Sunday in Sacramento

We headed up to Sacramento last Sunday to visit Steve's parents, for our usual monthly visit. They met us at the wonderful Tower Cafe for brunch. They are known for their French Toast and I also really like their Eggs Benedict (called the "Egg Tower").



After our meal, Steve's mom Carolyn treated Steve and me to an activity perfectly suited to us: a tour of half a dozen remodeled homes in East Sacramento. The tour was run by Friends of East Sacramento and benefited the local parks. We absolutely loved it. We didn't take a lot of pictures, but here are a couple highlights.

Fabulous inlaid floor detail in a beautiful craftsman-style bungalow:

Amazing park-like backyard of one of the homes (the pictures don't quite do it justice):



Amusing yard tool storage area:

It certainly did our house envy no favors (especially since a run-down home on the same block as the beautiful Craftsman-style bungalow was only $300k and looked like an ideal project house... sigh...) but it was still a great time. We are hoping to go back for the Christmas decoration home tour in December.

Kiwi Around the House

Kiwi is very similar to a previous rabbit of ours, Kuipo. She loves to climb on me and will sit in my lap to be petted. She'll be two years old in a couple months, so she's still fairly young, and is full of energy.

May I help you?

Lisa the Climbing Gym

Yummy Jeans

Lisa and Kiwi

Relaxing after a Hard Night's Mischief

Annual Coastal Clean-Up Day

Steve and I almost never go to the beach. Sure, a couple times a year we'll go down to the boardwalk to ride the Giant Dipper and get a corndog. I'm really more of an indoor kid, and unapologetically so. But it does seem to be a bit of a waste that we live so close to really lovely coastline and rarely visit. So when I heard about the annual coastal clean-up day sponsored by Save Our Shores, I figured it'd be a good opportunity for Steve and I to visit a new beach.

Slathered with sunscreen and warmly dressed, we headed out yesterday to Four Mile Beach. It is, as you might infer, four miles north of Santa Cruz.

The clean-up started at 9 am. It was a very cold morning (especially for this time of year) with light, chilly winds. We spent about an hour wandering the beach collecting trash. The beach we picked was relatively small and not one of the more popular beaches in the area, and thus not as rubbish-ridden as others. But we did collect about half a bucket full of debris.

Steve among the kelp:

I survey the beach, our tally sheet in hand, with Andy (the high school kid we were grouped with for the clean-up, since his friends had apparently slept in) taking a break in the background:

Despite the less than ideal conditions, Steve and I really enjoyed ourselves. We are thinking at this point of joining more of their monthly clean-ups. It'll be a chance to get to know more of the local beaches... and get me out of the house occasionally.

Garden Update

This past weekend, as per usual, we kept ourselves busy in the garden.

New acquisition, Red Sensation Cordyline:

New acquisition, Dwarf Century Plant:

Happily blooming little plant (it's from the UC Farm plant sale, but I don't remember what it's called):


Side yard:


Back fence:


Giant Mum we transplanted from the side yard, where it had been taking over:

Steve planting onions now that cucumber season is over for us:

Out-of-control tomatoes (which have not been ripening due to our unseasonably cool weather):

Speaker Stand Project

Living in a rental is always a tricky thing for nesters like me and Steve. We've put dozens of holes in the walls hanging pictures, but that's generally where I draw the line at "damaging" the landlord's property.

Steve enjoys his home audio and has surround-sound speakers, but the two speakers that are supposed to go behind you (for all the jumpy effects that I hate) have been sitting on our table for ages. Awhile ago, I designed a stand to get them above the back of the couch without taking up any valuable floor square footage and without putting any holes in the obnoxious pillar in the middle of our living space. We finally got around to building it last weekend.

Steve places one of the brackets:

The stand is not attached to the pillar and is the same width, so that the clamp holding the contraption upright bites into the stand instead of the pillar.

"Back" of the stand, behind the couch:

"Front" of the stand, poking up above the couch:

It's actually very stable, and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. It's not the optimal placement for peak audio performance I'm sure, but it sounds pretty good to me.

Some 13-year-old series...

I just completed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows this afternoon. I started reading the Harry Potter books a couple weeks ago. Up until that time, I hadn't touched them.

I had been told to read the books by several people, some with such sterling credentials as husband, mother and friend. But I refused, due to a flaw in my fundamental nature, which I've taken to calling "arbitrary obstinance." I have a compulsion, sometimes quietly confined to my thoughts and other times stubbornly proclaimed, to not do what I'm told... or sometimes even a desire to do the exact opposite for no particular reason. I suppose I could be kind to myself and say I'm just a "fiercely independent thinker," but that makes it sound like a good thing... and it's certainly not my best quality. Even well-reasoned advice from people I like, love and/or respect, gets this initially rebellious reaction within me. I try to keep it in check, but for some reason it feels so good to cave to it...

So, anyway, I have my little rebellions. Refusing to read Harry Potter was one of them. I had rationalized that I didn't like fantasy books (which is true). I gave the movies a try, and while I enjoyed them fine, didn't feel a particular drive to know more. I thoroughly adored Alan Rickman's Severus Snape (largely the reason I enjoyed the movies as much as I did), but seeing as he was an adversary of Harry's but not the main villain, I figured there wouldn't be much more to learn about him from the books. And I didn't really gravitate to any of the other characters. I couldn't really see myself in any of them.

Well, given my aforementioned affection for Snape, I was finally driven to read the books after I saw the Deathly Hallows Part 2 movie (I had been sorely tempted after Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows Part 1). I was unable to resist reading more about that character. So, I set out the read the series.

Having completed it now, I will begrudgingly admit that I enjoyed the books. But, in defense of the results of my arbitrary obstinance, I think I enjoyed them much more after having seen all the movies. I am the sort of person who flips to the end of a book to see how things turn out before reading it, the sort of person who re-watches movies and TV episodes I enjoyed to try and catch every nuance, the sort of person who reads blurbs on Netflix envelopes or online to know as much as I can about the plot of something before watching it. I don't mind spoilers; I seek them actively. I don't like surprises, but I do like looking for patterns and clues that I would likely miss if I had no inkling of the direction a story will take. Also, I have a horrible imagination, and being able to picture the characters of the Harry Potter universe as the actors who played them made the world much more real to me than it would have felt otherwise.

I still did not find all that many characters who I really felt drawn to in the series, although I have a lot of affection for Remus Lupin. Though I am (as far as I know) not a werewolf, I identified with his quiet, calm and gentle manner and his compassion for the less fortunate tempered by his uncertainty and anxiety.

So, to all of you out there who told me to read them, there. I did it. Eventually.

And to all of you out there who, like I would have, skipped to the end of this post to see what the whole thing was about: I read the Harry Potter books finally. They were fine. I liked the werewolf.