Mission San Luis Rey

The first three photos are in the gardens of the Self Realization Fellowship in Encinitas. Don’t worry, we didn’t have to join in order to see the gardens. The rest are at the historic mission in Oceanside. Really, really cool.

In France, they just call it “bread”

I am all about baking bread lately. Check out these lovely baguettes I made last night. Nice and crusty and very good. Once again, The Joy of Cooking comes through, although their breads have been a little salty. I’ll remember that next time and cut the salt in half. There’s something about baking bread that really satisfies. The process involves this almost baffling alchemy of rising and kneading, and then surprise, it’s bread! It’s like the Calvin and Hobbes strip where they try to figure out why bread goes into the toaster and toast comes out. Where does the bread go? It’s kinda like that.

Three Years? Wow.

Oh Figs!

 

We discovered this afternoon that our scraggly little fig tree has apparently decided to bear this year. Little more than a weed when we moved in almost two years ago, with some judicious (although largely clueless) pruning, our little tree has become quite the young man now. He’s providing excellent shade in our little back patch and perhaps even some tasty figs by summer’s end. These may not be edible this year, but it’s going to be fun to watch them grow. I’m already making all sorts of fig recipe plans, but as Anne rightfully wonders, “what has figs in it?”

It’s Been Real?

Update 5/10/09: I realized that this original post was the result of an imbalanced life — mostly due to dissertation-finishing stress. I’m back to blogging here again, and I’ve transformed it a bit into more of a “hey, this is our life and this is what we’re doing” blog for our friends and family to keep up with us. It’ll be updated as the need arises, so y’all should check in periodically.

Actually, no, it hasn’t, and that’s part of why this is my last post. I’ve posted here about my, er, “fondness” for the internet. Or rather, the narcissistic search for fulfillment through various vicarious internet outlets. Blogs, photo sharing, etc., it’s all a way to seek self-importance, a way to affirm existence. And the more I think about it, the more false it seems. I spend way more time making posts, checking comments, making comments, etc. than I do actually doing things worth posting about or commenting about.

So here’s the thing, Internet, I think we should see other people. We can absolutely still be friends, but I just don’t think this whole “exclusive” thing is working out. I don’t like how dependent on you I’ve become. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I just think we spend too much time together. It’s not that I find you unpleasant — quite the contrary — I just feel like I’m missing out on a lot of other great things.

So this blog is going away, along with a few other “droppings” I’ve left around the Internet. I’m tired of the incessant demands on my time — real or imagined — and I’ve decided to live less of my life (much, much less) behind a keyboard and a computer screen. The other day, I added it all up, and I literally spent an hour and a half of otherwise-productive time just messing around online. I’m sure this is much less than a lot of people, but to me it’s unacceptable to lose time like that for no good reason.

If you read this blog for updates about what’s going on with me (I think there are a couple of you), just drop me an email every once in a while, and I promise I’ll do the same. I’ll leave this blog up for a little while, just so everyone gets the message, then down it comes, and this little patch of Interwebs reverts to its wild, uncultivated state. Thanks for reading, folks, and if I may, please use the time you would have spent reading my posts to do something enriching, productive, and worthwhile.

Stack o’ Papers

Well, here it is. This is my dissertation. 440 pages. Second photo is the stack of three that were mailed off today to my committee.

Phoo. Also found out today that I had an article accepted to a journal I submitted to back in November. It’s quite a good journal, a nice step up from what I’ve already been published in, and a good stepping stone to the next tier. Annnd, probably the most exciting news is that we bought a new bed today. A real growd-up bed with a frame and box spring and everything. It was quite necessary, since our former bed was literally hurting us. Badly. Very badly. I can’t even tell you how excited I am to go to bed tonight. And then to get up and NOT work on my dissertation! It’s like a whole new lease on life. You think I’m kidding, but…

Winter Craftiness

It seems a winter of sorts has finally hit us down here in SoCal. Rain off and on all weekend, and a genuine storm by any standard hit today, with high winds and cold rain. The weather has provided a nice excuse to hunker down and be cozy in the evenings (which is not altogether uncommon, it’s just that now we have an excuse). This, combined with a renewed campaign to turn the TV off if there’s nothing in particular that we want to watch, has given us some good productive time. Last night, I finally got around to sewing the crane (maybe stork? egret?) patch my wife embroidered for me onto my $2.00 garage sale messenger bag (the patch covers up a machine-embroidered logo for some kind of gin), and tonight I rebuilt the front wheel of my current bicycle project while my wife worked on her latest embroidery project. It was really lovely to sit in our little living room, working on our projects, and alternately talking and listening to the storm outside and the cat snoring. I can’t think of a single thing I would rather have done with my evening.

January 20, 2009

After watching the inauguration this morning, it feels a bit like I’ve taken a rubber band off my head that’s been there for the last eight years. How strange it will be to have a president that doesn’t make me cringe and turn away whenever I see him on the television or hear him on the radio.

We’ve just returned from a quick trip to Oregon to make up for missing Christmas on account of the weather. We had three full beautiful days in Oregon, and half of another beautiful day yesterday before we came back. Except for the first day, which was foggy, it was clear and cold and lovely for our entire trip. We spent some time clearing storm damage to the trees and walking around taking photographs. I also scanned a few images from the family photo archives. The first one is a photo of my grandmother and her brother, the other two are some random photos of me around two years of age.

Yup, that’s a teddy bear and a chicken, too. I like this photo because they look like lost urchins in some kind of migrant worker shantytown.

Here I am concentrating very hard on a truck. I still get that look sometimes.

This one didn’t scan or clean up too well, so I got a bit creative with the editing. I like it because I appear to be just accidentally flopping through the edge of the photo, looking somewhat tragic and harried.

December 14, 2008

I’m still basking in the glow of the good news received last week. On top of that, the weather has turned “wintery” here in SoCal, which means it’s cool, cloudy, windy, and a little rainy. We actually turned the heat on yesterday for the first time, and I’m about to really enjoy a nice warm bowl of oatmeal and cup of coffee (which I’ve only recently started drinking in small amounts). It’s funny how much better days like this make me feel after days and days and days and days and days of the same bloody thing. I never thought clear, sunny skies would get tiresome, but boy, do they ever. I know, I know, most people wish they had that problem, especially this time of year, so I’ll stop bitching.

It feels so good to be moving forward with my dissertation. The fact that I now have some distinct goal and some good feedback is really wonderful, and it has really energized me to get things done. Not just diss things, actually, but it makes me want to make progress on all my projects. I guess nothing succeeds like success, right?

I’m about to head off for Oregon for a couple of weeks, and I’m getting together what work I want to take with me. It’s nice to feel like there is actually a reason to work while on vacation, instead of just some vague mandate to get stuff done. Of course, it will also be wonderful to just relax in Oregon, a place which has the much-appreciated ability to take my mind off of just about all of the everyday stresses and worries.

Everything’s Coming Up Milhouse!

Yesterday was an unprecedentedly great day. I mean, it was probably hands-down my best day since finishing my diss draft in June. Not only did a bunch of stuff not go badly, it actually all went really well, and there were even some very pleasant surprises. First, I finally had a two-hour phone conversation with my diss advisor, who thinks a defense by March should be quite possible. Woo hoo! Not only does my diss not suck, it actually could be finished within a quarter! That’s crazy!

The rest of the stuff sort of pales in comparison to that, but it was all really good: 1) the bike shop got the stuck pedal off the Runwell finally; 2) one of the readers of my Old Bike Blog sent me this incredible poster he made; 3) I finally won an eBay auction (even though I swore on this blog that I would never eBay again) for a replacement handlebar/stem for the Huffy/Raleigh at a really good price; and 4) some long-awaiting microfilm arrived by inter-library loan. By the end of the day, part of me wanted to explode with glee, while the other part kept looking over my shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m still a little worried that the universe is just getting me in a good mood ahead of some epic disaster of cosmic proportions, but hey, even if that’s the case, I’ll take the good stuff while it lasts!

PS–If you don’t get the title of this post, please hand over your credentials and exit the blog without incident. We don’t want any trouble.