BARTdropping

"I really like your dad's car. I really like it when he talks to it.
That makes him seem totally insane."

What Not to Wear

Sun dress, sun hat, water sandals, smock dress, two pairs of pants, and
a turtleneck. All at once.

The Girls

Ponies

Ehren with the twins and Little E

Facepainting

High Hill Ranch, Placerville

This was only a drill. No mice were hurt in the making of this photo series. Thank you.

Part III: Deck Stacked

Part II: Assembly

How to Catch a Mouse, Part I: Materials

Because Nothing Says "Inconvenient" Like A Burnt Member

What the SF Chinatown Y lacks in plumbing, it more than makes up for with frank talk about anatomy.

Coming Home

The ceremony Saturday night was beautiful. They were married by a Hindu swami with fruit, smoke, flame, rice, scents, a coconut, garlands and flowers on a low platform covered with rich cloth and pillows; the backdrop to this was fading daylight, rain, brick, headlights and narrow streets seen through paned glass. All this gravity, ritual, and devotion tucked into the corner of an 18th century New England inn. Gorgeous.

As is usual at weddings these days, my state was as emotional as can be, and I welled joyful tears at least half a dozen times. For all their obvious tradition and even artifice, I find weddings increasingly raw and ballsy. Hope marching into battle against statistics. Promises made beyond our innate ability to carry them through, but somehow made in good faith just the same. And then the community stuff, the village gathered to cast a vote of confidence, to give a blessing. On one level, these are clichés; on another, God help you if don't stack the deck every way you can. It's brave and it's real and what can I say - I believe in love.

Later - rusty as hell and wielding a couple of rented acoustics - Shyam and I got up and did some old songs of ours. And I did a couple alone, Saji and I did a Ryan Adams song, then we all sang "Beautiful Day."

After another great late night, we were up early Sunday for good-byes over breakfast. Car, plane, terminal, plane, van shuttle, car, BART train, and car and I found myself home about midnight.

Reference Anemone

(See October 7.)

Leafloose: The Making of Leafloose

(Courtesy of P. Bitterolf and his Tréo.)

The Blushing Groom

After Party

Windows & Scenes, Hanover

Marriage is Achieved

West Lebanon

I write from the lobby of a large, charming, funky and nice lodge in West Lebanon, NH. Three hours on the red eye for my past day's sleep has me so far not too much worse for wear. Calls home tell me K hasn't gone off the deep end flying solo with the children - there's still time.

Tonight's lovely welcome dinner in Woodstock (just back over into Vermont) was a perfect mix of catching up with old friends and getting to know new family. Good wine and absolutely great food. (Vermont is a bit like Petaluma and Sonoma in that it seems to have the same enlightened rural vibe as well as a foodie streak. Artisanal foods abound.)

It is POURING outside.

Stowe, VT

Stowe smells heavily of bacon. In a good way. Here's where we met a woman in her eighties from Texas in the Old Depot deli. She was part of a leaf peeping tour. Around her neck she wore a lanyard, and at the end of the lanyard was a nametag: Anemone.

"Anemone! I love your name."
"My mother named me after a beautiful flower and you're the first person who has ever said it correctly the first time."
"Well, that's because I know what an anemone is!"
"Can you save me a place?"
"Sure. We're leaving anyway. We have to get back to Ben & Jerry's."
"Oh, do you people work there?"
"No, we're from California."
"Oh, I love California! I visited my daughter in California last year."
"Oh, yeah? Where does she live?"
Silence.
"Northern California? L.A.?"
More silence.
"Where did you fly in?"
"..."
"OK, you're like me, you just go where you're told, right?"
"Yes, that's right!"
Some good laughs, and then off to the ice cream tour.

Where Ben & Jerry's Flavors Rest In Peace

Highway 89, Vermont

Nina and Saji, JFK

Man, it's early.

Deep, San Jose

Shyam's Wedding

Waiting with my luggage for a train into the city. After work, I'll make a couple connections: flying out of San Jose tonight with Mundeep, then meeting up Saji and Nina at JFK in the morning, from where we'll all fly to Vermont.

It's strange and cool to look back on all the years I've known Shyam and to get to see him in his new habitat. The Jenny Thing certainly is in diaspora now with none living closer than 90 miles of another. (That's me and Ehren; we see each other every month or so.) Folsom, San Diego, New Hampshire with Missouri on deck... I'm the last Bay Arean standing, for now anyway.

Still, my fondness for the boys is surely deeper than our salad days, which, in addition to notable camaraderie, were filled with at least one giant ego, miniature senses of self, and much artistic angst farming. The good parts now stand in well-lighted silhouette. And so, something worthwhile is transformed into something priceless and lifechanging.

Plus, if we were still in close quarters, surely we'd have killed one another by now. So, you know, there's that.

Megan's Mug

Look at This Joker Rocking a Crewcut

Look at This Joker

My Morning

what do you choose about yourself?
influence vs. control
(a lot vs. a little?)

Sidekick II: Becoming Paris Hilton

My first note on this thing. As a... sheeyit, 9 year (!!!) user of Palm Graffitti, I'm not yet sure about the thumb keyboard... Well, better on ellipses! Sticky shift and alt are rad. Is it somehow less creative, less organic?

Who am I kidding. still writing what I'm thinking, and thinking the same old hooha... :)