Red-Letter Day!

Went to see the Giants game. Got the sweeeeeeet company seats. w00t!

Yes, that's my view 3 rows back from the field. Close enough to say things the players and umpires could hear! I sat up in the front row for a few innings too.

And then we came home and made cheese from scratch! Like, for real! We bought some cream-top 2% organic milk from TJ's and followed the directions in our Cheesemaking Kit, and less than an hour later, fresh mozarella cheese! How cool is that?

Om nom nom.

It's that time of year

Driving home tonight from work, the freeway traffic warning sign on the Dublin grade read:

Oakland Coliseum
E V E N T
Expect Delays

First game of the season, Oakland vs the hated Broncos. Monday Night Football. Yes, we love our HD TV.

Goooooooo Raiders!

La Frida Bonita y otras cosas

Went to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the SF MOMA this weekend. I was surprised by how many paintings were included in the exhibit, and frustrated by how many people were also moving through the rooms. It was hard to read the information displays, and hard to get in close - even sometimes see from a distance - the paintings. But what paintings! I know Kahlo mostly for her self-focused imagery, her struggles with pain, her representations of inner anguish. The exhibit showed her earlier portraits (straight-up, 30s modern), her later still lifes (vibrant, beautiful, static) and many candid photographs from her years in SF and Mexico...in addition to the amazing images you already know. There was good biographical information about her marital to-and-fro-ing with Diego Rivera, as well as her sojourns in America. Altogether she painted some very beautiful, symbolic, thoughful pieces. I was surprised by my enthusiasm. And while she herself was beautiful and charismatic, and she was tragically in love with Diego Rivera, a doughy dumpling of a man - what was she thinking???

Afterwards we got the super-bonus of an exhibit of modern Chinese artists - including Yueh MinJun whose works shows hordes of painfully grinning Chinese men (on ostriches, as fields of near-identical statues, sitting around, etc.). They are somehow perfect - identical, falsely friendly/happy, artificial, vaguely off-putting. Ai WeiWei had taken Neolithic clay pots (5000-3000 BCE) and painted over them with garishly-colored paints. Sacrilege! What a waste! Or...an interesting point about history, conservation, consumerism. Sui Jianguo created "The Sleep of Reason" - my new favorite, a statue of sleeping Mao (very unusual, as the link explains), and filled the room around him with waves of colored toy plastic dinosaurs, radiating outwards in dreamlike technicolor trip-out patterns. Way cool.

Afterwards we had dinner on Fillmore street at SPQR, a mixed-up Italian joint. It was good, but I can't tell you why. The desserts were confused (the "panna cotta" was a delicious chocolate mousse with chocolate cake on the bottom), and I think we paid too much. I was fascinated by the clientele; Mom had commented recently that people eating out in the East Bay are somehow different than the people eating out in San Francisco - more casual. Sitting there in SPQR, all I could see were white people, all the women were blond (almost none naturally), all from a very high socio-economic stratum, healthy, wearing very nice clothing, and not necessarily enjoying themselves. I felt pretty ghetto in my shorts and stringy yoga top. The couple to the right of us complained the whole time about the food, and the woman to the left of us spent almost the entire meal nattering away to her absently listening partner. Dad and I barely needed to talk for all the entertainment we had. Yes Mom, diners in San Francisco are different. I'll stick to the East Bay.

Change is good, mostly

I've just concluded a rather interesting month. The short(ish) version: I realized that my workplace had changed strategic direction in a way that really didn't need my skill set very much. So I went to S, the guy who runs the place, and said, "I'm not asking you to fire me, but honestly, you don't need me. Is it okay if I make a few calls?"

My thinking is pretty straightforward. I'd rather work where I'm needed, not just where I'm liked.

So he gave me permission, and I put the word out that I was available. Something must be in the proverbial water, because it seems like I got calls from damn near every major player in my industry within a few days.

Also within a few days, S called me into a meeting to tell me, with a hangdog expression on his face, that he had done all he could, but my position had to be eliminated. My last day was to be in two weeks, at which time I would be handed a very generous severance check.

Weirdly, he was the one who needed to be comforted. "S, man, why the long face? You just got done telling me I get a fat check for leaving, which you know damn well I was doing anyway. Corporate HQ got a camera in here or something?"

I continued interviewing. Either they were all desperate, or I still got mad interview skillz, because each interview resulted in either a followup interview or an offer. Perhaps I shouldn't have done so many interviews...pretty soon I had a lot of deciding to do.

I've chosen one now, and for those who have heard me talk about the options, I chose the one that I can take the train to rather than the one I need a Chinese visa for, or the one I could bicycle to, or the one that might involve exotic foods.

I've learned a lot through this process. Turns out I can make hard decisions after all. Apparently I also have senior-management-level strategic thinking. I definitely have the Best. Wife. Evar.

I haven't ruled out going overseas for work one of these days. Probably will, in fact, before the next summer Olympics. Learning Chinese and French in the meantime might be a good investment of my time....

Twenty Year Time Machine

Had a really good weekend (which is good, because this week so far has been uphill both ways).

Friday night: Gaming. D&D 4th edition with some of K's tribe members. I manage to convince KF to join us at the last minute, thereby preventing him from mouldering in his office until the wee hours. J brought Fred's Burgers and old-fashioned fat-tacular ice cream. (First two ingredients: butterfat and buttermilk.) I conked out at midnight.

Saturday: Haircut, violin lesson, volunteering at the Alameda County Community Food Bank, and dinner with the Dads. I was exhausted after shelving food for 3 hours, but cheerful. My co-volunteer spoke mainly Spanish, so I was kept mentally entertained by struggling to remember vocabulary.

Sunday: loafing about, including some minor house chores, reading in the sun, and a vegetable-tacular trip to the local farmer's market. K made a giant egg bake full of broccoli and cauliflower.

The highlight of the weekend was really the violin lesson. I played violin semi-seriously when I was a kid: started when I was 9, stopped when I was 13. I like to think I was a decent violinist, and the main reason I stopped was because we had moved to San Francisco and it seemed clear to me that it was time to decide if I was going to be really serious about violin or let it go. I decided I didn't want to be yet another Asian Girl Who Plays Violin.

I've always harbored a desire to play again, Sherlock Holmes-style, and so have kept the violin with me, as well as my sheet music and stand. I even had the poor thing repaired at a local violin store a few years back. But mostly it hid in its dark case.

Earlier this year I looked for violin teachers on Craigslist and found one who just happened to grow up in the same region of LA as I did, and even played with my Junior High orchestra conductor. He's a Berkeley grad, lives not far away, and was very kind and encouraging. He seemed pleased that I still remembered a few things (including a general sense for when notes are out of tune), and had lots of good advice about my bad thumb posture (BOTH hands, drat the luck). I was really encouraged and heartened.

So, now I'm back to practicing. K says it isn't too bad, and I find it very enjoyable. Some of the stuff even seems to be coming back, which is great. Many thanks to Mom and Dad and C for tolerating the whining and screeching of my practicing all those years ago, and paying for the lessons!

Mistaken Identity

K just told me that he had to undelete some items from my gmail. Apparently I had left it logged in. He went to send an email and saw all these messages from people and companies he didn't know! delete, delete, dele-- oh crap! This is C's email!!!

Note to self: remember to log out from K's machine.

Point Reyes - On Hard Difficulty

Meaning (for those of you non-gamers), not on "Easy" or "Medium".

Been looking forward to this hiking weekend for some time. Though none of our usual camping buddies was able to join us, K and I decided to go it alone (and miss E's birthday shindig, sorry E!). I needed the mental rest.

It started off badly, as I ended up needing to do about 3 hours of work on Friday. (Boo! Vacation delayed!) That took me until 10:30, whereupon I started gathering my stuff for packing. K had already given us a good head start (with my verbal commentary) during my work phase. We headed out around 12:30, stopped by TJ's for jerky and fruit, and got to Point Reyes around 2:30. After some initial administrivia at the Visitor Center to get our camping pass, we went to the Five Brooks staging area, parked, and hit the trail. First leg: 4.4 miles up, up, up! It was a nicely graded drivable road (Stewart trail) that went up to Firtop Mountain at 1,324 feet. Oof. Oh, and it was 82 degrees out. Double Oof. And there were yellowjacket warnings. Yikes! A few groups of horses passed us, and at one point K spotted a mountain lion. Double Yikes! We considered turning around, but another group of horses gave us courage (and cover) to proceed.

At Firtop, we met a group of cyclists celebrating their ascent of the mountain. As we proceeded down the steep trail, I marvelled, "They _cycled_ up this?" We took a hiking path down the aptly named Greenpicker trail, and made it into camp in plenty of time to pitch our tent and feel exhausted before having dinner. We couldn't find our tent pegs and it was so warm out, we happily slept under a fir tree with no rain fly. We also started a steady diet of ibuprofen. Total Hike Day 1: 6.4 miles.

Some uncomfortable tossing and turning during the night. We agreed we need new sleeping pads.

Since we were both prety wiped (we both had had migraines late in the week for one thing), Saturday we decided not to go for a longer trek down the coast but to look for ocean views from the Coast Trail. We don't normally stay at this end of the park, so were looking forward to different terrain. We hiked out via Glen Trail to the Coast Trail, and saw...lots of fog. Fog, fog, fog. We were very glad not to be hiking in heat like the day before, but the vista points were sadly obscured. Finally we turned a corner on the trail and saw...a mound of white rock jutting out of the ocean. K promptly gave his best voice-over: "And now on our left, Bird Poop Rock..." as that was what clearly gave it its color. Moments after that, the fog cleared and we were able to see the coastline down to Wildcat Camp and the faint coloring of Alamere Falls in the distance. Beautiful! We had lunch at Arch Rock and ambled tiredly back to camp. K found a nice stout walking stick and cleaned it up. Napping, dinner, and some bedtime reading. The sun never really broke through, and it was spitting fog when we went to bed. Total Hiked Day 2: 5.7 miles.

During the night: incredibly loud chatty neighbors, more painful tossing and turning, the slow increase of drips in our uncovered tent.

Morning dawned gray and drippy. The fog continued to condense into spitting near-rain, so once it was light enough (and we could no longer stand the water splups in the eye) we got up, took stock of our soaked items, and decided to head out as soon as we could. K made stand-up breakfast, while I slowly assembled our things and kept them as dry as I could. Mostly, our approach was to "put everything into a white plastic bag and walk." We'd already agreed the night before that we were going to take the shortest route back to the car. Not long after leaving camp, Kyle saw another mountain lion - much smaller this time, but unmistakably a mountain cat. This plus the very damp Greenpicker brook - er, trail - convinced us to change our route out from the shorter hiking paths back to the main Stewart Trail. We would have a clear view of the road and the horse traffic, leaving much less chance of cat encounters or slipping on the wet terrain. Slog, slog, slog, 6.4 miles and we were back at the car.

This was a tough trip for some reason. Our other stays have been at campsites that are far more accessible (Sky and Coast are 1.3 and 1.8 miles from parking, respectively, with not much elevation change); this trip we started by climbing 4.4 miles in 82 degree heat. We'd both had migraines recently. We were both uncomfortable sleeping on our pads. We got soaked. (Oh, it turns out the tent pegs had landed under the tent and we just hadn't noticed. "No wonder the ground was so uncomfortable!" K said half-jokingly, half-painfully.) And we didn't see much wildlife, except for K's mountain lion sightings - not exactly encouraging. I did get to greet a few big black offrushing beetles and a banana slug, but there were none of the usual deer.

Maybe we'll try again in October, or let it rest until next spring.