Futility Now

So I took a week off and we went to the coast. It was fantastic. We stayed in the Tennessee Williams room at the Sylvia Beach hotel

We investigated intriguing rocks.

Then we went and stayed in a beach house with Portland’s greatest living author, Matthew Flaming and his wife and child. While there we ate at an awesome diner in Waldport.

and did some cooking at home.

We visited more beaches, this time with the sprout (who we see here looking sort of like Ringo on the cover of Abbey Road).

We also went on a serious fishing adventure and returned with a ridiculous quantity of bass. Unfortunately, only Matthew had the presence of mind to bring a camera suitable for wielding out the middle of the ocean. Perhaps if we plead enough he will pass on some pictures and we’ll get them up here eventually.

We left just in time to avoid it being sunny.

On the way home we made a brief stop in Philomath by this awesome building.

We were expecting serious abuse from Yoshi when we got home, but he came around fairly quickly. I wonder if he had basically despaired of our returning and was too relieved that we were back at all to punish us for staying away.

Despite our well-documented efforts to tame the yard, it is already a total jungle. Here is a picture of Yoshi looking out the window in disgust at the fruits of our slovenliness.

Rather than taming the damn thing, we’ve run off to Parkdale again (geez). Here is a picture of Mount Hood.

When I turned the camera on to take that last picture, the shutter speed was set really low. I thought the grass looked cool all overexposed.

We flew to San Francisco in incredibly cramped planes.

We went to a bunch of really cool places, including this phenomenon called The Albany Bulb, which I had never heard of back when I was living in SF.

As disaffected youth hurled parts of older artifacts into the bay, our guide, Gnarles M, said that the last time he had visited the area had been more whimsical and less apocalyptic. I suggested it was merely a sign of the times, and then stared across the bay, soaking up all the bleakness.

Then we got drinks.

On the west side of the West Side, we meandered around a bunch of places that I really miss about San Francisco. The highlight of these was probably San Francisco’s incredible Conservatory of Flowers, my ardor for which had been stoked to a feverish pitch by the fact that I hadn’t been there for fifteen years (it was closed for restoration the entire time that I actually lived near it.) It was totally worth the wait.

Truly one of my favorite places on the entire planet. After the conservatory we hit Golden Gate Park’s charming carousel (totally enhanced by it’s proximity to massive dumpsters) and the California Academy of Sciences, which was rebuilt recently with a very cool living roof.

(For you nerds: looks sort of like an ohmu, right?)

We also made it out the the Sutro Baths, the site of many disastrous mishaps in the life of my father. With us as his guardians he managed to visit without falling off of or into anything.

Eventually we came home to suffer the torments of our neglected kitten.

I was really tired of my office being bright blue, so over the break we did something about it. First we painted the middles of all the walls a sort of nondescript tan. After that there was a beautiful vision in which we would strip and stain all the wood, but basically the stripper was so toxic we gave it up. Even the curtailed version of the plan in which we only stripped the floor molding was pretty exhausting, probably more unctuous than all of the subsequent painting combined.

Then we masked things off, which actually looked pretty cool on its own.

Then there was the painting of the dark portions. I think it turned out pretty well.

And that’s good, because it ended up being pretty crazy. We actually finished on the 31st, just in time to put on more appropriate Champagne-drinking outfits, which is good because boy howdy.

So last weekend we escaped to some friends’ country estate.

Hazel preparing for departure:

The digs:

(As you can see, we invited our esteemed colleague, Mr. Pillow.)

The view:

We mostly just schlubbed around the house, which is good because the outdoors are packed with incredibly frightening spiders.

Once we were done screaming, we noticed that the spider’s shed was kind of pretty in its own rustic way.