London Calling

I've posted my pictures from London in summer 2004. I didn't label all-seems like I've forgotten what some of these places were. Basically I spent the whole time in London, although I took day trips to Canterbury and Cambridge. The flower pics are from the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew. I'll try to do some brushing up and add more titles to some of the other pictures.

Also, you may notice I've put a direct link to my flickr photos to the right. Thanks Michelle for the suggestion.

Spring in January?

Photos later, but two of my favorite things about living in Central Texas have started-the blooming of redbud trees and mountain laurel. The latter causes much of Austin to smell like grape kool-aid for about a month. Like living on Howard's End. The former ushers in all the other blooms over the next five months-irises and lilies, followed by bluebonnets, buttercups, paintbrushes, indian blankets, winecups, mexican hats, and closing out with sunflowers. With all the rain this summer and into the fall, I'm hoping for a great flower season.

The north side of the Town Lake Trail near Austin High is a great place to see all these kinds of flowers. Other favorite places-Highway 71 from Columbus to Bastrop, the Willow City Loop near Fredricksburg, FM 1340 near Hunt, Texas (check out Stonehenge while you're at it), Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and the drive from Marble Falls to Llano (RM 1431 to SH 29)(do not leave this earth without having eaten at the Bluebonnet Cafe in Marble Falls or Cooper's BBQ in Llano). The Trestle Trail in Brenham is really great for wildflower viewing, although I've come close to death twice running the Blue Bell 10K along that route. US 290 on either side of Brenham is great too, although lots of people pulling over for "bluebonnet pictures" can detract. You people do know that rattlesnakes like the bluebonnets, right?

Send Me Away (on Vacation)

Its getting near that time when I need to start thinking about where to go on my annual overly long, overly expensive, and overly difficult early September vacation (September 1-15 or so). Its sort of getting to the point where I'm unable to pick where to go next. There's so many places I'd like to go, but so little time. Each time I go on one of these trips I have it in mind that it might be the last one-I could easily come back to work and get fired for letting things pile up while I was gone. Vacation after that would be something of a permanent state. So I really need to get maximum bang for the buck, as it were, each time out.

But as I'm in a somewhat dithering mode about picking a place, I thought I'd turn this into a gimmick and get some help from the four of you reading these posts (it used to be three but I finally persuaded a fourth person to read-I think she mainly skims it to see if there's any new pictures.). So here's the deal. If I get enough response, I will commit to go to the place that gets the most nominations from you readers. Unless you come up with something ridiculous of course. Like Darfur, or Paris.

Here's the rules. No, actually, lets call them "guidelines." I'm about as picky about vacation spots and activities as I am what I eat. Anyway, the first and primary goal is to get out of the heat. After three months of near 100 degree heat, I'm usually pretty drained and need to go somewhere cool (literally and figuratively). So that largely rules out places where it continues to be hot in early September, unless its someplace like the Utah national parks where it cools off during the evening. Beyond that,

• I ride alone. The second best thing about vacation is I don't have to talk or listen to anyone. I can come and go exactly when and where I please, and don't have to negotiate with anyone about schedules or agendas. Or come up with things to say. Or have to talk during breakfast. Or pay attention to the fifteenth annoying story about something clever Dave in marketing said the other day at happy hour. Not that I don't treasure the times I spend with all my friends of course....Plus, hey, lets look at this as a sorely needed vacation for all of you from me too.
• My main goal is to find somewhere that combines lots of outdoor activities (hiking, running, etc.) and great natural scenery with one or more cities that have great culture, performances, architecture, and restaurants. Typically I try to avoid so-called "adventure travel." If I wanted to risk my life and get sick at the same time, I'd spend my time riding the bus in Austin and save my money. So that rules out anywhere that I would have to take a bunch of shots before going, or where I'd have to brave famine, pestilence, disease, terrorism, mimes, or civil wars. If its somewhere I have to take money for bribing the local cops, forget it.
• Also, I know most of you think of vacation as lying on a beach somewhere reading a book and having someone named Manuel or Rolf bring you a fresh drink every half hour, but not me. About the last thing I want to do is lie around. This may come as a great shock, but I'm not so big on relaxing. Yeah. I relax, sort of, by actually doing something. So no beach getaways or singles cruises. [Shudder].
• I am not a family. Despite the fact that I have multiple personalities, I still am just one person. So I don't want to go somewhere that's mainly a big family getaway destination. That rules out places like the Disney cities, Mall of America, Niagara Falls, Las Vegas (actually, that's not a joke-you'd think Caesar's Palace would be the last place someone would want to be pushing little Snookums around in a stroller, but sure enough they are all over the joint).
• Finally, I don't do tours-see the first bullet point. Unless that's the only way to see something awesome (as was the case for seeing Milford Sound in New Zealand).

Basically, I'm happy to go somewhere by myself and try to blend in as much as possible. Its more important to try to live like a Londoner for a bit, for example, than to hit every single tourist spot in the town.

OK, places I've already been on vacation:

US: Oregon, Washington (state and DC), San Francisco (town and Bay Area, including as far south as Carmel and as far north as Mendocino), San Diego, LA, much of New Mexico (Albuquerque and Santa Fe), northern Arizona/Grand Canyon, Southern Utah (really just Monument Valley), Salt Lake City, most of Louisiana and Mississippi, much of southern Pennsylvania (including Amish country), Boston/Nantucket, Maine coast, NYC, everywhere in Texas worth seeing except Big Bend and Palo Duro canyon, Western Arkansas, Memphis, Chicago, Wyoming (Grand Tetons and Yellowstone), Montana, Las Vegas.

Elsewhere: Canada (Vancouver, Victoria, Whistler, Banff, Montreal, Quebec City), New Zealand, England (mainly London).

Places I'm interested in going: Italy, Australia, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Colorado, Utah (national parks), Alaska.

Places I don't want to go (at least for now): Paris, Hawaii, Russia. I have my reasons. Do not question them.

So let me know what you think. Feel free to suggest places not on my list. Within reason of course.

Going to California

Made a quick trip out to Northern California over the weekend to visit my friends Terry and Kimberly on the occasion of her 29th birthday (or something like that). We took a house at the Sea Ranch, a development just outside of Gualala, California, near the Sonoma-Mendocino county line right on the coast. The pictures are on flickr.com, as usual. Our house was right on the coast, just at the edge of one of many rocky coves. We could hear the surf pounding on the rocks all day and night. Although we had generally foggy, clammy weather, it was still beautiful.

Thursday I flew out to Oakland and rendezvoused with Kimberly during the day, and we ran errands. I had forgotten to pack my running shoes, and stopped at La Foot, an outstanding Berkeley running shoe store. They have incredible service, going as far as to watch you walk barefoot across the floor to assess your gait and shoe needs. Would that my salesperson wasn't suffering through incredible allergies and barely able to breathe. But that was probably the inevitable result of three massive storms in two weeks and lingering clammy weather that plagued us all weekend. That night we had a blow out dinner at Rivoli, a fantastic local place on the Berkeley-Albany city line. Entertainment included not only our respective fine company, the flower garden in the glassed-off atrium, but also the three Berkeley professors arguing the merits of the Hillary campaign at another table (and making it difficult to keep down my outstanding dinner of stuffed quail and roasted sweet potato). But Kimberly dropped eaves at length over her excellent hot fudge sundae.

The next day we made our customary Noah's Bagels run, then headed to the Sea Ranch. The route takes us past San Quentin, where each time when I pass by on the way to Marin and places north I think of Merle Haggard, who did time there. We arrived at the Sea Ranch in the early afternoon. As the pictures show, the Sea Ranch is an extensive residential development right off the Pacific Coast Highway near Gualala. It features moderate bluffs going down to the ocean, with numerous coves and seal feeding grounds. The houses all have a uniform, uninteresting architectural style, but most feature outstanding views either of the ocean or the many open spaces throughout the Ranch. After stocking up with provisions, we settled in for the evening. Kimberly made a fine dinner consisting of duck a l' (blood) orange with honey/soy/cherry preserve glaze, spinach, and cauliflower, which we enjoyed immensely after watching a surprising little sunset that could. Afterwards we enjoyed another little birthday celebration with the opening of presents and gobbling down outstanding birthday cake courtesy of her friend Daniela, and adjourned, in a true California cliche, to the outdoor hot tub and then to toasting marshmallows in the fireplace.

Saturday as usual was long run day, sandwiched between watching the Packer and Patriot playoff games. Kimberly and I went to the Dolphin Gallery to check out the local art store, then returned for lunch. After, I ran on the gravel/grass trail that lines the coast along the entire Sea Ranch. The trail was a pretty bad ankle-twister: lots of grass divots and other chuckholes to avoid. Incredible scenery, as you can see from the photos, albeit somewhat diminished by the lingering fog. I returned to the house and basically couched it the rest of the day, interrupted only to watch a spectacular sunset and eat Kimberly's next meal, of beef bourguignon and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies made from scratch (needless to say, I now weigh 300 pounds after this weekend). Terry and I ran Kimberly upstairs by breaking out Fellowship of the Ring on the DVD.

Sunday saw Terry spend the entire day hiking all of the coastal bluff trail, roughly 9 miles. Kimberly and I went to the Gualala Arts Center for an unexpectedly good exhibition of local artists. We went to the store to shop for dinner, then returned to the house where I watched the Chargers finish off the Colts and the RCA Dome along with them. After a two hour hike on the coastal bluff trail, I came back to watch the end of the greatest game in years-the Giants putting down the Jessica Simpsons. Sorry Lisa, looks like your boys were Cabo Waboed into a first round playoff exit. No hot tubbing or sunset tonight, but we did enjoy Kimberly's final feast of the weekend, sauteed (in white wine and butter) halibut and scallops with broccoli. Kimberly and I watched Persuasion on PBS, with great disappointment at the amount of editing. It was like watching a version of Gone With the Wind that skips from the Twelve Oaks barbecue to the end of the Civil War.

Monday was a travel day, which depressingly featured some reasonably clear weather for the first time the whole trip. We did enjoy a pretty scenic drive back to the Oakland airport though. Formerly a crackhouse of an airport (hey, it made the Shreveport Airport look like the Notre Dame cathedral), Oakland has really improved the facility, to the point where its fairly easy to get in and out of (after killing yourself getting past the Bay Bridge exit, of course). Notably, the flight crew back evoked Southwest Airlines flights of old, back when SWA hired only smoking hot stewardesses (no "flight attendants" back then), who had fun singing songs and joking with the passengers. It was briefly like 1985 again. When Reagan was President and all was right with the world. Well, except for AIDS, new Coke, Live Aid, and other atrocities.

All in all it was quite a long strange Northern California trip.

Top 5 Songs I'm Listening to Now

What really matters is what you like, not what you are like...Books, records, films -- these things matter. Call me shallow but it's the damn truth....

-High Fidelity

Blogs are all about overestimating the significance of one's life and opinions, right? How else do you account for "dear diary" blog entries? "Today I slept late, took out the trash, had pancakes for breakfast. I thought about children without insurance. And it made me sad :(" Yeah, well, I thought about my rapidly declining yard and that made me sad too. Or the rise of self-appointed commentators on all aspects of the human endeavor. Particularly those creepy political blogs from people you've never heard of or who never actually come out in the sunlight. (Just kidding Maureen Dowd. You know I'd run off with you to Tora Bora and be your white American male-hating valet if you'd ever return any of my calls). I have this feeling most political bloggers got the crap kicked out of them on the playground in second grade. Jimmy Carter taking advice from Amy about nuclear war thinks paying attention to bloggers is ridiculous.

But just as sharks hunt, government workers slack, and Steve Francis, well, um, I'm not sure what exactly he does when he's not napping on the court, anyway, just like all them, bloggers inflict their own taste on their readers. So to avoid swimming upstream, here are the 5 songs I'm listening to the most these days:

1. Sisely and the Safety Pin-Ups, "Do the Robot." Like the Go-Go's or the Donna's, but a lot less tidy. Imagine if Ally Sheedy in the Breakfast Club had a band.

2. The Greenhornes, "There is an End." This was the theme song to the Bill Murray movie of a couple of years ago, Broken Flowers. I really identify with the Murray character in this movie, and the song reinforces the character.

3. Nancy Sinatra, "Tony Rome." One of Frank's best movies. I dug the hat. Probably Nancy's swinging best song.

4. The Ramones, "Teenage Lobotomy." Maybe the biggest regret of my musical life is I passed up the chance to see the Ramones at Liberty Lunch in the 80s. Granted, they were way past their prime and would have been in some glue sniffing haze, but it would still have been revelatory. I usually am late to appreciate musical genius. Sad that it fell to Green Day to play Ramones songs when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

5. The Raspberries, "Let's Pretend." Now, this is 70s AM radio pop, granted, but its a beautiful song. If I had a longer list, this group would have been in my Hall of Sort of Fame. Its been fun discovering this long-neglected gem.

Now, go knock yourselves out.

My New Year's Resolutions (sort of)

I guess you're supposed to have your New Year's Resolutions made up before the New Year starts, so that you can begin following them on day one. Not much use in starting your resolutions on, say, November 12th. But nine days is still close enough. Besides, 2008 is a leap year so its really just eight.

I'm not sure whether there's any rules for New Year's resolutions. Something should separate a "resolution" from something you always want but fate always conspires to separate you from achieving your just reward. Like "score with hot new chick in HR" or "talk stepmom into paying bowling league dues." Mostly it seems like resolutions come from the self-help section of the western lifestyle section-resolutions are promises to yourself which if kept will result in some sort of "improvement." Strictly speaking they're what you resolve to do in the coming year. There's no real value judgment. Like "invade Poland," or "break company union." Generally there's some sort of self-improvement angle though. The most popular resolutions are to start exercising, go on a diet, spend more time with family and friends, and reduce debt. Sounds kind of pushy. All I know is my gym is crowded from January 1st to Spring Break every year with couch potatoes tying up the machines.

Some "scholars" at the University of Washington who studied New Year's resolutions say some keys to keeping them are a "strong initial commitment to make a change" and not "framing your resolutions as absolutes by saying, 'I will never do X again.'" That's just staggering insight. If I am committed to changing its more likely I'll change. I always thought most people forgot all about their resolutions by, say, the time it gets warm enough to enjoy ice cream (which is about January 5th for most of us). But the UW people say 63 percent of people kept their main resolution for at least two months. Which is about two months longer than the average attention span. And one month longer than any reasonable commitment should be expected to last.

There's some resolutions I'd love to actually make, but am honest enough to realize I have no likelihood of fulfilling:

1. Be more efficient at work (to allow for earlier daily departures).
2. Buy a new car.
3. Get a new TV.
4. Watch more movies and sports.
5. More time with college babes/less time with everyone else.
6 Get a bullfighter jacket. Really. Those things are totally cool.

Then there's my list of yawn-olutions that I have little or no interest in keeping, but would use to tell people these are my New Year's resolutions to make me seem like a better person:

1. Do volunteer work. Preferably with kids.
2. Read more. Focus on 19th century English novels. Like Dickens or Austen.
3. Cut out TV watching (except for the news). Also see No. 5.
4. Plant a garden (using only organic techniques, obviously).
5. Redecorate house. Oh, and start watching HGTV for tips (exception to Resolution No. 3).
6. Really get to know more of my neighbors.

Resolutions I am more likely to keep, but still won't because, let's face it, resolutions are pretty much lame:
1. Get more sleep.
2. Buy a pair of jeans that fit.
3. Clean my house once a month (need it or not).
4. Attend one party (or gathering with more than three people not in my family).
5. Go to one play. And only one play.
6. Office visit to one (and only one) of the following: dentist, eye doctor, or nutritionist.

So there you go. Totally untimely but hopefully I've inspired you to keep your own resolutions. Let me know in a couple of months.