Rabbot

update on car restoration:

-fixed wiring to fuel stop solenoid (engine turns off when ignition is shut off!)
-new(ish) seats w/ better seatbelts and electric bases (1990's technology!)
-new (rebuilt) fuel injection pump
-new (slightly used) shocks and struts - not yet installed

minor setback
-dash lights are out. one lowbeam headlight out. tail lights are out. i think they're all connected...



no more vinyl w/ ducktape.


i'm getting really good at installing the injection pump.
so is boy.


in other news, we found wolaver's!

Craft time

Jenne sews

George sews

Ho, ho, ho

Kitchen christmas!
Originally uploaded by average lavender

Christmas felt like just another day around here, except Liz was here and we were given the exciting task of unwrapping things. Being festive, "Christmasy", jolly, etc is virtually impossible in the land of no snow, fake Christmas trees outnumbering real trees, and people who think snowflakes are stars. We tried though. We put up some lights and even got some of those glass ornament balls, we had a wreath...we listened to all the holiday news on NPR... So without the cheer we just tore the paper off the packages and soaked up all the kitchen-gift-related goodness depicted here.

Next step for the kitchen? Triple it's size, magically.

It's nice to know we're not alone.

Homesick

(by Joeseph Lambert, George found it in Seven Days.)

Okay, I'm back.

Time has passed and some things have happened, but none of them are earth-shatteringly exciting - I swear.

Jesse was here to visit and we did a lot of driving around and looking at things and watched him take a lot of pictures. He's got a fancy new Canon PowerShot G9 and can't seem to put it down. Now he's in China for an undetermined amount of time, but he was excited and happy to go.

We had Thanksgiving at the bakery with my boss, co-worker Emily, her husband and some more of Shannon's friends. While it was nice have a big meal and do something other than work I helped with a lot of the preparations and most of the clean up, so it was kind of like being at work. There were two turkeys (one brined, one not), sweet potato gratin, gravy, mashed potatoes, some other stuff, and a bunch of pies - of which only three slices were eaten.

Emily had her baby. A little boy named Ethan Danger - healthy, content, home. I still haven't met him because I've been sick for the past week and decided a week old human probably doesn't need this.

George has put in something like 53 hours at work this week starting and finishing up the $10,000 shoebox. He tried to sucker me into sanding but it was no use. His boss called last night to tell him how good it looked. It's the kind of thing that I can't even begin to describe but hopefully he'll get some pictures of it before they bring it to the client.

We're slowly getting into the Christmas spirit here in the land of drab drizzly winters. We've been cranking out gingerbread people and houses at work, sugar cookies shaped like candy canes, Santa's hat, and snowflakes - which, interestingly enough, everyone here calls a star. To celebrate the birth of our fair Jesus we're thinking about hitting up a different beach this year, maybe south of here, possibly Santa Cruz, possibly for two days and a night, or maybe we'll just do a beach day trip. We haven't accepted the possibility of rain, but no one wants to be at the beach in winter when it's raining. Regardless, we'll be with Liz and maybe Iran and Anu? (nudge nudge)

I'm trying to figure out how to make Flickr and Blogger talk nicely so I can put more pictures up with less hassle...

Jesse is here. Mostly we eat and sit around. We've gone to the top of Mount Tam and today he and George went to the Marin Headlands. Also they fixed the Rabbit.

Links to things:

Mount Tam
Marin Headlands
Rabbit
Pie crust
Sweet potato fries
Pacific Catch
Japanese Joinery

Toxic slick: coming to a beach near you...er.. us.

Last Wednesday a container ship ran into the Bay Bridge, dumping 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel oil into the bay. As for the cause, it's being attributed to "human error," which is believable and there was some serious fog that morning, but honestly--it's not like those pylons are tiny and they're equipped with radar. It's scary to think of what the marine life is going to be like around here in the coming years. In the meantime, officials seem to have everything under control.

George continues to pluck away at the Rabbit without much luck. The fuel lines have been replaced with stronger, clear tubing so it won't degrade as quickly from the biodiesel and we can see if the fuel pump is actually getting fuel, which it is. This afternoon his focus is on the fuel pump and whether something is amiss with it; he bought the pump used, but (supposedly) resealed from a fellow on ... ebay? craigslist? and has since emailed him to see if he can shed any light on the subject. Or find out if he got ripped off. Whichever. We're hoping it'll magically get fixed by Tuesday night when we have to head to the airport to pick up Jesse!

Yesterday we spent our rainy afternoon listening to Agatha Christie podcasts. Last week I painted the underside of our loft (which is the ceiling for the dining area) and it ended up a greenish yellow that Geo describes as glow-in-the-dark paint that doesn't glow in the dark. That's pretty accurate. This week I'll paint our new window shelf and then take a few pictures so you can watch the evolution of our weird apartment.

Part two: other stuff

Saturday night was a 40th birthday party for George's boss at the local winery. His wife is good friends with the owner, so he closed it down so we could have dinner there which was provided by the Puerto Rican restaurant Sol Food. Usually hanging out with the Coutures is entertaining and enjoyable, however this time is was the Coutures and the rest of their friends, who--aside from the other guys in the office--are all about 40 and from Marin. It was an awkward evening that with every "oh what do you do?" conversation drove home the feeling that we don't belong here. We don't have kids, we don't own a home, have a modern car, I'm not a contractor nor a designer, George isn't a business wheeler-dealer or wear a tie, we don't watch sports or even have TV, we know nothing about wine, we haven't traveled much, and we don't care about any of these things. We had a pretty nice conversation with one woman who'd grown up around here and seemed to understand that a lot of the residents in this area are completely intolerable, we liked her.

Sunday night we were psyched to be going into the city to have dinner with George's cousin, Iran, but didn't get to go because the Rabbit developed a fuel leak. George spent the whole day trying to fix it and when he thought he'd got it the car wouldn't start at all (instead of starting and sputtering.) We're both becoming more and more frustrated with this car, but probably will never part with it.

We finally found a place in the apartment for some bike hooks and got the bikes up off the floor! It feels a little less like we're living in a garage. George built a fancy new shelf to go under with window by the table, which replaces a skinny, ill-attached shelf the cats would sit on. Today I'm hoping we can agree on a color for the new shelf and for the underside of the loft, because while I can't put my finger on it I'm convinced that painting the right thing the right color in this place will magically transform it into a more comfortable, homey living space. Or I'm crazy and fickle about interior paint colors.

What we're really excited for is the middle of November when Jesse comes to visit! He'll be here for a whole two weeks around Thanksgiving, which we'll be celebrating at the 2nd Annual Fat Angel T-Day Feast. Maybe we'll get to take an exciting trip to some other part of this God forsaken state, or at the very least have a few days where we can all hang out with anyone having to go to work.

Today's fascinating lunch: mac & cheese with tuna fish. Tonight's fascinating dinner: sweet potatoes and chicken.

Part one: the food.

We really did try as hard as we could to put together our costumes, but it just didn't work out. Luckily, by the time we finished with dinner it was 11pm and even Liz, the party girl that she is, was fine with ducking out on Halloween festivities. Chez Panisse was one of the most elegant meals I've ever had--big plates with consumable-size portions precisely, yet nonchalantly arranged food, the waiter actually used a crumber. The menus are printed for the specific day and they have a great print on the cover. I think the vegetarian menu had an eggplant...or grapes, equally as beautiful as the tomato plant.


The best courses: the appetizer and dessert. The mozzarella was mild and cheesey without being rubbery like big pieces of mozzarella tend to be. The fig crostata was wicked figgy (a crostata is essentially an Italian galette but much flakier), and the fennel ice cream cut the intensity perfectly. George and I plan to go back at least one more time before we leave the Bay area. (Most of the things to do before we leave are eat at certain places.)

Continuing with food, I have three different cakey things to share with you. The first are some hi-hat cupcakes I made for Emily's birthday back in October. They're a chocolate cupcake frosted with a mound of marshmallowy stuff, dipped in a chocolate shell. I pawned most of them off on George's office.




At work I've been playing around with frosting some more cakes, the most recent a spice cake Shannon had leftover. I put some chopped apples and unsweetened whipped cream in the middle which was what really made it. Next time the apples need to be chopped smaller and more of them.




Most recently I made cashew, carrot, cardamom cupcakes with cashew cream cheese frosting from a recipe at Cupcake Bakeshop. The best way to describe them is with their name: they're exactly that. They're delicious in the way that cashews are buttery, soft, and salty.

EARTHQUAKE!!!!!

We can finally leave California! We felt our very first earthquake. Honestly it felt like when the garbage men throw the cans against the house after emptying them. Kind of pathetic, but I don't think I want anything bigger.

Apparently it was a 5.6 on the richter scale, just north of San Jose.

From the USGS site:

"A moderate earthquake occurred at 8:04:54 PM (PDT) on Tuesday, October 30, 2007.
The magnitude 5.6 event occurred 8 km (5 miles) NNE of Alum Rock, CA.
The hypocentral depth is 9 km ( 6 miles)."

you're looking to waste some time?

Why not finely grate one pound of baby carrots? That's what I did.

the rabbit's got one boot

As we speak George is (hopefully) an hour or so away from having the Rabbit complete and running for real. Now it's got new axles/CV joints, one new boot, new tie rods, new oversize battery, and a new lease on life. If all goes well and according to plan we're hoping to celebrate by going to one of our new favorite restaurants, Sorella Cafe.

One of the projects George is working on is kind of the prime example of the ridiculous ways people spend money when they have too much of it: a mobile name tag holder for a church which George's vague estimate prices out to be $10,000 in the end. I haven't seen the design, so I can't say whether or not it's going to be really cool. It's just so silly that someone would hire a designer to solve their pesky name-tag-jumble problem. Peg board? Everyone responsible for their own tag? Card catalog style?

After my boss came back, my co-worker and her husband went to Japan for two weeks and upon coming home she promptly came down with walking pneumonia. Which means George and I haven't been having any grand adventures aside from the usual go-to-work-come-home-sit-around. With Liz back in town we've been trying to at least get over to Berkeley. Luckily we've got her hooked on watching the show Alias with us so we can lure her over at least once a week. For Liz's birthday/Halloween we're going to Chez Panisse with her, her dad and step mom. We're hoping after dinner we'll still have time to get out and do something for Halloween; Liz is going to be Rainbow Brite, I'm planning on being the Morton Salt girl, and George is wavering between Speed Racer, Wolverine, or a number 2 pencil.

Last night for dinner we had Chickpea Broccoli Casserole from the cookbook Vegan with a Vengeance. Neither of us is vegan but it's nice to have a a group of recipes that rely more on vegetables than meat and butter, like this one for example. If you're going to make it you'll need...

3 16-oz. cand chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 large onion, quartered and thinly sliced
3 large carrots, grated (2 cups)
1 head broccoli, cut into small florets (4 cups)
2 Tbsp. thinly sliced chives
1/2 C. bread crumbs
3 T. olive oil
1 C. vegetable broth
1 tsp. salt

Then you'll want to...

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl mash the chickpeas well, it takes about two minutes with a potato masher (or pastry blender in my case) and they're good and mashed when they're done. Add the vegetables and mix well. Add the bread crumbs and mix. Then the oil and mix. Add the broth and salt, then mix. Dump it all into a glass or ceramic 9"x13" pan pressing the mixture in firmly. Cover with aluminum foil, bake 45 minutes. Uncover and bake 15 minutes more. Ta da!

My boss finally took a vacation and went to Italy for a week for a friend's wedding. Consequently, I'm working eleven days in a row--which started last Thursday.

Last week George was supposed to get the last of the parts he needed to finish the Rabbit, we even drove up to Petaluma to the the package because UPS wouldn't leave it without a signature. The next day he discovered that they'd sent him the wrong part!

It's a long week.

bulleted

The bike

For all practical purposes, my bike is complete!






One of her flashiest features are the tires: SpeedBlends made specially for Rivendell. When they're rolling the colors merge and have a nice teal-to-pink progression.




A couple other things I really enjoy are the microfiber bar tape, the waxed thread securing it, and the sleek, attractive stem. (Notice the u-lock attached to the bike...) The next step for it will be a shorter stem so I'm not reaching as far and a little saddle bag so I don't have to carry around a bag on my back.


Trips and visitors

My trip to Asheville was great, I got to spend time with Hope which is something I really could stand to do more of. We spent most of our time tearing paneling out of the littlest room in the house and painting painting painting. When I left we'd finished the walls & trim in the bedroom and almost all of the studio and the first coat in the kitchen. The time we spent away from the fumes was filled with trips to Lowe's, going out for food, touring around the city, and a really sucessful trip to and antique mall where we walked out with a chrome breadbox, a set of rectangular chrome kitchen canisters, a little kitchen table (mostly for the heavy-duty base, not the paint-splattered institution-like top), and two awesome chairs.

Dyani and Conor have arrived in California, Conor will be starting classes at U.C. Davis anytime now. They came down for the weekend where Dyani got a new bike: a new Volpe! She'd been looking for a nice touring bike and I, naturally, couldn't shut up about how amazing the Volpe is and pointed her to a bike shop that had one the last time George and I were there. After test riding and discovering it was on sale and loving it, she decided to get it. Hooray!

Liz is coming back tonight! We like Liz, she makes us feel like we have friends and know how to have fun.


The Rabbit

George has been plugging away at Rabbit repairs. I'm not too sure of the specifics, but I know that lately the work has been unfortunately frustrating. Parts not fitting and having to be reordered, bolts in ridiculous, hard-to-get-to places. Maybe he'll make his own post someday about it and it'll be more in-depth and interesting than mine. (hint hint)

funday

today george got a big ol' box full of rabbit parts! the new head gasket, brake pads, door gaskets, new head bolts, a new door latch, thermostat, and ... a water pump! and a green o-ring.

boy got to chase ants around the window sill.

girl got to be chased into the house by another mean dog. last night a dog bolted from the sidewalk into the driveway barking and snapping his evil jaw at her. she managed to scramble away and under the house. this morning she was sitting on the threshold of the door and the dog almost busted into the house. i'm not impressed with these san anselmo pooches.

and tonight i got to go to the doctor for a mysteriously swollen achey weird knee problem. it kind of went like my dentist visit, except this time the doctor was just late to work, apparently. after waiting in the exam room for an hour, he came in, moved my knee around a little, and determined that i probably have a little tear or some other damage in the joint, but it doesn't appear to be severe enough to warrant x-rays. however, if by next monday it's still all "jacked up," as my co-worker emily would say, then i get to go back in and possibly get some x-rays and then depending on what they find the great possiblity: surgery. i'm hoping it'll just get better.

tomorrow we may drive up to jenner and beyond and see what's whats up north or we may stay home and i'll sit on the couch. regardless we're heading to hilda's coffee shop for breakfast.

scrappins and mitch

last weekend my boss made a big cake that looked like a wine bottle and had tons of cake scraps leftover, so i took them and made scrappins the polar bear cake.



george thought he looked silly without a mouth, so he gave scrappins one. at first the cake was going to be a tower, then a panda, and finally a polar bear, but he looks most like a dog. regardless it's pretty delicious.

yesterday as i went out to do the laundry this little bird started making noise at me and fluttering around and i figured i'd just spooked him. later when i went out to put the laundry in the dryer boy and girl were harassing him in front of our neighbors house. i picked him up with a towel because it looked like they were more toying with him and less eating his flesh at that point.



after calling george and george calling susan we took mitch (i named him mitch) inside and cleaned up his feathers with rubbing alcohol which really woke him up and he started flappin' around. we put him back in the area where i'd first seen him, up in a box that houses electric meters and gave him a little food. i checked on him later and he was up and walking around making noise...and being stalked by the neighbor cat, rusty. i didn't bother to move him or shoo rusty because unless mitch jumped he would be safe. hours later i went to check on him again...and.. he...was face down in the dirt with flies around his head. i blame rusty.

in less morbid news, at the end of the month i'll be going to north carolina! hope and her husband are buying a house in west asheville and she'll be going down to do the closing and some cleaning and invited me along!. i'm looking forward to some time away from here and the adventure of travel and new places.

rabbit surgery

well. i've officially gone too far to turn back. i pulled the poor little bunny's heart out today. last weekend i popped its head off to change the gasket, and started seeing leaks all over the place. apparently a lot of the old seals don't stand up to bio-diesel. turns 'em to mush. i think i've found somebody who will rebuild it. i don't really want to get inside that thing. too many little bits.

should run like new once it's all back together...

gotta go. ice coffee time.

look. i'm famous!

woo hoo!

Congratulations are in order for my friend Hope who's just won an Eisner Award for her graphic novel Gray Horses! I highly recommend checking out both Gray Horses and her first book, Salamander Dream. Perhaps you may have also noticed her piece in the New York Times Op-Ed section this past Wednesday...


we've been a little a.w.o.l lately because we had cynthia and leland visiting for a while, then some frantic house cleaning and laundering due to an unpleasant amount of fleas and fear of reoccurring ringworm, and after that i have no idea where we've been. halley's coming out to visit monday night and will be here for a week...and half? or something? and the entire time she's here my co-worker, emily, is out of town and graciously letting me borrow her fancy 2007 prius. which couldn't have happened at a more perfect time because the brakes on liz's car need fixing and the rabbit is still on vacation.

i have to say, i'm very proud of george for making a post on the blog. i've urged and proded and asked and bribed him to do it in the past but he just wasn't interested. i guess all it took was some killin'.

morning kill

jenne's baking... i'd don't really know how to work this blog thing. but, girl brought me a gift this morning that i thought everyone should see... her first kill! ugly bugger, eh? the penny's pre-zinc w/ copper coating. but, if you have a new penny...

looks like she hasn't posted in awhile. things are pretty quiet around here. aside from the traffic. they're tearing up all the streets to replace drainage pipes, so the morning traffic backs up for miles. bikes are good.

the rabbit's still resting. i think there's a drain on the battery that i haven't found yet. today however, i'm messing around with the fuel injection. "hillbilly tuning". the site seems to be down right now, but i've been learning from a vw diesel guru. hagar (i think his real name is sven). he's a 75 year old "scanderhoovian" (as he calls himself) from the birthplace of the diesel engine. his english is quite poor, and sometimes he claims he went to hogwarts with harry potter, but he knows more about tuning diesels than anyone else... 70-80mpg is pretty good.


george

new neighbor.

the apartment directly across the street from us is pretty cute, it's the old train station so it has this nice line of windows above the door and says, 'landsdale station' above those. we're convinced it's got to be cool inside, so when we saw and ad on craigslist for it we figured we'd go to the open house and if it met our criteria (gas stove, bathtub) we'd consider it. the landlord (or tenant) was fifteen or twenty minutes late to show it so we decided to just forget it and went to see a movie instead.

our new neighbor moved in yesterday and the big glaring drawback to this guy is that he's got a little yappy dog that insists on yapping almost constantly. GREAT.

birthday weekend

george's birthday was pretty quiet and strangely exhausting. he ended up with the poached pear and almond tart, which turned out not perfect, but better than expected-and it's delicious! he spent the morning working on the dashboard and the display for the rabbit and in the afternoon we went into san francisco to say bye to karl and lindsay and to track down the elusive krylon spray paint for plastics in the color orange (we were hoping it'd be perfect for the dash.) driving through san francisco is always stressful and irritating (always), but more than just driving, parking is a nightmare. being that it was george's birthday and i was already exhausted he did all the driving, which he soon regretted.

karl and lindsay sent us home with various householdy things (like a totally sweet salad spinner), then it was back to marin and off to dinner with the boss & co. at the pub/brewery up the street. which only lasted until about nine but felt like two am.

yesterday was quiet. ish. we drove all over looking for a seatpost for my bike, never found it, had sandwiches in sausalito, and finally picked a color for the dash. the color is a nice light green (more like a celery and less like a mint), we think it'll be perfect.

the bike is coming together well; we've got everything we need save for bar tape and a seatpost. because the frame is old it uses a post with a smaller diameter-26.0mm as opposed to 26.2 mm. we went to six different bike shops yesterday and none had the correct size. we did discover our new favorite bike shop, the village peddler. george ran all of the cables for me and has been working on the brakes because after fighting with them and being defeated three or four times, i just couldn't bring myself to work on them. hopefully today we'll be doing some derailleur alignment.

as for the cats:

more exploding tires!

after trying again and having the tube explode again george and i decided to just set the project aside and wait for some more informed help. i did, however, get the bottom bracket, cranks, and some pedals put on yesterday:



Rivendell's wheel-builder, Rich Lesnick, emailed me yesterday to say my rear wheel was all assembled and ready to be picked up. this morning we headed out, with a box full of pastries, to get the rest of the missing components.

in order to get to walnut creek from here we get to do exciting things like go over the richmond-san rafael bridge and through the caldecott tunnel; at these two places we realized what is wrong with california drivers: they can't merge! that's right, all these instances of traffic being jammed, backed up, out of control and ridiculous are because people can't grasp the concept of merging- preceded, i suppose, by sign reading. by chance, we thought our car was making a terrible burning smell so we got off the interstate to check it out. it turned out to be someone else's car and when we got back on the interstate, just before the tunnel, we managed to miss almost all of ridiculous waiting.

once there we picked up the wheel, a saddle: the women's b.17 because it really does suit the bike better, two burrito wraps, new brake pads, and little nut/bolt combo missing from one of the brakes. they took a look at the wheel and tires and determined that (surprise!) a smaller tire would hold to the rim better and more safely than the ones they'd previously given me.

all that's missing now is bar tape and a seatpost (which we'll have to scrounge around for, apparently this frame requires a fairly skinny one.)

george installed his new, wider handlebars and got some red bar tape for them which turned out to be a pale red so it looks kind of pink. he's pleased, but may shellac them to try and redden them up. it's a good look for his predominantly silver and red bike.

in cat news: it's true and confirmed, the cats have fleas and ringworm. this means lots of baths and anti-fungal cream for them, which by this point they're fairly okay with. they're not clawing our eyes out, but they're really not happy about it. there's been floor and laundry bleaching and scrubbing all around. i mean, it's not like we're living in a filthy hole or anything, we clean and launder regularly, the windows are always open, they get advantaged regularly: what the fuck?

saturday is george's birthday (the big 2-5) and hopefully we'll be going to the beach with liz and mike. i think he's decided that instead of a cake (i had suggested carrot cake with strawberries and whipped cream filling, frosted with either whipped cream or buttercream) he'd like a tart. and quiche. but not at the same time.

p.p.s

my tires are the coolest thing since forever and are a big awesome surprise for all y'all.

you know, more bikes

what do you find in the bottom of a jug of maple syrup after it's been sitting for a while? a crystallized pancake!




i had my doubts about amaryllis bulbs, but they were a) unfounded and b) wrong. towards the end of last summer susan (george's mom) gave us a bunch of them and naturally i brought them all the way across the country and about a month ago decided to give 'em a go. the result was this great bloom - however, it was too heavy for the rest of it so it fell over and broke off. so the leaves in the background are still in the pot and the flowers are actually in a blue thermos. we fooled you though.




after discovering a flexible bondo-like substance, george got to work remodeling our new/old dash! he cut some custom vents and applied the aluminum strip (at the bottom). we haven't decided what color to paint it yet, the front-runner right now is beige (because it'll match the color of the roof inside.) the other option would be black, but we have a theory that a lighter color would help keep the car cooler in the hot summer sun.

saturday we made a trek out to walnut creek to check out rivendell bike works with karl and lindsay and it was a tremendous success. the guys there were really nice, really helpful- nay, ridiculously helpful. the rear spacing on my new/old frame is narrower than bikes these days and someone invented a pair of tricky little tools to a) increase the spacing and b) re-parallel them. the best part is that i got to do it myself! that way i couldn't blame anyone else if it fucked up the frame, wouldn't have to pay them to do it, and i got to do it myself. we walked away with a bunch of snazzy new bike parts and a rear wheel on order. i froze on the saddle choice; i've been eying the brooks b.18, but didn't realize that brooks makes a womens version of the b.17, which is less cruisey and more roady. lindsay got a b.17 for her 1980-something schwinn le tour, which she was super psyched about (apparently the current saddle is really dirty and suede thanks to the bike's previous owner.) hopefully by the time my rear wheel is ready to be picked up i'll have made a decision. instead of getting me new handle bars we got george new, wider, handle bars so i'll have his old ones.



(click for a larger, readable version)


after work today i was ready to start trying to assemble some bikey things and decided to start by putting a tube & tire on a wheel, a nice simple place to start. everything was going fine until the tube exploded! being captain cool/clueless that i am, i forgot to put the rim tape on the rim. it's this nice cloth tape that goes around in the inside of the rim and covers the end of the spokes so they don't....pop the tube! it was a shocking, headache-inducing pop and it's still in my head. then george got home and enlightened me regarding rim tape and we set out for performance bikes for some springs for the brakes, bar tape, and a bottom bracket tool. on the way home we stopped and picked up sushi for dinner and got liz o and mike's message asking to crash on our couch tonight.

george is currently dismantling his handle bars. boy is sleeping on the couch. girl is stalking around outside. i'm sitting on the couch.

p.s. - we think girl may have ringworm again.

when thieves steal your bike, build a new one

and so begins the chronicle of the new bike:









the frame also came with a rear derailleur and some brakes, both of which are in decent, usable condition.

cats!

the cats have been sleeping on the couch a lot lately, probably because it's soft and out of the hot searing sunlight. it's been ridiculously warm lately-up into the mid-90s. i see people around wearing long pants and shirts and...jackets. yesterday and today are nice and cool due to the morning fog we're getting; it was actually cloudy this morning.




while sleeping on the couch boy's been sleeping in some funny positions that rival the funny positions ollie used to sleep in. this one is my personal favorite-showing off the snaggly tooth and his enthusiasm for life.




and even when i lay on the couch he's still determined to sleep on the couch.

hot summer

lately we've been hanging-out machines; first dyani was here and while she was here we got a hang out a little with my paper-source-boss lori, we spent a good part of the weekend with karl and lindsay at the beach and playing wii, tonight we're dining with lil, tomorrow we're attending a little birthday bash for george's boss's son, bo (catered by wife/mom, jen with hot dogs!), then hopefully more hanging out with karl and lindsay, then mike and liz, then cynthia and leland are coming in july!

in the meantime george has been diligently working on our new-old dash for the rabbit. he's got it pretty well flattened out and cleaned up and soon we'll choose a color and install it. i'm not sure what his next step is, possibly working on the not-running problem, or the broken-horn-steering-wheel thing. regardless, we're one step closer to getting her running again.

my new-old bike frame has arrived and is beeeeeautiful! it's got part of a bottom bracket that needs to come off and then it's just a matter of amassing the parts, a good portion of which i'm hoping to get from rivendell bike works, and an up-coming bike swap in san rafael.

woo!

mourning and the lighthouse

after checking ebay and craigslist every day for the past week, i'm truly convinced my bike is gone for good. some people i've talked to have had optimistic stories of other people finding their bikes on craigslist and having the pleasure of getting it back, or simply finding it, or having it returned to them more than a year later. my bike has moved on. i have found a couple other bikes similar or identical to mine for sale and have considered buying another one, but i've come up with a better solution: i'm going to build my own precisely the way i want to. i deviously won an ebay auction for a Volpe frame from the late 80's and have started compiling a list of parts. the frame is scratched up enough that a dumb bike thief won't go through the trouble of stealing it, i hope.

dyani was here visiting for the last week or so which was a very welcome break from the lame stuff we usually do around here. she and her boyfriend conor are moving out to davis in september, so the first thing we did was drive to davis so she could sign a lease on an apartment. we did other californiay things like: go to the beach, the jelly belly factory, ride our bikes across the golden gate bridge (and then walk back after they got stolen), eat seafood, walk through chinatown, and check out the point reyes lighthouse.

















the cats, who we recently had to de-flea, are very big fans of dyani and are kind of bummed that they're not getting all that extra attention and entertained all day long anymore. while here dyani requested some baked goods and picked out chocolate cupcakes filled with chocolate mint ganache and topped with mint buttercream. they turned out delicious and kind of stomach achey. luckily we've pawned three off on the neighbors and george doesn't seem to have a problem eating one a day so we've only got a few left.

in car news, george took a dash out of another rabbit to replace ours which is cracked and messed up beyond repair. he's going to sand down the few cracks this newer one and finish it with some bondo-like stuff and paint it. he hopes to have it running by the end of the month. we got a new set of tires for liz's car and now it rides like a dream - smooth and steady.

violated

dear jerk bike thieves,

i don't support your way of life, but you've left me no choice. i hope you enjoy reselling/chopping/riding my bike which i have loved and treasured and ridden with great joy for less than a year. i am glad i hadn't upgraded my saddle or found the right rack for the back. please do enjoy the lights and i hope the pump falls off so if you have a flat you're screwed. maybe if you're lucky you can be hit by a car while riding it just like i was.


sincerely,

girl who's bike you stole from in front of a bank on a sunday afternoon.

p.s. - thanks for stealing the bike i was borrowing from my really nice elderly neighbor, i thoroughly enjoy telling him it had been stolen and there's no hope of getting it back.

p.p.s. - you're a jerk.

memorial weekend

the other day girl brought home her first kill: a tennis ball. as you can see it's only slightly smaller than her head. she carried it inside, walked around with it, showed it off, then played with it for a while.

for memorial day we went to my co-worker emily's barbeque in the park for a little bit and then headed off to muir woods to meet up with george's cousin iran, her husband anu, and two of their friends from iceland.



today i did all sorts of fascinating errands and cleaning and belated birthday present sending and of course: baking! chocolate chip cookies (from my new favorite book, baking illustrated), high protein bread (the amazing manghis' recipe), and grape nut muffins (from the enchanted broccoli forest).



now george and i are patiently waiting for dyani's pretty-delayed plane to arrive at 1am by rearranging the house and putting up bookshelves and watching a movie. dyani'll be here for a whole week! we'll be going up to davis to find her an apartment, biking into the city to bike into the city, and heading to the beach because it's been seventy and sunny for the past two weeks so why wouldn't we go to the beach?

last sunday we went to the maker faire and were overwhelmed by the number of people, the amount of technology and resounding creativity. there were fire trucks shooting flames, rockets, power tool races, at least three different electric cars, bicycles, bicycles, bicycles, a life-size game of mouse trap (it looked just like that too..), yarn, clothes, legos...



there was this tiny house which is truly remarkable. before we left for california we thought it'd be a great idea to build and tow a tiny house instead of a u-haul. our design looked more like a cross between a gyspy wagon and a train car.



a tiny tiny model A engine! (for those of you out of the model A loop: this past summer george spent hours upon hours tinkering on a 1930's model A in his parents garage and managed to get it running!)



on our way out of the faire we came across driving cupcakes! there were three or four of them, well, one was a blueberry muffin.

since we were down in that neck of the woods, we decided to check out half moon bay. it's one of those ridiciulously quaint costal towns that only survives because of the tourist traffic. we had some coffee and looked around an antique store where we found this little hand drill. i've been searching for one to use to drill little holes in order to bind books. (someday i may shell out the $40+ for a screw punch, but until then...)





but perhaps the most exciting part of the day was the very beginning when we were just heading out of san anselmo and stumbled across and antique faire! (they're all about the "faires" out here.) we meandered through looking at all the unaffordable antiques and the wealthy people buything them to use as decorative splashes to their homes until george found a little chest full of machinists' tools!



$500 later we were on our way to the maker faire.

p.s.

the key to polenta is cheese.

a smattering

george made this nifty little circuit tester! it lights up AND buzzes! he plans to use it on our sick rabbit in order to fix things like the headlights.

speaking of rabbits, my sister's rabbit, andrew, died this week after living to the ripe ol' bunny age of ten. after her first rabbit, fluffy, died mom and i went out in search of the perfect replacement to give her as a christmas surprise. we found andrew and managed to keep him in the house and a secret from her for something like a week. she opted to have him cremated like i did ollie - if anyone finds a bottle shaped like a rabbit, please let me know.

speaking of things being sick, my grandfather goes in tomorrow for some heart surgery. in addition to needing a stint in his artery, he has a touch of pneumonia in one of his lungs. he's spunky (like his wife was) but old; here's hoping everything goes smoothly tomorrow.

today continued to be full of baked goods: pitas, maple cornmeal muffins, and finally, polenta for dinner (which is still in the oven.) other highlights of the day included:

- breaking little pieces off of plants at OSH to bring home and root
- getting some new sheets
- george coming home for lunch

tomorrow we hope to bike out to point reyes station like all the cool kids do. (tons of people bike from san francisco to pt. reyes on the weekends - flocks! oodles! droves! murders!)

meh.

clearly someone's a better nose-licker.

we're back in california after a visit home. the travelling back went without incident except for george's weird-pain-in-sternum-might-collapse-lays-down-in-the-airplane-and-feels-
better-in-five-minutes thing. it was good to see the kittens and nice to not be flying or driving, but i can't say that i was glad to be back. the last three days i've been feel crappy physically, mentally, and emotionally. it's like living in someone else's apartment and going to someone else's job. george and i decided to try and think of it as having summer jobs in some great costal place.

rose is in town for a wedding in berkeley and hopefully we'll get to see her along with liz o. and mike. and at the end of the month dyani will be visiting for the sake of visiting and to nail down some housing in davis where she and conor will be moving in...the fall i think and to visit friends in santa barbara.

girl is pretty pissed at us-literally. she's taken to doing her business by the door and on our messanger bags. we reassure her that we're not going to leave her for good and that she's a good cat, but not when she pees on things other than cat litter.

recipes of the week!
- chilled avocado cucmber soup, from Horn of the Moon Cookbook
- coconut milk cupcakes with coconut cream cheese frosting and pineapple, from the blog Vanilla Garlic

chilled avocado cucumber soup

4 c. (2 medium cucmbers), chopped (reserve 1 cup, peel only if skins are waxed)
2 ripe avocados, pitted and peeled
3 large cloves of garlic
1/2 packed cup fresh parsley
2 c. yogurt
1 c. water (or 1 c. ice cubes to chill soup quickly)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. chopped scallions

- in a medium bowl combine 3 c. chopped cucumbers, avocados, garlic, parsley, yogurt, water or ice, and salt.
- puree mixture in a blender in batches until smooth.
- when everything's blended stir in the reserved cup of chopped cucumber and scallions
- chill 1 hour

my note: i think i would go ice cubes as a cooling method-the water seems to....water the soup down a little more than i would like. or maybe i wouldn't use either of these and would just chill it longer.

also, today i swiped some big, healthy wandering jew clippings from home depot-suckers.

montpelier visit no. 2

today i rode a sweet bike that colin made! george rode it too; he tried to do a wheelie and fell over backwards. we spent time with liz wandering around the town, visited the bakery and saw the new delivery car (a blue ford windstar), and some other stuff. mostly the bike is the coolest part.

[edit 5/3: the link to the sweet bike is a sweet video of me riding the sweet bike, but it didn't work out so hot. ]

montpelier visit no. 1

george, jesse and i drove into montpelier today to stop by the bakery and hang around town. paul and elaine had already left, but denise was still there and we talked about bakery things and new news-the delivery car finally died. magically, while we were there liz called! (liz k.-the first liz i worked with at the bakery) we made a date to hang out at the langdon street cafe this very afternoon! i got to meet her five and a half month old daughter, amelia! she's pretty little and pretty cute. she's got wisps of red hair and a distinct voice.

george and jesse played scrabble-jesse won. we went to rivendell and bear pond looking for the horn of the moon cookbook and any good book. i found this one! ideally i'm in the market for a used copy of the horn of the moon. then we went to the co-op and passed susan on the way in, but she didn't see us. jesse got stuff to make quiche and george got some asparagus to roast and we're hoping that james will bring down some steak. it's a lot of food. so come by and eat some.

home sweet home

we made it home relatively unscathed! the most annoying things we encountered were being unable to sleep on the plane and JFK being unusually hot and dry-which made us very unhappy. the icing on that cake is that the water-fountain-water tasted dreadful and the bottled water was virtually unaffordable.

jesse met us at the airport and we headed over to see my sister and pick up some car keys...then downtown for some lunch...then up and down church street for fun...and he drove us down the parking lot with the car. luckily he didn't make it out of the parking lot before we discovered we couldn't get the car to start. after trying to jump start the car about eight times and calling my dad at least four times we broke down and called AAA for some help. then we sat in the car and waited for something like a half hour and then got a call from them saying it'd be another half hour before the town truck got there. jesse drove us into montpelier, where george's mom, susan, met us, we ran into my aunt susi and then susan brought us the rest of the way home.

before we left montpelier i got a call from the tow truck guy who told me that the car started fine-as long as it's in neutral instead of park. so he didn't tow it anywhere because it didn't need to be.

after finally getting home i rang the door bell and surprised my mom! she was very, very, very, very surprised and happy. i managed to keep the actually dates of our trip home a secret from her and let everyone else know. woo hoo! i started to tell her the story of the car and she interrupted with, "oh, ... and it has to be in neutral, dad knows that. halley knows that." ... .. i'm SO GLAD they let me figure this one out on my own.

jenna's managed to keep all the plants i left behind alive-except the avocado tree which may or may not make it because one of the four cats in the house used its pot as a litter box. excitingly, her chinchilla, chillbert, has learned to use her excersize wheel! and all the cats got fat!

birthdays!

happy birthday to:
- my mom, kim!
- george's brother, jonathan!

nothing will make a birthday more special than being in a bulleted list of other people celebrating a birthday.

as it turns out these people also share a birthday:
- george
- liz o.

some stuff about some things

this is the worst of my injuries:



it's looking pretty good today, it's been pretty black and purple for a while.

friday night we drove into the city and had dinner and went to a movie with hope and mal. and i highly reccomend that everyone go see (or rent when it comes out) hot fuzz.

saturday george worked on fixing a chair most of the day and i went to work most of the day. for dinner we had roasted yams and asparagus.

sunday we drove back into the city and went to the alternative press expo with our friends karl and lindsey. it was kind of overwhelming and i felt a little too ignorant about comics. i did buy a little book that's portraits of werewolves among the roman elite; i appreciate it because these guys obviously put a lot of time into it (the illustrations themselves and the folder the portraits are in is handmade) and it gives me hope that if they can do something like this and make some money from it then i could probably do something like this and make some money from it. i also bought a hat just as the expo was closing down, it's a nice brown corduroy cap with some leaves stitched in orange on the sides. hope got a really beautiful blue wool(?) one with a bird stitched on the side.

after the expo was over we drove hope and mal back up here to the north bay so they could see our little apartment and more importantly meet our adorable cats and slightly more importantly eat some delicious dinner. butternut squash ravioli, melt-in-your-mouth gnocchi, beet salad, creme brulee, chocolate mousse torte... hope and mal are two of my (and assume george is with me on this) absolute favorite people to hang out with-there's just enough similarities and differences between us that everything is interesting.

our friend liz leaves to go back east for the summer tomorrow and we're bummed that she's leaving but are confident she'll come back-if not for her car then for her le creuset pot.

as an aside, i think one of the most wonderful things about bicycles is that they're simple machines and, with a little effort, easily understood. would a chainless bike be even easier to comprehend and repair? i'm undecided.

super exciting wednesday!!

the excitment is absolutely non-stop here in san anselmo. my schedule for work got rearranged a little so i can go somewhere this weekend, so today i was supposed to work all day. this morning i got nice and early and cancelled the dentist appointment i had today and ate my cereal and even got to enjoy my coffee. i got all dressed up in layers and headed out for work on my bike.

i was promptly hit by a car!

luckily, i'm okay. my legs are bruised and swelling in selected places, but other than that i'm clean. my bike is even all right! which, deep in my heart, is the most important thing.

now i'm drinking hot chocolate and already going crazy from sitting around. entertain me! or not. whatever. i'll be here.

excitement tuesday

yesterday i had the chance to spend the afternoon with my friend sarah who is going to grad school in england! things would have been more exciting if i'd flown over there on a whim, but it turned out she was in the area for school break. we had sushi and walked around berkeley. she bought a hat. the excitement continued after we parted ways and i returned to the car to discover a $30 parking ticket! woo! on the way home i didn't even get stuck in rush-hour traffic, though it would have been all right because george just installed...a new stereo in the car! that's right, if you keep turning the volume up you can almost drown out the shaking and rattling noises the car makes, it's very exciting.

but the excitment doesn't stop there: about a mile and a half from our house, just past a heavily traveled intersection where two lanes merge - the rabbit broke down! she just turned off and left me in the middle of the road. luckily there were some guys waiting for the bus across the street and pushed me out of the road and into a 20 minute parking spot. i tried calling george - no answer. i tired calling andy - no answer. i called george something like four more times - no answer. i assumed they were in a meeting but walked up to the office anyway. it turns out he hadn't turned the ringer on his phone back on after we went out for chinese food the night before.

we went back to the car and george tinkered on it for a while and concluded that it's probably something to do with the fuel injector pump. just before we called AAA he tried starting it again and it did! we only made it about a quarter of a mile before the rabbit broke down again. this time we pushed it off onto a side street and called for a tow truck. the first time i called AAA told me that my card had been cancelled and that they'd transfer me so i could sign up again, i told her i didn't really have time for that at the moment, but thanks anyway. then i called back and talked to someone else without any problems.

the guy in the tow truck turned out to be a nice guy not much older than us. he had the car up and ready to be towed in a short bit and then when we got to the house he managed to back it into the driveway and even into a parking spot - which, considering our driveway, is quite a feat. sometimes we can't even back the car into a spot.

we're glad it didn't happen far from home and that it was nothing catastrophic, but i'd prefer it didn't happen at all, or if it could have happened on, say, monday. this is the one weekend we actually had planned to go somewhere in the car. so now we're hoping it'll be either an easy fix, the buses run with some frequency on the weekend, and/or that we're up for riding our bikes in and out of the city. or that our friend liz wants to leave her car with us sooner than she'd anticipated. =)

george and i are both relieved that we don't have to drive to work. and now we're leaving for work.

headliners

Vermont cheese makers garner awards

Wife of former Senator James Jeffords passes away

Unicycles, scooters and feet
(the scooter lady, amy, scooted by manghis' everyday. sometimes she'd have the little boy she nannied with her and she always spoke to him like she spoke to everyone else - there was no simplified language, no orders given, like they've been best friends since the beginning of time. she also had pink streamers on the handles of the scooter.)

Phish frontman pleads guilty to drug charge

california's toll

since moving here i've spent more time trying to recuperate from various things than i remember having done in the past ... i don't know... DECADE. ringworm. psoriasis. internal infections. cuts. bruises. scrapes. it's out of control and has been just about non-stop since we got here. i drink water all the time, i do my best to get full nights of sleep, i'm cautious when using sharp knives and when riding my bike in traffic, but none of it seems to matter i still feel like crap and cut myself and am tense, grumpy, and unhappy about it.

as an aside regarding food: despite being in the magical land of california it's becoming increasingly difficult to eat really well and consistently. we have yet to find the farmer's market (but have really promising leads) and really fresh vegetables seem virtually impossible to get. there are something like four or five grocery stores within a fifteen minute drive for us and they either have yucky produce at an affordable price or good produce at a ridiculous price. rar! we've been eating out more and more which is exciting because there's an endless number of restaurants to choose from but it's also more expensive, there's less control over what we're eating, and we run into problems like the one we have tonight: no produce in the house! so we get to go on the hunt.

i guess i'm just frustrated because i'm lazy. but the getting sick and having ridiculous accidents is just absurd at this point: california is not earning any points from me.

things we're excited about:

- tax refunds! which between the two of us total a little over $2,000. hooray!
- parts arriving to fix the wheel of the car!
- finding a new frame for the futon! one that's oriented the short way! it'll fit in our tiny space better than our wide one.
- almost being done painting that breadbox! after running out of one color spray paint i tried to find it at our little hardware store but didn't have any luck. but once the car's fixed we can look in other places!

pictophotos

girl's newest mouse trick.



we deicded to put the soda in the freezer to chill it faster as it was warm and we were out of ice, then we forgot about it and it 'sploded.



cat wrastlin' 101