Note from a cruising altitude of 10K feet…

washington crossing the delaware

I had seen tweets from @alaskaair about wifi on this flight yesterday (the inaugural non-stop flight from Portland to Chicago) and hoped that they’d have it on today’s flight. I couldn’t verify that they would because apparently the planes get switched out sometimes so…no guarantees (unless the whole fleet is wifi).
I packed a Plan B just in case: Freeman’s biography of George Washington (the condensed version – not the 7 volume set). I know just about nothing about Washington and figured that 3 hours inflight would give me at least a high schoolers clue about the man…but I digress.
When I got to the gate I asked the agent if this was a wifi plane…she though it wasn’t because she didn’t see any sort of antenna on it…neither did I. Really, boning up on Washington is not a bad way to spend the time.
But as I boarded I saw the wifi inflight logo:

…and I knew that immersing myself in Freeman’s book wasn’t going to be happening…or probabaly wasn’t. There was a slight chance they could forget to turn on the wifi (someone had tweeted that this happened on their flight before).
After we reached a ’safe cruising altitude’ I whipped out my laptop to try the wifi. It was pretty straightforward, but the $7 charge on the last screen was a bit of a surprise…its not mentioned in the seat pocket literature. Still..$7 for 3+hours of entertainment? Sure!
So now I’m online, flying over this:

and thinking about this vast country and how it was formed… So now I’m going to log off and read a little about George Washington.

While you can go home again, you should

We all have those places back there in our lives that we go home to. The house that has been my anchor point in San Francisco off and on for the last 20 years or so is that place for me. Its not the physical ‘house’ that I connect with, but everything about it. I notice a plant has been moved closer to the window, or that the newspaper recycling basket is falling further into disrepair.
There is a comfort that comes with knowing something so well – well enough to notice things so small.
The ratio of pots to plants on the back deck has always been favoring pots – always. This time though, the plants are winning – things are changing in small ways.

Jane's backyard

But there are big changes too. New neighbors have taken down a sickly tree in their backyard, opening up an unobstructed view of St. Paul’s Church.

St. Paul's Church, San Francisco

I’ve never seen that view before – never the whole church – amazing. The scaffolding in the picture means that the steeples are being cleaned too. But the church has always been there. Always will be. Many a Christmas we talked at the table in the kitchen about going to a service there..one of these days. I mean, it is only a block away.
New windows in the living room have stilled the draft.
These changes are good..but that’s not why I go back.

The woman who owns the house, Jane, has an eclectic and artsy decor of weavings and baskets. Whenever I go back I sleep surrounded by shelves of her beautiful hiupiles

Jane and the weavers

and every now and then I wake to a sunrise reflected in the windows of the houses on the hill.

sunrise on the hills above Noe Valley

While I can go home again, I do. Do you?

Woodblocking – A Beginner’s Take

Ever since I went to the M.C. Escher exhibit at the Portland Art Museum, I have been intrigued with the idea of block printing. Until the exhibit I had always thought of Escher as the staircase guy.

Ascending and Descending

..but the exhibit introduced me to a different side of Escher – a side that blows me away far more than any of his illusion pieces.
Snakes for example, was created out of three separately carved wood blocks – each carved in different ways to compliment the others and allow for multiple colors within the same print. One of the blocks was just the snake with the skin intricately notched out. The actual wood blocks were in the exhibit, behind glass that had dozens of little nose prints on it…you really needed to get that close to see just how amazing it was.

Snakes

The day after the exhibit I went to Utrecht’s and bought a Beginner’s Block Print kit. If anything, the experience has made me all the more aware of what a genius Escher was.
This weekend I finally got a chance to try it out! One BandAid and 5 lobster cards later I can honestly say.. block carving is a very manual, but highly rewarding medium. I loved it.

Here’s what I did:

First I traced and transferred a picture of a lobster onto the linoleum block (its linoleum in this beginners kit…). Then I started to carve it out…very slowly..

starting to carve out picture...

Once I got the first cuts in, the rest was easier because the ‘trough’ was already dug around the image (the part that requires the MOST concentration).

mostly carved!

I inked it up!

And just like that – I was making lobster cards!

lobsters everywhere!

My two fancy ones were the dark green one (because that’s what an uncooked lobster can look more like…),,,

an uncooked lobster

and this two-tone one. I inked the block with orange and printed it and then I inked the block with dark green and nearly got it to line up…nearly.

two-tone lobster

10 Things I’ll Stop Saying When I Get the NYTimes on my Kindle DX

amazon.com

1. “Honey, wake up. I heard a noise outside.” “It’s 3am. It’s probably just the paper.”
2. wobble. wobble. “This table’s a little wobbly. Hand me the Mutual Funds section.”
3. rrrrrrrrip…. “OMG. You have to read this!!”
4. “Okay. Next Sunday you carry the papers and I’ll buy breakfast.”
5. “Crap. My coffee cup is leaking. Hand me a section. Quick!!!”
6. “You’ve got something on your nose. Right there. I think it was just some ink.”
7. “Shakespeare fits. But then 22-down would be offsep. Thaaat can’t be right.” erase. erase.
8. “Can you take the recycling down? It’s like the Tower of Pisa in here!”
9. “Aaarrgh! Take that, pesky fly!” splat.
10. “I swear this paper just keeps getting thinner.”

An Amazing Morning!

Ok. So my sister’s dog, Bandit, had a shoulder injury about 2 weeks ago. During the diagnosis of his shoulder problem, the vet noticed a sewing needle on the xray. It was in a location (the chest cavity) that made surgery not a very safe option. ..but it appeared to not bother the dog and had been there for some time. The vet thinks that it was ingested and worked its way through the esophagus to the chest cavity. My sister did recall an eposide when Bandit was a puppy, where he’d gotten hold of her pin cushion…

Now they show up in Portland for a vacation (with Bandit in tow). He develops a little bump on his shoulder yesterday.

The shoulder problem back? We didn’t know. My sister starts poking at it today and ….feels something hard…

We get the tweezers, and this is what we pull out of Bandits shoulder:

OMG! A 2-inch sewing needle…

Tweeting the Classics

Today I got a dm from my friend Paul, pointing to this Boing Boing post on musing over what Homer’s Odyssey might look like on Twitter. Last fall I was wondering the same thing as I started reading Homer’s Iliad as part of a Portland Library reading series. I did a short recap of each of the 24 chapters (books) via Twitter, trying to present the main characters and plot of the chapter in…(gulp) 140 characters. Some were more successful than others and I don’t expect that anyone could actually follow my tweeted version if they didn’t already sort of know what The Iliad was about…but hey, it was a fun time trying! And here’s the result…in something less than 3360 characters… The Iliad by Homer via Twitter

To Catch a Thief

Being a bit of a foodie myself, I find this story pretty funny. My brother, Joe, is the store manager at a gourmet grocery store in Bend. Apparently for about the last year, someone has been swiping the high-end balsamic vinegar. It has gotten to the point that they’ve put up a surveillance camera and dubbed this person the Balsamic Vinegar Bandit. The story has now been picked up by the AP.

“A sign hangs amid the bottles of vinegar at Newport Avenue Market. It’s simple, to the point: “Thanks to the Balsamic Vinegar Thief this area is now under surveillance. We will get you.” The last sentence, it should be noted, is underlined…”

Here’s the rest of the story.

Moving on Up!

Its been about two months now that I’ve been training for that 1/2 marathon.  I can keep to a pretty consistent schedule…Two short and one longer run each week, gradually progressing upward.

Progression of training for 1/2 marathon in May

This screenshot here is from Gyminee, where I’ve been tracking my progress.  Its a pretty cute site and I can track not only my runs, but also nutrition, weight, etc. Really though, this little running graph has turned into such a source of motivation for me.  If that’s all the site ever showed me, I’d still sign up…  hmm.. OMG!  I’ve got to go work on an something awesome.  More later.

Where Do the Hours Go?

***ALERT: THIS POST CONTAINS SIMPLE MATH***

Lets see…There are over 8500 hours in the year.

If I break out all of those hours…here’s what I’ve got.

Ok. I’m asleep about 3000 hours/year…but that’s not negotiable.

And I work about 2000 hours/year…and go to a little school, and I do a little commuting..and a wee little exercise…

So holy cow! I’ve got about 2700 hours/year that I can’t account for. If you divide that 2700 hours into 12 months..I’ve already spent about 225 hours in January doing what?!? Well, I did do that graphic above (I don’t really know Illustrator…so it took me longer than you’d think).

Like sand through an hourglass…but no more! I am going to schedule about 400 of those 2700 ‘lost hours’ with volunteer work - that’s 33 hours/month doing what I promised to this new administration. And I’ll keep it all in a little graph…because I’ll still have way too much time on my hands…2300 hours to be exact.

Those Who Cannot Remember the Past…

…are condemned to repeat it – George Santayana

Sometime back about 6 years or so ago, my pal Sarah and I started running together. We did a pretty steady 3 mile loop at lunchtime one or two times a week – down the Embarcadero from Market to the ballpark, across the front courtyard – “touch Willie!” we would say as we slapped the Willie Mays statue – and then back down the Embarcadero.

Not long on distance, and not a consistent runner, I found that most of the races I ran were at the coaxing of others. “Come on. It’s a cool shirt.” “But it’s Puerto Rico!” Several of these races I did with Sarah – Bananaman 5K, Race to the Far Side 5K, SF Hook & Ladder 10K and of course the Bay to Breakers (which isn’t much of a ‘race’ when you run with a beer in your hand at mile 5…). She was always a little faster than me…but we’d stay pretty much at the same pace – just like our lunchtime runs – gabbing a little…picking up the pace at the end.

In 2004 Sarah suggested we take our running up a notch – do a half marathon. ‘That might be ok…’ I said, feeling absolutely on the fence about it. Somehow by the end of the day we were registered.

Sarah’s husband (boyfriend at the time) was a real runner and introduced us to a real running plan – 3 x week…miles ramping up…rest days. We did our shorter runs during the week on the Embarcadero and the longer runs (6-10 miles) in Golden Gate Park on the weekends. This was nothing like our little 5Ks. This was (gulp) really running.

Training was going pretty well until we go about a month out from the race. I started to poop out after about 6 miles, and Sarah developed a hip problem that sometimes made running for her just totally painful. We pushed each other along though… just to the top of that hill… just past that tree… then we’ll slow down… you’re doing great! I’d say that about 1/2 the time there was at least one of us who showed up to run solely because of what the other might think if she didn’t.

We weren’t necessarily at the top of our game come race day… but we were a team!

The San Francisco 1/2 Marathon started in the Presidio and snaked up to the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge run was beautiful and the restrooms on the Marin side of the bridge marked the 1/2 way point. All well so far. As expected I started to slow up a bit after the bridge and Sarah started to pass me. “Wait! Wait!” I wanted her to stay with me – motivate me – push me along! But there she went… ahead without me. This was race day and every second mattered. Then somewhere in front of Crissy Field I spotted her again – slowing up. Her hip was obviously bothering her – here was my chance! “My hip!” She was obviously in pain, but no mind… It was my chance to pass her up… which I did. How’s that for motivation?! Then on the last 1/2 mile down the hill to the finish my left knee started feeling like it was going to give (probably from the downhill which we didn’t train much on). Sarah came up from behind. “My knee! Sarah wait!” I yelled out to her. All I heard was her “Noooo…..” trailing off as she passed me up. In the end only one person came in between Sarah and myself at the finish line.

Gina and Sarah finish the race!

We were glad to have finished, and proud of our hard work – but I threw my shoes away that day and Sarah and I didn’t pick up lunchtime running again for about a month… and then only back to our little 3 milers around Willie Mays. I swore I would never run another 1/2 again.

Now fast forward to 2008. Sarah had a baby in September. I’ve since moved away to Portland, Oregon. Sarah’s thinking that maybe we could do a half marathon again – somewhere between SF and Portland – with a little long-distance motivation. Over IM I agree and I can’t recall exactly why, way back in 2004, I thought I would never do another 1/2 again. So, as of about a week ago we’ve been in training for the Avenue of the Giants 1/2 Marathon in Humbolt.

We’re on a running schedule – her in San Francisco running on the waterfront and me here in Portland. I’ll go on over 50 runs between now and race day – maybe only one or two of them with Sarah. Come race day though, we’ll meet in Humboldt to run what is considered one of the most beautiful races around – and it will just be an awesome day.