December 25th, 2007
Merry Christmas folks. We actually had our big celebration on
Saturday when we had a Solstice party. Our neighbors Patrick, Mark,
Val, Karin and Dave attended as did Chris, the contractor who is
renovating our deck! Also the majority of the Santa Cruz footbag club
was there, Jacob, Jeremy, Angel, EJ, AJ and Sage. Kim had done a lot
of preparation so we had Prinskorv and Glogg from the Swedish deli
near where she grew up and we had a large entertainers package from
Usingers. The house was decorated with glittery snowflakes and glass
balls, we had cranberry relish, pickled herring, cheese and
characters. There was Aquavit, in fact there was two kinds of
Aquavit. One from last year and a new one that had journeyed over the
equator twice. There were Maple Nut Balls, Chinese New Year cookies,
Nut cups, two types of Christmas ale, a honey beer and a Vienna
Lager. Mark brought over some of their homemade cider. Our neighbors
down the hill joined us, Melanie and Duane with their son James and
Bill and Andrea with their sons Billy and Sam. We had planned to make
mini-reubens on cocktail ryes, glitter pine cones and cut a sapling
redwood and decorate it, but frankly the party was so full there was
no time! Well that perhaps and also when Billy caught sight of the
360 on the TV stand, the night's activities soon included a little
Halo 3 and Project Gotham racing. A little later in the evening we
headed up to Patrick's back hill to take a bounce on his trampoline
and enjoy the large bonfire he had set up that morning. Kim brought
up the drums and bells and we had an old fashioned drum circle around
the fire. Folks stayed at it until finally fatigued caught up with us
around 3 am.
Now it appears that Santa has visited our house as well as there are
stockings and presents laid out on the couch above. Hope your
holidays are all joyous and well.
November 2nd, 2007
Some photos for you. The first seven are from the Minneapolis
Sculpture Garden. The last is the result of our neighborhood pumpkin
carving this year.
October 31st, 2007
Happy Halloween!
The earth played a little trick on us last night as we had dinner over
at Patrick's by giving us a little quake. 5.7 on the Richter scale.
Just enough to rattle some glass and Patrick's hanging pots. Kim was
quite excited to have been in her first earthquake.
Amazingly the USGS site had full measurements of the quake 5 minutes
after the event. We checked their website. Over 300 people had
reported on the quake within that time too (I was one of them...). We
were 28 miles from the epicenter.
The neighborhood pets were the most put out by it. Lots of reports of
cats hiding under beds and dogs whining. Our two furries seemed to
sleep right through it.
Also today I finished the Nabisco book that John gave me back in
Chicago. A pretty good read indeed. The book list.
September 29th, 2007
Kim and I are back from a week away. We left last Thursday the 20th
for a trip back to the midwest. Highlights include: staying at Jackies
Thursday night, getting abducted by the Tim and Julie Friday night for
dinner, swimming in the backyard pool at Linda and Tony's with Brian
on Saturday, staying with Kim's dad and Daphne Saturday night, seeing
our wedding location Sunday and attending the wedding of our friends
Cathy and Lora, Kim getting deathly ill Monday morning, going to the
emergency room in the afternoon, missing our flight, paying more for
altering our flight than the cost of the original ticket, getting
talked into taking a 6:15am flight on Tuesday, waking up at
3:40am... *shiver*, staying at the Super 8 in the Twin Cities, meeting
Dr. Chu and deciding that postponing surgery indefinitely was the
right choice for Kim (corrective eye), Kim relapses into deathly ill
for another night but we avoid another hospital visit, Wednesday the
day of rest with the hotel hot tub at night, visiting the Minneapolis
Sculpture Garden and Mall of America on Thursday, Visiting Kathy,
Eric, Christian and Sampson on Friday, getting delayed at the airport
because of construction on the airstip, switching flights to US
Airways, flying into Las Vegas at night, Kim and I played our first
slot machine ever, arriving in San Jose at 1:40am sans luggage,
starting the Saturn with dead battery, paying for long term parking
sans ticket (which is in the luggage), Kim driving Bear Creek Road at
night since I was falling asleep, arriving home around 3am and finding
Hank and Buddy sleeping together in the drawer and the house in good
(albeit bored-ferret) shape, falling asleep at 4am. Ahh!
If that felt like a run-on sentence then you are getting the point.
Still it was a pretty fun trip without much family drama which is
always good.
The postscript is that Kim got a sore throat and clogged sinuses. No
doubt from me since I caught a cold in St. Paul. I have pictures that
I'll post in a bit.
August 28th, 2007
Wooo! Look at all the updates. Kim has her Tai Chi class on Tuesdays
and I took the opportunity to finish chipping the slash in the
backyard. Afterwards we headed to the farmer's market in Felton for
our weekly supply of fruit and veggies.
I'll continue my way-back machine trip with the following video clips
from Big Basin (also taken February of last year). A short quarter
mile loop at the park headquarters has the two largest trees in the
forest.
Father of
the Forest: He's not as tall as the mother but he's bigger
around. I flipped the camera while shooting so excuse the flip. You
can read the height and girth from the sign if you look closely (and
quickly).
Mother of
the Forest: She's taller and has a cool opening. This time I had
the forethought to actually take a picture of the sign. Also
here's a photo
from the way-way-back machine to give you a sense of scale. They
actually aren't that keen on folks going in the tree so this is a
little self-incriminating but I'll just blame it on foolish youth and
not expound on dates and times.
August 26th, 2007
Some more video. I took these February of last year when I was
visiting the house to oversee some work being done on the grounds and
also to talk to the engineer who was designing the retention wall.
Clip 1:
Going up the front steps to take a look at a Douglas Fir tree that's
in the front yard. It's a lovely tree but a fruit tree probably would
have been better. Fir trees have a reputation of falling over at the
roots and unfortunately they can also be very large. We like our Fir
enough that we'd like to keep it a while longer.
Clip 2:
A look at the slide that happened in front of the house. I'm so glad
that's done with. Well as much as anything can be done in Boulder
Creek. ;)
Clip 3:
A little hill on the north side of the property has a nice Madrone
tree on it. It's a split trunk tree that has had half of it taken
down (long before I moved in in 1995). The tree isn't quite
flourishing but it's not ready to fall over just yet either. Another
tree we need to keep an eye on.
Clip 4:
And finally we have the Live Oak in the backyard (east side) which is
a really nice large triple oak. Aside from some normal branch die
off, it seems to be in pretty good shape.
Clip 5:
Here is a pan of the whole backyard from standing on top of the
northern hillock. Funny, seems like we've done a bunch of work on the
grounds but it really looks about the same. ;)
August 25th, 2007
I finally figured out how to rotate video! Kim and I have taken a
number of short video clips on our Konica and it didn't occur to me
until afterwards that video isn't as easy to rotate as a JPEG. Well,
I must actually tip my hat to Microsoft Moviemaker which turns out to
be pretty handy in that regard. It was sitting on my Alienware all
the time and I didn't give it a second glance.
As such I can finally post the link to the video clip
of the tree guy taking down a dangerous Tan Oak in our backyard. Keep
your eye on the guy on the ground holding the rope. That is a big
chunk of wood he's catching there. I actually got the chance to help
Ben (the tree guy) the next week when his assistant couldn't make it
to work. I got to catch a couple branches myself and it's a bit
humbling to feel the weight on that rope. Thank goodness for
friction.
August 3rd, 2007
Remiss again in updating. In fact I'm still not updating but I do
have a shiny list I started. It's a(n incomplete) list of books I've
read. Okay that's not so shiny. Still here it is: Book List
July 5th, 2007
Netflix is a wonderful thing and lately I've enjoyed sharing movie
ideas and reviews with friends via their Friends content on the
website. If you have Netflix and want to see what we've been
watching. Click This
Thing.
July 4th, 2007
Happy Independance Day! Kim and I are staying in. No parade, no
fireworks and no pancake breakfast at the local fire station for us.
The pancake breakfast would have been nice but I opted to sleep in
(and de facto that means Kim slept in too). Same deal with the parade
(too early for us) and no fireworks is a mixture of it being in Scotts
Valley (snooty) and us lamenting the fact that we can no longer walk
to the fireworks as we did in Oak Park.
However, our neighborhood had a very nice 3rd of July barbeque. I
made some vegetarian brautwurst which actually turned out really nice
(boiled in Wider hefeweizen with onions, saurkraut and german mustard
on a thick roll). We also brought a good sized salad and some peanut
butter, chocolate, puffed-rice treats (think Mashmallow krispies but
more deadly).
I include 3 links to photos of the retention wall
You might think that a 20k wall would be more impressive. I guess
that's what you get for custom labor. Too bad Honda doesn't sell
retention walls. I'm sure it would cost ten times less and look ten
times better.
Cheers to my youngest sister who just turned 40. I'm sure there is
something good about being 40. Or perhaps as my oldest sister says
'it's better than the alternative' (not turning 40...)
June 14th, 2007
My birthday was on Tuesday and now I'm 37. 37 is an okay age to be.
Kim and I went for a walk in the woods and I brought home two ticks.
Those suckers (literally) really hold on I gotta say. I think I
managed to get them off without leaving anything behind. No infection
yet at least.
Today we took a truck load of stuff to the recycling station in Ben
Lomond. I gotta say, there is nothing so liberating as taking a whole
load of stuff and being rid of it. The Squatters (as we like to call
the menagerie that lived here in our absence) had tied up an old metal
futon frame as a trellis in the yard. We untied that thing and dropped
it off in the scrap metal bin. Voila! Freedom.
Also it's very sobering (pardon the pun) to go through all the bottles
and cans of the products we've consumed over a few months. It would
be interesting to tally up how many gallons of soda, juice, beer,
wine, etc. that we go through each year.
Kim pulled an old wrought iron chair and some fire tenders out of the
scrap metal bin and gleefully put them in the truck. My dad would be
so proud.
June 4th, 2007
Yesterday was Kim's birthday so we went out and celebrated in style.
After brunch at the Saturn cafe we headed down to the Santa Cruz
boardwalk. We did some low G's first to let brunch settle and had a
good time with the Sky Glider, the Haunted Castle and the Speed
Bumps. The Speed Bumps are bumper cars but there are rules now! You
have to go in a clockwise direction and you even have to wear a
shoulder harness. Gone are the Mad Max apocalyptic cars of our youth
where you got your money's worth by being in traction the rest of the
day. Still we were wearing grins after our bumpy ride. We should
probably replace the cars on the I-17 with bumper cars and then people
would be all smiles after collisions.
So one more old person ride to do, the Ferris Wheel, and then we were
ready for a main course. The Giant Dipper
is the U.S.'s 6th oldest roller coaster but it's still a great ride.
Then I sat and watched as Kim went on the Fireball which is something
like the Pirate Ship meets Rip Tide meets insanity. I looked on with
a mixture of admiration and incredulity as folks got tossed up into
the air and flipped around like flap jacks. Kim keeps her Carnival
Ride Dare Devil crown for one more year.
We hit another roller coaster next, the Hurricane, which is teeny tiny
but still manages to thrown in a good half dozen cork screws and
dips. I called it 'Roller Coaster Concentrate', Kim likened it to a
'Roller Coaster Pill'. Feeling braver then I agreed to go onto the Double Shot.
I was pleased that I managed to enjoy the ride and not whimper or cry
but declined to buy the photo that captured my deer-in-head-lights bug
eye look for long term rememberance.
We wrapped up our boardwalk visit with a cotton candy and a ride on
the Cliff Hanger that puts the rider in a hang glider like position.
After that we were off to Scott's Valley to catch the 7:30 showing of
Pirates of the Carribean: World's End. Kim enjoyed it quite a bit and
I found many parts entertaining (just don't think too much when you
watch it). We got out of the movie at 10:30pm and fulfilled Kim's
last birthday wish of cake at the Safeway where we grabbed a couple
frozen pizzas and two pieces of German Chocolate cake.
I think for my birthday I'm ready to do some knitting or something...I
guess a walk in the woods will fit the bill.
May 23rd, 2007
We're back home with no troublesome travel stories to tell which is a
good thing indeed. United Airlines may have improved substantially
since I used them in the 90s and perhaps I'm a bit wiser now as well
by avoiding connections at (almost) any cost. Worse thing that
happened is losing my parking ticket for long term parking but even
that wasn't bad since Big Brother now keeps an inventory of all cars
in the lot and they knew how long I had stayed anyway. Just had to
pay a $15 'loser' charge. I can live with that.
The week itself went pretty well. Kim and I didn't really lend too
much help to the garage sale but we were present and Kim gleaned a few
boxes of clothes, shoes and jewlrey. Shoes and jewlrey are like
catnip for (a lot of) women. Kim went there with a stern demeanor
about how one must be firm with relatives and just tell them that 'no
thank you, I won't have any use or desire for < Insert object here
>'. But flash sparkly beads and shiny shoes for free and it's
"Squee!". That's okay, we only had to ship one box via Fed Ex and
they are inheritence from her Grandma. Can't complain about that
(well maybe I would if they were all pink fluffy bears and stuff but
we aren't there yet).
I got to play tech nerd for Uncle Tony who is dialing up AOL on a
28.8K modem with a Pentium II. A worn out motherboard battery caused
his BIOS settings to vanish leaving a IRQ conflict between his second
serial port and his ISA modem. Luckily I just happen to have the
Windows 95 know how to diagnose and solve it. Big points for the
in-law boy here.
We wrapped up our visit with the memorial brunch at Bertucci's in
Highwood which went well. A few words were said but most of the water
was flowing under the surface. Heavy emotion lay in there air. Bida
Marie Harvick Seybold, you will be missed.
We managed to squeeze in dinners with Kim's Dad and Daphnie as well as
Aunt Jackie. Good times there.
Now we're happy to be home, the Redwoods calmly inviting with
Buddha-worthy serenity.
May 14th, 2007
Tomorrow (early!) Kim and I head to San Jose airport to go back to
Chicago for a week. We are to help out with the family yardsale in
the wake of Kim's grandmother's passing.
May 6th, 2007
This weekend is the Santa Cruz Sole Jam Footbag Tournament. When AJ
And Jeremy from the Santa Cruz footbag club told me they were going to
host a tournament, I must admit I had my reservations, I didn't think
we would draw much of a crowd to our little seaside footbag haven.
I was very pleased then to see twenty two registered players
yesterday, with a pair of them coming from as far as Portland,
Oregon. The party room they reserved at 99 Bottles was filled last
night. It was a really good turn out. Special thanks to the Oakland
Chaos club for coming down in force to really flesh out the number of
competitors.
April 17th, 2007
Just a quick note to say that the retention wall is done. Done at
last! Done at last! If you go back in the Rants to the Feb 6th, 2005
entry, you will see where the fun all began. Now over two years later
it is done. Well you know, as done as anything ever is. I suspect
that there may be another entry at some point about the next part of
the hill that needs supporting. And of course now begins the chore of
trying to make the wall look nice and not like you are coming to stay
at Stalag 17.
March 26th, 2007
Saturday evening our whole neighborhood went to a benefit for the
Congolese Rangers who are dedicated to protecting the remaining
Mountain Gorillas in their area. Our neighbor Val is curator at the
Happy Hollow Zoo
and she worked for like a week ahead of time to prepare the majority
of the food. You can see a little about the people and purpose which
the benefit was aimed here. The event itself was
a great success and via silent and live auction, raised many thousands
of dollars to help support the rangers.
The next day Kim and I had some folks from the neighborhood over for a
small gathering where we had entirely way too much food. Everyone
brought something for a pot luck but Mark and Val also brought a ton
of food leftover from the zoo benefit! I think that's the first time
we've opened up our house for a neighborhood party. It was really
nice sitting out on the deck with our glasses of wine in the cool
spring night among the Redwoods.
And bright and early we were up to see Eric Jacobson's crew arrive to
pump concrete into the holes for the I-beams. They had to pump the
concrete up all the way from the Band/Sunset intersection as the
concrete truck couldn't make the corner. So now we wait for the
concrete to cure for a couple weeks before the lagging can be put in.
March 23rd, 2007
Jacobson's crew was back this morning. Eric isn't very good about
calling ahead. It's a little before eight o'clock and we hear a large
truck coming up the hill. Sure enough up comes his work truck with
three 18' I-beams on it followed behind by the backhoe. I must admit
I never before realized what a thing of beauty a backhoe is. Watching
Roberto lift the I-beams off the truck with a chain attached to the
front bucket and then lowering them into place with the chain attached
to the rear boom was quite impressive. I think I might lapse into
giddy insanity if I were piloting one. Toss the neighbors abandoned
cars into the ravine or some such. It's impressive to see the care
and restraint Roberto uses. With great power...
The other news is the old water heater is gone and the on demand unit
is in place. It took a couple days to get it straight but Mike Finley
showed up and made sure everything was working well. It works very
well. Endless hot water. Well until your propane or your money runs
out.
I must also relay the sad news that Kim's grandmother has passed
away. She died at the tender old age of 87 and went in the presence
of family under the care of hospice folks. It's pretty clear to me
that she was ready to go.
March 16th, 2007
The retention wall is finally underway! Eric Jacobson showed up
yesterday with a dump truck and a back hoe and took away the land
slide that happened two years ago. There was a little to do about
where to drill the holes but that got sorted out and now there are six
holes in front of our house that are twelve feet deep. Stare down a
twelve foot hole and you realize that nothing you drop in there will
be coming back soon. Now that the holes are dug, Eric is going to
order the steel (6 inch wide, 18 foot long steel I-beams) which will
be encased in cement 18" across. My lord, it feels like Hoover Dam.
March 9th, 2007
Yesterday I spent the day up at Thunderhill Raceway Park with
my neighbor Mark. Mark is the chief crewman of a D-class Sports
Racing team. Thursday was the day for Mark and the team to shake out
the latest modifications to the car. The engine is 1000 CCs
putting out around 165 hp. The car weighs about
900-1000 pounds with the driver sitting in it. The car is very accessible since
the body panels come right off with locking nuts.
To make the four hour trip up to the race track, we met in San Jose
the day before and took the owner's RV. We arrived at
the gate of the track around 1 AM and got some sleep before waking up
at 6:30 AM to get inside and get the car ready. The race car was
towed behind the RV in a trailer which made the whole rig barely legal (in
fact Mark said it is not legal in Oregon but they'll let you go
through as long as you don't get off the highway).
The race track was pretty empty for the most part. We shared it with
a few other folks (including this stable of Porsches). The car, while quite
impressive is just beset by constant problems. Over the course of the
day the team worked to fix two severe oil leaks, reset the headers,
went through 2 sets of tires, replaced the brake pads, constantly
tweaked with the transmission, adjusted structs, replaced springs,
ride height, wing placement and angle, monitored air flow across the
body and took copious amounts of onboard video for later analysis.
Still I was constantly amused to see our car eat all the other cars on
the track. It blasted around the Porsche GTs like they were stuck in
3rd gear. The track is three miles long and the DSR 5 can make it
around that in one minute and forty seven seconds. That averages out
to over a hundred miles an hour. The car can pull 2 Gs going into
corners and Mark suspects that it generates enough down force to drive
upside down.
This tire died
early in the day, after the driver Sig went around his first lap, all
in first gear, came immediately into the pit and came screeching to a
halt. He thought the transmission was fried since the car wasn't
shifting. Mark asked him if he had held down the shift button for
five seconds, which turns on the electronic Pringle Transmission. "Oh
man!", Sig said, "That's totally all on video too!". Burned!
Other exotic cars visited the track over the course of the day as well
like this Radical. We kept at
the car and sending Sig around the track right up until the whistle
blew at 5pm. After that everything got put back into the trailer to go home.
Even after we got back to the owners house to drop off the car, there
was still a bit more work to do as the shocks had to be taken off the
car to be returned to the manufacturer for testing/replacement. At
the end of the day, the team often asks itself "Why do we do this?!".
Heh, not sure I know! But it is pretty cool.
Some short video of Sig going round the track (Force 5 is the teams
name, sorry Kevin!):
Force 5 video1
Force 5 video2
Force 5 video3
and a couple junkie videos, the first of:
Darth Vetter
and
Porsche GT3
Feburary 16th, 2007
Just a note that Buddy made it through his surgery with no problems.
The vet found that both adrenal glands were slightly enlarged so she
removed the left one (the easy and safe one). The also found a large,
isolated insulinoma on the pancreas that she was able to remove. She
didn't see any other tumors on the pancreas which is very unusal. We
are excited about the possibility that Buddy's low blood sugar problem
could be greatly mitigated by this. We got to see him briefly and, no
surprise, he looked totally wiped out, but otherwise he looked fine.
Hooray for Avian and Exotic Pets of Monterey!
February 15th, 2007
We are up before dawn this morning to take our other ferret, Buddy, to
Monterey for surgery (both adrenal and pancreas!). He is in good
spirits and there is every reason to hope that he shall react well to
the procedure. Still we can't help but be anxious about the risks.
February 9th, 2007
Well the furnace is installed but we don't get to use it tonight. As
fate would have it a tree fell across Rte. 9 this morning and not only
took down the power lines but also caused a telephone pole to come
down with it. It took PG&E until 6pm to get a new pole in place and
the power reconnected. The Finley's explained that they wanted to be
here to monitor the first run of the furnace and make sure everything
was working well, which is a very reasonable request. So tonight we
burn wood, nothing really new there.
To escape a day of no electricity (not such a rare thing here in the
winter), Kim and I went to grab some breakfast (well breakfast for
us), only to find that Route 9 was closed to clear the fallen tree and
pole. We poked around on the neighborhood roads for a while but
didn't manage to find the Northwest Passage. Eventually we took 236
through Big Basin State Park to get to town but that took a good forty
minutes of driving time. At that point (since the Mountain Inn was
closed) we just kept driving all the way to Santa Cruz to go to the
Santa Cruz Diner. Might as well make the best of it. That did take a
good amount of time so by the time we got back to Boulder Creek the
road was open again.
January 26th, 2007
Kim is away this week, visiting family and friends in Chicago and also
helping out our friend Josh at an outdoor travel expo (his company Wild Planet
Adventures).
I've been clearing out the small shed along the side of the house that
held our old furnace. Our new furnace is scheduled to be installed
next week. That will be nice! The woodstove has been great for
keeping us warm this winter but if you burn wood for a winter you will
find out why people switched to gas! And this is a California winter
I'm talking about. This would be ten times crazier if there were
actually freezing temperatures on a routine basis.
For media there has been a bunch of stuff. I finished reading "Anansi
Boys" by Neil Gaiman (author of the Sandman series), Ursula LeGuin's
"Dispossessed", which I had read before but devoured again and Carl
Sagan's Gifford Lectures from 1985 entitled "The Varieties of
Scientific Experience". I'd recommend all three. Very good books
all. Gaiman's is mostly just a fun ride, however I will say that his
incorporation of mythology into his stories belies a level of
thoughtful coolness that I admire. LeGuin's "Dispossed" is an essay
on possession clevery disguised as a novel, and a very good and
entertaining novel at that! Finally Sagan's book might as well be my
current handbook on spirituality (surprising isn't it?!).
For film Kim and I went to see "Pan's Labyrinth" at the Del Mar
Theater in Santa Cruz. Really good. Check it out on IMDB and via Netflix
we've watched "Marry Poppins" (feminism via movie for children), Ghost
in the Shell (existentialism wrapped up in anime) and "Whisper of the
Heart" (Miyazaki comes through again with another coming of age story
portraying strong female characters).
Oh I also borrowed my neighbor's truck and chainsaw today to limb and
buck a fallen tan oak for firewood. The tree had died and fallen
across the fire road at the northern end of our neighborhood. So I
felt like I was doing a good dead by clearing it out (at least the 4x4
owner's will be able to drive to safety in the case of a forest
fire...hopefully they'll take Kim and I too). So I have a chainsaw
(but it's electric) and a truck (but it's 2 wheel drive) so I had to
rely on the neighbor with his 4x4 diesel and 2 stroke Husqvarna. Ah
well, environmental decisions have their draw backs.
January 10th, 2007
Kim and I went to a slideshow in Santa Cruz tonight given by Jim Bell of
Cornell University. Dr. Bell was (is) in charge of the color imaging on the
"Spirit" and "Opportunity" Martian Rovers. The photos were just great and Dr.
Bell gave a really good talk with a lot of info behind each photo presented.
Kim picked up his book of photos which the good doctor was happy to sign
"To Kim - Mars Rocks! Jim Bell". Nice. :)
We also picked up a pickup truck load or more wood. So far we've burned up
probably close to three cords of wood this winter. We proably keep the house
a little warmer than is absolutely necessary but it sure is nice keeping a
fire going. Very homey.
January 1st, 2007
A Happy New Year to you all. The holidays are just about behind us
and it has been a very pleasant one from Kim and I this first season
together in Boulder Creek. We decided to stay in last night and
enjoyed a toast to the New Year just between the two of us.
2006 Rants
2005 Rants
