The coldest winter I ever spent
Archive for 2010
Want to join me to see Pomplamoose at the Warfield on New Years eve?
Tickets are $45 (general) and $60 (seated) (including Ticketmaster’s “fuck you” fee)
Call me if you wanna go. You wanna go.
Oh and Dresden Dolls too!
It’s 7am and I’m in Newark Airport waiting for a bus to Laguardia Airport. My flight back to SF was cancelled due to the weather on the 26th (oh the weather outside was frightful…) and Delta rescheduled my flight for this morning at 5:55am. I kept checking their website and was never able to “check-in” because of a problem with their site, “we have hit some turbulance” shone the letters in in Delta maroon. Well, it turns out that the error was hiding an important issue. Most flights out of Newark were cancelled. In retrospect, I should have looked up my flight by flight number instead of assuming that my rebooked flight was ok (I had figured that since they rebooked me last time the flight was cancelled, if the new flight was cancelled they would… Well it doesn’t really matter what I figured, does it?) so now I’m on a bus to Laguardia sitting next to a Brazilian/Japanese paleative care nurse. It was enjoyable trying to chat with her, using my horrid Spanish, her Portuguese and Spanish and a translation guidebook for words like “security” (she was wondering if taking a taxi instead of the bus to Laguardia was safe). I’m on a bus to Laguardia, on to Atlanta and the San Jose. I’m a bit worried because I’m getting in to San Jose at 10pm and I don’t have a solid idea as to how to get to San Francisco. All I know is that it’ll involve at least 2 transfers and if I’m unlucky, the BART will shut down for the night before I get home. I suppose that’ll just mean an expensive cab ride home.
I gave a hand in the airport to a Brazilian woman who only speaks Portuguese and Japanese. It felt good being helpful, it helped pass the time, and it’s a little better to travel with a companion than alone. We had fun translating words like “safety” from her poor Spanish to my terrible Spanish. She was concerned about the safety of taking a cab from Newark to Laguardia.
It’s remarkable how facial expressions are almost entirely universal while languages are infinitely divergent.
It’s now 1:30 and I’m sitting at the gate in Laguardia airport. Pheh.
I can’t tell if this wordpress app for iPhone is sucking or if it’s the phone itself. It is terribly slow and sometimes loses sections I have writtens.So I will write later.
A coworker’s sister produced this pretty sweet music video. Check it out.
A Token of the Wreckage” – Megan Slankard
local version:
Watch the lunar eclipse live right now. It’s cloudy in San Francisco so this will have to do.
My friend Schuyler has a Kickstarter project to help him build his blacksmith portfolio. Watch the video on his Kickstarter page.
skiing in Tahoe
horseback riding
saw walnuts in Walnut Creek, and California peppercorns in… ummm Walnut Creek,
drumming
horsing around
cleaned house (which was more fun than you might imagine)
I went to a newish event called “Feast of Words” at Somarts last week. It rocks. The idea is straightforward enough. A monthly dinner party where writers and foodies come together to eat, write, and share. I’ll be back!
My sister asked me about the people we used to live near as a child, the Iannis. We never knew much about them but they always seemed really cool and mysterious. Every now and then they’d drive down our dead-end street in their Land Rover (They had a Land Rover waaay before it was cool to have one). Mr and Mrs were both very fair skinned with white hair. I sometimes envisioned them as vampires holed up in their castle or some-such but the reality was that they were always very nice, if private. Their home certainly held terrific fascination. At the end of our dead-end street, the blacktop changes to cobble stone. The beginning of the driveway is saddled with stone pillars that hold hinges to what used to be a gate. About 15 yards down the road, there was a small house that looked in disrepair; a peep in the window showed a rustic interior. I couldn’t ever tell if it was a storage place or crazy crowded guest house. Go down the road another 20 yards and you come to the house. I only remember going in once… it was with my folks. They had all kinds of cool adult stuff. There were stuffed animals (a bear? My memory fades), an indoor waterfall fountain, lots of dark hues. I remember that the two of them always looked like they were going off on some awesome, grown-up adventure in that Land Rover of theirs. They both had a smile that conveyed intelligence, worldliness, and adventurousness.
I did a little research and found a couple things. Mr. Ianni wrote, among other things The Search for Structure. It’s curious that the first words of the book are “The lives of adolescents hold a fascination for all of us.” In a manner, we were those adolescents.
The Teachers College website reports, “Dr. Francis A. J. Ianni is Professor Emeritus of Education at Teachers College Columbia Univesity. He earned his degrees from Penn State, completing his B.S. in 1949, his A.M. in 1950, and his Ph.D. 1952.”
Most curiously, the Teachers College article mentions:
Dr. Ianni suggested that immigrants from Italy and their children lacked an ethnic identity based on their common national ancestry when they came to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. In his view, when they eventually acquired the consciousness of being Italian, such an outcome was “an invention of the new world” (202). Ianni’s interpretation of the changes in Italian Americans’ ethnicity resulting from their interaction with the adopted society can be easily placed in a broader perspective with implications for other immigrant communities in the US as well.
Yes, I understand and feel that. But it’s ok.
Here’s a nice dump of my iphone camera photos from the last few months showing where I’ve been and such. Click to enlarge any of them.
Open air restaurants are certainly one of the great joys of Parisians. Here are some of the delightful street sounds I heard as I walked past Café le Piquet in Paris one late summer night.