car) but the bike lock was way down below instead of conveniently on street level. if you have not had the nerve-wracking experience of riding a bike in a busy parking structure, i suggest you forgo it. it even makes me crazy. so i gave up on that headed back home to cut across the stadium to go on the bike path that follows the empty river. (it goes from yorba linda to huntington beach) except you were riding a trail with only major street access, and no smaller business access and staring at the backside of industrial complexes and parking lots.

i miss the old neighborhood. i liked riding through domestic streets to get to places worth going. like work. i hate having to drive to work. not nearly as pleasant as a bike ride. the new place has all sorts of amenities like a playstation room, screening room, rooftop pool, game room, gym, none of which i have actually used. i tried to use the gameroom, but they had no pool cues, and the playstation room is byo games and controllers.

the fact is, i spend 95% of my time in the confines of my own apartment, and i love it. and that is what matter. let's just chalk this up to "be careful what you wish for"

new place: before

2009-09-11T13:25:00.000-07:00

happy birthday grandma Lois!

2009-08-28T21:53:00.000-07:00

It is my grandma's birthday today. She is a super lady, and a wonderful and caring person, who i am lucky to have in my family.
i love you, grandma.

The end of the summer

2009-08-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

(meg as a tree, and me as an ornithologist)

well, next week is september. and that means that summer is over and its time to go back to school. maybe its faulty memories, maybe its global warming, but it seems wrong to start back to school at the hottest time of the year (at least in these parts).

so i um, didn't get accomplished fairly half of the things i set out to do this summer. namely: jump out of a plane, or learn to weld. things came up, as they often do, and so those will have to wait until next summer. i will be driving a half dozen exotic sports cars in october, thanks to meg, it was my 30th birthday gift, and the reason for postponing the skydiving. i caught up on a fair number of the movies i missed out on by not becoming a film major. i read one book (it was assigned to me almost a year ago-but i promised the professor i would read it) "house of god" about medical internship at harvard. i went for some memorable bike rides, and mini-vacations. went to the fair (a bunch), and some good parties.

In less retrospective news: (for the 2 of you who read this that are not on facebook, or have seen me in person) meg and i are moving. the short version is that the apartments we are in are taking away our second parking place, which is essential. and after assessing our finances we realized that we could do better than the place we are in. (shame really, since we renewed the lease 2 months ago, and did all that work on the bathroom) but such is life.

we start moving in september first, and will be entirely in out new place by the 9th. it is a brand new building, really nice, and i am very excited. more posts on this to follow.

we went to see pageant of the masters in laguna beach last week. it was incredible. my friend lena was in it, and got us tickets. really, just fascinating (DO NOT FORGET TO BRING BINOCULARS) if you get a chance to go (every year, most of the summer) take it, you will not be disappointed.

this was a good summer, despite my advanced age. i hope yours was too.

now get back to work!

...this just in...

2009-08-07T19:15:00.000-07:00

this is a photo of the match winning hit by kerri walsh in her first tournament back since the olympics (and having a baby) she was noticeably off her game but still reliable in the air.

i went to the hermosa beach open today with my friend Vern, we had a great time watched about 5 games, including the 3 game match featuring kerri walsh. the audience swelled during those games from 2 deep around the wall to 5-6 deep standing on trashcans to watch. i felt kinda bad for the other team, who played very well, and the games were all quite close, but everyone cheered for walsh, she could do no wrong.

how to spend 2 days off!

2009-07-17T16:40:00.000-07:00

So in a bout of uncontrollable consumerism, i spent my birthday money on a new bike. if you refer to the photos of my other bike you may notice several differences. basically, this bike has multiple gears and skinny tires. i had a few days off and wanted to take my new lovely out and show her a good time, a nice weekend for two just up the coast. it was last minute and i had prepared myself to go hat in hand to every state campsite south of santa barbara, i left at 545 on thursday. my first choice was mcgrath state beach half way between oxnard and ventura, (i read some stuff about birdwatching) i got very lucky (and was the first one there when they opened) and got a campsite.

Its a decent place, the campsites were smallish, and the area around was more birdwatchy than beachy (snowy plover closed the direct beach access) there's a small estuary/large river that was very scenic, if you were willing to make the effort to get to it, and state law doesn't deter you. i was, and it doesn't, so that is where i spent my morning. it was peaceful and very well populated with seafaring and riparian birds. the fog was just lifting as i left for a bike ride.
On the road to ventura, which is a nice city, by the way. still overcast, the expected high for the day was 67. the sun did eventually come out. i wondered what one does in ventura, and remembered passing the fair on the train to portland, last year, i thought i'd give it a try. i basically followed a bike trail right along the beach most of the way, past the pier. no such luck on the fair, i was exactly a month early. i contemplated making the 20 mile trip to santa barbara, but decided against it for the sake of sunburn and dehydration. as i stopped to take a far less memorable picture, i happened to see a snake in the ice plant behind me, i grabbed him by the tail and lifted him to see his head, and it told me that he was safe. his name is Randall, and he is a california king snake, as i reached for his neck to get more control of him, he bit me between my index and middle fingers, once i got him loose, i took the following picture. he is beautiful, probably 2.5 feet.
That was it, i was tired, so i went back to camp and took a nap for several hours. i got up in the evening and went looking for something to do. i drove around and got familiar with the area, and began looking for a bowling alley meg and i saw on the trip to santa barbara, but never found it, and gave up at 2100. the following is the first thing you see when you wake up in a tent.
This is the river next to the campground, friday morning there was no fog so the shot came out better. after a little bike ride, it was time to break camp and head home.
I followed PCH all the way down, even when it was less convenient, and it was interesting. the following picture doesn't need a caption, but i believe i was in el segundo or culver city when i took it.
I had recently seen ads on tv for the manhattan beach open of beach volleyball, as an afficionado of tall women in swimsuits i though i should stop by and give my support. i wasn't sure if this was the weekend or not, but i was pleased to find out that it was. this is me on manhattan beach.
the match i watched was hyden/scott vs jensen/lane. it was in the main court, but behind the opposite side bleachers was 6more courts holding official matches. hyden is the no 1 player this year, and he was incredible. lane is the assistant coach at csulb. the level of play was incredible, but what amazed me most was the power that they could put into the ball, the serves alone you could almost feel the smack of their hand hitting the ball.

After the guys match, hyden/scott won, i went and watched the girls. i didn't know any of them, kerri walsh (gold medalist) was there, but not playing. the women don't have the sheer power of the men, but they are louder and communicate all the time. the woman in the photo had a killer serve, and her team dominated the match i saw.
I couldn't take anymore sun, my head was kinda burny, so i started back home. i stopped at my favorite tea place and took one to meg at work, before finally making it home. it was an awesome 2 days, so much fun. the bike did well, i may have to invest in a new saddle (something softer, i'm getting older).
have a good weekend!

Twas the night before thirty...

2009-07-08T23:18:00.000-07:00

Two years since i started this blog.

well, being in a retrospective frame of mind, i must consider what i have learned in 30 years that i could pass on. the answer is, not much. there are lots of witty, snarky things i could throw out, there are hard learned lessons to be offered like halloween candy, but i am realizing that life is a trial and error thing. some people seemingly have easier tests than others, but we all make our own choices that shape who we become. some better than others.

There are days when i wish i could be Mark Quinn. My best friend is an incredible person, and a great, and loyal friend. From my vantage point he makes carefully considered deciscions, and plots his own course as smoothly and as practically as i can believe is possible. i have an enormous amount of respect for him, and his process. i HATE to make the inevitable comparison between our two disparate lives, but i do, usually late at night. i secretly wonder whether i have squandered my youth, whether i am too far behind to catch up to any semblance of equality with my peers. I wonder, in my days filled with an executive best friend, and a doctorate wife, if i will ever shake that flush of embarrassment that comes when introducing myself in social situations.

Don't misunderstand me, i have no shame in what i have done on an item by item basis. but the sum of my adventures does not have the same value as the parts. i am years away from having a career. maybe this is common among people at this age, but i thought i would be farther along by now. i will be able to run for president in 5 more years.

reflecting on my 30 years, in comparison with my closest friends, looks alot like the "goofus and gallant" portion of highlights magazine. i know that this perspective is skewed, slightly, but i must also admit that having such impressive people in my life is also sound motivation to try to catch up. and eventually i will reach the top of my own personal hill, build a nice little cabin and settle into a life and career there; but it is only by virtue of the internal bootstrapping i must do to play catch up to my illustrious friends. thank you for the help.

this post has pictures (albeit unrelated ones)

2009-07-03T22:52:00.000-07:00

So after some technical nonsense, i managed to get my old drive mounted long enough to get all my photos back. it cleaned up everything, nicely having to start all over from a blank disk, all the programs run a little smoother, ipod syncing takes less time. so life is more or less back to normal.

happy fourth of july everybody!

this year i won't be in hanford, which is a great disappointment. but i will be going to a barbeque/pool party with some of my friends from work. i don't know what the status of fireworks is in their particular jurisdiction.

This Post Has No Pictures...

2009-06-28T22:45:00.000-07:00

...and the reason is that I (capitalized for effect) have no pictures. of anything. from the last 2 years. (so those blackmail photos of you snuggling up to a transvestite are gone--you know who you are)

my hard drive died, just the hard drive, and it has made the last several days unbearable (technologically). i have replaced the drive and now i am back at it, but i had not backed up my photos since 2007 when i got my new imac. that was the only real loss.

learn from my mistakes, back up early and often. i got a 1TB (terabyte=~1000 gigabytes-that's for you mom) drive plugged into my airport extreme router and i am using apple's "time machine" to automatically back up now. of course once this happens, you get all freaked out and take all the precautions you should have done in the first place, and then it will never happen again.

BACK THAT THANG UP! (that's for you cory)

last bits of hanford

2009-06-24T22:08:00.000-07:00

this was my childhood lightswitch

this is a baby toad i found near my parents pond
my trophy from grandma's yard

grandma being zany

...more than meets the eye

Father's day

2009-06-21T23:37:00.000-07:00

since i was in hanford at the beginning of the week, i celebrated father's day early with my dad and grandpa. grandpa and i shared some superior dairy ice cream, a stroll, and a nice conversation. i admit that when i got to town i was stumped as to what to get my dad for a gift, i had a card already, but couldn't find that special thing. that changed when i went out shopping with mom on wed night-that's how we bond. at marshall's i saw the coolest, most pimped out converse ever. my dad has a collection of odd chuck taylors (desert camo, candycane striped, etc.) and these would be the crown jewel in that collection. Red, patent leather, perforated, clear rubber sole with red inside. mom tried to talk me out of them, she did not understand these shoes. i saw them and spontaneously felt a profound connection to my father. these were not only shoes for him, but they were shoes i was proud to say speak to a shared affinity.

he's a good man, and i love him greatly. (but when he dies, i'm getting these shoes)

additionally, there are other photos on my parents' blog if you just can't get enough of the shoes.

The Evolution of Nate

2009-06-19T23:03:00.001-07:00

This is a short trip through some of the momentos i found while going through boxes at my parents house. they capture very suscinctly the changes in my life over the course of one year from approximately May 1997-May 1998. of all the boxes of star wars action figures, baseball cards, and comic books that i went through, this box had the most sentimental value. its probably because it was full of things that WERE me, rather than things that BELONGED to me. additionally there was a lot of bad poetry that should never see the light of day again, sheesh high schoolers in love...

in high school as seen by his friend Phil Malouf (MD.)

in high school as seen by his youth group in bootcamp in hospital corps school in field medical service school

odd bodkins! a tea update!

2009-06-10T14:43:00.000-07:00

Loyal readers let me first apologize for my neglect, it has been several months since i brought you up to date on my tea snobbery. so long in fact that i had to go back to reference which ones i'd mentioned. i am sure that your anticipation has forced you to throw yourself over whatever rocky cliff is nearby, and as your body tumbled and scraped its way--homer simpson-like--to your doom, your only concern was to end the nights of sleepless yearning for new and rapturous tea experiences. your wait is over.

Mildly disappointed by pu-erh, i offered it to some friends at work who had given coffee up for lent. since it needs to be steeped in a larger container, it was really for more than one cup at a time. having made it for them, to show them how (recall that the instructions are a bit odd), i tasted it with the triple filtered, softened, starbucks water, and it was quite good. much better than at home from once filtered tap water (which i tend to prefer).

after pu-erh, i tried lion mountain keemum, another china black tea. it was warm and honey-like, but had a smokey taste like burned paper. not to be confused with the lapsang souchong that was very piney. keemum was tolerable, but not particularly noteworthy. even with the teas that i know after the first cup are stinkers i finish the whole 4 oz., which takes approximately a month. so i try to make the experience better by adjusting steep times, temp, and any other variable i can find to get the best cup possible from that batch.

with keemum out of the way, i moved from china to india black teas. there are only two species of true tea plants (you can make an "infusion" of anything by adding hot water) camelia sinensis which is chinese tea, and camelia assamica which is indian tea. chinese tea has smaller leaves, and more caffeine (generally), most "english breakfast" teas are mostly indian with some chinese added.

first up was assam golden tip. this was a harsh, malty tea. it was very bitter, which is possibly related to the condition of the leaves. Peet's has two offerings of assam, golden tip ($7.50), and extra fancy ($12.50), the difference is leaf condition. golden tip is made of broken leaves, and therefore, lower grade and cheaper price. the result is better than that of tea bags which are the next lower grade as they include "dust and fragments (tea dust, not dust-dust)". the finer the pieces, the more acidic, and bitter (also more caffeinated) the tea. it was very potent, superior to lipton tea bags, and on par with twinings english breakfast for flavor, but slightly harsher.

after that i got darjeeling fancy organic, i had heard of darjeeling teas from a number of pop cultural references, not the least of which the movie darjeeling limited (which i thought was pretty good, but i like wes anderson films). darjeeling, i have heard, is the preferred tea of queen elizabeth 2. well she can have it. i am still almost done with the tin after 4 months. its not that its bad, it just tastes like peanut shells. after enjoying some peanuts, i end up with a container of moist shells that have had all the salt sucked off. if i were to take that container, and then pour assam tea into it and drink it, i imagine it would be similar to the experience of this tea. no adjustment can rid me of the peanuts.

so to depart from darjeeling i got ceylon fancy, a sri lankan tea that is supposed to be lighter and cleaner than mainland indian teas due to differences in elevation on the plantations. i poured a cup for my wife, who subsequently exclaimed "chinese restaurant tea", and she had nailed it. it tastes like the tea in chinese restaurants, which is odd as it is not a chinese tea, but what are you going to do? it is light and citrus-ey, and a little grassy (not orchard grass, just lawn grass). its not bad for the afternoon, but its too weak to drink in the evening.

the final tea for this post is assam extra fancy, which i was apprehensive to buy after golden tip. why buy more of the same when you can get an equivalent experience in bags for cheaper, was my thought. after the first cup i felt like a fool. it was black and acidic, and rather like coffee, not at all what i had in mind. it was terrible. part of the problem was this, i had recently switched from a spoon like steeper with a few largish holes to a mesh ball steeper with fine holes all over. so the mesh steeper is slightly larger and allows for faster expansion and infusion, more holes make it quicker for the tea to get out. it actually changes the flavor and character of the tea, perceptibly. so i tried steeping for 5 min instead of 15 (i like it strong-but not bitter{like my women-forgive me}). and the resulting cup was very strong, and rich, but still a little acidic. so by accident one day--i was in a hurry--i steeped it just less than a minute. the resulting cup was still very flavorful, and rich, but considerably smoother than golden tip and twinings. so far this is the best tea i have found. to give an indication, i still have 2 teas i got before it, and it is long gone.

babysitting (or Nate vs. the snotgoblin)

2009-06-08T19:05:00.000-07:00

meg works hard. she has even taken up a side job writing study questions for kaplan test prep to make a bit of scratch. so she said the other day, "i want a massage" to which i replied "do you want me to set up an appointment?" but she is very humble and hates to spend money on herself (other than buying pets) so with some coersion i got her to agree to get one today. i also called her best friend joy and suggested she come up to join meg, and i offered to babysit her 14 month old.

now i am good with babies, and really good with "kids", but what the heck do you do with a toddler? can they walk, like really walk, without help? how to feed this little monstrosity? the ability to string two letters together is not the ability to communicate (unless of course you are the creature's mother) what is the time limit on a diaper?

so joy and mikky showed up, then the girls left and it was mikky and me. apparently she can walk pretty good on even ground (which will come up again later). since i think strollers are collossal pains i opted to carry and walk with her. and where better to do this than the santa ana zoo. it was a lot of fun. mikky fell down twice while walking, the first time it happened i sat down in the middle of the pavement and pulled out the diaper bag and had mikky sitting on my lap. as soon as the bag was beside us she was pointing to the small external pocket where her pacifier spends its vacation time. popped it in, and all was good. next time i would be prepared.

the trick i learned was to carry her when we were between exhibits and let her run loose when we stopped. cause a toddler does not understand the flow of traffic in a public place. she was fascinated by waterfalls and birds, (which was nice to have shared interests), and i was fascinated by her. we got to pet the goats. and i helped her use the slide. it was a good time. then i took her home and eventually to the block in orange to meet up with mommy. very nice time, toddlers are far more interesting than babies-so there's hope all you baby owners out there.

but within a half hour of returning the little snotgoblin to her mother, i was beat. i took a two hour nap, just layed down and passed out. all the picking up and carrying, and putting down, and diaper bag, and left arm, right arm. thats a lot of work. newfound respect for the parents of small children. its more than just sleep deprivation.

Summer renovation season!

2009-06-01T22:10:00.000-07:00

So, for those who don't know Meg and i live in some old ghetto apartments (cause they're the only ones that allow dogs) and each year we celebrate lease renewal by painting a wall. as is apparent by previous posts our color palette tends toward the "lively" (yeah, we'll go with that). this year we decided to do the kitchen, by "we decided" i mean i asked meg which wall and what color (if i disagree i reserve the right to argue) she said "kitchen" and "lime green". i said "cool".

i like painting. maybe its just the fumes, but i do enjoy it. especially masking, i don't really know why. since we only do one wall, it is usually pretty easy to get the whole thing done in one day, from getting everything moved away from it, to putting everything back. which is nice, since i have learned that meg generally likes the things i do around here, the process freaks her out. like taking everything out of the kitchen and putting it on the dining room floor so that only a small trail of a walkway exists. but it works out that i can start when she's at work and finish before she gets home (and in this case, have to make dinner).

once all this was done, i added some bars for hanging storage, and while i was at ikea picking those up i thought of my unused can of paint, and decided to surprise meg by redoing the bathroom as well, later in the week. a year or so ago there was a leak from above that lead to a hole in the ceiling, the apartments fixed the hole, and plastered it, but never came back to paint it. so we had a big ugly section of not just ceiling, but wall that stared at me while i took a bath. so i couldn't just paint one wall, i had to paint everything. so i bought a can of white paint and painted the 3 walls and the ceiling. the remaining wall, the one that the door is on, i painted bright lime green. i also took down all the horrible cheap apartment wall fixtures that were in awkward and freqently unusable locations, puttied and plastered the holes, and put in NEW cheap ikea towel hooks, and toilet paper hanger, a magazine rack, and a small shelf. the cost of all this was around $50 including paint.

the only remaining alteration is the light, which at this moment is a bare bulb. i took the plastic cover off the existing light fixture and the room looked 300% less dingy (and this was before the painting) so i refuse to put the old cover back on. i found a light today, that is $30. kinda pricey for an apartment, but when i consider that i will likely be here for another 3 years it seems worth the ten bucks a year not to hate the bathroom.

Congratulations, Dave and Joanna!

2009-05-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

I went to my friend (and meg's former boyfriend) Dave's wedding. The wedding was held on mother's day, kinda odd, but the only weekend it was possible as he graduates medical school at UCI this coming weekend. and starts residency shortly there after. This will be a challenging time for them both, joining their lives and homes, moving, and then residency itself.

but here is a photo that sums up the bachelor party, from what i saw:

some things i should have mentioned...

2009-05-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

way back, forever ago really, i went back to hanford to visit, and help my dad tear down my grandfather's workshop. i spent a lot of childhood in that place, and i have many fond memories of grandpa teaching me how to use the bandsaw and various other things that were probably far too dangerous for me to be working with at that age.
the workshop itself was all homemade, and it sort of grew, tumor-like from the back end of what was my grandparents garage-turned-store. the house was homemade too, if what i remember is accurate, both my grandfather's and my great-uncle Quint's next door. They built them when they owned a large swathe of property they used as a chicken farm.

we even got grandpa from the rest home to come out and supervise. the best quote of the day was my dad asking his dad if he felt like he had saved enough half-empty cans of oil. its kind of a "you had to be there" joke, but there were cabinets full of half used oil, you could never let it go to waste, and you could never throw it out.
Grandpa was not a heavy drinker, that tequila box is full of, you guessed it, oil

I love going back to hanford. it is such a quiet, restful place for me. The four-hour drive up is wonderfully relaxing, and things move a bit slower, but it is full of people and things i love and places i remember fondly. while it was sad to help destroy such an important piece of my youth, it was good to be there, in the space, using power tools like old times.

if you want to see the results of our work, there are some later shots on my parents blog-at left of the screen. additionally we will be taking down the remaining storage area that was added on the garage in the middle of june, so look for that update.

posted without comment (add your own)

2009-04-07T21:38:00.000-07:00

like a...lizard

2009-03-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

yeah, a mohawk. meg says i can keep it for a few days.

To Narnia and back

2009-03-01T21:25:00.000-08:00

I am an explorer. i always have been. i enjoyed what i lovingly refer to as a "free-range" childhood, meaning that i was given a long leash (within reason). one of the places that dots my nostalgic map is morro bay, my family has gone there for years. my parents and grandparents used to rent a house in cayucos for a week or two every summer, and since nothing happend in cayucos we always went to morro bay. i may have previously mentioned montana de oro in an earlier post, and that has always been one of my favorite places on earth. so a trip to morro bay is full of fond memories, and marvels at the changes to the town, but there is something else lurking out there, just across the water.

On the fringes of nostalgia for childhood places is Narnia. or rather Narnias. Narnias are places that were magical, unreachable places in childhood. Sometimes they can be as simple as a parent's closet, or as far off as hidden temples in cambodian jungles. i have many of these places, and when possible i try to go and explore them. The reality is that the places we remember from childhood are pale ghosts whose vivid colors and experiences lasted no longer than our own youth. Sometimes it is sad to return somewhere to find only ashes of what was. One remedy for this is a Narnia.

Saturday, i got meg and the dog up (relatively) early and rented a canoe from the marina in morro bay state park. if you are familiar with the area it is way, way south of town before the marshes that become los osos. we set out across the bay, the three of us, to the sand spit that creates the nominal bay. it seemed like a long paddle. and eventually i realized that the water was only a foot deep in places. it turns out that you could walk halfway across the bay and not get your waist wet. eventually we came ashore. This was unexplored territory, always viewed longingly from across the bay. i had watched people in kayaks, and on surfboards make the impossible crossing and imagined the wonders that awaited them. i had reached Narnia.

What was there is not the important part. It was magical, i assure you. but the best part was that even before we landed, i was a 10 year old me on the adventure. I ran around and looked at every rock that interested me, followed animal tracks in the sand, pondered my surroundings with all the wonder of childhood. all because i had never actually been there. it might have been three times as amazing 20 years ago, and that doesn't matter because i can't be nostalgic for it. my wife probably thought i was crazy, no, she is pretty much used to this kind of crazy from me by now. but it was nice that she came along to see it. and the dog, it was really cool to have a dog as a companion, not just dragging along on a leash. we chased eachother around the dunes and generally wore ourselves out.

i can't encourage you enough. Seek out your Narnias and explore them, go back in time, be young again, take friends with you, new places are tomorrow's nostalgia.

when i should have been watching the superbowl...

2009-02-06T17:34:00.000-08:00

This is my new favorite thing on youtube. now i'm not one of those people who lurk there looking up videos of cats eating spaghetti, and i found this there after seeing it on tv.

so to set up this clip:

Katy Perry, sexy pop singer, famous for her song "I kissed a girl" that could be heard blasting from the cars of teenieboppers all last summer. Look for her in five years on the VH1 where are they now? show.

Superbowl sunday, meg and i were channel surfing to avoid football, and we were accosted by the aforementioned poptart on the latin mtv video music awards (yes, i'd rather watch spanish language programming than sports-particularly if it was all as good as this) she finished her song, in a state of undress that is a prerequisite for her profession, and procedes to bellyflop into a 5 tier pink frosted cake. (and that's just the set-up) she throws frosting, picks a play fight with the mariachi guitar player and falls to the floor, where she spends the better part of a minute flopping around like a newborn fawn trying to stand for the first time. it is hilarious. its got sexy, cake, a mariachi, pratfalls, i ask you, what else you could possibly want in your entertainment, oh, and a valuable social message for the kids "DON'T JUMP INTO CAKES"

so without further ado:

...since then

2009-02-06T17:15:00.000-08:00

(Meg got this for me through channels she is not willing to divulge, but its still really cool. Misty may won the women's beach volleyball gold (in the last 2 olympics) and she is a csulb alumnus)

well, almost a month has passed and the doldrums are a fading memory. In the meantime, i had a nice weekend in santa barbara with meg, a solid 3 days in hanford visiting my new niece, and the rest of the family, a few days of work and then two weeks ago i went back to school. now i am up to my neck in physics and ochem. but thats okay.

so these are a bunch o pics from my time off:

new haircut, i like it! so much so that i even put some junk in it. still a month and a half from shaving weather

i put new handlbars on my bike, i like the riding position much better, more relaxed, and narrower

a shirt i made for cory for his last birthday (it was in september, he got it in january)

RAINPANTS!

my baby brother's babies, cute ain't they.

The Doldrums

2009-01-15T14:00:00.000-08:00

this is the worst part of the vacation.

today, i went to the dentist. which in and of itself is enough to ruin a good day off, but also i finished the book i was reading, i have seen all the worthwhile (and some other) films at the dollar theater, and school starts in about a week. and i miss it. i miss the stimulation, i miss the socialization, and try as i might to fill my inquisitive mind in my time off it is inevitably at my own pace which is admittedly glacial. its so much more efficient to have someone else cramming knowledge down my throat.

Um, so about that book. i just finished "love in the time of cholera". i was supposed to have read it last semester and written a paper on it, only one of those assignments was graded, and that is the one i did. in retrospect, my paper was not that ill-informed for being based on assumptions gleaned from in class discussions. in my professor review at the end of the semester, i promised to read the book in the upcoming break (after having admitted that i did not read it prior to my paper){this did not effect my grade}. the novel is every bit as good as you have heard it to be, and if you haven't heard that you're hanging around with the wrong sort of people- go out and get you some literate friends.

it is a beautiful story that is so well crafted it deserves the praise it recieved, and yet easy to read and become engrossed with. it is about love, and sex, and the passage of time. that is an over-simplification, but thats what we're focusing on here. what i found most poignant was the idea of love between the young, between people before marriage, being entirely different from love between married people, and also just between old people who are "dating". over the past nearly seven years i have learned the differences between dating and being married, not all of them related to sex. this book illuminated for me the results of those years of study.

I will never have the same relationship that i had with my wife before she became such. We are never going to be giddy and amused with each other's company all the time. don't misunderstand me, that is not as depressing a thought as it sounds. But in all honesty, i have tried very hard thus far to try to fight my way back to that place. marriage is occasionally hard, and in those times it has been easy for me to look back with longing for those days and use that idealized snapshot as a blueprint for a future that looks as rose colored as when we were dating. what i should have done, nearly seven years ago, was close the door behind me and build a strong foundation for a marriage that does not mimic the way we were when we were twenty, but builds something that will be sustainable when we are fifty.

so this book has given me a lot to think about, i love that about art, and education, you never know how something will hit you and suddenly other seemingly unrelated things come together. go read a good book, it will make you a better person.

Christmas

2008-12-31T21:29:00.000-08:00

here's the recap.

meg's folks came up here for christmas day. they brought a wonderful roast, and the rest of dinner. it was excellent, my mother-in-law is an incredible cook, even in our dinky little kitchen. we had a nice meal and then opened presents.

Foggy Day Schedule

2008-12-31T16:40:00.000-08:00

i love fog.

today when i got up at 330 and took the dog outside, it was hinting at being a foggy day. By 400 when i got on my bike to ride to work it fulfilled that promise. i could smell plants, and soil and cement, my eyelashes collected pearls of moisture that compounded when i blinked. it was reminiscent of riding my bike to school when i was younger. i am from fog.

people in southern california are perhaps worse drivers in the fog than in the rain. both are only minor weather phenomena down here so nobody gets much practice. this should make a rational cyclist nervous, but i am not that way inclined. fog requires more attention, certainly, but it downplays the visual input that is so pervasive and you can focus on the sounds of oncoming cars, or ones turning corners. and the increased moisture carries scent molecules to your nasal mucosa much better. i have a poor sense of smell in general, but on a foggy day, its like a whole new world out there.

i have the next few days off of work, and i hope they're foggy too. since so many people start the new year in a metaphorical fog anyway, it would be nice if the rest of us could enjoy some actual fog. Happy New Year!

also, this week we are catsitting for meg's friend lena. so we have cleo her kitten running around the place. she's a lot of fun, and pretty well behaved for a kitten.

How lazy I've become (part of an ongoing saga):

2008-12-29T22:15:00.000-08:00

For christmas i asked for "cowboyish" boots.

to clarify, i am not now, nor have i ever been a cowboy. i am just too lazy to tie my own shoes.

i live in southern california, where the weather is fine and it is not unheard of to wear flip-flops in the early days of november. there is an ease to sliding one foot into a readily available thong sandal that makes those midnight trips outside to drain the dog that much easier. it was with much consideration that i came up with the idea of getting said boots. i hate to wear my shoes untied and ruin the laces by slopping around in a shoe that barely keeps my feet in. mocassins and clogs are just not for me-that's all that need be said. and i considered some loafers, only briefly, as they have become so stylized that it is hard to find one that doesn't make you look like ali baba or an italian lothario.

you're thinking to yourself "in the choice between giggolo or pecos bill, and you went with pecos bill?!" but hear me out. The boot is a wonderful piece of footwear, historic even. mine in particular were not particularly cowboyish, they have a rubber sole, a rounded toe, and a flat half inch heel. there is no ornate stichwork. they're more wellington than "howdy pardnuh" and honestly, for being the most expensive shoes i've ever owned, they are easily the most comfortable.

the other consideration was the future. i am convinced, through my time in the navy, that a properly maintained pair of leather boots (shoes) can last a lifetime. the problem is usually the sole. i have a pair of dr. martens that i love, and have worn-in wonderfully, but you cannot resole those boots. i've asked around. but these boots can be resoled.

plus they give me a reason to wear boot cut jeans. (finally, i have one) so look for them at the bottom of future pictures of me, hopefully for many years to come.

P.S. i also just bought a pair of chelsea boots for work as it was time to replace my much abused synthetic oxfords. less westerny, but still slip-on. (tieing your shoes in the dark at 345 am can be more complicated than necessary)

Best Christmas Moment 2008

2008-12-28T22:34:00.000-08:00

Christmas morning i woke up around 8. i did the morning routine, washed all the remaining dishes in the sink, straightened up the house. it was 10. Meg's family wasn't due until 1230, but they called (at 1230) to say they had just left so expect them around 2pm. In the glorious 2.5 hours between completing ALL the housework, and their phone call at 1230, i sat in the living room, with only the christmas tree and some icicle lights lit up. I had a cup of tea, the one that tastes like burning christmas tree, and i read the entire New York Times (from last Sunday) in the stillness and quiet of the late morning.

I know i raved about having nothing but leisure time ahead when i finished the semester, but lets face it, that was crap. It was a week and a half before christmas, and stuff needed to get done. plus there was a lot of other stuff that got done whether it needed it or not. so the honest truth is that those 2.5 hours were the only two that i can remember when i could say i had nothing to do. my apartment was as clean as it could get, my wife was in bed, the animals taken care of, no errands to run (nothing was open anyway), and not a thought in my head that came from a to do list. So i read the paper, and i thought about you. all of you. i thought about my friends and family, even those i haven't talked to recently, and i imagined them (you) happily enjoying christmas morning with their family and loved ones. seriously. it was a wonderful, peaceful, and happy thought that filled me with warm contentment.

i get this sort of freedom once in a great while, only when travelling, i call it the "airport syndrome". when you get to the airport, bus station, train terminal, you are entirely isolated in the moment. if you forgot something at home, well, too bad. didn't pick up the dry cleaning, it'll wait. there is nothing to do but wait. it is a magical time when i can shake off my mental to do list, and just be still. then you have to get on the plane, and don't get me wrong, i love that too, but for different reasons, and you get all cramped and the guy next to you is smelly, and the child behind you REALLY, REALLY wants that juicebox, and you have to fish your ipod out of your carry on that is wedged between the floor and the seat in front of you, thats all awesome too.

I hope you all got a few moments of peace, and know that whatever you were doing between 10-1230 on christmas, i was thinking of you.

Generosity

2008-12-24T15:45:00.000-08:00

I am frequently impressed by the generosity of my customers, i mean they're buying an overpriced cup of coffee and a morning greeting for almost $5 (most of them). But at Christmas-time their gifts, cards, candy, and personal tips can be overwhelming.

my job is not hard. most of the time i can do it with my mind in neutral, but my personality is always in drive-even at 430 in the morning. i love where i work because of the people. i love the tangled inner-workings of my co-workers' personal lives. i love teasing them in a familial way. i love the vast majority of my regular customers. i love my boss, she takes good care of all of us. i love feeling like part of the community i live in: i know cops, CHP, doctors, lawyers, contractors of all varieties, old men, teachers, mothers and children, homeless people, hipsters, everybody.

i couldn't care less about coffee. and that's okay because i care about what my people want.

i want them to leave happy, and come back to visit tomorrow. if that means dressing up a bit strangely at times, or teasing them about something, or starting a friendly argument with my coworkers (while i work) to give people something to watch while waiting in a long line, then i'll do it. and if it occasionally gets me a $50 tip, well, that's cool too!

The water boy and deuce

2008-12-17T21:35:00.000-08:00

Over thanksgiving weekend meg and i stayed at a condo in port hueneme. it was very nice, twice the size of our apartment, and it had cable!!!! but better than that, on saturday we spent most of the day in santa barbara and ended the day by going to the zoo. they have a great zoo, worth checking out. As we were leaving, two couples were headed toward the zoo in the parking lot. It was Adam Sandler, his kid, and his pregnant wife-and Rob Schneider and his wife(?) They were really cool and Mrs. Sandler even took the picture above so that i could get in there too. very nice, it was a cool little incedent over a very nice weekend.

merry christmas!

2008-12-15T16:14:00.000-08:00

This was this year's christmas picture. I like doing them, and meg grudgingly plays along, but this one is awesome. The theme is "Green Christmas". In case i can't say this face to face to you this year: Have a Merry Christmas, and an Odd New Year. Stay warm, safe, and happy over the holidays.

...Well, now that that is over with...

2008-12-15T16:00:00.000-08:00

(nobody reads this unless i have a picture, helmeted guineafowl in pearl plumage)

its been a while. a month by my mother's calculation.

i just took my physics final. i can only hope that more than half the people in the class are dumber than me. thank heaven for curves.

that is, briefly, why i haven't been keeping the world up to date on celebrity sightings, new teas, the general goings on of my digestive tract. school has kept me busy, and when it wasn't there was something else pulling me away from this blog. but that is almost over now. a couple more low stress finals left. and then a month off. mind you i'll still be getting up at 330am more often than not, but really what else would i be doing at that hour.

so now i have begun my mini celebration, i have a six-pack of henry weinhard's root beer (it is the best in creation--so far), i've got yesterday's new york times, i've got ben and jerry's creme brulee ice cream, some good tea for later, a list of books to read, and hours of recorded tv to rot my brain. this is going to be sweet.

Pu-erh anyone?

2008-11-11T15:02:00.000-08:00

last week i went all out, i got the fanciest, most expensive tea in the place. At $20 for 4 ounces pu-erh is easily the most expensive tea i have had. apparently the store i go to only keeps one can on hand, due to price, rarity, and that nobody buys it.

Pu-erh is a specialized tea from the same region of china as the last tea, yunnan. it is made specifically from old growth plants that closer resemble trees, these stands of wild tea trees are fairly rare and it makes the tea pricier. the whole story is available on wikipedia, it is pretty interesting. another interesting tidbit: it is fermented and pressed into pucks which make it necessary to use a pot instead of making a cup at a time.

pu-erh is thick and dark with a funny fermented smell. it looks like coffee. meg takes her tea with milk (i know, freak) and that really made it look like coffee with a reddish tinge. its flavor is very different from regular black tea, which it is considered to be. it has only a slight similarity and instead is very nutty, it remains surprisingly smooth as opposed to the harsh bitterness of coffee. the fermented flavor does permeate the brew which will take some adjustment, a very interesting sidetrack to my tea tasting adventure, and while not bad it will probably not be one i go back to buy more of when its gone.

Yunnan Fancy

2008-11-11T14:45:00.000-08:00

In my continuing quest for tea snobbery i tried yunnan fancy. Yunnan is a region of china, and the tea is black. It was very good standard black tea. it wasn't smoked over anything weird, or fermented extra long or anything out of the ordinary. it was light, and finished clean with a hint of citrus. very much like an earl grey with only the smallest amount of bergamot. the leaves were black, medium length, with occasional yellow long leaves that really accent it very pleasantly.

meg said she liked that one best so far. so much so that i had to buy extra steepers so that we could have it at the same time.

one interesting note about the commercial origins of these teas is that they are all from Peet's Coffee and Teas. It feels kinda illicit to be a starbucks employee and sneak off at night with my tips from work and go buy tea from a competitor. but their tea selection is impressive, and the staff knows all about them, which is refreshing, and if this is wrong, i don't want to be right. Starbucks on the other hand has tazo brand teas (owned by the company) most of which are adequate if not particularly interesting. Though my favorite tea is their "joy" available only during the holidays. i have been told that tazo will be offering whole leaf teas in the coming year, so that may change my opinion.

veteran's day lament

2008-11-11T09:59:00.000-08:00

Last night i got an email from the college that said i needed to prove i had gotten my vaccinations (in case i bite the other students, apparently) and so i went rummaging through the archives to find my navy medical record.

as a former corpsman i take pride in the nearly exact facsimile of my actual service medical record that is held in a warehouse in indiana--i think. i know where everything is in it. and i took a moment to look it over before getting to the shot record. I saw dozens of names, most of which i knew, some of which were friends. and i recalled specific instances, like the time i got acute pharyngitis onboard ship in southeast asia and had to get antibiotics every six hours. and i started my own iv. i got to sleep in the hospital ward, in a full sized bed, instead of the cramped racks below. but it was the day before we left the ship, so i had all my worldly possessions with me to carry around.

i saw the work that my compatriots and i did reviewing medical records, holding shot standdowns. mostly i just wondered where they all were now. That is the small burden i bear from my military service. I didn't have to watch them die or lose a limb, and for that i am fortunate and grateful. i made it through my tour uninjured, and again grateful. but i wonder where my brothers are, usually on veteran's day or the 4th. i hope they are happy and well and that their lives have become more than they hoped it would. i'm doing my best to make that happen for me, and i pray that they are doing the same in whatever form that takes.

its amazing the effect that groups of people with different backgrounds all packed together, like they are in the military, can have on one another. i have been molded by their company and their absence.

Lapsang Souchong

2008-10-26T18:53:00.000-07:00

i have decided to become a tea snob.

i work at starbucks and there are a few coffee snobs there (anyone who asks for a caramel-anything is not a coffee snob) people that can tell you what county, farm, tree, branch, weather, if the farmer had a wedding ring by the subtle gold notes in the bouquet, are snobs.

like oenophiles, but for coffee. well i want that for tea. i have also started to dabble in whole leaf (higher quality than bagged), not as convenient.

my first adventure out was lapsang souchong. a black tea from china that is smoked over pine root.

it tastes like christmas, rather, it tastes like 2 weeks before christmas when dad gets the tree and cuts the lower branches off and throws them into the fireplace. smokey and piney with a tea chaser. actually its not as bad as that may sound. the scent of the dry leaves is pretty intense, but the brew is milder and when sweetened it is quite drinkable.

not the perfect cup, but an interesting sidetrack. i'm going to continue in china blacks before entering "flavor country" (india), followed by oolong, then green.

Why I hate Disneyland

2008-10-26T16:44:00.000-07:00

i don't hate disneyland. it is a fine place. but just like Las Vegas, its adult counterpart, i just can't enjoy the artifice. its not for me, disneyland is for children, and it should be full of giggling screaming children begging for $47 sodas and $138 mouse ears. i want them to be there and have that experience, and inevitably their parents, i guess they should be there too. but seeing as i belong to not one or the other categories i should be exempt. i also have some questions as to the morality of season passes and families that go every weekend just cause they live in a 30 mile radius. kinda spoils the magic when you know the kid in the mouse suit's name is chad and he's your babysitter.

i am cheap, and any childlike wonder i still possess is tightly regulated to actual places that exist in the real world. by these two facts alone i will never understand either the mouse's house or vegas. Again, vegas i just missed the bus on, too much of an old man to get drunk and chase women, (and i mentioned the cheap thing), and not old enough that swirly lights will keep me entertained. a hotel shaped like a castle is not a remote second place to an actual castle. it might cost more to get there, but you get what you pay for.

All of this is stirred up because of my wife's vacation. she loves disneyland, loves it like a child. and i can't fault her for that, i am glad it brings her joy, she has a surplus of childlike wonder that she keeps hidden for just such an occasion. we had other plans, but they fell through, so we ended up with the two choices mentioned above. i chose disneyland, it's closer, therefore cheaper. we got there just after it opened, and left just before it closed. went to california adventure as well and had a nice time. i hear the fireworks everynight, but it was neat to actually see them, pretty big show to do everyday, wonder how much all that costs annually. (two smiley faces, dad. and three cubes) also because we were there early we got to ride everything, with seldom more than 20 minutes wait. they did ruin the haunted mansion with nightmare before christmas stuff, it was really bad. seriously, ruined.

but meg had a good time, and so did i. now i'm good for another 5 years. hope you had a good weekend too.

Congratulations!

2008-10-13T11:57:00.000-07:00

In case the "shouted from the rooftops" reception in your area is poor: about 20 minutes ago you should have heard my mother yelling for joy as she became a grandmother.

congratulations to annie and cory on the birth of baby Bee.

We love you and are glad to open our hearts and our family a little wider.

all our love,
nate and meg

A little trip down memory lane

2008-10-01T22:30:00.001-07:00

So meg and i had an overlapping weekend off, which is about as common as a lunar eclipse. and we decided to get away for a couple days. we left early friday evening and drove up to morro bay. the plan was to go camping at the state park (which assured me over the phone that they had plenty of spots open) but when we got there at quarter to 10pm the signs said no vacancy-and there were no rangers around. so we had to get a motel room, which is nice in its way, but not as cheap as a campsite--although cable tv reception is better than in the tent.
i got up early (7) and wandered around the embarkadero following my boyhood trail up and down the empty streets as the fog burned away, disturbing only the seagulls enjoying the fishermen's leftovers. it was a nice little stroll, i hadn't been there in about 10 years, very nostalgic. then i went up to the park to try my fortune with the rangers. as luck would have it they were still full through the weekend, but when i mentioned having handicapped placards the game changed. there were five open spots that couldn't be filled. so i happily availed myself of one. went to the site, set up our massive tent, and got things semi set up by about 10am, and went back to the motel to wake meg and check out.

then we walked the embarkadero together now that shops were open and had an acceptable brunch at the otter rock cafe. did some shopping at the boutiques along the strip. drove out to morro rock to watch the otters just generally had a nice time. it was also the weekend of the avocado/margarita festival (two of meg's favorite things) so we browsed through all the local farmers booths and saw guacamole of many varieties. then we went to camp. meg took a nap and i went off to hike around montana de oro state park.

it was, again, a very nostalgic (and hot) trek. its just such a memorable place from my childhood. i remember going there in my parents tan pontiac 6000, probably an 84-5-6, not sure, but cory and i were little and we just got out at this wide spot in the road. it was a eucalyptus forest, and we followed this trail that was almost like a hall it was so overgrown with vines and creeping plants. and then all of a sudden there was a small wooden bridge and you walked out of this crease in a cliff onto a rocky beach filled with tidepools (if you go at the right time-otherwise its filled with water). i remember touching a shark that had gotten stuck in the rocks at low tide and got to touch it. it was amazing. it was one of the few outdoorsy things my parents ever did with us as a family. (my parents are good people, but not big wilderness folk) maybe it was the proximity of the beach, the fact that we were never more than a dozen miles from a hot shower and a cool pillow, but whatever the reason for their favoring of this particular state park, i thank them for including me (and us) in what was to become my favorite part of the central coast of california.

came back to the tent, took a little nap. then we went to see the heron rookery and go get clam chowder at the harbor hut for dinner. along the way back we fed french fries to seagulls. we got back to the tent and played a game of scrabble (which i lost, handily) which included 64 points for the word "fuzz". then we went to bed, we both enjoy sleeping in the tent its very comfortable, as is required when i bring meg. but i can suffer through a little comfort for the sake of company.

we started back a little earlier than expected, so we stopped and went to the santa barbara zoo to kill some time. it was a great little trip, i'd like to go back when we have a few more days.

in my absence...

2008-10-01T22:16:00.000-07:00

hey, guess what.

physics is hard. and not fun hard, like MATH hard. yeah, not good.

everything else is cake.
even sitting through the bullpucky that is philosophy is manageable. things have settled down, round these parts. gotten into a nice groove (or rut). i guess its been a month since i did this, or so the backlog of photos tells me. here's what happened:

my inlaws went to australia and we birdsat for them, a cockatoo and a kookaburra, they were fun to have around.

we took delivery of our new baby (parrot) a caique named Ernie. who one day decided to climb up my bike.

this was a nice photo of meg and her folks and their respective parrots. (plus a rare photo of the elusive mother-in-law)(yes, that is blood on meg's pants)

some minor successes

2008-09-03T19:50:00.000-07:00

SECOND DAY OF SCHOOL:
better. managed to get into a physics lab (it was all that stood in the way of my getting into a physics lecture class) so i don't have to worry about ochem for another semester, and i have 16 units. so i'm done looking, and almost done crashing (i want to swap my special ed class for an earlier one) but that happens tomorrow.

and i ran into a girl that was in my very first science class 5 years ago at saddleback. it was nice to see a familiar face and chat for a few minutes outside of the ipod bubble that it seems the majority of my fellow students (myself included) wander around in. then in the afternoon my assistant manager at starbucks/friend carrie "vern" vernoy who is taking her last 3 classes walked me around campus and showed me all the senior secrets, which was nice of her. so i know that at any given time there are potentially 3 people i will recognize on campus. oh, and i met a guy named ryan in my physics lab, he had cool brown/white saddle shoes, so maybe 4.

things are already looking up. one more day, two books to buy, one to return. and then its all locked down for 5 months.

Back to school, all over again

2008-09-02T20:08:00.000-07:00

I was hit by a car, not today, but around 10 years ago. my future wife was behind the wheel, not that the event itself matters. it is a nice story, if you like that sort of thing. but AFTER i rolled off the windshield, and also after i hit the asphalt, but before i stood up--the awestruck moment of realizing what happened, all the potential consequences, and the self diagnostics that go through your head if you know anything about spinal cord injuries.

that's where i am right now, its the best i can equate it to. cory called me midday and asked if my first day was-i forget how he put it- spiffy. at the time i had just rolled off the windshield, but before i hit the asphalt. it was not momentous, it was mildly daunting.

let me explain that it was not bad, i was not pelted with rotten fish, nor was i forced to walk the hallways to the murmured word leper on everyone's lips. i just felt alone, and doing things (like trying to crash classes) that were bordering on pointless. i went to 4 classes today, if you don't count the "modern sexuality" class that i walked into the last 15 minutes of on invitation of the instructor (a very bold fellow, who amused me greatly, and i got the impression the feeling was mutual-he stayed behind a few moments to chat)

i still don't know if i got into ochem, or physics lab (but i get to try all week long to find a physics lab) so those classes were akin to urchins looking into the bakery window (all that warm fresh education, hot from the oven, but i can only watch from the outside as others partake in electron orbital geometries, and immutable laws). and there is a certain kind of disappointment that goes along with that, solaced only by the knowledge thatsomeday i will be in the metaphorical bakery before graduation.

after lunch my luck changed, and i went to the one class i was enrolled in today medicine as literature, the instructor had changed (and into a woman-which is awesome as female lit teachers love me (i don't know what it is, i'm just sayin')) and the class seems interesting and i have already asserted my dominance--i answer questions, sit in the front, and engage the instructor. she also invited meg to come in to address the class, upon finding out her profession, and literary achievements. and then i actually managed to get added to health sciences for secondary educators, so i am now at 12 units (with a little more shuffling and hopefully another class to add) so i am at full time.

meg got me weinerschnitzel for dinner to celebrate, she's sweet like that sometimes. tomorrow, i go to work and then back to campus.

Cleaning off my desk

2008-09-01T17:44:00.000-07:00

my mother once told me after a bout with teen angst and youthful rebellion in the middle of the punitive phase of the cycle that your room (home) reflects your heart (or at least your mental status). that was a pearl i have always held on too. i find that on the eve of great personal tumult (the scheduled kind: moving, new job, new school, vacation, etc.) i tend to control my environment so as to control my mind. from my father and his kin i got a pre-punctuality bug that was only reinforced by the navy. if you are there (wherever) 15 minutes early, you're late--but sit in the car and wait for it anyway. these two precepts have commingled so as to give birth to my present mindset.

tomorrow is my first day of school at csulb, and i am anxious, clean, and early.

my backpack has been packed for a week, triple checked; schedules printed, reviewed; potential "crashed" classes have been checked, mapped, and found nearest bike locks. snacks have been purchased (i eat to stay awake), alarm has been set for 3 hours before my first class. my house is clean. and i am ready.

but... i haven't blogged in a while and need to clo se out this summer's bittersweet lul with a final posting. some of what, if i may be frank, i have been too lazy to post about:

i read some books, starting with the day of my calculus final, i read, now the hell can start- about the burma road in ww11, (bought it hard cover the week it came out after a particularly seductive interview with the author, it was mediocre and i resolved not to buy a hardcover book again.) then followed it with Frankenstein, (interesting from an analytical perspective, dull from a readers.) Then Kim by rudyard kipling, good book nice story even for children seemed like it should have been the first of a series, but alas. Then i was given Between the bridge and the river, a charmingly profane navel by craig ferguson of late late show fame, for my birthday. i was also given a gift card for barnes and noble and got A human comedy by saroyan about my homeland, (wonderful, little novel, about nostalgic places) and Midnight's children by salman rushdie (fascinating puzzle of a novel that just unwinds itself beautifully and grimly, set in india/pakistan over the last hundred years, perfect to link Kim with the present) and i am 40 pages from finishing it which will cap off my summer of indolence at bedtime tonight.

i have made many shirts, recently, and over the summer.

and i have had many bad haircuts.

finally, pictures of my bike trailer.

see you in a few days (?) after the adventure has begun.

a land where nobody says, " baskets and fenders?!"

2008-08-10T18:24:00.000-07:00

I have been to a lot of perfectly good cities, mark's boston, cory's new york, mom's denver, the navy's san diego and chicago and a bunch of others-some in other countries. and they were all wonderful and exciting and memorable, but i never really said, "wow, this is where i belong, i get it, and its people" until i spent 3 days in portland, oregon.

it is beautiful, and green (in both senses), and friendly. its like a rainy san diego, as meg likes to say. first of all let me tell you of the bikes. i am used to a cyclist element, living in orange county, doctory-lawyery types who get all spandexed out on the weekends and go for 50 mile rides in herds that resemble gazelles with nascar advertisement stickers all over their bodies. but lets face it, i am not that guy (i may have flirted with it in high school, but it didn't work out), i like to ride my bike to do stuff and go places, the ride should be enjoyable, but in no way resemble exercise.

everywhere you went in the city were people on bikes, bike locks, and bike parking. and not like new york where the skeletons of bikes are chained to lampposts stripped like carrion of anything that can be removed. and the bikes weren't carbon-fiber-aerodynamic-clip-in-pedals-speed-machines, they were either fixies (converted ten speeds, and actual fixies) or they were mountain/cruising bikes like mine with racks and baskets and panniers, milk crates, bumper stickers and every one had fenders. these are people who ride their bikes to the grocery store, (and they probably do it in the rain too).

i would probably have to wear fake mutton chops or a amkeshift goatee to look like i belong there, but that is a small price to pay. (and can you say "no sales tax", i knew you could). wonder of all wonders, meg feels the same way about the city (albeit for non-bicycle related reasons) and it is our serious hope to move there. the university hospital (OHSU) is excellent, and there is a lot of cross-pollenation between uci and ohsu, so meg knows people there and here that can put in a good word.

we took the train to get there, but that will be tomorrow's post, its a whole other bag of gummi worms.

oh, i brought my camera, but forgot it as we wandered the city. sorry no pictures. in particular, there was a bike with a bumper sticker that said "this machine kills hipsters" which was hilarious and thought provoking.

here's hoping your machine kills hipsters too...

bike: a finished product

2008-08-03T23:51:00.000-07:00

i managed to tear the nozzle out of the tube in my rear tire. so that is me replacing it and re-sliming it.

mom, i finally have lights on it for riding to work.

and i found a handlebar mount for my gps which makes it that much more useful for exploring the wilds of orange county. pretty handy when you bike to another town.
i have a rear basket that is in the mail and that will be all. and i love it.

bike news

2008-07-28T16:38:00.000-07:00

i bought a trailer for my bike, you know, the kind used to haul kids around in. my plan is to use it to get groceries, run errands, do the laundry. and so far it works beautifully. the pictures will follow, as i haven't taken any.

pro's: extra weight=harder work=better workout
cheaper than gas
people give you the right of way when they think there are kids involved
it is removable, and collapsible, and reasonably light

seemed like a good idea, everything i need is within a mile (school being the exception) and it will hopefully save some money and add years to my life(or subtract inches from my waist-which is better).

this is the mount that is permanently attached to my rear wheel, so i can take the rest of it on and off without tools.

some things i should mention...

2008-07-28T16:33:00.001-07:00

meg and i went to "the latelate show with craig ferguson" last tuesday, it was neat to see how it works, but i have to say the show is better on tv. they did a pan of the audience (rare on the show), and you can see us in the front row center.

also here is my latest hair adventure.
(star and stripes)

about a bike

2008-07-17T22:21:00.000-07:00

i admit to having peculiar aesthetic tastes, and i am a minor design snob. this coupled with my deep affection for my former bicycle presented quite a challenge when considering a replacement. i considered the folding bikes by dahon which offered portability but in limited configurations and at a premium (to me) price. maybe in the future when i can afford one of their better models.

i could have tracked down a later model of my old bike, but they were painted yellow and black, and glossy, which i couldn't stand, so i would have to have it stripped and painted. too much trouble and time for a utility bike.

so i went shop to shop from high end triathalon stores to shady "family" bike shops. in the last store on my list i found it. they were a high end mountain bike place, but they had some limited stock of "fixies" and a couple road bikes. i don't mind the "fixie" idea, but i want a coaster brake. (no simple task to find on an "adult" bike (even on beach cruisers)) the bike i found was a cross between a mountain bike, and a bmx bike. single speed, coaster brake (no cables)-it was set up for adding disc brakes (the new state of the art), big cruiser tires, and ridiculously light.

the down side was that it needed a lot of add ons, fenders, a rack, baskets/panniers, even a kickstand. not to mention the biggest lock i could buy.

the next day i went and got fenders, kickstand, and a rack. oh, and a lock that weighs as much as the bike itself.(not an exaggeration)

still holding off on the baskets/panniers as i might invest in a child trailer (don't take this wrong mom , that is not a subtle hint) the trailer is for groceries/hauling--so i don't have to take the car. and i need some lights, eventually.

the maker of the bike is "swobo" they have some really good looking utility type bikes, if thats your thing you should check them out.

here's woody...

2008-07-17T22:17:00.000-07:00

my inlaws got a new bird, a hawk headed parrot. i have described it frequently, but here he is.

this is the business end, he gave me the worst bite of my parrot-loving life (so far) he gets a little schitzy

San Gorgonio

2008-07-17T22:01:00.000-07:00

the tallest mountain in southern california is mt san gorgonio, at ~11,500 feet. mark and i had an adventure there nearly a month ago, but having been too lazy to post it, most of you know the story already. the summary is: it was very steep, mark kicked my butt up the hill, ( i take no offense, he was far more motivated to get to the top than i was), we had a great campsite near a creek, and we flew down and were home by noon. oh, and the first night, for lack of wilderness permits we slept in the scion--it was awkward, but we survived. (to clarify--as that last statement sounds "funny weird"--i slept in the backseat, and mark in the front passenger.

mark found this "fresh" banana at the top, not sure how it got there, providence?!

...one year later

2008-07-09T23:16:00.000-07:00

mark and i at 29

my 29th birthday is almost over at this point. one year ago i started this blog, and it has at times been a useful means of communication and a nagging burden to maintain. i have not written as often as i wanted, and there are larger gaps than i would have hoped, but life is that way, sometimes there is little to write about.

this has been an interesting year, and the last week in particular have tested my mettle. (if you understand this, then smile smugly to yourself and let everyone else wonder) i had dinner with my best friend tonight, and he asked me some hard questions, which i am still processing. he also encouraged me to take stock of my life (usually he suggests i leave livestock alone). he asked me what made me happy. and i honestly didn't have an answer (not in a depressed way, just that i don't really sit around making that list). why not make the list now?!

1. my family/my past
2. my friends (male, female, old, new, alive, dead, flora, fauna)
3. being in nature, even just a backyard.
4. naps
5. a well crafted sitcom
6. fireworks/fire
7. technology/gadgets
8. feeling useful (in whatever capacity)
9. children (other people's, and potentially my own)
10. animals (not just the cute ones)

that's what i came up with. its not in any order, and there are some i have omitted (accidentally and otherwise) oh, and bamboo--i love that stuff, so useful. now i have a list.

What foul, cruel villainy is this?!

2008-07-01T14:02:00.000-07:00

today, my beloved bicycle was stolen. i rode it to work, and when i came out to go home it was gone. someone had cut the "uncuttable" links of my kryptonite chain between 425 and 930 am.

i feel violated.

it wasn't a flashy, expensive bike. IT HAD BASKETS, FOR CRIMENY'S SAKE. i had had it for 8 years, since my last bike as stolen when i loaned it to mark to use at usc. it was a utilitarian wonder-meg just made me put lights on it a couple months ago for riding to work.

i just want it back- i don't want to get a new one.

make your own caption contest

2008-06-12T17:52:00.001-07:00

today i made a cake.

i had never made one before.

it has two layers, i'll let you know if either one is any good.

(not that you need an invitation, but) feel free to caption this yourself, mine is
"so that's what betty crocker looks like topless"

now you try...

fancy hair day

2008-06-12T17:48:00.000-07:00

every other wed. i shave my head, so wed morning at work i have a funky haircut. this week was "white boy's corn rows" forgive the seemingly asymmetric nature of the cut, i got one pass into shaving it off and remembered i forgot to document it. it was glorious in its hideousity.

Calculus...

2008-06-09T14:09:00.000-07:00

...I PASSED!

WITH A MIDDLE OF THE ROAD 75% C

HOORAY FOR MEDIOCRE!

NOW ON TO DO THINGS THAT MATTER.

the end...for now...

2008-06-05T12:55:00.000-07:00

I just returned from my last day at junior college, from now on it will be senior college or nothing. i had my calculus final today and i have no idea how it went, certainly not a crushing victory (like my zoology finals), but more of a (hopefully) win by points. but no chicken counting until next monday evening. i went in, and did my best, and hopefully that worked. if not i can do it all again later.
i can now attend to all the piddlies that i hve neglected this week like taking out the trash, cleaning the floors, and clearing all my math work off the table. the rest of the day
is a cleaning binge, and since meg is on call it is perfectly timed.

as i mentioned at the beginning it is the last of my (good heavens) six years at one jc or another. the other day they had graduation for the folks who completed programs or AA's and there was a bunch of cap/gown traffic around the school. and despite my lack of ceremonial attire i felt like them, like the king of the school. i also am scared to death of going to "big college" i know its silly, but there is so much more to do/learn(/pay for) and it has taken so long to get here. part of me is worried that i'll languish at long beach wasting time and money. my plan to counter that is meg, she will undoubtedly kick me in the butt when i need it.

but for now i am going to enjoy my first summer out of school in, well, seemingly forever. mark is in town, i haven't heard about the job at the zoo yet, there's a new parrot on the horizon, strange new haircuts every 2 weeks, and life is full of little adventures, so here's to summer.

what you've missed...

2008-05-29T22:47:00.000-07:00

so next week is finals week and last week was another test week, so in the lul this weekend i wanted to post.

to catch y'all up on the goings on: this is the beetle that meg helped me catch in utah (fiery searcher) and that my professor helped me pin and dress (none of the ones i did myself look anywhere near as good) it is the jewel of my collection.

then i made a lungs shirt for a co-worker of mine (my first comissioned piece)

then on wed of this week it was shaving time again and so i went to work with a mohawk. i got mixed reviews from customers and coworkers, i only did it for work anyway. and went home and shaved it off. i think i will do something odd every few weeks (when its time to shave again), so look for that in the future. it was very travis bickle, and i kept walking by mirrors going "are you talkin' to me?!", so i had to get rid of it.

mark is in town, we hung out on monday and saw "the bank job" a pretty good heist flick if you're into that sort of thing. its good to have somebody to hang out with.

oh, and if you haven't heard yet, i am going to have a(nother) niece.
cory and annie are having a girl (i blame their fru-fru diet)
her name will be Bee (i don't know what to blame for that)
but i can't wait to meet her.

bug fair (my new beetle)

2008-05-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

Today, as per my zoology assignment, i went to a bug fair at the LA county museum of natural history. it was surprisingly crowded. you could buy bugs (alive or dead), and bug paraphernalia. it was pretty amazing, the colors and variations in structure are incredible. i have grown a minor fascination with beetles over the period of this class, and am considering continuing a collection. one native california beetle that i saw in a book and wanted for my own was the desert ironclad beetle. he is actually blacker than he appears in the photos but he does have a gunmetal finish that makes the rows of bumps on his carapace really stand out. he's about an inch and a half, and i'm calling him erwin (after erwin rommel "the desert fox" who was a tank commander on the wrong side of WWII-this should not indicate nazi sympathy, just well thought out naming).

in non bug related news, the museum has an incredible bird collection, and a large area devoted to the peculiarities of bird life (flight, sight, feathers, songs, eggs, hollow bones, etc.) as a bird fancier i was very impressed (take that new york natural history museum).

this summer (After i barely pass calculus with the lowest "c" possible) i have no summer school, for the first time in 6 years. so to celebrate, i applied for a new job, or rather another job. the zoo i volunteer at has a zoo camp in the summer, and i applied for a job at it. it should be good experience working with kids, plus all the camp songs i can sing-does the marine corps hymn count?!- and the pay is pretty good, but i believe that it is only for six weeks. although i am told by other employees at the zoo that it is a good way to get your foot in the door for a full time "regular" job there. that's all well and good, but for now i think it would be a nice way to fill my summer (and potentially my bank account) and keep me out of youth gangs and the like.

Goodbye to a Good Lady

2008-05-13T21:16:00.000-07:00

My grandmas (Lois and Darlene)

My (step)grandma Darlene passed away last friday. She was an incredible woman, a real firecracker (keep in mind she was in her 70's when i met her). she married my grandfather 11 years ago, and probably saved his life after the loss of his first wife (my grandma colleen)put him in a bad place. they were meant to be together, having both lost their spouses in the same year, (and having cemetery plots one away from each other), they met at their church and she quickly brought a new vitality to my grandfather. she was a dear lady, and i will miss her a lot. she and meg had a special connection over their love of birds and i know that meg feels a similar loss. She went quickly and painlessly to be with her savior, and that is all that we could ask for. Our thoughts and prayers are with her (very large) family, and we share in their grief.

must see tv, for me

2008-04-29T22:08:00.000-07:00

there's a documentary miniseries on pbs called carrier. you should watch it if you have ever wondered about life aboard ship. i have caught the first (two hour) episode, and had flashbacks. it was surprisingly real, and unblinking. with the exceptions of some language edits its pretty much like being there, without the smells. some interesting smells you miss out on.

granted, i was never on a carrier, but while underway-below the flight deck is exactly the same on all ships big or small(the only difference is the size of the cast). good stuff, slightly more realistic than jag or ncis.

behive state wanderings

2008-04-29T16:06:00.000-07:00

a sign just out of town. we felt at home.

so we did it. we went camping outside of zion national park. we got there around 9pm on thursday, and set up the tent in the dark without issue (barring that the ground was gravel, and the dirt below it was exceptionally hard), it was a little windy, but not unbearable. and the whole thing took less than an hour to get up, in, inflated, zipped up, and drowsy.

the fortress of solitude

the place we stayed was the zion river resort, in virgin, it was really an rv place that had less than 10 tent sites. but it had nice amenities, a pool/jacuzzi, decent store for necessities, nice bathrooms, laundry, and even the tent sites had electrical outlets. right next to the river, and all for about $30 a night.

i made breakfast both mornings on the barbeque we brought, nothing fancy, egg stuff. and then we used it to roast marshmallows friday night. not as pretty as a campfire but much more efficient to cook on and makes perfect marshmallows. friday was nice low stress, got up and went up to kolob reservoir, only didn't. we got almost all the way there and a 30' long bank of snow blocked our passage on the road. still, the drive was pretty and we did get out and walk around a bit. then it was back to camp for lunch/siesta then we went to one of the trails and walked along the river, and i collected bugs. (some of you know that i am taking a zoology course right now, and the instructor is an entomologist so we have to put together a 2o specemin bug collection) Found a really cool beetle called a "fiery searcher"beautiful iridescent thing. i'll put up pictures after the taxidermy is complete.

saturday we came back earlier than expected, by the time we tore down the campsite and got ready to go, had lunch, and realized that we had to go home in only 3 hours there was little sense in hanging around town. so we headed back leisurely, tried to see a movie a few times, and failed. but found another state run campsite near the virgin river that we may try in the future. the one mishap on the return trip was a leaky cup of mountain dew that filled the console of the car with soda. and you couldn't brake, because a wave of it would wash over the front and onto the floor. well, thats what happened-stupid inertia.

got home safely in the evening on saturday, had to work on sunday. and found out that i did not (as expected) have to work on monday morning. so i went with meg down to san diego to celebrate her parents birthdays(both in april). it was very nice, her mom made lamb chops that were really good. and as always, her apple pie is the only one i'll eat. we stayed the night and returned monday afternoon just in time for me to go to class.

it has been a busy few days, but it is nice to be back home.

new shirts

2008-04-18T17:52:00.000-07:00

made 2 new shirts last week, one i love, the other is my least favorite.

the jellyfish is the largest design i have taken on it took about 20 yards of thread, it took about 9 hours. but it is amazing. by far my favorite so far.

the other is an illustration of a bird's wing, with the different feather regions in different colors. it looked really good in white when i had chalked it out, but in multi colors it looks, not so much. i thought i'd try it, i had all these leftover pieces of thread, so why not.

i am pretty much done with doing shirts for myself, i have all that i need (unless i find some really cool colors) so i guess i should start taking orders for other people now. standard (single color) shirts $30, ($25 if you provide the shirt), larger designs (bigger than 8.5"x 11") or multicolor are possible but will cost more.

drop me a line if you are interested.

bald weather returns to southern california

2008-04-18T17:06:00.000-07:00

as the title implies it was time for the annual shaving of the head today. i feel lighter and more aerodynamic, just waiting for someone to stick me in a wind tunnel and test my reduced drag coefficient. which is funny in an esoteric way that while scientifically that is probably true, socialogically, it would seem, that having a shaved head would facilitate one being a drag performer/queen (with all the wigs and whatnot) thereby increasing your potential drag coefficient. not that that has anything to do with my choice of hairstyles, just an insight into how the mind wanders.

so in other news, i bought a tent. and those of you who know me well are like "don't you have a tent already?" and if you're cory you're like "didn't you have so many tents you gave me one, not that long ago?" and i am like "yes, i do, and i did." but that notwithstanding, i needed (wanted) a tent that meg and i could use on less intense camping trips (ones where you don't have to carry all your stuff all the time). meg has some knee problems-and another problem where she considers backpacking less than an ideal way to spend her vacation, but i'm not bitter- but she is amenable to car camping so i decided to buy a tent to meet our needs.

car camping, for the uninitiated- or those who know "car camping" simply as camping- is when you put all your gear in a car and drive to a spot, get out and take most of the amenities you were supposed to leave behind in your home and put them in a tent. frequently attached to a generator. its like rving, or renting a cabin (but for poor folk). it is not without it's charms so long as the modern world is kept at bay (and everything is battery powered-so there is some chance it may give out).

and now you're like "great, but why now, what makes you need(want) a tent for such purposes now?" and i'm like "don't rush me, i'll get there". meg starts vacation next week, and i have taken fri/sat off of work, which allows us to leave on thursday (after calculus) to zion national park. meg had specified warm, and a river on her trip preferences so we will be camping along the virgin river in southwest utah.

so back to the tent. did all my research, and bought a "tucana" tent by coleman for about$120 at target. yesterday i went out to try to set it up. i am a firm believer in doing this with new things (tents especially) before you go into the field-meg thinks its a little obsessive, but there is no good excuse for leaving home without tent poles. plus we will be arriving around if not after sunset, so i now have the added challenge of being able to do it in the dark. so i went to the park and did a trial run. firstly, the thing is giant, 8feet tall in the middle (on the inside) and 16 feet by 10 feet. it went mostly fine until i had to put the rainfly on, when not being 8feet tall became a disadvantage. still i managed and with some inventive solutions on my part i managed to get it up-not staked and guyed- in an hour (all by myself).

it is a monster, big enough to park a truck in. room for a queen-size air mattress and an inflatable living room set. one of the cooler features is that it has a big d-shaped door that has slender tent poles in the hinge and around the edge of the door next to the zipper that keep it rigid and allow it to function like a regular door. much better for meg than the unzip and crawl out/in on all fours.

i went back today to practice again, with a new strategy, and brought my time down to a half hour, and that included staking (but not guying). so i am pretty sure that we'll be okay in utah, providing there is minimal wind and rain when it is time to set it up. there are no real pictures to put up yet, but there will be some from the trip so look for those in 8days or so.

Living room redux

2008-04-10T16:50:00.001-07:00

Here's the before and after on our living room. it needed some color, and some rearranging. i know you're thinking "it may have needed color, but is that the color it needed?!". and the answer is yes. it really warms up the whole room. those are the same cabinets under the tv as were next to the tv before, and the pendant light in the room is now remotely switched from an outlet to the right of the frame.

much cleaner, and more modern, and better--but that might just be the paint fumes. plus, much easier to clean. still want to get a smaller coffee table (so you can see the rug that incorporates the purple into the rest of the space. sara's blog really gave me motivation to do something about the living room, you should check it out (link on the left) she's always redoing something.

Father time

2008-04-10T16:45:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday to my dad, even though sometimes i have made you out to be an international terrorist, you're okay in my book. i love you, dad.

if you see him, be nice to him (this week only).

Back home to visit, and then to the car museum

2008-04-10T13:52:00.000-07:00

So i went back to visit hanford (mostly to visit my grandfather who is having some health issues) for a few days, it was a nice break. i also went to see cats (the musical-not the animal) with my mom{my dad gave me his seat}, it was opening night, front row center, amazing. but what a weird book, t.s. eliot or not, c'mon it was all over the place. cats, spaceships, synthesizers, "memories", it was everywhere. if you want to see the pictures, go to my folks' blog (link to the left)

on the way home, i decided to go to the nethercutt museum, in sylmar{upon my dad's recommendation}. it is a private car collection, all rolls royce-y and fancy schmancy 1930's carriages, limos, and the like. very cool. the two-tone green rolls was my favorite, and there was a bugatti that i didn't photograph that was unbelievable. they also featured a hood ornament collection (with some that light up) it was pretty cool if you like cars, and free.

the power of huell

2008-04-10T13:31:00.001-07:00

Two weeks ago we saw this grocery that sells specialty sodas on california's gold with huell howser. like original dr pepper, nehi, and orange crush to name a few. and rootbeer, birch beer, ginger beer, spruce beer etc. so we went to check it out.

This is the view from the line there were about 70 people in the small store all with carts full of nothing but sodas. awesome.

this is our cart, why yes, it does have moxie!

we were talking to the people behind us in line and they lived in the neighborhood, they said they had never seen more than 5 people in the store before. it was all due to the power of mass media.

Thingy-de-resistance...

2008-03-31T14:13:00.000-07:00

the pinnacle of my ability with a needle (outside of my heroine addiction-kidding, ma) this took FOREVER, but it turned out pretty well. i hope you like it. (yours will cost $150) the fish was pretty easy, but the scales were murder- you can see they gradually become smaller (less impressive)

(Seriously, $150)

Congratulations Joy&Jeff

2008-03-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

Meg's best friend joy gave birth to her first child today, Mikayla, at around 1145a. so congratulations to her and jeff, and i'm sure they'll be incredible parents.

new shirts

2008-03-29T12:48:00.001-07:00

i made these a few weeks ago, but i wanted to wait until annie got hers before i posted them. shame to ruin the surprise. but the baby is for her and my nephew (you heard it here first folks, the smart money is on genetics, its gonna be a boy) i made the heart one for meg, which premiered in a previous blog and the owl one i made for myself.

late night confession

2008-03-27T23:26:00.000-07:00

so in my earlier post i may have glossed over, somewhat, the releasing edgar thing. maybe i'm crazy, but i feel aweful about it. i took him out hoping that the other birds would accept him, but when he flew they mobbed him and knocked him down, to the ground and then into the tree, and continued to harrass him. when i had him on my hand i assumed that was it for the day and was taking him back to the car when he flapped into the tree. he is a pretty tame bird and i worry that without a group of other birds to learn wild behavior from he will starve or worse. i know this seems silly, but he was my pet, and i raised him from a baby. when he was in the tree he was hunched down in his "defensive/hiding" posture, he was scared, and when i shook the branch hoping he would fly to the ground, he took off, was mobbed, and i lost him. chances are he is in a tree hiding, and probably sleeping now. i went back to the cemetery and the park across the street from it 6 times since i let him go (around 2pm) and looked and listened but never saw him. plenty of crows, but they all flew too adeptly to be edgar. it has bugged me all day, and is now keeping me up. i feel horribly guilty. i want to believe that he will be fine, but i can't , and i know it is my fault. sorry this isn't a happy post with lots of pictures, but i wanted to get this off my chest.

Goodbye Edgar

2008-03-27T14:16:00.000-07:00

Today I released my friend and long-time crow, "Edgar Allen". at first he took right off, he wanted to stretch his wings, but promptly ran out of steam and plopped down to the ground. oh, i thought an appropriate place to let him loose was the cemetery near the house, and there was a murder of crows wandering around the lawns.

so after the video of the initial release, i went over and picked him up. he talked to me a bit, and i walked around with him on my hand for a little while, when the other crows heard him they rallied around and circled us overhead, it looked a little like, well, how the devil is represented in some films, a swirling vortex of black birds calling overhead. edgar took off again, this time into a tree, and from there to who knows. i hope he will be okay, i hope he finds food and water, and i hope he falls in with the right crowd, you just hear about crow gang violence so much in the news. he's 4 now, he should be old enough to make the right deciscions.

godspeed Edgar