Photos from a New Year's Day brunch I had at my house, and the blood orange tart I made last night
John and Mike
Dena posing next to a red velvet cake I made
Emily, Kevin and Vicken
blood orange tart - so pretty!
Monday, February 8, 2010
Photos from the past: part 2
Here is Part 2: some mushroom photos I took around the Davis greenbelt.
Photos from the past: part 1
I'm finally cleaning off my digital camera...so here's the first installment, from November:
A sunrise photo taken from the Furnace Creek Campground (Death Valley NP)
The Thanksgiving potluck!
Kevin wielding weapons, Phil wielding alcohol.
A discussion over mulled wine.
Kristy and James
The carcass
I made some pies. Pumpkin, apple and pecan.
A multi-generational feast!
Sunday, February 7, 2010
This made me laugh...hard
I'm sure that everyone here has received some sort of "X number of ways to make your life better" email from their family (usually these people are over 40). The most annoying thing about these forwards is that it's all about (as I interpret it) accepting the shit that happens to you (i.e. not making a change that maybe you NEED TO MAKE), and having faith in Baby Jesus.
That's why this made me laugh so much: (original link: http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/374966576/zenzenzenzen)
That's why this made me laugh so much: (original link: http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/374966576/zenzenzenzen)
- 43 Ways to Simplify your life:
- 1. Remove your doors
- 2. Eat half of each pet
- 3. Sit on a big, thick book
- 4. Something something keyring holder
- 5. Paint clocks cheery pink
- 6. Wear discarded food
- 7. Makebelieve girlfriend chair
- 8. Sleep in liquor cabinet
- 9. Embrace hug love hug meow meow
- 10. Small room to plan crimes
- 11. Hack your house key organizer
- 12. Mail a surprise toaster
- 13. Just stare more
- 14. Fourteen
- 15. Poke holes in paper things
- 16. Macrame shoelace tree
- 17. Scrapbook poop and pee
- 18. Euthanize even faster
- 19. Amputate favorite limb
- 20. Pencil shaving gallery
- 21. Immigrant coat rack
- 22. Shoebox of dangerous porn
- 23. Zen unicorn rainbow zen journal
- 24. Icepick to one good eye
- 25. Simplify fourteen harder
- 26. Aluminum foil swan cozy dryer
- 27. Smell your finger. All of it.
- 28. Resimplify your simplicity
- 29. Habitualize your zen
- 30. Remind your drapes, “I love you, Mrs. Textile”
- 31. Freeze your clutter
- 32. Couch fort dinner party
- 33. Nicene creed robot
- 34. Only sodomize things that forgive
- 35. Coaxial sweater vest
- 36. Transitive verb predicate clause
- 37. More crying but quieter
- 38. Inhaler nativity
- 39. Contact paper taxonomy binder
- 40. America’s Roast Beef: Yes, Sir
- 41. Breathe like no one’s dancing
- 42. Unbridled solo diaper play
- 43. Illuminated panty shrine
It reminds me of the story John told me where a woman was leaving the Coop in Davis and bit into a carrot and said "THIS CARROT IS NOT ORGANIC! ORGANIC CARROTS TASTE BETTER THAN THIS!"
The people at the Coop went into the back and opened up a box of organic carrots and let her taste one. She said "well, the other organic carrots tasted better."
Saturday, February 6, 2010
WAKE UP
I'm a huge fan of Donnie Darko, so I loved this apparently non-photoshopped example of "light art". Her is the original link: http://blogof.francescomugnai.com/2010/02/this-is-not-photoshop-50-incredible-examples-of-light-painting
Friday, February 5, 2010
dizzy spell
So my vision has been weird and I've been a bit dizzy or "out of it" (for lack of a better way to describe it) for a few days. I'd like to think that I'm just fine, but the last time I thought I was just fine and needed a few rest days, I got diagnosed with MS. It sucks. Anyway, I can't even tell if I'm thinking about it more and making it up because now I've noticed it. I hate that shit.
Had dinner with a friend tonight, Happy Hour at Village Pizza for the GGE last night (free food, but god the service was terrible), and on Wednesday I went to Oakland to climb with Shannon...
On the way to the Oakland gym, I stopped by the Berkeley Bowl West and plundered their citrus section. I bought a bunch of Meyer lemons and blood oranges...I also made friends with the produce guy and got to sample a bunch of fruit. Yessss.
So I made this: http://foodlibrarian.blogspot.
And I want to make this: http://www.epicurious.com/
I'm super psyched on citrus right now! And I have to say, the produce at the Berkeley Bowl is amazing. They have an entire section devoted to different kinds of eggplants!
I'm craving another rest day tomorrow. I hope that the wonkiness in my brain will go away, but sadly I think it's permanent. har. Trying to make light of these things.
More climbing on Sunday! Yeah! And then maybe some sort of superbowl get together where I don't actually watch the football but hang out with friends and maybe have a beer or two.
Had dinner with a friend tonight, Happy Hour at Village Pizza for the GGE last night (free food, but god the service was terrible), and on Wednesday I went to Oakland to climb with Shannon...
On the way to the Oakland gym, I stopped by the Berkeley Bowl West and plundered their citrus section. I bought a bunch of Meyer lemons and blood oranges...I also made friends with the produce guy and got to sample a bunch of fruit. Yessss.
So I made this: http://foodlibrarian.blogspot.
And I want to make this: http://www.epicurious.com/
I'm super psyched on citrus right now! And I have to say, the produce at the Berkeley Bowl is amazing. They have an entire section devoted to different kinds of eggplants!
I'm craving another rest day tomorrow. I hope that the wonkiness in my brain will go away, but sadly I think it's permanent. har. Trying to make light of these things.
More climbing on Sunday! Yeah! And then maybe some sort of superbowl get together where I don't actually watch the football but hang out with friends and maybe have a beer or two.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
On moving on.
I read this article today: http://seedmagazine.com/
The first echos my sentiments about the nature of reality that I blogged about a little while ago (italics mine):
"Biology likewise confirms Woolf’s intuition that “reality,” a term she put in quotes, is contingent. We cannot know one another absolutely. “What solitary icebergs we are, Miss Vinrace! How little we can communicate!” says Richard Dalloway in The Voyage Out, while Terence Hewet is correct that “I say everything’s different. No two people are in the least the same.” Reality is subjective because the brain is not a passive antenna for “objective data” impinging on it, as people often suppose. Each brain actively pursues what interests it, filtering the world in its uniquely subjective way. Genes prime a life while experience in a given culture contextualizes it."
The author basically says what I said but way better...reality only exists in our minds, and if it's that subjective, then it isn't reality. Case closed. Just kidding...
The second is regarding empathy, and the lack thereof in some people. I'm always trying to diagnose people who have no empathy...or at least figure out what is wrong with them...at least so I stop blaming myself. (Paranoids blame other people, depressives blame themselves...guess which I am?)
Here it is:
"She had what I would describe as a faulty theory of mind—a standard term describing a developing child’s ability to attribute mental states to others that depends on what are called “mirror neurons.” Though one cannot know others absolutely, once developed, our brains are good enough to infer what others might be thinking or feeling, allowing for empathy."
Maybe people with no empathy (who are sometimes sociopaths) simply are not wired properly neurologically. Who knows. Regardless of the reason, if someone has no empathy, is it wrong to be angry with them for being mean? It's almost like being mad at the retarded kid down the street for acting like a retarded kid. Can you blame them? Can you be pissed? At any rate, it's not useful to blame myself, though I get pissed that I'm pissed in the first place, or that I let someone piss me off, or that I let someone continue to be mean. I mean, isn't it my responsibility? Should I expect anyone to give a shit about whether they hurt me or not? Is that a basic expectation that you can have of everyman? Seems so, but maybe it isn't. Maybe it's my responsibility to weed through the jerks and assholes in the world and make sure that I only spend energy on people who are kind. If I expect everyone to be an asshole, then I'll be really psyched when they are not. But I think that has gotten me into trouble before. I think that maybe I should switch to expecting people to be decent and kind and being disappointed when they aren't...I'm not sure.
Maybe the right path is the "middle path" (not to be too la-di-da), where I can forgive people for their weaknesses (much as I'd like to be forgiven for mine), and still protect myself by cutting off damaging and toxic relationships. And focus on putting effort in to the good relationships in my life; I've been reminded recently that there are many.
I suppose there's no right way to grope blindly through confusing interpersonal relationships...other than to continue to grope blindly and hope you grab onto something that you can hang on to. Sometimes it really does feel like chance. You can take all the initiative in the world and not get anywhere, or you can just sit and wait for things to happen. You can be super aware, super reflective, and still make mistakes.
All I can say is that I'm ready for good things to happen. I hope that I'm at least putting myself in a position for good things. Shit happens, we get sick, friends and family can die or be hurt. I'm ready for good things.
And now to tack on the token climbing paragraph of the day:
I went to the Berkeley gym and met up with Jason on Sunday...since he epic-ed with public transport meeting up with me, I climbed a little bit with Drew and Alice and got to chat with Rachel and Hallie. Karl and Audrey showed up later, which was a treat. It had been so long since I'd seen them! Also Weezie and Mick were there (who hopefully will go to the Red...yay!). Afterwards Rachel and I went and had a chat and a burrito at Whole Foods. I got a good workout in (though I was still worked from the fingerboard/pullup/crossfit workout I did with Shannon on Thursday (!)). Today I rode my bike for the first time in a while...I hate the way my neck gets so freakin' sore if I haven't ridden in a while. Tomorrow I'll head back to Oakland to boulder and then do some crossfit/hangboard stuff with Shannon. The weather has been a blessing because I've spent a lot of time with people I haven't seen in a while. It's been really good.
Maybe Mission Cliffs on Saturday? I need to get my blanket back from Ethan who STOLE it from my house. Who does that? Apparently he's holding it ransom for a Snuggie. I think I'll arrange a trade.
Also, thanks to everyone who has written personal emails to me regarding the blog. I'm always psyched for feedback, even though sometimes it helps to be more honest with my writing if I feel like I'm writing in a vacuum. But I think it is good.
I'll end this post with another quote from the article that I liked but that I don't have much to say about. I just thought it was interesting:
"The idea that humans possess more than one mind, in a literal, physical sense, was first suggested in 1844 by Arthur Wigan. In The Duality of Mind, he described the autopsy of someone he knew well in which one brain hemisphere was discovered to be entirely missing! Wigan had wits enough to deduce that a single hemisphere was enough to be a person. It implied that the brain is not a single organ of two halves, but a closely apposed pair just as the kidneys or lungs are paired one to a side. Wigan concluded that if one hemisphere was sufficient to have a mind then the customary pair made having two minds inevitable. His astute observation suggested a physical basis for why it is ourselves with whom we are most often at odds and “can’t make up our minds.”"
The first echos my sentiments about the nature of reality that I blogged about a little while ago (italics mine):
"Biology likewise confirms Woolf’s intuition that “reality,” a term she put in quotes, is contingent. We cannot know one another absolutely. “What solitary icebergs we are, Miss Vinrace! How little we can communicate!” says Richard Dalloway in The Voyage Out, while Terence Hewet is correct that “I say everything’s different. No two people are in the least the same.” Reality is subjective because the brain is not a passive antenna for “objective data” impinging on it, as people often suppose. Each brain actively pursues what interests it, filtering the world in its uniquely subjective way. Genes prime a life while experience in a given culture contextualizes it."
The author basically says what I said but way better...reality only exists in our minds, and if it's that subjective, then it isn't reality. Case closed. Just kidding...
The second is regarding empathy, and the lack thereof in some people. I'm always trying to diagnose people who have no empathy...or at least figure out what is wrong with them...at least so I stop blaming myself. (Paranoids blame other people, depressives blame themselves...guess which I am?)
Here it is:
"She had what I would describe as a faulty theory of mind—a standard term describing a developing child’s ability to attribute mental states to others that depends on what are called “mirror neurons.” Though one cannot know others absolutely, once developed, our brains are good enough to infer what others might be thinking or feeling, allowing for empathy."
Maybe people with no empathy (who are sometimes sociopaths) simply are not wired properly neurologically. Who knows. Regardless of the reason, if someone has no empathy, is it wrong to be angry with them for being mean? It's almost like being mad at the retarded kid down the street for acting like a retarded kid. Can you blame them? Can you be pissed? At any rate, it's not useful to blame myself, though I get pissed that I'm pissed in the first place, or that I let someone piss me off, or that I let someone continue to be mean. I mean, isn't it my responsibility? Should I expect anyone to give a shit about whether they hurt me or not? Is that a basic expectation that you can have of everyman? Seems so, but maybe it isn't. Maybe it's my responsibility to weed through the jerks and assholes in the world and make sure that I only spend energy on people who are kind. If I expect everyone to be an asshole, then I'll be really psyched when they are not. But I think that has gotten me into trouble before. I think that maybe I should switch to expecting people to be decent and kind and being disappointed when they aren't...I'm not sure.
Maybe the right path is the "middle path" (not to be too la-di-da), where I can forgive people for their weaknesses (much as I'd like to be forgiven for mine), and still protect myself by cutting off damaging and toxic relationships. And focus on putting effort in to the good relationships in my life; I've been reminded recently that there are many.
I suppose there's no right way to grope blindly through confusing interpersonal relationships...other than to continue to grope blindly and hope you grab onto something that you can hang on to. Sometimes it really does feel like chance. You can take all the initiative in the world and not get anywhere, or you can just sit and wait for things to happen. You can be super aware, super reflective, and still make mistakes.
All I can say is that I'm ready for good things to happen. I hope that I'm at least putting myself in a position for good things. Shit happens, we get sick, friends and family can die or be hurt. I'm ready for good things.
And now to tack on the token climbing paragraph of the day:
I went to the Berkeley gym and met up with Jason on Sunday...since he epic-ed with public transport meeting up with me, I climbed a little bit with Drew and Alice and got to chat with Rachel and Hallie. Karl and Audrey showed up later, which was a treat. It had been so long since I'd seen them! Also Weezie and Mick were there (who hopefully will go to the Red...yay!). Afterwards Rachel and I went and had a chat and a burrito at Whole Foods. I got a good workout in (though I was still worked from the fingerboard/pullup/crossfit workout I did with Shannon on Thursday (!)). Today I rode my bike for the first time in a while...I hate the way my neck gets so freakin' sore if I haven't ridden in a while. Tomorrow I'll head back to Oakland to boulder and then do some crossfit/hangboard stuff with Shannon. The weather has been a blessing because I've spent a lot of time with people I haven't seen in a while. It's been really good.
Maybe Mission Cliffs on Saturday? I need to get my blanket back from Ethan who STOLE it from my house. Who does that? Apparently he's holding it ransom for a Snuggie. I think I'll arrange a trade.
Also, thanks to everyone who has written personal emails to me regarding the blog. I'm always psyched for feedback, even though sometimes it helps to be more honest with my writing if I feel like I'm writing in a vacuum. But I think it is good.
I'll end this post with another quote from the article that I liked but that I don't have much to say about. I just thought it was interesting:
"The idea that humans possess more than one mind, in a literal, physical sense, was first suggested in 1844 by Arthur Wigan. In The Duality of Mind, he described the autopsy of someone he knew well in which one brain hemisphere was discovered to be entirely missing! Wigan had wits enough to deduce that a single hemisphere was enough to be a person. It implied that the brain is not a single organ of two halves, but a closely apposed pair just as the kidneys or lungs are paired one to a side. Wigan concluded that if one hemisphere was sufficient to have a mind then the customary pair made having two minds inevitable. His astute observation suggested a physical basis for why it is ourselves with whom we are most often at odds and “can’t make up our minds.”"
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