Aubergine

February 18: Gung Hay Fat Choy

February 17: Nowhere in particular

Our plan for the weekend was simple: explore the City.  We arrived in the afternoon on Saturday and walked from our hotel to the Ferry building, but couldn't snag a seat at the bar of the Slanted Door (where reservations had been filled for at least a week in advance).  We shopped the various merchants and brought home a decadant picnic to eat on the bed of our room: Wine, cheese, salami, fresh bread, olive oil, a fat asian pear, and chocolates.

On Sunday we avoided the crowds surrounding all of the touristy things happening in the city on Sunday (Tour de California which went right past our hotel, Chinatown celebrations) and wandered around Pacific Heights and Japantown instead.  I seem to be craving visual input, like I'm emerging from a long dim nap (I am).  I really enjoyed just looking at everything, absorbing.  I'm such a country mouse - everything has more style in the City! I didn't even take very many pictures, just absorbed it all. 

And brought home a stack of new canvases that are singing a siren song to me.  As with a siren, I'm both seduced and wary.

February 16: Looking forward

Riley is looking forward to the sunbeam that hits this windowsill about 9 in the morning. 

I'm looking forward to lunch with a good friend today, and then the weekend.  Lisa and I are going to go play at being San Francisco tourists for the weekend.  Although I've lived near this city for all but the first 6 months of my life, I still feel like I don't know it well.  We are going to explore some neighborhoods, eat good food, walk in parks, spend some baby time with good friends, drink wine, and enjoy each other's company.  Maybe we'll even ride a cable car.  I expect I won't be posting any pictures over the weekend, but you can be sure I will be taking them.

February 15: Pros and Cons

The problem with having an extremely comfortable new bed is that it is exceedingly hard to get out of it in the morning.  On the other hand, I'm very well rested this week and my back isn't hurting.

February 14: gourmet lunch

One of my favorite things about the days I telecommute is that I get to make myself something fresh and hot for lunch.  Today I tried a cream of asparagus recipe/suggestion that I found on DomesticAli's blog a few weeks ago.  It was very fast, and delicious.  And made enought to have some for lunch tomorrow, too.

Happy Valentine's Day!

February 13: Stress and relaxation

Two photos today, from opposite ends of my life.

This is approximately what my desk has looked like for the last week.  The pile of papers is getting bigger, but no more stacked or straightened.  I gave a big presentation this morning, which I had been stressing about, but which actually went extremely well.  And then I cleaned up my desk right after I took this picture.  Ahhhh.  Much better.

At the end of my day, I went to a knitting guild meeting.  I'm an inconsistent attendee at this guild.  I always enjoy it when I go, but not so much that I'm motivated to go every single month.  But I'm glad that I went this month - it was a nice, relaxing end to my day.  And I got a lot of ooohs and aaahs on my Wanderlust Hoodie-in-progress.  Remember this sweater? I'm making good progress, and as I finish each piece, I sew them together and try it on, just to prove to myself that my pattern re-write is still working.  It is, and it fits wonderfully so far.  One more sleeve and a hood to go.  The color is more accurate in the October post.  It looks a bit sickly here.

February 12: signs of spring

Daffodils mean spring to me.  I wrote about this last February, eerily only one day off from today.  What can I say, I'm predicitble with the daffodils.  My mother brought me these blooms yesterday from the drifts she is naturalizing on the hillside behind her new-ish home.  In a few more years, they will be stunning, as this slope gets lots of warm sun and so will bloom early each year. 

February 11: Post Nubila

When I was in high school, one of my very favorite albums, and one of the first CDs that I purchased, was Enya's album Watermark.  One of the songs is in Latin, which fascinated me.  I worked in a library at the time, and I enlisted the head reference librarian to help me find the translation (if you want a reference librarian to love you, ask them hard questions).  This was, of course, in the days before Google.  I just looked up the song in Google and found the translation in 5 seconds flat.  What will be come of the reference librarians in this day and age?

The translation she hunted down for me was rough, and even she didn't think it was terribly accurate.  But I remember one line: "Post nubila, Phoebus" which she told me was "after clouds..." and then Phoebus was a sun god (another name for Apollo, Google tells me now).  Somehow that phrase got stuck in my memory as "after clouds, the sun."  This is a phrase that comes back to me often, as grey days have such a detrimental effect on my mood, and remembering that the sun will always return is important.  On Sunday, the sun returned after a couple of days of rain, and it was glorious.

I have no photo for Saturday, though if I had taken a picture, it would have been of my credit card.  We spent most of the day shopping for two major purchases that we'd budgeted for a while back, but never got around to buying.  First, a new mattress.  Second, a gas stove to replace the ancient electric one that currently graces our kitchen and is often cursed.  Actually the old mattress was getting cursed almost every morning, so the purchase of these two items will greatly reduce the amount of cursing going on in this household.

February 9: Post

I didn't take this photo today, but it is a good image for my intentions for this weekend.  I will return emails and call back those loved ones I have neglected since returning from our trip:  Jamie, John, Jennine, Niki, my dad, Natalie...

I have become a poor correspondent, and I don't like it.

February 8: So many books, so little time

I read more books on our trip than I've read in the last year, but now that I'm home, I've stalled again.  I miss the smell of pages, the escape to another world, the smoke of the story that lingers around my head later in the day.

While we traveled this time, I read books of the place where we were.  I borrowed (and devoured) books from Lisa's suitcase, from my mom's, and I still stopped to buy more.

Arranged Marriage, by Chitra Banerjee Divakarun
Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure, by Sara McDonald
The City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi, by William Dalrymple
A Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks
The Glass Palace, by Amitav Ghosh

I read all these, and I think I'm forgetting one.  While in London, our hotel was across the street from Waterstone's, which was too much temtation to bear, and I added several more books to my already bursting suitcase: The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 1599: A Year in the Life of Shakespeare, A Fine Balance, Witch Child, In the Company of the Courtesean.  I even emailed my mom, who was in London a few days longer than us, to pick up How To Be Free for me, which wasn't available yet in the US.  I can't get enough.