So it’s been 200 years since I blogged last. I attribute this to general lethargy and/or laziness. Also, I’ve been very boring lately, other than some shitty shit happening.
Let’s see…where to start.
I think maybe I went to some UT football games since that Navy game, but I never really got into football this year. I just watched a Frontline about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) that may have soured me to football forever. If you ever come across that episode, it’s definitely worth watching. The NFL is gross and did everything they could (and probably continue to do everything that they can) to cover up mounting evidence and downplay the severity of the problem. More alarmingly, YOUNG people have been diagnosed with CTE posthumously. The brains of a 21-year-old from Penn and a 17-year-old high schooler showed CTE.
I am a person who enjoyed, you might even say loved, going to football games. My Dad and I famously did not miss an AWHS football game, home or away, from the time I was in 4th grade (and had been to a few before that, too) until I graduated, and we’ve been a few since then. My frenemy Julie Skolmowski and I used to make the locker signs for the football players’ lockers, and I certainly thought my fair share of football-playing boys were dreamier than their non-football-playing counterparts (save soccer, which was a cute boy factory, though most of those boys were dumb as rocks). I’ve been to UT games here and there the last few years. As CTE has been in the mainstream media the last few years (though if the Frontline is to be believed, not nearly as much as it should have been), we’ve all become more aware of it. However, I always thought it affected guys who played YEARS AND YEARS of football – HS, college, long pro careers. Much has been said of how much bigger, faster, stronger players are these days, and also the NFL’s abandoned plan of having more games, MORE HITS per season. Knowing that young men, basically kids, already show both the psychological effects in life, as well as the CTE-related pathological changes on autopsy, is sobering.
This is all interesting for people in my age group. Would I *ever* let a child of mine (assuming such a person existed) play football? No, of course not. Can I watch my peers allow their kids to play football and not pass judgment, even if only to myself? If I had a kid, would I think that the parents of kids who were allowed to play football probably loved their kids less? Yes, probably, because I’m a terrible person. Brian says that in listening to Sports Guy podcasts, Chuck Klosterman says that the only people who will play football in the future will be the poor and oppressed. Now that seems like more of a possibility to me.
So that’s football.
Lady Rockets are back in action, but they are not very good, for the first time since my recent extreme fanhood started (this correlates nicely with the Israeli leaving, for those keeping score at home). Of course, I am still a rabid fan, but it’s not as fun this year.
The Men’s team, which has sucked predominantly sucked since our initial Toledo Basketball exposures, is really good this year. The games are still not that fun to go to, atmosphere-wise, but for those who appreciate dunking and thugs (as my Dad says), they are pretty entertaining. We went to the game before their undefeated streak was ended by Kansas.
The cats continue to be extremely cute, of course. The fluffy cat has a limp on and off, but that’s really the only health concern right now, knock on wood. Here she is in a sink:
A lovely ginger gentleman cat showed up at the homestead not long ago. My brother suggested the name Stewart, and I latched onto that quickly and ferociously, since the last cat he named goes by Broccoli. Stewart is quite charming, and it seems my Dad has agreed to keep him. I took him to the vet for his first shots and stuff, and he was given a predominantly clean bill of health…he had earmites and hookworm (gross) but those are easily remedied. He gets neutered on Tuesday (!). He’s pretty quick and kittenly, so these pictures aren’t the best:
I think it is important that my blog readers see this truck:
We did sort of celebrate Christmas this year…we had Boston Market for Thanksgiving and Christmas both, so you might say both were a little half-assed.
Last week, I worked nights, but I didn’t work New Year’s…I wished I had offered to just work it, since I was already on night shift schedule, but whatever.
On New Year’s Day, we got a crapload (I would guess 8 inches) of snow that no one seemed to plow until after midnight that night when it was no longer a holiday. Of course I had to work that night, and it was as unpleasant as ever sending drivers out into that. In the days following the snow, I went out and filled the birdfeeder, and the snow was deeeep. Here’s a picture I took from that trek:
Our Kroger, which is going to be replaced soon, has those characteristic weird black windows/solar panels/? along the front, and in the last couple years, whenever we get snow, they put up the caution tape to keep you from walking where the snow will fall from those windows onto your head. This time, the weight of the snow brought down part of the structure:
This morning, Brian and I shoveled the driveway early to get rid of whatever old snow was still around, and for a few glorious hours, the driveway was clean. I decided to shovel the patio, so that the snow today could be accurately measured. I elected (wrongly, I’ve been told) to clear off the patio table after measuring the snow on it. This is what was still around of the New Year’s Day snow before I cleaned the table off:
We are getting light snow, but very consistently. We have a Level 3 Snow Emergency. This is SNOW IN PROGRESS:
We’ve been out and shoveled a couple of times today. Here’s the current state of things…including a SNOW BOOB:
I like this:
I sent Chiara some Christmas gifts and candy…here she is modeling her new T-shirt:
Here we are on different continents with our owl twinsies:
One of the bigger things that happened since I was in the habit of blogging is my Dad’s prostate cancer. One day, he came over and told us while we were eating pizza that he had to get a new doctor, because his left, and the new doctor was suspicious of his PSA of 4, given that every previous one was 1. He had a biopsy, which found cancer at 6/12 sites, and the Gleason score was 8. He had a robot-assisted DaVinci Prostatectomy on December 12 at TTH. It went well, and everything the surgeon told us was very encouraging. He has done really well, recovery-wise, and when he went back to the surgeon, he said that the seminal vesicles and the lymph nodes were free of cancer, and they will do a PSA in a month and that will determine whether he needs any radiation or chemo. I am very grateful.
So that’s what’s up around here. I need to go shovel again and/or go to bed.
Posted in Baby Jesus Spites Me!, Cats and more cats, Christmas!, Family Time, Friends, HoneyBear, House and Yard, Lame. Work., Let's Talk About Me, Parentals, Stupid stuff
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Not much has been happening lately…I’m off(ish) this week with little planned. Here’s some stuff I’ve accumulated:
I bought Bossman this shirt even though he’s not a big t-shirt person really:
BabyCat always wants to come in the bathroom with me…this is what happens when I don’t let her:
Brian assures me that Chris Perez will not be a Cleveland Indian next year, so I have decided to kick it old school and be a Tigers fan (if only I could find the 1984 World Series Tigers watch that most memorably made my 5 year old wrist break out). I went with my friend Peter to the ALCS Game 5 to watch the Tigers lose to the Red Sox in the cold/rain. Here’s an ominous weather picture from before the game.
From the outfield:
This is the view from our seats:
Tigers lose :(
It is worth noting that I had a cold when we went to the game, but my condition did not worsen after sitting in the wet cold for hours. Because of this, I thought it necessary to go to the UT-Navy football game with my Dad on Saturday, when it was colder and wetter:
I was glad we went, as UT won in 2 overtimes, and at the end the sun was even out:
Here’s the team after their victory:
I haven’t done much in my vacation so far – I did get my fingerprints done for the master gardener volunteer program, and I cleaned the cats’ litterboxes today, which is always delightful…it’s still nice to be away from work (and my students :( of course) for a while.
Saturday morning, Juliette dropped me off at the airport. Tearful goodbye!
Here’s the airport from the plane:
This is what the forest fires in Yosemite looked like from the plane:
I took this picture because I thought it was cool to see the cloud and the shadow it cast:
I talked mad shit all week in SF about how I missed the green of home (minus when we were at the Redwoods), and I can’t tell you how happy it made me to see all this green on the approach to DTW:
I’m going to try and be more grateful for the seasons and the space and the trees and I don’t even know what else. Look at the green!
Brian fetched me and took me to dinner. Hooray!
NOW TO THE PENCILS PORTION OF THIS POST:
First, Juliette got me these Hawaii pencils, and there’s a bonus syringe pen and “Get the lead out” pencil:
These are the pencils from the official Alcatraz gift shop. They are made from recycled jeans, and you can read the rules that are on the pencils on the packaging:
Alcatraz pencils from shops in Fisherman’s Wharf:
Other miscellaneous tourist pencils I accumulated:
Pencils from the MB Aquarium:
Friday morning, Juliette and I had breakfast at Darren’s Cafe, which turned out to have excellent breakfast AND Vietnamese food. Juliette let me go back to the Sea Lions with Brian’s fancy camera.
Here’s a slightly off-center picture that is otherwise worthy of being a postcard (NOT taken with the expensive camera, of course):
So, more sea lions:
Sea lions with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background:
We were fortunate enough to have been able to buy Alcatraz tickets before they were sold out. There were signs that said they were sold out for days and days, all cruises. Even though I had been told that it would be SO COLD at Alcatraz, it was actually very warm on Friday. We sat in the heat waiting to board the Alcatraz ferry.
I had never heard of (or did not retain, more likely) the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz between 1969-71. Several places around the Island were painted by the Indians – like this area on what was an officer apartment building:
Same apartment building:
The Dock Tower:
Wikipedia says that the Officers’ Club burned in a fire of “disputed origins” during the aforementioned Indian Occupation:
Quartermaster building:
Water tower, also painted by Indians:
I also thought the gardens/plants on Alcatraz were very interesting. Alcatraz is, of course, a rock. As soon as American people arrived at the island in the mid-1800s, they brought packets of dirt to make the island more hospitable. From the time of military use through the federal prison years, people, including prisoners, tried to plant seeds and plants from around the world that might do well in the harsh conditions. Some of the species survive. There has been a decent effort in the past 10 years or so to redevelop and preserve the diverse plant life on the island. If I lived in SF, I’d try to do some garden volunteering on Alcatraz. Here’s some plant stuff:
Creepy creepy morgue (through plexiglass):
Jail pictures!
Into a cell:
Creepy peeling paint:
The different hallways and areas of the prison have names like “Broadway” or “Times Square.” Here’s Broadway:
Pictures of the bars over windows in what was the library (there MIGHT have still been a few barren wooden bookcases in that area):
D-Block was where the baddest dudes stayed, and where the scary solitary cells were:
The Cellhouse from the outside:
The heat had burned off the fog, so a lot of our pictures of the city, bridges, etc. were decent:
Framed with some cool Alcatraz plant life:
Fancy landscape-oriented picture of a century plant with the Golden Gate in the background:
An interesting flower I’m going to try to identify later:
The Alcatraz Island Light:
We did take a bunch of pictures of ourselves finally:
Everyone had stupid audio tour headphones on all the time (so they were quiet, but extra oblivious about where they were standing and people trying to get by them), so we had a hard time finding people to take a picture of us. We finally got a couple with wicked Boston accents to trade picture-taking duties.
Cell phone selfie:
We finally made our way to the dock to catch the boat back at 4:15. We ran into this bold little guy (a baby gull?) while we were waiting:
It is worth noting that we could have fought some bitches in the line for the boat – they accused us of “slipping” (cutting?) in line, though some park dude was squawking about not staying in single file line – just GET ON THE BOAT.
A warning about picking up prisoners:
Alcatraz from the boat back to the pier:
We walked a bit to catch a cable car at the end of the line, so we got to watch them turn it around. I was standing right behind the dude who was “driving” the cable car…pretty cool.
We had to take Uber to get to the AT&T park from where we got off the cable car. The ballpark was just as nice as I had heard:
Main entrance, palm trees:
Seeing that it’s 9/11 (sort of, I guess it’s very early 9/12 now), here’s the 9/11 stuff out front:
We had a margarita at the Mexican restaurant attached to the stadium while we waited for Brent to meet us, and then we went in and got settled.
Here’s the scoreboard:
Sponsory weirdness in the outfield:
Selfie at the Giants game:
The next post will have pictures of the pencils I bought in SF, but I’m including this one here since all the teams sharpen their pencils. I told the girl in the gift shop that I’d like to register a complaint about the sharpening of the pencils. I don’t think she cared.
You’ll also notice in that picture a ticket for the Virgin Flight Deck (the semi-exclusive 2nd level of the stadium). The people in front of were wrongly accused of sitting in the wrong seats by some Game Day employee who tried to apologize with those tickets. They asked us if we wanted to go up there, as they usually get tickets on that level and knew what was up. Juliette and I took them and went up there (after a confused detour to the suite level where we were turned away):
I took this picture of the lit-up Bay Bridge from the Virgin level:
Also, this shitty picture of boats waiting for balls hit out of the park:
I saw an almost-perfect game, pitched by Yusmeiro Petit. Perfect until the last out.
We got more weird expensive SF ice cream on the way home from the game, this time at The Ice Cream Bar…and then my last day in SF ended. Sad pandy.
Thursday, when we left Napa, we drove to Guerneville to have lunch and go to the Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve.
Walking back to the car from the restaurant, I spotted this cool sidewalk art, and then ruined the picture with a smidge of my purse. Oh well.
Onward, to the redwoods! I don’t have much to say about the trees, though I have tons of inadequate photos. No description or photograph can do them justice (partly because they are just too damn tall). Maybe some people aren’t that jazzed by trees, but I really could not pick my jaw up off the soft forest floor. NATURE! (Yes, touristy nature, but NATURE!) That’s really all I’m going to say about the trees, and not because I want to be done writing blog entries about my trip.
Brent and Juliette walking ahead:
Family photo near redwoods:
Roots on a fallen tree:
iPhone panoramic photos are probably the best way to get the whole tree in a picture:
We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge again on the way back. We went to Brent and Juliette’s local watering hole, Club DeLuxe, to have some drinks (delicious greyhounds, made by an indie/pop-recording bartender who had just returned home from Burning Man) before dinner at The Little Chihuahua. We also had weird expensive SF ice cream before coming back to watch Village of the Damned, an excellent (?) movie with Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley, and Mark Hamill.
On Wednesday, we went over the Bay Bridge (the new span!) the second day it was open:
We had brunch in Sonoma, and then we got down to business tasting the wines. We started at Imagery Estate Winery, where a fast-talking dude who said “Absolutely!” way too frequently talked quickly about different wines. I did not care about wine.
We went to Domaine Chandon and had champagne. It was very fancy there.
We went to Rombauer Vineyards, which had some beautiful flowers and a pretty view:
We went to Dutch Henry Winery, where there were bonus animals. Josie wanted to eat these bonus chickens:
I did not develop a taste for wine while tasting wine. Brent and Juliette tried to pick a winery with sweeter wine for our last winery, so we tried Raymond Vineyards. They were not dog-friendly, and the tasting menu did not have the sweet stuff on it, so we just walked around a little and saw a bunch of French Bulldog-centric signage:
Also of note, Raymond Vineyards is going biodynamic, which apparently means planting in sync with the phases of the moon. Um, OK.
I think these might be biodynamic grapes:
We tried to go to the Oxbow Market, but it was not dog-friendly either. We went to our hotel (Embassy Suites) and called maintenance to have them “fix” our TV by unplugging it and plugging it back in. Then we sat outside and enjoyed the rest of the champagne/some wine/cheese/complimentary cocktails for a while, all the while dealing with the flies that came with having these swans in the courtyard pond:
Then! A highlight! Faithful reader Mike (I’ll make it sound like I have random readers who find out where I’m going to be and demand face time with me, I have no shame) came up to Napa to hang out with me. We had dinner and drinks and lovely conversation. Hooray!
Tuesday was Monterey Bay day!
On the way down, we drove along the coast, which was super amazing (amazeballs, even). We stopped at NorCal surf shop so Juliette could buy flip flops, and at maybe the grossest place I’ve ever peed because I drink too much water, but somehow not enough.
We went to the Aquarium, where again I tried to take non-cat animal photos. My photography skills had not magically improved, but I’m just going to include a ton of them anyway. So there.
One of the best things about MB Aquarium was the view of the bay from the back:
Here I (MB) am in Monterey Bay (MB):
Much raved-about jellies (the best-looking 14 out of their 20 species are on display at any time):
I was super excited about Sea Turtles (you can’t tell how big this dude is, but he’s pretty big):
Here’s a juvenile loggerhead:
More aquarium pics:
We had Mexican food in Monterey Bay, and then went into some shops looking for pencils. I found this hoodie for $19:
I should have bought ALL THE HOODIES and given them to people who love an MB ;)
On Labor Day, Juliette and I went north across the Golden Gate Bridge to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, where Juliette’s horsey lives.
I tried to take pictures of Belle (the horsey) with Brian’s fancy camera, but I don’t understand horses and/or non-cat animal photography, so none of them were very good.
GGNRA is very cool, particularly if you have a genius horse like Juliette does. This is across the street from the barn:
After letting Belle walk around a bit and eat some grass, we went to Sausalito to have lunch with Juliette’s friend Karen, which was interesting. I do not think I’ve ever met a rabid James Blunt fan before…but perhaps she had never met a less-rabid Tristan Prettyman fan before…to each her own.
We came back across the Golden Gate Bridge, and I remembered to take a lackluster photo from inside the car:
(Also, it is worth noting that the number of tunnels I’ve been through was probably increased by a factor of 3 while in California.)
So when we got home, Juliette and Brent went to an HOA meeting, and I went for a walk up to Haight-Ashbury and beyond, then back down to the park, and here and there.
I was fascinated by these plants the whole trip…I just found out they are of the Brugmansia genus, and they are commonly called “angel’s trumpets.” More interestingly, the entire plant is poisonous. Wikipedia says, “All parts of Brugmansia are poisonous, with the seeds and leaves being especially dangerous. Brugmansia are rich in Scopolamine (hyoscine), hyoscyamine, and several other tropane alkaloids. Effects of ingestion can include paralysis of smooth muscles, confusion, tachycardia, dry mouth, diarrhea, migraine headaches, visual and auditory hallucinations, mydriasis, rapid onset cycloplegia, and death.”
“Full House houses”:
Obligatory Haight picture (my Haight-Ashbury street sign picture didn’t come out):
