"I like my gardens moist"

said young Stovielet on the phone the other night as he looked at pictures from our parents' recent visit to Spookytown. I took them to the aquatic gardens that I had briefly visited on Saturday, and spent some time documenting the loveliness. These gardens are part original marshland (much of Spookytown was originally marshland, which makes it completely unsurprising that I'm being attacked by malevolent mosquitoes right now as I'm typing this, out on my balcony at dusk) and part human-made pools for the purposes of floral aquaculture, specializing in waterlilies and lotus(es) ('lotus' - pluralizable?). For all that I have nearly bought super-tacky lotus-shaped lamps in various Chinatowns over the years (somehow always resisting), before this past weekend I had never seen a lotus in person. They're beautiful.
Those ones above are descended from plants germinated in 1951 from two seeds found in an ancient lake bed in Manchuria, seeds that were carbon dated as possibly 960 years old. That's pretty old.

The new-school, more brightly colored lotuses get all pinkly glowy in the sunlight, really highlighting their resemblance to lamps.
I find the lotus to be aesthetically appealing in all its phases, from bud to seed pod, and en masse as well as individually.
Although perhaps an impressionist cliche (albeit not their fault), regular-type waterlilies are also beautiful.
Especially when they are supporting froggies, as they were clearly designed to do.
As it turns out, I am also pro tiger lily.
And tree bark.
I guess, to sum up, I'm kind of down with wetlands flora.

Some strange days

I've had a couple of really weird days over the last two weeks, noticeably odd with remarkable (and I don't mean in a good way) accumulations of bizarre events. A usually trustworthy source, a person I don't think of as in any way influenced by astrology or suchlike, mentioned on the phone the other day that a lot of people are experiencing life oddities right now, and many of them are chalking it up to some kind of unusual planetary alignment in place from mid-June to early July. On the one hand, for heavens sake! (So to speak.) On the other hand, are cosmic forces really throwing a wrench in my mundane daily existence? Some of you may recall a two-week period in June 2005 in which an exploding transformer behind the house blew up all my electronic equipment, I got into a car accident requiring like a thousand bucksov of repairs, my glasses broke, and my bicycle fell apart as I was en route to buying new glasses. With a few other things thrown in for good measure. It's not that bad at the moment, but let's take a look at last Tuesday.

The forecast was for serious thunderstorms starting mid-afternoon, so I decided to take the metro rather than bike. I was kind of sleep-deprived, in that the previous night I had waited until well after midnight for my cousin to arrive from the train station (for whatever reason, after his 11:15 train arrived, he had decided to take the metro, involving one train change and then 15 minutes on foot, rather than a 15-minute $12 cab ride), and it took me maybe 20 minutes to figure out what to wear. Which is hard these days, with it all hot and steamy in outdoorsy places but icily cold in indoor air-conditioned places. Of course, not only did it take just 2 blocks for me to realize I completely hated every single thing I was wearing, but it took just 3 blocks more to realize that my sandals were tearing up my feet. I don't mean just rubbing in a blister-starting way, I mean actual skin shredding with associated bleeding. But I had bandaids with me, and so decided to do some repairs and continue to my office rather than head back home. At least I had remembered to go back for my wallet while still in my building, so I didn't have to turn back at the station and laboriously retrace my steps (it's happened) (quite possibly more than once). Work was filled with frustrating e-mails and meetings, and it would be a stretch to say that I had a productive day. So I headed out a bit earlier than I had planned, and went back to the neighborhood with Whitey D, who lives nearby, and who treated me to a consolation cinnamon bun (delightful, if not so good for me). I headed home and arrived just minutes before my planned meeting with an expected guest, a Craigslist reader who was supposed to come buy a super-heavy stone pedestal urn I recently decided I didn't want on the balcony anymore. I poked through my bag looking for my keys, and looked again, and took everything out and shook the bag to see if they had perhaps slipped through the lining, and finally came to the reluctant realization that I had probably left them in my office. I had switched shoes early in the day, but even so, the idea of walking even one extra step was deeply deeply unpleasant, so running over to Whitey D's to get my spare set wasn't an option, especially as the Urn Woman was due any second. So I used the new secret code, which I had just learned from management the previous day, to let myself in the front door of the building, walked up to the second floor, slithered through the window, walked on the mini-roof connecting the two balconies on my floor, climbed over the balcony railing (harder than it sounds, since not only am I a very bad climber but also there are no toeholds and it's hard to get my short little legs over the top), and let myself in the screen door, which I had luckily left unlocked in order to keep the fan on and give the piggies some air. Once inside, I realized with a sinking heart that I was locked inside my own apartment, since the spare key that I usually keep in the front door had gone off with my cousin and his lobbying early that morning. How was I going to get Urn Woman her urn? I started to sketch out a plan involving heaving the urn over the balcony railing, dragging it to the open window, and more. But I was clever, and before taking action decided to wait and see if she actually showed up. Which she did not, Craigslist people being flakes more often than not. So I hightailed it over the balcony railing, slithered back into the building through the window, and headed down to Blackie's for the other spare set of keys, Whitey D not answering her phone for whatever reason. We watched the Colbert Report together, only the second time I had seen it on an actual tv (I watch on the Comedy Central website, such that his adorable head is approximately the size of my thumbnail), and it was of course the worst episode I have ever seen. I then limped my way back home (with approximately 7 bandages covering my feet and toes) and sat trying to decide if I should drive to my office to get the keys. I was waiting for an important letter which I had been told to expect any day, and not having the key to my mailbox was making me crazy. But but but, I thought, if I shlepped 45 minutes each way and came home to find no letter, that might be even worse. So I cooked some non-kosher food, making sure to clean up the remains before the orthodox cousin returned, and instead of being able to change into pj's and head to bed early, had to stay fully clothed and awake until late, once I was sure my cousin had returned safely -- I have all kinds of summer nightwear, but none of it is sufficiently modest for those times when your 57-year old religious relative-by-marriage is sleeping in your living room. Oh, and by the way, those thunderstorms that stopped me from biking and that everyone said were absolutely sure to happen? Never happened.

As it turns out, it's a good thing I decided to not to head to work just for the mail key, since on Wednesday I learned that there was a (possibly major) setback in terms of the important letter. Which is an official job offer for a yearlong visiting professor position in one of my favorite departments ever. In late May, out of the blue, I had gotten an e-mail from the man who literally wrote the book on my major field, in which he said, "Hey, I know it's kind of late, but any interest in coming to teach here next year?" To say I was interested is to speak in understatement, and after some salary negotations (now that I am technically debt-free I'm really wanting to stay financially stable, is that so wrong?) and his getting some extra cash from god-knows-where, I got an e-mail saying we were all set. So imagine my horror when I learned Wednesday, one week after the "we're all set" e-mail, that the administration was insisting that the lovely department in question publicly advertise the position, a position that they had created just for me -- not only did I have all kinds of plans in place that were going to be set in motion the instant I got the offer letter (negotiating a junior sabbatical at work, buying a new car that can actually get me across the country, tapping into my SoCal networks to see about housing, etc. etc.), but the e-mail was so hedgy that it made it sound like there was now a chance they wouldn't be hiring me. After three close calls for real improvement in my professional position this year, all of which fell through, to have this next one fall apart at the very last second was possibly going to be too much to bear. But after a minor freakout -- and my god in heaven let me use the "Save to Draft" button in lieu of "Send" the next time I am in freakout mode -- I am now trusting my employer-to-be to take care of things. "Be patient and trust me," he wrote, "I get things done." And since he comes from a country where circumnavigating bureaucratic absurdities appears to be a national pasttime, I have decided that I will indeed trust him. We are already choosing classes that I will teach (one with 250 students and 5 TAs!), so I am feeling mostly reassured. But certainly will feel much, much better once I have letter in hand.

Which brings us to Saturday. I had registered to volunteer with a park cleanup, which turned out to be in wetlands of a nice local river.

Of course, the directions on the park website didn't take into account a recent highway closure, so I had to engage in all kinds of circumnavigating and driving around until I finally found the place where we were gathering, arriving 15 minutes late. Meaning that all the small-sized galoshes were gone, and I had to wear a pair of men's boots to slosh around in the mud. Meaning that when my feet got sucked down in the mud as I reached out for some rusty cans, the boots weren't tight enough to hold me, and I promptly fell on my butt in swampy mud and river water. And on rusty can. On the plus side, while I was down there I found the Swamp Cow, pictured above and here, now in situ on my balcony, a much happier home than half-buried in river muck.
After the cleanup was done, the remaining volunteers took a mini canoe tour with the guy who runs the watershed, in which we saw herons, and native wild rice, and non-migratory Canadian geese, descended from a few geese whose wings had been clipped in the 1920s in order to provide a hunting flock, and whose children had therefore learned to fly, but not how to migrate. After the canoeing, I headed over one park to the north, to these aquatic gardens I had wanted to visit for some time now. It's filled with loveliness like this
and like this
but I decided to save the real exploration for another day with the parents, who I was sure would enjoy it (they are people who are drawn to swamps, for some reason -- and I'm pretty sure it's not race memory of muddy Eastern Europen shtetls). So instead of surrounding myself with natural beauty, I headed over to one of the better thrift stores around in search of cheap summer pants (I am still en route to the size that I like to be, and so while in desperate need of summer pants, don't feel like pouring money into stuff that will hopefully be too big in a month or two). Got a phone call from a faraway friend right before I headed in (a sad phone call in that he will be in the Far East and/or Europe for basically the entirety of my upcoming LA/Monterey visit, thus scotching any and all hopes I had of actually "hanging out", which is such a shame because he's such a pleasure to talk to) and so ended up wandering the store and poking around way more than I ordinarily would, since I wasn't sure if my phone would get reception in the fitting rooms, which have large and solid metallic doors. (As it turns out, the reception in there is just fine, but if you're trying things on in suburban Maryland and ask someone in Los Angeles, "do you think these pants make my butt look fat?", don't expect a useful answer.) I learned in my wanderings that this thrift store is filled with thrifty goodness (e.g., Tales of Jabba the Hut, just 99 cents and now sitting on my bedside table waiting to be read, although I think the Spookytown heat hasn't cooked my brain quite enough yet) and creepy vignettes. Especially the doll section.
Correction: especially the stripped-naked-and-tossed-in-a-giant-heap doll section.
Not one doll was touched in the taking of these shots, people -- I snapped 'em as I found 'em. This kind of looked like a Gucci ad.
While these little vignettes seem to be saying something about the state of contemporary American womanhood.
And I'm not even going to hazard a guess as to what was going on in this corner here.
About $20 lighter, and some pants, skirt, and jacket heavier, I returned home to experience three more moments of things not really going right. First, I did two loads of laundry, only to learn that I had somehow managed to leave the muddy swamp pants out of both loads -- they are still stinking up the laundry basket as I write. Also, when I put water up to boil for some pasta, I somehow managed to turn on the back burner in lieu of the front, so that burning smell I smelled sitting out on the balcony doing some reading was not as I first thought a neighbor using a particularly icky kind of lighter fluid for a barbeque, but a pot lid of mine sitting on the back burner and glowing red, with its black handle white and crumbly and really, really unpleasant smelling -- a lot like burned hair. It look three days to get the burned pot smell out of my house, and now I have to find a new lid because of course it's the size that I use almost every day. The final sad moment of the day -- when I got home I found that these flowers that I had gathered from a culvert on my bike ride home last Thursday as part of a semi-hippie solstice celebration
had been knocked over, probably not long after my departure early in the morning, and in the ensuing hours of heat, most of them had withered and died. I assume that someone knocked them over in order to get at the water. I wonder who it might have been?

Tomatolets!

I now count 42. So very excited!
Since they're only growing up to be wee little grape tomatoes I'm hoping it's just a few weeks until the first harvest.

Putting the Fun in Ft. Funston

Actually, as long as the weather is good, the fun is kind of always in Fort Funston, probably San Francisco's nicest beach. After some early-morning yoga last Saturday, Stovie and I headed off with his friend Soleil, in town from England for a wedding and to see California for the first time. This seemed as good a place as any to show her.
It was great San Francisco beach weather, which is to say I was only wearing three shirts and a scarf, but the kids managed with just two shirts and some rolled up pants legs.
There were lots of frolicking doggies (not pictured, sadly) and a horse even (also not pictured, sadly), and sand to get buried in,
and views to be looked at,
and pelicans to be watched,
and leaping about to be done,
although it definitely helps to have equipment if you truly want to stay airborne.

Places I do/don't want to see again some/anytime soon

The "don't want to see again anytime soon" place: Dulles airport. With its endless traffic-ridden highway approach, never-arriving economy-lot shuttles, "impossible to check bags in a timely fashion even if you've already checked in online" lines, "you can't dash for the plane even if you're late because you have to take some weirdie trailer-on-wheels shuttle to your terminal" plane-missing obstacles, and oddly pervasive smell of burnt garlic/window-washing spray throughout the low-numbered C gates, I would be delighted to never see it again. Oh well, at least I have three weeks to brace myself.

So I have been back almost a week now from my latest whirlwind tour, but I'm still not yet quite as recovered as I would like to be, although with good reason -- with the exception of last Saturday I have been either working or travelling for work every single day since April 29. I'm tired! And was looking forward to a little entropy reduction/apartment cleaning, except that I hurt something in my back this morning changing my sheets, so I think all my planned lifting/stretching/bending stuff is out for the rest of the day. Hoping that the painkiller will let me nap a little, but in the meantime I will spend a few minutes reminiscing fondly about how much I really love California. My love for Chicago and excellent quality of life there kind of made me forget, but really, I just love California. The project taking me to Monterey continues to be annoying and filled with logistical difficulties (not to mention not intellectually stimulating at all), but I keep on reminding myself that it is, in fact, getting me to Monterey. Which is less fun now that N-ka and family are summering in Sankt Peterburg and so not around to play with, but still pretty nice. The major jetlag this time (9 hours difference between Hamburg and Monterey) meant that I was up pretty early every day, which once the sun rose made for some nice, practically person-free, early morning walks or runs. (The hotels I stay in are always adjacent to the bayside recreation trail, which is great -- I can stretch out on my balcony and then just head out.)

This morning here started out same as usual: a little bit foggy, a little bit sunny, and with a lot of resting seals.
They're like little ear-free flippery water-loving cats, just lazing around and sunning themselves on rocks all day, with periodic forays for food.
I wanted to sit on the beach I like and commune with my young seal friends (the juveniles far bigger than on my May trip, much harder to tell from adults this time) except unfortunately some dreadlocked white hippie with a guitar had beaten me to it. There was only so much stoned strumming I could handle (= next-to-none), so I headed down the path once more and followed some stairs down to a beach to nowhere -- on the left, a kayak launching site for the super-fancy hotel above and on the right, some kind of semi-abandoned construction site that has turned into a cormorant nesting ground.
They were all over. And didn't seem to mind me so much, barely glancing down at me at all, but seemed awfully concerned about something to the east -- I never could figure out what.
They were building nests right as I watched,
both right over the water and tucked away in nooks and crannies on high (upper left, here).
There were a few seagulls hanging out quietly too -- no one seemed to mind.
The bottoms of the construction pillars had become overrun with tidal-pool-type creatures, most notably sea stars (can you see the fourth in the picture below?) and sea urchins.
All my years of tidal-pool wading but I still have no idea what this rock-encrusting creature is.
But it sure looks nice with artfully strewn seaweed lying on top of it.
The trail runs over and alongside roads, but is pretty highly regulated, I suppose to make it safe for walkers/bikers/runners. I kinda think they could have stopped with the catch-all "motorized vehicle" category, but apparently the parks people like to cover all their bases.
Non-motorized skateboards also verboten, even if there are surprisingly graceful riders on them.
To be filed under "ironic": as I was taking pictures of the signs above, I was nearly run over by this truck that was backing up, which I'm pretty sure falls in the prohibited "motorized vehicle" category.
When I turned to flee, I found this even-larger truck blocking the path.
I guess rules can be broken when it's time for Mulch Madness.