Starry Wisdom

The contractor wasn’t able to make it. He won’t be able to make it until next saturday. I’m going to call a leak specialist tomorrow, in the meantime.

That’s the weather. More on this later.

This weekend my CSA, Eatwell Farm, had a tomato sauce party. They invited members over to the farm (in Dixon, CA) to make and can tomato sauce from tomatoes that were too ripe to send down the road to SF, and to camp out. Mackenzie and I had been to the farm in May for Strawberry picking, but we had never spent the night before (this was the second campout of the year, the first, a garlic party, was on her birthday weekend), so we didn’t know exactly what to expect. Still, it seemed like fun, so I signed us up for it.

Armed with pots, pans, knives, and a borrowed propane stove, we drove out to the farm, arriving fashionably late. Some people, who got there when the event began at 11am, were nearly finished for the day by the time we showed up at 2PM! No matter, it was a race and not a sprint for us, as we were spending the night. We cooked up an initial sauce, which ended up only filling one of my jars, but when that couldn’t fill up all of the canning jars I brought, we used the leftover to create the starting point of a second sauce. We ended up having to make a third, smaller batch, to eat with dinner that night. It was certainly a learning experience as I only ever made sauce from fresh tomatoes once before, when I roasted the heck out of some romas and then ground them in a Moulinex (note to self, bring that next time!).

After we finished up the sauce and got in line for canning (they had several pressure canners set up, but as some people made entire flats of mason jars of sauce, there was quite a wait to actually get on the stove, we ate some pasta and sauce for dinner. Bread would have been nice, as you use the same ingredients to make buschetta as tomato sauce, and there was bountiful garlic, tomatoes and basil. And after dinner we were given a tour of their amazing earthen roofed farmhouse, which is under construction. We even got to climb to the top of the roof!

After the tour, when we were packing the cooking utensils back in the car, a woman came up to us and asked if we lived on Lily St, which happens to be the street I live on. I said I did, and looked at her quizzically, and she told us that she too lives on Lily. She had noticed us packing the car this morning (and I guess I sort of noticed them too, but didn’t make a big memory of it) and Mackenzie’s neon sneakers keyed her in to the fact that we were the same people. So strangely, I drove 100 miles and managed to meet some neighbors! And even crazier, my jars and theirs were combined into one batch for the pressure canner through somewhat random chance!

After a remarkably good nights sleep for lying on the ground, we were treated to a breakfast of the best flour tortillas I’ve ever eaten, and the farm’s delicious, FRESH, eggs from their pastured chickens. These eggs are super delicious, and I highly recommend them (they have them at Rainbow sometimes, for the SF locals). When breakfast was over we went on a farm tour, and were given free reign to pick strawberries, eggplants and zucchini blossom from some over abundant (or soon to be shredded for chicken feed) fields. We snagged some strawberries and eggplants, and head out to Davis to see Mackenzie’s Sister and her family for lunch.

All in all it was a pretty great adventure, and I didn’t even mention the kitchen cart trial that was the reason that we showed up late until the end.

Yesterday I went on a picnic excursion to the Marin Headlands (which is just north of the Golden Gate Bridge) with Mackenzie. We ate on Rodeo beach, which was a nice little beach, and afterwards while using the facilities, I read about the coastal defense batteries in the area, and saw that there were a couple you could drive to nearby, so we went that way.

I had known something about the Golden Gate coastal defense batteries from various sources, and I had seen some of the remnants on the San Francisco side which I guess are part of Fort Winfield Scott – which is the famous Fort Point from Vertigo, but I didn’t really know much about what was in place on the other side of the Golden Gate.

It turns out that there are too main forts, Fort Cronkhite, which is hard to spell, and Fort Barry. Fort Cronkhite is behind Rodeo Beach and required a bit of a hike, which we weren’t in a mood for, to visit it’s main battery. Fort Barry, on the other hand, is easy to do some park and walk site-seeing, and has some really cool things. One of which is a Nike launch site SF-88L, which is restored as a ‘museum’ but was not open (and evidently barely is). I should have probably had us pull over and taken some picture, but alas.

The two man things we looked at were Battery Mendell, which is a pre World War I battery which housed disappearing guns. Evidently this was awesome for defense against ships, but pretty weak against air power. You can scramble all over the gun emplacements, which is pretty neat.

Here is the whole thing, which I shot from Battery Wallace, on another ridge:

Battery Wallace seems to have originally been a similar sort of battery to Mendell, but was casemated to protect against air attack in 1942:

You can see the gist of what this in this photo shot from Battery Mendell:

And here you can see it up close (probably too upclose):

I only had my point and shoot with me, as I wasn’t expecting to be doing much site seeing of note, but here is a link to the related flickr gallery.

I’m trying to decide if I should do NANOWRIMO this year or not. For the record, I’ve attempted it every year since 2003, not getting too far that first year, due to job searching, but completing it in 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2008 (in 2006 I only got to about 45,000 words, due to moving in November).

I’m trying to fathom if I have the desire to go through with it again, knowing that if I want to I can complete it (most of the stuff I’ve done has been incredibly stupid, but hey, it’s easier to write stupid than smart). It’s a lot of hours of time blocked off, when I could just as well be doing something else, either more or less useful. I have a seed of an idea, but I would have to spend some time prethinking of it before I could actually write on it, which means even more time spent.

Should I or shouldn’t I? I have 26 days left to decide!

It’s really simple: go to an all ages show!

I went to see Los Campesinos! (the most exciting thing to come out of Wales since the new Doctor Who) last night at Slim’s. It was an all ages show, and while I think at least half the club were of drinking age, most everyone was barely so (or got in with a fake ID). That being said, it was a really good show. The opening band, Sky Larkin, were, frankly, an adorable trio of youngsters from Yorkshire. Much like LC! themselves, they are indie pop, and were a fun opening act.

The headliners did not disappoint, playing a good mix of songs from their newer album We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed (which I don’t like as much as…) and their older album, Hold on Now, Youngster…. Age is relative, both are from 2008! Their songs are super poppy and fun in general, and they are really energetic live – so much so that Gareth Campesinos! had to reach for his brand new inhaler that he obtained via posting on Twitter, as he had lost his on their US tour.

During the finale/encore the people from Sky Larkin came back out, and half of Los Campesinos! came down to the floor, which was odd, but sort of cool.

A few iphone pics:

and supar crappy on the floor during the encore:

I went to Seattle this weekend to visit my friend Steve and his family. Last time I was there, in september, his daughter Holly was 16 months old and barely talking. Now she has a pretty good vocabular but not much in the grammar departmen :). She really is an adorable kid, though, even if she is a bit ADD – yeah I guess little ones tend to be that way but Steve and Jum both say she’s a bit more so than her peers.

The famous Seattle weather was in full form so we didn’t get to do as many outside things as last time. But we did go take pictures at the Japanese garden, which was the place for holly to look at ducks, and validated taking the SLR along on the trip. I also got to hang out with just Steve a fair bit – we saw the Cinematic Titanic Live show Saturday night (I laughed so hard I hurt) and saw Watchmen yesterday afternoon during naptime. I liked the movie ok, and I think it was just about as good of an adaptation of the source material as possible, but that still only makes an above average movie.

I’m writing this on my phone at the airport, so I am unable to add any pics – they are still on my camera – but I’ll post again later to highlight some.

Trying the Iphone wordpress app. I’m at SFO on the way to Umbria, Italy:

I wanted to go out and get coffee today, but I also realized it was a nice day to take a bit of a Walk. I also wanted to take a couple of pictures for my friends photo website, 52Clix, so I brought my camera with me. I was delighted to find some neat things within just a couple of blocks of home!

First of all, here is a typical view (well, it’s often a bit foggier, but Potrero Hill is remarkably clear so this view isn’t completely atypical) down Kansas street from 20th:

I walked down 20th to the park at the end of the street (Well, where it ends on Potrero Hill – 20th Street keeps going on the other side of Potrero Ave, but we’ll get to that soon). I walked around the clearing a bit, and found this nicely framed view of the Mission:

I walked down to the path that is a bit down the hill from the clearing, mostly to take a rather pedestrian photo of Sutro Tower, the big TV antenna that looms upon San Francisco like the Eye of Sauron. I rather like the way this one turned out, though. The street that goes out to the hill in the distances is the other section of 20th Street, which starts up again on the other side of Potrero Ave.

Now, when I was walking down there I noticed a garden area which was connected to the park. I walked to it and it was a community garden – The Potrero Hill Garden, and it is open to the public for viewing and appreciation. There wasn’t all too much growing of interest, but I found a cute statue with sunglasses:

And also, the bees!

And for a bit more context, here is a view looking up (East) from the back of the garden, towards the inhabited part of the hill:

After I was done in the garden, I thought I would walk down San Bruno, I knew had to end by Mariposa, but I figured I would just see what was there going down the street. I was pretty surprised to find a pedestrian overpass, crossing 101, at 18th street – even though I’d driven under it probably hundreds of times, and never thought to look for it. It’s actually a pretty neat bridge:

It’s also a shortcut towards my eventual destination, Coffee Bar. Instead of having to go all the way down to 17th street, and cut back to Mariposa, I can cross the expressway at 18th and not have to double back at all.

I’d never really walked down Potrero Ave before, so I thought I would walk back up to 20th street to see what the view up looked like. It’s actually pretty neat to look back up that way. In the photo below, the structure at the top is the shed at the back of the community garden:

After that, I meanderd over to Coffee Bar, to get my planned coffee and do some reading. I ended up getting some food and a beer after I finished the coffee – having such a choice of beverages handy is quite nice.

After a couple of hours, I headed back, cutting back up the overpass. I decided to walk down 18th Street to Kansas, and just cut up there. I happened to come across an open house at 18th and Rhode Island. I took a picture to remind me to look it up to see how much it was going for. Here is the house, which is pretty cute:

And next, the MLS listing for it. Yes, the house is listed at $725,000! I plan, just for my own amusement, to follow this house and see when it sells, and try to see how much it goes for.

The complete set of photos from my walk can be found here.

Also, when I got home, and looked up community gardens in San Francisco. It turns out there is one not too far from my place that might have open plots. I wonder if I should look in to that – it might be fun! Anyone have any opinions on that?

This past weekend was FULL of adventure, and I am slacky at posting, so here it is Tuesday, and I am finally getting around to what could have been daily posts if I were better at this.

Friday – rather normal day at work. However, it started to get interesting on the way home. After getting off of BART at the 16th street station, while waiting for the Bus, a homeless guy took my umbrella (which I had bought in Japan in 2007 for 400 yen – a bit more than $3). He had a broken leg, so he couldn’t run away, so he talked to me, which was a bit surreal. First he threatened to kill me, but this didn’t impress me. Then he asked me who I voted for, and I told him Obama. He called me a liar, and told me he voted for McCain. I told him that was nice. Then he told me about kung fu, and, well I forget the details. Eventually, after about 10 minutes, the bus came. I told him I had to go, and he asked if I wanted the umbrella back, and I said he could have it if he wanted. I got on the bus and a woman, who was also waiting, asked me why I spent so long talking to him. I said that it was funny and it passed the time, and she agreed.

I got home and slacked for about an hour for heading back out to Cobb’s for The Sound of Young America Live. This was a taping of the podcast/PRI radio show done as part of SF Sketchfest. His guests included Jello Biafra and Tom Amiano, both of which who were very interesting, as well as a comedy performance by Sean Cullen and music by the Oakland hip hop group Zion I. It was good fun.

Saturday night I did another sketchfest related activity – A midnight showing of Wet Hot American Summer at the Clay, hosted by the creators and stars of the movie. The movie is somewhat funny, but it is made funnier by seeing it in a crowd of fans. And of course the people from the State and Janeane Garofalo were suitably amusing too. It was worth staying up late for, even if it means that due to my sleep stupidty, I only got about five and a half ours of sleep that night.

Sunday I ran errands, and then I went out to see another podcast taping. This time it was The Monsters of Podcasting with Jordan, Jesse Go! and You Look Nice Today. The Jordan, Jesse Go! show was incredibly funny, although I was disturbed to find out that Jesse Thorne thinks that Canada is a city. I enjoyed You Look Nice Today, even though I don’t quite understand them as well. All in all it was a good way to end the weekend.