Ben teaching Geneva to juggle (prepare for the cute overload):
cute. overload.
{04 December 2010}
{04 December 2010}
Ben teaching Geneva to juggle (prepare for the cute overload):
{15 July 2010}
(think of it as where’s waldo for the alaska photoset.)
the short and the long of the trip to alaska was: cruise ships are maybe not my style (being penned up on a boat with a lot of old people), but as a way to see alaska’s spectacular inside passage, pretty great. vancouver is a lovely city, and the forest around juneau is easily the most beautiful forest i’ve ever been in. B and i opted for as much adventure travel as was possible while off the boat: snorkeling, ziplining, hiking, rock climbing. it became clear that we were out of our demographic when we kept ending up on shore excursions attended only by us and members of the boat’s crew.
other perks of the week included: eating my body weight in salmon over the course of seven days (mmm). learning to run on a treadmill while the boat heaved over waves in conditions that ranked a 7 on the Beaufort Scale (sometimes you have to embrace the absurd). hanging out with my family (my ADORABLE and much adored niece Geneva has a bright future in chess). experiencing the near-constant daylight of alaska around the summer solstice (blackout curtains do wonders, when you want to sleep). oh, and of course, the polar bear plunge, going swimming in the (unheated) pool on the back deck of the ship while the ship sailed past glaciers in Glacier Bay.
* with apologies to the panama canal guys. i had a palindrome phase when i was a kid…
{28 September 2009}
on saturday Chris, Teresa, Geneva and i drove up to Petaluma to go to the Windrush Farms FiberFest — basically an expo of yarn, spinning, dying, felting — all kinds of fiber arts that start with wool. one could follow the yarn-making process from start to finish in a single afternoon — there were alpaca and sheep on the farm, great piles of greasy, newly-shorn wool, tools for carding and cleaning the wool, spinning wheels and drop spindles, dyeing vats and beautiful skeins of yarn for sale, looms for weaving and knitting swatches.
aside from being really much too hot for late september, it was an awfully pleasant, pastoral scene: everyone was so friendly, sitting in the sun watching kids run around the yard and pet the animals, skin tanned and weathered from spending seasons out in the sun and the wind, trading stories and sharing knowledge of something that, now an art form, was for thousands of years, a basic skill. a pair of golden retrievers trotted around the yard loving up to everybody. there was a wood-fired oven in the yard and a guy making hand-made pizzas and lemonade, to be eaten at folding tables and chairs set up in the shade. the farm animals suffered to be petted on the nose (or fed tasty leaves).
the turn of the fall weather (fall arrived on sunday, by the way, the day after our hot trek up to Petaluma), plus the imminent arrival of several friends’ babies, means that i’m inspired to start crafting again. somehow the direct mail gods know this, as i have received three knitting catalogs this week (and, naturally, have earmarked more patterns that i want to knit than i shall ever have time or funds for). but anyway, getting knitting catalogs lets me play the “who would knit this?” game. see, that’s the tricky thing about knitting. finding nice yarns and patterns. because for every beautiful, modern or classic (classy classic, that is, not “christmas sweater” classic) pattern out there, there are a dozen hideously frumpy things to knit out of terrible, cheap plasticky nasty synthetic yarn. it’s almost too easy to play the WWKT game, especially with the patternworks catalog. so for this week, i submit this, to you, dear readers (knitters and wearers of sweaters and non-knitters or sweater-wearers alike): who would knit this?
{15 September 2009}
{25 November 2008}
Geneva Christine* was born on Monday Nov 24 at 2:30am. Welcome, Geneva!
*okay that’s not actually a link to her blog. she’s only 24 hours old, after all. but it’s her mom’s blog and there are pictures!
{23 October 2008}
my grandfather died on the most perfectly beautiful fall day. at least, it was beautiful in chicago – one of those heartbreakingly golden fall days, when the sky is blue and white clouds with grey underbellies race across it, the sunlight playing hopscotch with little rain squalls. on campus the grass was still lush and green from early fall rains, trees draped in color, not yet bare, dried leaves making that crunchyhappy underfoot noise, filling the nose with the dusty scent of something slipping out of your grasp. the air was cool and crisp and the sunlight warm, that clever dichotomy of temperatures that locates a sort of wordless, melancholy joy in the chest. an imperceptible breeze shook leaves out of their trees, drifting noiselessly toward the ground one or two at a time, like harbingers of the coming snow.
i imagine that in boise it probably rained that day. i picture a grey day and a cold drizzling rain, trees already bare, lifting their skeletal forms up to the sky in dark silhouette. i picture this because on the day that my grandfather left this world, a light went out somewhere. i imagine this cold fall day into being for my grandmother, because the times in my life when i have been truly overwhelmed with grief, i have wanted, needed even, the world to share my howling sadness, to be grey and damp and close.
to try to summarize his life here would only fall into cliche, and i’m no obit writer anyway. i am his legacy, myself and my brothers and cousins, our parents and our children and children-to-be. in all: two children, five grandchildren, three great grandchildren. a life’s work: more life. more branches. on october twenty-first, a single leaf let go of its branch in a breeze so soft the rest of us couldn’t perceive it. it was just time to let go and so he did, drifting slowly earthward, with grace.
{02 May 2008}
today my baby brother is (omigod) 26. that makes me…old.
{26 April 2008}
here’s a little plug for my brother’s new project: www.giftjot.com. it’s a closed-circle gift registry – you can create a wishlist from any vendor (so you’re not limited to the items that a particular site is selling) – and then set up a network of friends and family that you want to share gift ideas with.
since my family is spread out across the country and we don’t see each other except on major holidays or big events, so we used to have these group emails that would fly around, with subject lines like, “shh…don’t tell mom” and then everyone EXCEPT mom would be copied on the email while we plotted a clever gift idea. pretty soon there was one of those emails floating around for each person and it was only a matter of time until the surprise was spoiled when it was copied to the wrong person. so, being the tech nerds that we are, my siblings set up a web-based database where we could log on, suggest gift ideas for ourselves or another person, see what gift ideas were already reserved, collaborate on a group gift, etc.
now that giftjot has officially launched, anyone can use it. it’s free, and you can set up your own network of friends and family to share lists with. or use it for a wedding/shower gift registry by setting up an account name and password that you provide to your guests when they ask where you’ve registered. so now it’s possible for the kids to collaborate on what they’re getting dad for christmas, mom can indicate on her wish list that that she’d really rather have a new iphone for mother’s day instead of that vacuum cleaner…you get the idea.
and since the registry isn’t tied to a particular store, you can register for whatever you want: link to books on amazon, request sky-diving lessons, ask mom to make turkey for christmas dinner because you don’t eat ham and then your grandparents always ask why don’t you eat ham it’s good for us look at us we’re in our 90’s and we eat ham, ask for the moon, or world peace or a donation to your favorite charity. you name it.
6.23.08 addendum: giftjot is temporarily closed for redesign, but matt promises it will be back and better than ever! i’ll put the link up here again once it launches.
{30 August 2007}
this post was supposed to be about what a crappy day i had today – i left my coffee on the table and remembered too late to go back, then my ipod died, i got a flat tire on the way to work, had to spend $9 to park downtown for a 5-minute dentist appointment. on the way north i hit horrific traffic and was late for my staff meeting at bmg, the parking meter was broken and ate all my quarters, there was no parking on my street when i got home. my new invisaline appliance made my teeth hurt.* i could go on.
then things were put in perspective for me when a friend of mine learned that her father passed away earlier today. it wasn’t sudden or unexpected, but i don’t think that prepares anyone, really, for losing a parent. i’m fortunate not to really know what it must feel like, i can only try to imagine.
bad days happen. but family is the thing that gets you thru those bad days, and i’m taking this moment to be grateful for mine, in all its changing forms.
*altho my 16-year old braces-clad self can’t believe this, i’m actually voluntarily submitting to have my lower teeth straightened (which, in the post-braces years, have drifted a bit crooked again). at least braces have gotten a lot better since the 80’s. no hideous metal brackets or anything, now it’s just a clear plastic mold i wear over my teeth.