09.09.23: Zippers

The fridge. It’s still a phenomenal nuisance in the house, and facing many more days before its replacement will arrive, we needed out for the weekend. So we kinda last-minute decided to head north, to see Tory and meet her horse Parco, at the barn up near Petaluma. And then we drove out to Guerneville, the main town on the Russian River. We glamped! We stayed at a place called Surrey Resort that has a bunch of platform tents (I think Alaska tent is the name of the style). Glamping is nice. They have a nice pool and a hot tub and there’s electricity in the tents. (Bathrooms and showers are shared.) And we had a nice fire pit. The tent entrance (and its windows) have these really substantial zippers that made such a satisfying sound. It’s the noise that stuck with me — and it’s SO. MUCH. BETTER than our damn fridge.

09.02.23: Chinese Lantern

I planted the Chinese Lantern in the backyard a looong time ago. A decade at least. It would grow extremely tall and bushy. Hummingbirds loved it. Eventually I’d get around to giving it a haircut, and it would grow back with a vengeance. I loved it. Jack and Kate didn’t. They felt it was blocking light from their apartment. I was imposing my will on the shared backyard. Still, cutting it down was emotional. Made me think of Mabel and her many many years investigating the yard, sniffing around endlessly—especially if she was onto some invisible creature trail. I miss her so much, still. Ironically, after Mabel died Helen Ford gifted us a baby Chinese Lantern plant as a healing gift. She did so because in the nursery it was marketed under another name it goes by: Flowering Maple, which made her think “Mabel.” She didn’t know we already had a huge one! But now the one Helen gave us is thriving, in a pot. Where it shall remain. (Note: Abutilon is the plant’s real name.)

08.24.23: So many interviews

I’m working on a podcast for which I’ve been interviewing tons of people lately and I feel like most of my time is in Zoom-land.

08.10.23: Duckpin

We’re in Milwaukee for Steve’s family reunion. We all went to an old dive bar called Koz’s for duckpin bowling, as we did back in 2011. It’s really fun. Short lanes and hand-held, small bowling balls. And it’s all manual — the fee includes hiring a couple kids to reset the pins each time you roll the ball. Steve’s Aunt Mary joined. She bowled, too, despite having to use a walker due to MS. She’s awesome. Here’s some ambient sound from that trip.

08.04.23: Cold discomfort

Steve and I bought a new fridge a few years ago. Not because the old one broke, but largely because I really wanted a freezer on the bottom. Just makes more sense to me. But this fridge we bought has developed a super annoying sound that drives me completely insane. It comes and goes. Steve can successfully ignore it. I’m jealous. My advice: believe reviews of fridges that say they’re noisy. We didn’t. (You might need to up the volume a bit.)

07.29.23: Merlin

We were at Minibasin (our place in the Santa Cruz Mnts) and woke up to lots of bird songs. I grabbed my phone and opened the Merlin app. It ID’ed a few different birds in this recording, but the most prominent is the Olive-sided Flycatcher. (I later learned that the bird in the Western US has a different call than in the Eastern US.) Can you ID the others?