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January 29, 2007
Water and ice
Lake Tahoe is always, always stunningly beautiful. And the water is so clear! I walked out to the end of a pier and could see very clearly the rocks at the bottom. Click the photos for more.
I went for a run the morning after my little ski excursion. Donner Lake is the site of my favorite triathlon, which features a run around the entire lake (it's just under 7 miles), so I thought it would be very interesting to do that run in winter. The temperatures were in the 30s, perfect for running. What with slogging through quite a bit of snow at the east end of the lake, the run took me about 30 minutes longer than usual. (I also added half a mile to a mile getting to and from my hotel).
Then I went to take pictures of ice skaters on Donner Lake. The next day, Friday morning, an ice skater fell through this ice and drowned.
Stay off the thin ice, my friends.
January 25, 2007
This is the point at which you wonder, will she ever get a job?
The top of my head, a ski lift and some mountains.
I don't ski nearly often enough. I grew up skiing all the time, spending weeks at Mammoth and taking occasional day trips to the sunny SoCal resorts. But I can count on one Grandoe-gloved hand how many times I've hit the slopes since high school. Sad, very sad. But downhill skiing is expensive, very expensive.
The snow in Tahoe is kind of suck right now, but it is there and it is white, so I headed up for a day of mid-week skiing. Oh, how I've missed it. I had so much fun despite the slushiness and the occasional rocks and grass popping through the snow. It was especially gratifying because it was a Wednesday, and I shared Sugar Bowl with just a few locals. No lift lines.
Skiing has changed a lot since the 80s. Well, skiing itself hasn't changed so much as ski lifts have changed. Now they are fast and smooth and the chairs come off the cables to let you ease on and off. Back in my youth, every time the lift slowed down or stopped mid-ride we knew that some poor kid had gotten knocked over by the chair as it scooped him up at full speed, or worse, someone had not quite gotten her butt all the way on to the seat and had (gasp!) fallen off in the take-off zone. But now, those high-speed quads, man, they are idiot-proof. Or maybe it's just like that on non-holiday weekdays.
Also, the lifts are silent. When I was a kid, at 8:30am you could hear the lifts fire up from a mile away. And they are supposedly cleaner, since the resorts all buy wind-generated energy to power those beasts. Clearly I am amazed at all the newfangled technology. (And did you know they scan the lift tickets now? No more hole punchers!)
I suppose skiing has changed, too, especially since half of the skiers these days are actually snowboarders. And there's freestyle skiing, and shaped skis, and twin-tips. But you ride a lift uphill, and ride your board(s) downhill, and it's loads of fun.
And the scenery is pretty.
January 23, 2007
Anyone for a swim?
This is Aquatic Park. The water is currently 47 degrees Fahrenheit, or so I'm told. I have been known to swim here when it's warmer (60 degrees, which is still brain-numbing). On this beautiful day it almost looked good enough to jump right in.
I got some interesting news today. My entire team at my old company, the technology group that included me, was laid off today.
I worked there for eight years. For the last few years I kept telling myself, in the words of a friend, "Ride the horse 'til it bucks you off." I assumed I'd get laid off eventually. And then I decided I just needed a change, so I quit.
So of course I'm sitting here wondering if I wish I'd stuck it out for three more months so I could at least have gotten the severance package... or if I was just prescient enough to know it was coming and it was time to leave. That's not really all that interesting or productive to think about, but I can't keep those thoughts out of my head.
I went back for a visit around the holidays and it was kind of comforting to see everyone and know they were all there, doing the same things, cracking the same jokes. It makes me a little sad to know that that place with those people will cease to exist. But I suppose that's life.
January 20, 2007
Tourist trappings
It took me a while to become a tourist in my own town. A couple of weeks ago Dave and I decided we should eat some Dungeness crab before it goes out of season. Some friends arrived in town at an opportune time, so I announced that I would be going to Fisherman's Wharf to buy crab for us to enjoy together.
When I worked downtown, I had a regular running route that took me right through the Wharf. I always thought that the best way to see this popular tourist spot was at six miles per hour, without stopping. I think I've been here as a pedestrian exactly once since we moved here eight years ago.
But on Friday I realized that it's really not so bad. There have been quite a few big improvements that make it seem more like an open-air museum commemorating a disappearing fishing industry and less like a place to get shafted buying cheap fleece jackets to cover up in the weather that is always unexpectedly cold for out-of-towners.
Don't get me wrong, the horribly tacky stores are still there, but some more life and character have been brought back to the place. There's a new Maritime Historic Park Visitor Center, the Hyde Street Pier, and the relocated (and free as always!) Musee Mechanique. And on a hazy Friday afternoon, it wasn't too terribly crowded.
And, of course, there were the seafood stands. Piles of cooked crabs lay upside-down, the cooking pots themselves spewing briny steam. Tourists made tough decisions: crab, shrimp cocktail, lobster roll, or chowder in a sourdough bowl?
And the Bush Man was there, waiting to scare the bejeezus out of unsuspecting passersby. He is so popular, and so successful at this endeavor, and the typical pedestrians are paying so little attention to their surroundings (what the hell is a bush doing on a sidewalk by a wharf?), that crowds gather to watch him frightening folks as they walk by.
He gets them every time. Hilarious.
The crab? It was delicious.
January 18, 2007
Public spanking, public reading
The old Emporium Rotunda reflected in the new Bloomingdale's building floor.
I found myself at the mall, no, at two separate malls last week. The first was your standard-issue suburban-type mall. You know what the worst thing about malls is for me? It's not the blandness, the homogeneity, the obnoxious packs of teenagers, or the horrible music, although those things do tend to keep me away from indoor shopping centers. No, it's the food. The food smells in particular. That food-court smell is sickening and yet somehow enticing.
I have a particularly hard time walking by a Mrs. Fields (or Chocolate Chip Cookie Company, or whatever -- there's one at every mall). As much as I know that industrial chocolate-chip cookies are full of chemicals and trans fats and are horribly bad and obscenely high in calories, I have a weakness for them. Especially the ones that are sandwiched around a glob of shortening-based "buttercream" frosting. Oh lordy. That is truly fat and sugar whipped into its most sinister form.
So the other day as I started to pick up the devilish chocolate-chip-and-crisco aroma, I promised myself that if I could pass by without stopping to indulge, I'd treat myself to a chair massage at the other end of the mall. I walked and averted my eyes and tried not to inhale through my nose as I made my way to the massage chairs.
The massage, billed as offering "the magic of acupressure," was sort of relaxing and sort of alarming. It contained equal parts gentle, soothing strokes and invigorating pounding and slapping, like you might see a trainer applying to a boxer in a movie from the 50s. The slapping actually felt pretty good, but I also found it oddly hilarious that I was getting my butt and thighs smacked by a stranger in public while I listened to smooth jazz.
The second mall was lightyears away. The old Emporium department store on Market in San Francisco has been closed down and boarded up for years, sort of a blight right in the middle of a high-end shopping area. A few months back it reopened as an extension of the shopping center next door, with a Bloomingdale's, a flock of glitzy boutiques, and a movie theater.
I went to a movie there with a friend on Friday. On our way up to the theater I was surprised and pleased to see that a huge open space right under the Emporium's beautifully restored glass rotunda was furnished as a reading area. This was not just a boyfriend-and-husband's waiting area, but a comfy place to settle in. Everyone there was reading! There was no smooth jazz, just the faint rustle of pages turning and distant noises of shoppers wandering about.
When we came out of the movie, I found a comfy chair and spent the rest of the afternoon reading. That's something I never expected to do at a mall.
January 15, 2007
A walk in the woods
Wow, it has been really, really cold here in California. It's only gotten down to about 32 in our back yard, but other parts of the region have seen temps in the 20s. I know that's not really cold, but for sea-level Northern California, that is quite chilly.
To celebrate the holiday, today Dave and I did a new hike. After eight years of hiking and running the trails of Mt. Tam, I was pretty surprised to find this hike that was completely on trails we'd never set foot on. We hiked to a lovely waterfall with a multi-tiered cascade, then down to Kent Lake, then back up to our car (which was parked above the golf course on Bolinas-Fairfax Road, my cycling friends). About seven or eight miles.
The shady parts of the trail were icy! You just don't see ice in Marin County. But best of all, it was sunny and clear. And everyone else either went skiing in Tahoe or slept in -- we had the trails to ourselves.
Here's some crappy video I took of the waterfall. But more exciting, this is my first attempt at posting video here. (Taking the video of the waterfall was Dave's idea. Thanks, Dave. There are more photos from our jaunt on flickr, too.)
January 10, 2007
Dazed and confused
I don't get much caffeine. I drink black tea every morning and some Diet Pepsi* during the day. But I am pretty dependent on what little I get. Yesterday I was running late for an appointment and skipped the tea. My head was foggy all day. And today, for various reasons, I didn't drink more than a quarter of my tea before it got cold, and again, the effect is a little surreal. (Or maybe that's just the Kevin Shields tracks on the Lost In Translation soundtrack having an effect on my brain.) It amazes me that such a relatively small amount can have such an effect on me, and I really wonder what the withdrawal is like for those of you who start the day with 16 ounces of dark roast.
Are any of you out there not hooked on caffeine? Or are you addicted to something else? In the spirit of National Delurking Week, please, share!
*Not Diet Coke.
January 6, 2007
Beating a dead hard drive horse
David Pogue discusses online backups for home computers in last Thursday's NYT.
"...There are only two kinds of people: Those who back up their computers, and those who will."
January 5, 2007
This is not a resolutions post
I've never really done new year's resolutions because I usually forget about them two weeks into January. But now that the holidays are over, and the sense of entitlement I have toward excess has worn off, here are a few things I'd like to work on.
Get more ambient exercise. When I quit working downtown, I cut about two miles of walking out of my day. I need to walk more in addition to the planned exercise I get. Plus, it's just nice to get outside and walk around.
Read more. This goes alone with the previous one. I used to get most of my reading done on public transit. In the last few days I have had to set aside time to sit and read. To clarify, that means reading something printed on paper, whether it's the New Yorker or one of the eleven dozen books in my to-read stack. And consequently spending less time reading stuff on the computer.
Send less to the landfill. We're actually quite good about this already. We recycle or compost most of our refuse. I always take my own bags grocery shopping. We generate little enough trash that we share one garbage bin with our upstairs neighbor. But I need to use reusable food containers more often, and not so many ziploc bags. I should reach for the kitchen towels more often than the paper towels. Buy more food in bulk and less food in ridiculous packaging. (Trader Joe's produce, I'm looking at you.) And the harder thing to do will be to reduce the stream of junk mail. It is really, really difficult to get oneself off of catalog mailing lists.
Drink less alcohol. Way less. I think I had something to drink almost every night in December. And November. That's a lot of calories. Not to mention wear and tear on my liver, stomach, brain, etc.
All sounds pretty reasonable, no? What things in your life have you decided to work on?
January 3, 2007
This must be where pies go when they die
I got an alert email from Amazon this morning telling me that the second season of Twin Peaks is available for pre-order. I signed up for the alert years ago. It's amazing that this seemingly forgotten TV show finally will be (almost*) complete on DVD.
Once I got over my initial surprise and excitement, I looked closely at the details and was even more shocked to see that this DVD set is the #1 seller in Amazon's DVD category. It's still pre-order only; it won't ship until April. Either Twin Peaks has an even bigger cult following than I knew, or the DVD rating system is so splintered that it only takes a small number of sales to propel something to the top of the list. The latter doesn't seem too unlikely, since #4 at the moment, The Secret**, isn't even available from Amazon directly; it's only sold by marketplace sellers.
Any Twin Peaks fans out there?
(I hope this will be the last time I blog about television because, honestly, I don't usually find TV that interesting. But Twin Peaks wasn't really a TV show... it was a parallel universe that we were able to glimpse, briefly, through the box in the living room.)
*The first season has been out for a while, but the pilot still is not officially available in the States on DVD.
**Not as mysterious as it sounds.
January 2, 2007
Happy new year!
Somewhere near Santa Barbara. Does anyone know the name of this little island?
