Wednesday, October 31, 2007

The spoooooky sound of sandblasting is reverberating through my head as particles of our 82-year-old house fly off into our landscaping and I get ready to write another four-figure check. Must be Halloween! Happy Holiday!

Actually so far it doesn't seem so bad -- it's insanely ugly and sort of mustard-yellow and grey camoflauge at the moment, but in 3 weeks we'll be done, and our place will have a new surface, new paint, maybe even new lighting. We must be crazy - or maybe just overly particular. Probably both.

My parents were here in time to see the house before its makeover on the trip my brother and I went in on as a gift to mom for her 60th birthday. We all met up in San Francisco on the 13th and had a great weekend before they set out on the roadtrip down the coast that blows everybody's mind, especially the first time they do it. I took Todd to Sausalito on Saturday so he could do the big bridge drive; we all ate in North Beach afterwards once the parental units arrived, at some Italian place (of course) called the Mona Lisa. After hitting Alcatraz and having a great lunch at Fog City Diner on Sunday, I had to get back on a plane, and leave them to their own devices.

They drove that rental Prius ($35 for gas, for the WHOLE TRIP) down the PCH and made it to Pasadena by Friday evening. Of course, we took them to Disneyland on Saturday complete with dinner at the Blue Bayou, and to the Getty on Sunday. The most suprising thing, ok two most surprising things; my father actually seemed to enjoy Disneyland quite a bit, and I actually enjoyed seeing what it was like to have your parents in the same time zone for a whole week. Makes the world seem a whole lot less lonely for some reason. (Did I really say that?)

Okay, back to my weird L.A. reality, which has its awesome moments: last Friday I sat two feet away from none other than Mr. Tom Petty, that's right, the Free-Falling, Traveling Wilburys, man-of-the-(San Fernando)-valley Tom Petty at a table read for King of the Hill. He didn't acknowledge me but I'm certain that he wanted to -- too many people around. Thanks Becky and Tony -- awesome in their own right(s) -- for inviting me to the reading of your very own KOTH script. May there be many more!

Saturday, September 29, 2007

I lost a week to the surreal world of jury duty. Today I'm trying to reconnect with my home, work, laundry basket. The on-call system throws you way out of synch because you really can't plan for a whole week, possibly two, if you get called in on a Thursday or Friday like I did. I do want to do my civic duty, I just wish I knew which day of the week it was going to be in advance. The free MOCA admission is a nice bonus.

My vacation memories are quickly fading but before they do let me share a few of the highlights, esp. some facts about World War II that really shook me out of my ignorance of the event and made it abundantly clear why the generation we're about to lose deserves so much attention and respect.

First, 50 million deaths were attributed to WWII - 50 million! I don't remember this fact being drilled into me in history class but that is the figure on the wall at the Musee de la Paix in Caen. Some put the figure much higher, around 70 million. 25 million were military deaths, the rest civilians, with places like Poland losing something like 18% of its total population. Staggering. And this happened within the lifetime of people who still live among us, even know well.

The U.S. lost over 400,000, most of them military, which is within about 100,000 of the number lost in France. The lead-up to the war is fascinating; a visit to the Normandy coast is haunting yet somehow makes it easier to disbelieve. All the details are organized in endless tiny museums, exhibits, memorials, maps, roadsigns and cases full of artifacts along the Normandy coast, where we visited Omaha Beach, Utah Beach, Arromanches, Caen and Pointe du Hoc. We also spent some time at the American Cemetary in Colleville-sur-Mer, overlooking Omaha Beach. The entire area is surprisingly serene and appears to be exactly the same as it may have been hundreds of years ago: sparsely populated, slighly hilly, and misty green, dotted with stone farmhouses, rolls of hay, with narrow, ancient towns sprinkled here and there and more cows than people, and more American and Canadian visitors than French inhabitants. It was easy to imagine the scene. I was struck by what I now realize is a deep and complicated connection to France, and to Europe in general, and by the understanding that when the cause was clear, people banded together in incredible ways you almost hope you never see again.

We flew into Paris and took a train to Rennes, rented a car and drove to St. Malo, a beautiful, large, medieval walled city on the beach, great for families - there's an aquarium, medieval ramparts, tons of restaurants, shopping and hotels at reasonable prices. We stayed in a beach-view room at the Hotel Beaufort (fantastic), and walked along the beach into the walled city for dinner both nights. Akhil started out eating pain chocolats right there at the airport; he had a gauffre, or big, fat waffle, with Nutella, in St. Malo before dinner. That was Day 1; on Day 2 we headed straight off to Mont St. Michel along the coastal route and spent most of the morning there before lunch in nearby Pontorson. We spent the afternoon in Dinan, which is one of the few cities in northern France that was left unharmed during the war - it's a great walking town with half-timbered buildings and cobblestone streets, plus a tiny harbor where you can arrive by boat if you like from St. Malo. We took our Peugeot.

We stopped for a drink in Dinard, a posh seaside resort town across the water from St. Malo, on the way back to our hotel. I had a cider, popular in the area, which is also known for its Calvados, or apple brandy (INCREDIBLY potent -- we tried it -- that's all I can say).

Day 2's dinner was gluttonous - a three-course menu, of course, at an excellent local restaurant called Delaunay. Akhil had scallops with bacon-laden creamed potatoes and I had a fillet of tuna that had foie gras on top. I am not sure I need to be eating foie gras but I'm game. They started us off with a mussel each, served on a tiny silver spoon with a curled handle, and appetizer salads. Of course, we had wine -- and dessert. Oysters are HUGE in this area, but neither of us like them. If you do, you'll be in hog heaven.

Days 3 and 4 were reserved for war touring, from Caen to the beaches to Bayeux, where we stayed and where we also viewed the 1000-year-old Bayeux Tapestry, which tells the story of William the Conqueror's invasion of England and his taking the crown. He was born near Bayeux, in Falaise, in 1028. Our hotel, the Hotel Churchill, was steps away from the museum, and Bayeux, also untouched during WWII, was an excellent place to stay. It was also the first city to be liberated after the Allies' invasion.

Day 5 was a heavy driving day. We headed off to Vernon late morning and got there by late afternoon to visit Claude Monet's garden and home in Giverny. I'd been before, in 1994, but saw it anew this time since I now have a large garden of my own - Akhil was inspired too but we won't be building a pond with water lilies in it in our backyard anytime soon I hope. We did plant some sedum and yarrow though, as soon as we got home and will be giving our heliotrobe another shot. From there it was Paris, and since we had some rental car agency confusion we had to drive it ALL THE WAY in and park it someplace overnight near our hotel on the street. Like last time we stayed at Hotel Monge in the Latin Quarter and had giant beers at a bistro down the street. We spent our one, single, solitary day in Paris walking the bridges, the left bank, the Tuileries, and having one more overly indulgent dinner in the Latin Quarter area - we didn't even mean to, it just happened.

Flying home is the hard part. You've got one long flight followed by another one. But France doesn't disappoint. Next time we're thinking south - the Dordogne, Corsica, or the Pyrenees... my fantasy life!

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Happy New Year! As Frosty would say... I had no idea anyone was still reading this, but a reunion of sorts at none other than Heather's wedding over Labor Day Weekend inspired me to come back and put up an 'ol post. Lots of people asking, "Wherefore are your blog updates?"

My last one was in... December? Well, lots has happened, yet nothing has happened. Akhil and I have managed to:

1. Gain some control over our haphazard garden, adding lavendar, sedum, yarrow, new David Austin roses, narcissus bulbs, and a kumquat tree to the mix
2. Get to a place where 6-7 day workweeks are the norm (for him, anyway)
3. Buy a buffet, a coffee table, a new arbor and a wheelbarrow
4. Entertain the neighbors with an authentic Indian meal prepared mostly by my gracious mother-in-law (95%); only slightly by me (5%)
5. Took a class on xhtml coding, and though I got an A realized I'd *much* rather be taking a course on photography (next)
6. Slip in at least a few good vacations, at my obsessive prodding, of course
7. Went through (Akhil) a massive, competitive bread-baking phase, and learned to make baguettes, pizza, and foccacia
8. Met Floyd Landis at a book signing in Pasadena (Akhil)
9. Rediscovered jogging, biking, and the tricep machine at the gym

Besides all this, my brother Todd has up and moved to Denver, Colorado; and the army of babies continues to grow! We've got Will, born to Regina and Bill in the spring; Ethan, born to Debbie and Justin this summer; & Isabelle, born to Carolyn and Rob on Aug. 30.

Meanwhile the blogger.com interface has changed - now it's connected to my Google account and automatically saves my drafts. Awesome. Maybe I'll try and get back here more often.

Now for the fun stuff: vacation summaries. That's what I'm here for, folks.

I celebrated, reluctantly, getting another year older in San Francisco with Akhil, who took me to the Cliff House for lunch and to the Presidio and the MOMA and all around town to help keep me distracted.

In May we spent four days in Sonoma. We hadn't been to the area since our first year of courtship, in 1999. This time we stayed at the Inn at Sonoma and it was fantastic. I tried a mud bath at Calistoga, Akhil bought tomato plants in St. Helena, which they let us fly home with in a paper bag, and we managed to get as far north as Healdsburg, the new wine snob's favorite place to taste and shop. Our tomato plant experiment was incredibly successful - each of the 3 plants is now about 5 or 6 feet tall and I think I've eaten 300 tomatoes this season.

A month later, for our fourth anniversary, we spent a long weekend in Big Sur (can you tell with like Northern CA?) which truly deserves its reputation as one of the most beautiful and other-worldly places on earth. It's almost heartbreaking. We stayed in the yurts at TreeBones, which were cozy and literally on the edge of the cliffs overlooking the water. At night it was silent save the sound of the waves and the sea lions barking. Hiking at Julia Pfeiffer and then the incredible beach of the same name were pretty much all there was to do, gloriously, besides dine, indulgently, at Nepenthe and at the Ventana Inn, where Ed Norton had the table next to us at cocktail hour on the outdoor patio.

Through the summer we both worked a ton, and were good and ready for the Labor Day weekend celebration that was Heather and Jon's wedding in Providence. Following we hopped a plane to Paris and spent 6 days in Normandy, plus a little Bretagne on the side. I'll give that trip it's own post.