Long days

It's true, I did go square dancing last Wednesday on my night off from Spanish. I wasn't exactly planning to square dance. In my head I was just going To a square dance. At which I would hear my banjo teacher's band play. And maybe there would be people moving around. Except that then I also danced. And it was Great. I really am getting all countrified by this banjo playing. This is one of the benefits of not getting enough sleep to think of reasons why you might not want to square dance. Because actually it's fun and you should want to do it.

But the amount of time I have for other fun things is getting squeezed again. I am trying to be on my better behavior after being yelled at over and over at work for not doing more than is humanly possible to do in 40 hours per week. And I object to being accused of having poor time management skills because I am not able to do in 40 hours what I couldn't do in 60. And yet, I find myself working longer hours because I dislike being the slacker. Sigh. Internal conflict.

Plus, I discovered today that one of my favorite coworkers was laid off! This is tragic because 1. he is one of my favorites 2. his job totally wasn't redundant like they said the jobs they cut were 3. he really enjoyed his job 4. there are others of us who would have been more amenable to being laid off. I am hoping for him though that he gets this new spot he's working on lining up.

Also in good things, I got to see my sister's play this weekend! In which my brother also played the music. And the English teacher, who was in charge of guitar playing, also smashed a guitar onstage! During halftime, I helped sell snacks for the Band Booster club to raise money for band uniforms and we raised fully enough money for a whole uniform just about! (They are Expensive). And being in LA also meant I got to see John for very nearly the entirety of Sunday, which made up for my flight being delayed just enough so that BART was closed by the time my plane landed and I of course had to get the one taxi whose credit card swiper broke earlier that day when I had no cash and he got to charge me extra to wait while I got cash to make up for his broken machine, but I made it home in one piece, so there's that.

This whole idea of me being particularly fond of a boy who is particularly fond of me I still find pretty odd, but I suppose I can deal with odd.

Lucky day

Guess what I just found in the closet?

Three brand new glue sticks!! Woohoo! I was down to my last tube, and they didn't have the ones I like the last time I was at the art store. And, how can you get by without gluesticks, really?

I mean, sure, I have a veritable tape arsenal in the bathroom closet, but still. It just feels better knowing I can glue one bit of paper to another.

I may need to make another mosaic/collage to celebrate. ...one of these days.

Postcards from abroad, episode 7: On spring

Seeing flowers on the trees at work and around Oakland reminds me of my first day in Kyoto. It was April, during the Cherry Blossom Festival, and I remember taking Molly's tour of the downtown area in something of a jet-lagged daze, having spent a sleepless night on an overnight bus from Tokyo. It was maybe one of the most perfect days I've ever had the time to step back and notice. I remember the yellow light, the way the air felt sweet, and a sense of newness. The way everything was new and fresh - Japan, the shapes of the houses, the letters on buildings, the sounds in the street and the pink petals on the trees.

Looking at this photo again now, I'm struck by blue the sky is. And how I know the sky in China looks nothing like it.

Awake

Not sure if it's the coughing or the work stress keeping me up.
Time to dig through the bathroom cupboard for cold medicine, I think.

The curious times we live in

I have just received a letter addressed to Mr. Elizabeth Schmidt Jr. thanking him (?) for his donation to the soldiers in Iraq.

I suppose that is what my credit card was stolen for. That, and a subscription to the Columbia House dvd club.

Curious, curious.

Catch up

What have I even done in the past couple of weeks. Not have free time, that's what.

Here is a brief recap:
BLUEGRASS BAND PRACTICE has started up again. Having three minutes to myself a week is making me not as great a banjo player as I may have appeared to be when I was practicing more, but this is ok because no one else in the band can play banjo. The mandolin player Pat has a super awesome rehearsal space in his parents' "garage" that we have been using. There are stage lights, a grand piano, two drum kits, plenty of chairs, inspirational (music-related) posters, and even music note string lights, so we've been practicing there. On St. Patrick's day, his mom cooked a positively first rate corned beef and potatoes and soda bread and carrots and cabbage dinner and we put on a little show for the guests. Good stuff. People love us. Now I just need to not forget my parts in the middle of songs...

MY COUSIN'S WEDDING in Los Angeles last weekend was just beautiful. I kept remarking on how darling a couple David and Kayo are. Sigh. A good time was had by all. I even got to take home one of the centerpieces (the most fantastic white hydrangeas in the prettiest turquoise vases), or rather, I took it out to the car and then sent it home with John since it couldn't come on the plane with me. And John was there! The sibs and I drove down to his place on Friday night to bake housewarming cookies (although I think I forgot to tell anyone they were housewarming cookies, so I'll probably make more housewarming baked goods) and play a little poker. I had not been previously aware that my siblings were so intent on becoming cardsharks. Thankfully, John was on my team to assure me that I was in fact allowed to look at my cards before betting - thanks John! In other excitement, John caught the garter at the wedding, which seems to have set the wheels in various maternal heads turning. All in due time!

SPANISH is going well. There was a nice, easy to read first letter of the alphabet on the second test we got back, which suggests to me that I can slack off a little more when I need to decompress since I am taking this class pass not pass after all.

MY TAXES have been filed! I think I did them in record time this year, which I am proud of.

THE BOTANICAL GARDEN is absolutely gorgeous these days. Spring has officially sprung. I am madly in love with that place.

Coming up:
My sister is performing Tommy - the musical by the Who - next weekend, which I am flying home for - how could I miss it?
New York to visit Ciana with a special guest appearance by my sister the architect!
More botanical garden!

Plant love

I'm sipping tea now, but just a few moments (and a nice hot shower) ago I was covered in all manner of dirt, wood chips, pond muck and plant debris, and I have to say I enjoyed it. Thank goodness for another fabulous morning at the Botanical Garden, eh? It really warms the soul.

Today I got to join a "work crew" - and let me tell you, they were serious about the work part. We cleared maybe three or four cubic metres of dead reeds and other viney plants from the pond at the top of the botanical garden, beyond the Nursery holding area, near the Children's Garden. Those serious-looking yellow fisherman rain pants and jackets were involved, as were some of those pants with the boots attached for wading. Then I pulled maybe six or eight cubic feet of weeds from a small strip of path - and that was all before lunch!

One of the most excellent women who runs the Nursery is also a founding member of the Arizmendi cooperative up the street, so there is always pizza for lunch, and today a lovely volunteer baked an enormous four layer, chocolate rum cake, heavy on the rum, for everyone with March birthdays. How great are these people??

After lunch I climbed a woodchip mountain to loosen and shovel woodchips down to the other volunteers to fill wheelbarrow upon wheelbarrow and 15 gallon tub upon 15 gallon tub with woodchips for the new beds we're clearing in the holding area up on the hill - the kind of physical labor you'll remember when you get out of bed the next morning, but what happy pain!

If only I could be up to this sort of joyous outdoor activity every day. And could you even imagine getting paid to do it? What heaven.

Bad fish day

Yesterday was, to put it mildly, a bad fish day. Or, at least that's what we called it around the office.

Emilio is alive and well, thankfully, but the foul smell hovering in our cube (that forced us to work on couches in entryways and scattered among the empty desks farthest from where we usually sit) turned out to be the death-scent of the occupants of all the other fish tanks. You couldn't really even see the bodies for the cloudy water.

And on this day, of all days, my manager chose to spend our meeting together not just asking why I hadn't gotten more work done. This time, he thought it prudent to mention that some one of my coworkers had come to him with the claim that I hadn't followed up on some unnamed action item. He even went so far as to insinuate that my reputation as a reliable coworker was at stake - what if, for example, I had planned band practices and then just not shown up week after week? what would people think??

Wow. Way to play the wrong card, sir.

When pressed, he was unable to come up with a single example of a specific thing I had not done - with the exception of a large project that we'd discussed months ago was not going to be finished by now. Instead, he insisted that I knew best what it was that I hadn't accomplished.

He asked what I was doing that was making me so busy and unproductive (not in so many words, of course, but that was the gist). I replied that I'd been sick for the past seven months, which is true (as I'm about to dash off, sick again, to the San Francisco Botanical Garden <3 this morning) and that I'm rather busy outside of work, which is really none of his business. I think it's entirely possible that I am not doing as much work as my coworkers. I work 8 hours a day and their lives are consumed by work only. I am not shy to admit that I haven't given myself the flexibility to work the amount of overtime I had been working before. I am also not willing to rearrange my schedule to be able to do that again. So, if we want to have a discussion about the fact that I'm sick because I feel pressured to work from home instead of taking sick days and that I'm getting poor reviews because my manager has a vague feeling that I'm not working as much as people who work more than 40 hours a week, I'm up for it. Not only that, I'd like to get it in writing.

In any case, I returned to my desk and made an attempt to finish a few more things before heading out for the day, which I did. And then missed my shuttle. The one shuttle to my stop.

Of course, the next bus to Civic Center was an old bus that could fit only half of my leg in the amount of space between seats with no possible reprieve due to immoveable seat backs. I don't think I've ever been on any mode of transportation with that little leg room.

But the day is over now, and I'm going to do my best not to think about it at least until Monday.

excitement!

I get to see John not only on Friday night, but also Saturday! And most likely even also on Sunday!!

It doesn't get much more exciting than that!

(sin titulo)

I think languages are nice for how they let you understand more people. And communicate with more people. But sometimes, like today, I'm torn between needing to say things and not necessarily wanting to be understood.

So, a list is in order.

Good things:
The magnolias and plum trees and cherry trees and everything is in bloom.
I may win a ukulele, which will be my first guitar, although I will need to pay for it.
I have a banjo lesson today.

Other things:
It's dark now when I wake up, and still dark by the time I get home.
I can't sleep, which probably means I am stressed.

Waking life

Where to start.

I had a dream last night. And I am one to have epic dreams on occasion. These almost always involve some herculean responsibility that falls to me because no one else can or will do it. Or some sort of trial. Or both. Even when the scenery is extraordinary, these are usually exhausting. And violent. And disappointing because I am always alone.

And you could say that these dreams stem from some overbearing sense of duty that my conscious self is absolutely aware of. There are things that one must do because they are the right thing to do.

But lately, things have been different. I feel content in my waking life. I feel good. I feel like -

I feel like Schroedinger's cat that had assumed it was in one state, but has had its box opened and is discovered to be in fact very much alive. Or a photon that had always thought of itself as a particle and finds that when push comes to shove it demonstrates the properties of a wave.

And I wondered when that sort of thing would start to show up in my dreams. I've been waiting.

Last night it happened.

I must have flown the whole world over with my father, who could not fly on his own. But instead of being chased, we were just looking for our way home. We never found it. He'd suggest one way, and I'd be sure our hostel was the other direction and we'd stray farther and farther from our village as I followed his directions, but I had the most wonderful time. We saw tropical islands, the building of a bamboo bridge, clowns walking the streets of modern day western towns with the brightest and most detailed store fronts. Everyone wore the most incredible clothes and hats. We found these incredible kites (made of a small umbrella with a mass of prayer flags tied to the handle - magically, it was the prayer flags that caught the wind) to help us when I was having trouble flying. My wallet was stolen at one point while we were flying low. Or maybe it fell out of my pocket, but it didn't worry me at all. Some of the places we flew over were pretty gritty, but still fantastical. I just knew everything would be alright.

In the bag

You know how I'm a professional musician now? Well, get this.

So a skeleton BP/P crew made of myself, Steven and Maya headed out to the Black Magic Voodoo Lounge in SF yesterday to make a little open mic appearance. I think I expected either throngs of puffed up hipsters or a spotting of wizened hecklers, but neither was the case!

We arrived at Lombard and Van Ness half an hour after the supposed beginning time to find a cute and classy little bar with 10ish reasonable and friendly looking people in it. The infamous Ray was still setting things up, but upon seeing even just the shapes of our instrument cases, he demanded that we play not just three our four songs, but something more on the order of six. Surely we must have six songs!

We puzzled it over at a small table buried under piles of instruments and came up with a good seven song set list as equipment was arranged. It turns out open mics are frequented primarily by solo acts but we managed to squeeze all our supplies into a little corner and huddled around the mics. Bluegrass-style, he called it. <3

And then there we were standing up at the front of an even more populated bar being announced by the talented Ray. A better introduction that you'd get if you were playing any normal venue. Who gets introductions?? I've only ever seen them otherwise at the Twang Cafe, which incidentally would have happened last night as well.

With that, we were playing, and I was singing. In Public. And shaking eggs, ringing bicycle bells. I even managed to play the glockenspiel bit of Scenic World reasonably without hitting too many stray notes (which I can never do!) and even then I think they were all at least in the right key, which is practically just as good as hitting the right notes! I even managed to learn Picture on the ukulele (which I had never done before yesterday) and play it standing on one foot so that I could attempt to lean over to the mic to do the Ooooo'ing parts.

All in all, a success.

A great success, and Ray the m.c. came over to us afterwards to insist that we give him contact info (good thing we had those handy block print flyers hand colored by my dad, eh???). I scribbled my email address on the back and he told us the banjulele was so cute and that he loved our instrumentation banjo-fiddle-guitar so much that we should really come back and be one of the featured acts at an open mic (wherein he would advertise that we would be playing such and such day at 7pm and we could invite our friends to a Proper Show. With Amplification! (well, some amplification)).

And not only that! I like to think that my cowboy boots, lacey flannel shirt and bandana (along with the banjulele) helped to give him the impression that we might just make a great opening act for this one country band with a show coming up....

We shall see what the future will hold!!

Rockstardom is pounding at the door!!

Were you aware of it? vol. 15: Miracle 'do

The story Fox news calls 'unbeWEAVEable'.



I may never brush my hair again.

Simply Delicious White Bread

In the spirit of Gerald of Wales (see especially his treatise on Ireland), I hope make this blog as great a wealth of knowledge as possible.

And for that reason, have decided that today is the most auspicious day to post my first recipe. (Not of course counting this).

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Simply Delicious White Bread
Although I haven't made it in a while, this is one of my fall back recipes. Made famous by its weekly appearance at Stebbins dinners during my tenure as a cook. This really is a co-op sized recipe, so feel free to cut it in half.

Ingredients:
5 c. warm water
2 T. dry yeast (or 2 packages active dry yeast)
4 T. sugar
2 T. salt
14 c. (white) flour, preferably unbleached!
1 egg white to glaze (optional)

MAKES 4 LOAVES.

Instruction:
Pour 5 c. warm (not boiling!)* water in a large bowl and sprinkle the yeast on top. Allow the yeast to proof (turn frothy) and stir in the sugar and salt.
Add 14 cups of white flour to the water mixture.
Knead for about 10 minutes until it makes a nice soft dough.
Raise till doubled in size.
Punch down, knead 3 or 4 times to remove air. Cut the dough into 4 pieces and shape into loaves.
Place dough in greased loaf tins (good for sandwiches). -OR- Place dough on a greased baking sheet and slash the loaves three times.
Brush loaves with egg** and allow to rise. Now is a good time to preheat your oven.
When loaves have roughly doubled in size, bake for 15 minutes at 450ºF and for 30 minutes more at 350ºF.***
Allow loaves to cool and freeze any loaves you're not going to eat right away. (Wrap frozen loaves in foil).
Enjoy!

*If your water's too hot you'll kill the yeast.
**The egg glaze makes it a lot easier to tell when the bread is done because it will turn a nice golden color, whereas unglazed loaves stay a floury white.
***Baking at 450ºF first gives it a nice thick crust. If you don't like crusty bread, you can bake it at 350ºF the whole way through.

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