Nightmare in St. Louis

The Philadelphia Phillies are leading the St. Louis Cardinals 20-2 (no, that's not a typo; the score is Phils 20, Cards 2). And it's the 8th inning . . . or maybe the third quarter . . .

Notes on a bike ride

Short ride on the Tour de Trash-plus-Wastewater Treatment Plant loop, ca. 9:30 a.m. . . . Northwest wind presenting a small challenge heading north and west, lending a push going east and south . . . Along Rd 28H (aka The Dump Road), egrets small and large in the field to the north, and, on a wire to the south, astonishingly, an owl; no binoculars with me, so couldn't see what kind, but its ears were clearly visible . . . down past the wastewater treatment plant with its pungent scent of sulphur and a lovely view to the south . . .

Returning to Rd. 106, an encounter with another group of bikers, these a bit bigger (and louder) than mine . . .

One more photo, this one to the west from the bridge, then home . . .

N.B.: These pix taken with my cell phone and e-mailed from same to my computer. Ain't technology grand?

Running hot and cold (and windy)

A week ago today, the temperature was in triple digits. Midweek, we had gale-force winds. Today, the high was forecast to hit a whopping 61 degrees, with lots of chance of rain. I'm sure climate change is more complex than this, but if you ask me, this past week may be the phenomenon's seven-day cameo appearance.

Test case

My car is a 1985 Honda Accord LX. By virtue of its advanced age, every two years the DMV requires me to take it to a "test only" place to be smogged. In every previous instance, the car has passed the test with good marks, but every time it's due for another test, I wonder, will this be the year it fails? And if it fails, will I be able to get it repaired so it'll pass the second time around?

This has been a great car. I bought it used in 1987, when it had 25,000 miles on the odometer, and from then until now, just a few miles shy of 170,000, it's been everything I'd want in a vehicle. It's reliable, starts every time, is economical to run, and can hold a surprising amount of stuff, especially with the back seats folded down. Like its owner, it's showing its age a bit—some things don't work any more (I carry bottles of water to dump on the windshield because the window washer tank has a leak; the power assist steering cylinder leaks, too, so when I realize I'm working hard to crank into a parking space, I go get that filled; and there's a hammer on the floor in the front seat to whack the AC/heater fan housing when it gets stuck), and there are some places that could use a cosmtic touchup (driver's side upholstery worn down to the foam interior, sun visor fabric shredding . . .) But it runs, it's paid for, the registration is $60 a year, and my insurance is laughably cheap. So even though I occasionally think that, gee, having a newer car would be nice (and have a lot more safety features on it than my current car), I can't see any good reason to give this one up.

Unless it doesn't pass its smog test. So when I took it to E-Z Smog this morning, I focused on thinking positively, remembering how it passed all those other years, but worrying nonetheless—would this be The Year It Failed?

I needn't have worried. My little Honda passed, and not just by a hair; all the scores were good ones. So the two of us are good for another couple of years. I'm lucky to have her.

In honor of passing the smog test, I put the Obama bumper sticker on. It joins Clinton/Gore 96, there on the left, and John Kerry in the center. I'm hoping Barack does as well with his challenge as my little Honda did with its today.

While I was waiting for the test to be run, I copied down some of the signs in E-Z Smog shop:
On a sign headed "Anything broken? Altered?":
Malfunctions examples: Added ground effects/running boards/air damn
On a sign detailing types of payment accepted:
"The only restriction on cash is that it not be counterfeit. (If you are a counterfeiter, we apologize for the inconvenience.)"

Going (sort of) public

I've never been terribly "out there" with this blog, meaning I haven't distributed the URL far and wide. I don't include it in my e-mail signature, for instance, or otherwise refer to it. I shared it with family and a few friends, and if they read it, great. Sometimes they comment on a particular post, and I recognize their names when they appear in the moderation section.

So I was utterly disconcerted when, a couple of days ago, two comments on my Double Century post appeared from two people I don't know and who had read what I wrote without my knowing it. It felt downright Peeping Tom-ish. I guess those two bloggers have some search thing they do to find posts on cycling, as both of their sites have to do with riding, but I'm so unsophisticated in the ways of blogging that I have no idea how that works, or even that there is such a thing.

With the possible exception of a grocery list (and I can make a good argument that a grocery list reveals a lot), writing makes the writer vulnerable. Discovering that I've been read by unknown readers was a reminder of how comfortable it is to be anonymous, and how important it is, sometimes, not to be.

Yarhzeit

My mother died 35 years ago today, just a few weeks shy of her 61st birthday. Trying to write about her life and my feelings for and about her runs up against the dam holding back the words—fragments of sentences, whole paragraphs, inchoate emotions that swirl and churn, rise to the surface and are pulled deep again. It's like a rapid below a steep drop in the river, too much turbulence to stay there long. Better to get downstream a bit . . . I miss my mom. Most of all, I think, I miss what I missed.

Today is also the 31st anniversary of the day I quit smoking—May 18, 1987. The occasion was a 3-day whitewater trip on the Cal Salmon River. The coincidence of it being the same date as my mother's death is just that—a coincidence. I think.

Double Century

I'm sitting in the Davis Double Century HQ room, aka the Games Room at Vets Memorial, listening to the radio guys talk to the sags out on the course and watching the real-time map projected on the wall that shows where our last rider is. It's been a blisteringly hot day—at one point I checked the Web and the temp in Davis showed 106 degrees—and many more riders than usual are folding and needing to be sagged back to Davis. But many more continued to ride, despite the scorching temperature, which is made even more brutal from the heat reflecting off the asphalt. Riding in these conditions is exactly like riding in a Brobdinagian pizza oven.

I've been here since 4 a.m. after being here last night until around 10. I'm registration coordinator again this year, meaning I'm in charge of making sure those who registered get processed properly and that I get late-entry people into the system. It's fun but exhausting, especially at this point (10:15pm) when I've been up for so long and know that there is still much to do before I can go home and go to bed. There's all the rest stop food that's been brought back here to deal with, cleanup in general, plus waiting for the last riders to come in, which sometimes isn't until nearly 1 a.m. So, I'm tired, and getting tireder, and will be tireder still. But I'm glad to be here. Really. And the riders are so appreciative it's humbling. So I'll be here next year, if they'll let me.

I scream, you scream . . .

Today's L.A. Times carried the obituary of Irvine Robbins, who, along with his brother-in-law Burton Baskin, founded the Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors ice cream stores. Nowadays there are lots of specialty ice creams around, featuring plenty of exotic flavors (along with astronomically high fat content), but for me, starting when I was a kid, 31 Flavors (as I've always called it) has remained the definitive ice cream shop. Not only did they have lots of flavors (I was partial to coffee, butterscotch ribbon and lemon custard) but they made ice cream cakes, some of which graced the birthday parties of my two boys.

This evening, I walked down to 31 Flavors in the E Street Plaza to buy a cone and raise it in tribute to Mr. Robbins. When I got there, the place was mobbed, the line stretching out the door. While I'd like to think this crowd was due to everyone having had the same idea as I, I have a feeling it had more to do with the warm evening. Not willing to stand in that line, I walked home coneless. But I'll be back.

Water baby

My synagogue held a fund-raiser a few weeks ago, and I ended up being the high bidder for a one-month membership at the Davis Athletic Club ($30—woo hoo!), so yesterday morning I activated it and went to the 8 a.m. aqua aerobics class. I'd been to it before, a few years ago when I was a regular DAC member, and my body has been wanting to get back to it.

This early-morning class is taught in what DAC calls the functional therapy pool. It's considerably smaller than the lap pool and—much the best feature—the water is warm; yesterday the announced temp was 88 degrees. So even if the air is chilly, entering the water feels wonderful. And you can get a good workout, or at least you can if you're not chit-chatting with your classmates the entire time; that element hasn't changed since I was last there. Clearly, some people see the class as a chance to catch up on their friends' lives and fill them in on their own. I know several of the women (and most of the class is female, though there are a few men), and I'm sure they think I'm antisocial because I don't engage with them when they greet me, but I don't want to multi-task during a workout, and besides, I'm concentrating too much on following the instructor (who is quite good and has the patience of Job; if I were she, I'd banish all the talkers to the far corner of the pool and tell 'em to yak out of the way of other people who are there to actually exercise. Harrumph.).

On the other hand, it's a good place to get your head on straight regarding body image. Like many women, I've spent a good deal of my life being critical of various parts of my body—legs too big, breasts too small, upper arms too flabby, blah blah blah—the only variations on the theme being the parts currently under the microscope. But spend some time watching older women emerge from the locker room and enter the pool. Talk about your variations in size and shape. As you might expect, given the time of this class, nearly all the students are "mature"; i.e., well into their 60s, some in their 70s, maybe a few 80-year-olds. Looking at them, with all their lumps, veins, and bulges, I felt simultaneous relief and humility. Relieved that despite my less-than-ideal weight and fitness level I'm in way, way better shape than most of them, and humbled (and a bit ashamed ) to think that I'm so damned vain. Good time to get over myself.

P.S. As promised, here are a couple of pictures of the results of Sunday's planting spree:

Salvia (foreground), Moroccan mint and lavender
(non-working fountain visible in background)

The herb pot
(basil, parsley, oregano, chives)
Blue Moon lobelia

Babz' Bistro

Dust Bowl goes green

Well, a little bit green, anyway. Time was, I had a lot of plants growing in pots and planters on my deck, but over the past few years, for reasons circumstantial (my landlord tore the deck off to fix the leak in the ceiling of the flat downstairs and it didn't get rebuilt for nearly 18 months) and whimsical (I had no energy for it), I've let it languish. Seeing all those pots out there, many half-full of bone-dry planting soil, began to get to me, and I've been promising myself that I'd get something in them soon.

Today was the day. I went to Davis Lumber and picked up little pots of basil, parsley (curley and flat-leaf), chives, oregano, and mint; a pony pack of Blue Moon lobelia, and two 4-in. pots, one holding a salvia, the other a lavender plant, along with two bags of potting soil. The herbs (except for the mint) went into a strawberry pot I've had for years; the lobelia I stuck in the small places around said pot. The mint got its own pot; ditto the salvia and the lavender.

This doesn't sound like much to plant, and if you just think about the number of plants, it's not. But I had to empty dirt out of each pot into a big plastic tub I brought upstairs for the purpose (being upstairs has its drawbacks), mix new potting soil in with some old, refill the pots after cleaning them up, shlep unused pots to a less conspicuous spot on the deck, sweep up dirt and other various bits, move the newly filled pots to where I want them, move them again when I decide that's not the place, after all, fetch water from the kitchen sink in a gallon milk container (no hose upstairs), repot a couple of languishing succulents and hope for the best, futz with decorative fountain that seems to be clogged (probably by pine needles) and will need to be taken apart, just not today, sweep some more, haul excess dirt downstairs and dump in alley . . . well, you get the idea. Luckily, the Giants-Phillies game was on, and my portable radio had fresh batteries, so it was pleasat, if tiring, work. Would have been more pleasant if the Giants had managed to win, but so it goes.

By the time I was done, it was time to shower and get ready to go to the Woodland Chamber Singers spring concert in Woodland (it was terrific!), so there wasn't time to take any photos. But I'll do that tomorrow and post them then. Tonight I'm just uttering small prayers that it all survives.

Baseball be berry, berry good to me!

I'm easing quickly into the rhythm of spring-into-summer days. At present, I don't have a lot of freelance work, and what I do have isn't requiring a lot of time (though it will be gearing up soon). The 10 days or so of being on cat- and garden-tending for Pica and Numenius jump-started my feeling of just plain enjoying the weather and the environment around me; the landscape around their house is so expansive, the poppies and irises and all the rest so lovely, that I spent a lot of time just sitting and looking at it all.

But back to the rhythm of the day, which, I realize, is heavily influenced by baseball. I listen to Mike Kruko and/or Duane Kuiper in the morning, and all during the day, I find I'm looking forward to the evening and that day's game. When the Giants have an off day for travel, I feel a bit flat, like a little kid who knows there won't be any dessert after dinner that night. I do ride my bicycle, and I go to Lisa's twice a week to take dictation from her, and I work on this and that, but it's baseball that provides the anchor. And it is a welcome respite from presidental politics, which now give me a stomach ache. So, Go Giants!

Radiohead

I have a new radio, a Bose Wave with a CD player. I'd read a lot about them, how the quality of the sound is comparable to a large system but in a compact size. And everything they said is true. Lovely, clear sound, highs and lows. Right now I'm playing a compilation CD called "Night Tracks." It's all instrumental, some Vaughn Williams, Saint-Saens, J.S. Bach, Copland and others. The size is perfect; takes up less room than the smallish boombox I had there, and pulls in KNBR 680 and the Giants broadcasts loud and clear.

Speaking of the Giants, they won again tonight behind Jonathan Sanchez' brilliant pitching. Fun watching this team with its rookies scramble its way toward making the doomsayers eat their words. Now that the season is in full swing, I spend my evenings listening to and, now that I have cable, watching the games. I manage to have both media—radio on in the kitchen, TV in the living room, so I can hear what each of the broadcasters has to say. There is one funny thing about doing that, though; the radio play-by-play is always ahead of the TV, sometimes by just a few seconds, other times (like tonight), a whole play ahead. It's convenient, though; if I'm in the kitchen or the bedroom and hear somebody gets a hit or makes a spectacular catch, I can dash into the living room and see it as it happens in TV land. Just reinforces my belief that all electronic communication is magic.

Seder

It's Passover, and tonight I went to a seder given by my friends Ken and Karen Firestein. There were about 15 of us, and Ken led us through the prayers, songs and eating of the ritual foods (matzah, horseradish, parsley dipped in salt water) and drinking of the ritual wine (four glasses). Then we got to the dinner, itself, which was delicious (meat done by Karen, the rest of the items—salad, kugel, veggies, desserts—provided by the guests.

I met Ken sometime around 1984 or '85, when he and I both worked in the reference department of Shields Library, and we became friends soon enough. I wasn't Jewish back then, but my interest was alive and well, and when we'd go on coffee breaks together, Ken and I would often talk about Judaism. It was Ken who invited me to my first seder way back when. One of the guests tonight was Seymour Howard, professor emeritus of art, whom I also knew years ago when he'd come into the reference department and offer me sunflower seeds. Never would I have thought he and I would find ourselves seated at the same seder table. This is what happens when you get adopted into the tribe.

April morning

Irises in Pica's neighbor's garden

Through a glass, brightly; Pica and Numenius's house

April afternoon

I spent the morning out and about, dropping Pica and Numenius at the airport, then to Lisa's for our Thursday session memoir dictation; back home to take care of some e-mail business for bike club and a freelance project. By 1:30, I was ready to head out again, this time just for fun.

Stuck a Jane Smiley novel (a very old one and not one of her best) in my bag and walked downtown, the temperature just about perfect, light breeze, no chill, not hot. Lateish lunch at Burgers 'n' Brew, across from Central Park, where I sat outside in the spring air, eating slowly and reading. Was offered a refill on my diet Coke, and took it so I could keep reading. Finally stirred myself to walk to the bank to make a bike club deposit, then windowshopped along Second St—Acquarius with its crystals and incense (it always smells wonderful in there), DeLuna's, filled with bling, The Naturalist (windchimes and pretty dishes decorated with bird eggs) and then to the Avid Reader, where I bought a book of Mary Oliver's poems. On to Samira's and to the Paint Chip, then slowly home. Everyone's garden is abloom, lots of roses already and, my favorite, the bearded iris—so many colors, each so clear and delicate. Rode my bike to P & N's to feed Diego and Charlie, play with them, check on the garden, take in the sheets from the clothesline. There, too, flowers in a riot of color—bright orange poppies, deep blue ceanothus and more iris.

Years ago, I saw these lines by Gary Snyder from a poem called, I think, For the Children. I wrote them on a yellow Post-It and stuck it on my Sierra Club calendar over my desk at work, where it stayed and stayed, moving from momth to month and year to year:

Stay together

Learn the flowers

Go light.

And this evening, I read this, from Sometimes, by Mary Oliver:

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

I'm looking for another Post-It note.

Let's get organized! Or not . . .

I got a new Levenger catalog in the mail today with a cover blurb touting "60 NEW Organizing Solutions." How, I wondered, could there be 60 new organizing solutions in there? So I checked, but the only "new" things seem to be the colors stuff comes in; no miraculous gizmos or methods for making one's life simpler or less cluttered. Just the opposite. Levenger is big on the 3x5 card method for taking notes, and for a mere $138, you can purchase a letter-size 3x5 Zip Action Folio (junior size, $98; $6 extra for monogram, $12 if you want your whole name). This thing is filled with card-sized pockets that hold 3x5 cards, which, once this treasure is in your hands, will be jotted on and arranged thus and so, and perhaps so and thus.

Just thinking about this kind of thing makes me want to lie down in a dim room with a lavender-scented hankie. I used to try to devise systems to keep track of stuff, but none of the Big Guns (Franklin, DayTimer, DayRunner, or Levenger) could overcome my natural inertia. In the ancient past, when I worked in the Reference Dept. of Shields Library, before all of us got so bloody busy that we needed more stuff to help us keep track of our stuff, I kept a steno notebook that I'd write in. Every day, I wrote the date, then whatever I needed to remember or keep track of got written down. Didn't matter where I started on the page, and when the book got filled up on one side, I flipped it over and started on the back side. The cover got the start and end dates. Worked fine, best system I ever had, and cheap cheap cheap.

We are the champions

The Sacramento RiverCats won the 2007 Triple A championship. Thanks to Gishi, we have T-shirts to commemorate the occasion, and we wore them to our first game of the 2008 season Saturday evening . . .
Our team: Bill "Dinger Dog" Sbarra, Susan "Put Me In, Coach!" Gishi, Babz "Duck and Cover" Anderson, and Liese "BatBabe" Schadt.

It was a perfect night for baseball—mild, T-shirt weather, good crowd, fireworks at the end of the game, even the dancing usher is back, now appearing as the dancing vendor—rendering the Cats loss to the Las Vegas 51s less painful. Also pain-reducing was getting to see a couple of former Giants, left fielder Todd Linden (who hit a home run) and catcher Justin Knoedler (whom we met a few years ago when we were all in Scottsdale for Giants' Spring Training).

Baseball . . . it's what's for summer.

Found it!

If you've been reading this blog for a few months, you may remember Gap in the Record, about my misplaced (and feared lost) notebook. I couldn't imagine that I'd thrown it out, but I'd looked everywhere and no luck. Just now I was looking through a stack of clippings and other assorted bits in the "things I'm saving to deal with later" basket, and there it was, stuck amongst the stuff. None of the writing in it is mission critical, mostly just notes to myself, quotes I want to remember, book titles I jotted down at the bookstore so I could remember them later when I went to the libarary, that sort of thing; even a grocery list or two. And I'm sure I would have lived just fine for the rest of my days if it had never turned up. But I hadn't forgotten about it, there was that gap, and now it's been filled. Quite made my day.

Ant-ics

I've heard from the Bohart. Monday, Thursday and their bretheren (sisteren?) are camponutus essegi, better known as carpenter ants. Here's what Steve Heydon at the Bohart had to say about them:

"Carpenter ants are found in houses and can be a pest since they hollow out wood to make themselves a home. You should do your best to determine if the ants are coming in from the inside or if they are living in your house since they can nest either place. When you look outside, you need to check dead wood, stacked boards, firewood, etc. Going around with a flashlight in the early part of the night might help. Many ants are nocturnal."

So far, I haven't done any flashlight hunts. But given their random and singular appearance in my house, and then only on my computer table, I have a feeling that these babies may be strays from the trees around my house, lost and trying to find their way home (see the link above). (Another one showed up last evening, again as I was sitting here typing away; I saw not from whence it came.)

So I've satisfied my curiosity, but I'm kind of let down. I think I liked it better when Monday and Thursday didn't have any other name. I'll have to be content now with the mystery of just how the heck they manage to appear. My landlord may be less thrilled with the whole thing, but I guess I should inform him . . .

The Masters

A minor surgical procedure early today left me with some residual mental spaciness. So, what better fit for a slightly dulled brain than daytime TV? Channel surfing, I found the live broadcast of the Masters Tournament from Augusta and have been watching it for the past 90 or so minutes.

Golf was a big presence in my growing-up life. My father was an accomplished amateur golfer who won many tournaments and, until his stroke at age 51, played whenever he got the chance. Neither I nor my sister took to the game (a deep disappointment for him, I know), but we learned a lot just by proximity, and names like Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, and Babe Zaharias were as familiar to me as the characters in my favorite books.

I don't follow golf much any more (I prefer baseball, another of my father's favorite sports and one I could participate in with him, as we were both spectators), but watching the Masters was a treat. The course, itself, is beautiful—lush, green, azaleas blooming, so, well, Southern—but it is diabolically wicked. Seeing the way the greens break, the position of the bunkers, the needle-thin fairways on some holes reminded me of nothing so much as some miniature golf courses I've hacked around; the ball never, ever goes where you want it to or where you think it should.

Despite that, a couple dozen or so players are under par following today's second round of play, about three times as many as were in that spot in 2007. The big surprise seems to be Tiger Woods' poor showing; he was even par until the 18th, when, executing a difficult shot out of the trees onto the green, he then sank his putt for a birdie. Brent Snedeker, on the other hand, is the current leader at 7 under par. But anything can happen; winds up to 25 mph are forecast for Sunday's final round.