Art art art

This weekend was full of art. Which is always a good thing. Saturday, after a stop at the Farmer's Market for a week's worth of vegetable goodies, I headed over to the SFMOMA to meet my friend Linnea. I hadn't been back to the MOMA since I interviewed there in June and I figured I was about due for another visit. Of course Neil has been going every Thursday night for free beer for the last month, but it is not free for the likes of me. He gets free entrance for being an SFAI student, and thus free access to complimentary beer. It is actually an art exhibit that is going on right now called "The highest form of art is having a beer with your friends". The art exhibit is just the experience that people have when they come and mingle. The overall exhibit is called the art of participation and it's very interesting. And hard to describe. The museum website describes it like this: "Looking back nearly 60 years across a wide spectrum of genres and media, this exhibition examines how artists have engaged members of the public as essential collaborators in the art-making process."

So we started at the top of the museum, and looked at a whole bunch of sculpture by Martin Puryears. He works with natural materials like wood, rawhide, etc. This was one of my favorite sculptures - it is made out of such hard materials, but the resulting piece is so soft in appearance, and so full and round.

Here is a few more pieces:

Then we spent a lot of time in the "Art of Participation" exhibit. There was a whole bunch of really interesting, really weird stuff. Mostly video, because these sort of exhibits are usually something that happened one time, in the past. And so the only way to "exhibit" them is to show the videotape of what happened way back when. That's the challenging part of performance art, is how to exhibit it in a museum after it has already happened. Here are some pictures of the stuff that was on exhibit:

This last one was one of the most interesting for me. You both put on this pair of noise-canceling headphones that has a microphone attached. But when you speak into the microphone, or if the other person speaks, you don't hear what was said for like 30-40 seconds. So the information doesn't get to you right away, and you are both talking over each other at first. It's interesting to think of what life would be like if this were the way things really were. You would have to be so much more intent on what people were talking and communication would take so much more concentration. Although I guess it would just be normal if that's the way life really was...Anywhoo - it was kind of fun.

We took a coffee break in the cafe at this point to rest our eyes and minds before tackling the painting collection. The painting collection doesn't change too often, and so most of the stuff on the walls I had already seen, but it's always nice to peruse through again. I think the Portland Art Musueum has a more interesting collection than the MOMA, interestingly, but I'm sure I'm just biased cause that's what I am used to.

By the time we finished, we had spent 3 lovely hours surrounded by art and that pretty much wiped the day out for me. I was planning on going home and starting to work on my own art, but by the time I got home, there was just time for cleaning the kitchen and cooking dinner.

So I got down to business on Sunday morning instead. I finally have gathered all the stuff that I needed to start making a lamp - lamp kit, bamboo reeds, bamboo skewers and papers. Neil introduced me to the coolest paper store on earth!! It's called Flax and it has more papers in one room than I have ever seen in my whole life. Printed papers, natural papers, crinkled papers, sparkly papers. I was in paper heaven.



So, with all my materials at the ready, and a design in my mind, I got to work. It felt so fantastic to be working with my hands again. I love to build and to feel the materials and watch things come together. Working with little wires, and super glue and tweezers and pliers and my drills - these are all things that I love to. I lost myself in the project for 3 hours or so, and finished the base of the lamp completely. I haven't found time to get back to it yet this week, but I can't wait! So far, it appears to be going well and the base seems to be a lot stronger than last time I built a lamp with hot glue only.

I am proud to say that I've been doing pretty well with the running, too. I miss a day every now and then (usually on weekends), but overall I've managed to keep up with the schedule. My longest run now has been 4 miles and I didn't die. Although I came close. Yesterday I got to do a "tempo" run, which means that I actually get to pick up the pace for a little while during the run. The distance is a lot shorter, which means I can run faster. That felt nice. It gets a little old to just be plugging away for mile after mile...

One other item of note: I saw the strangest thing yesterday while riding the bus to my doctor's appointment. I glanced out the window and had to do a double-take: there was a cat riding along on the back of a dog's back. The dog was just trotting along and the cat was just along for the ride on his back. The strangest thing. Smart cat.

Wine-tasting on MLKJr. Day

We went wine-tasting in Sonoma county on Monday and I have been a little slow to post about this wonderful trip because I have been sucked into the black hole of time that is Facebook. Since I started actually using it at the beginning of January, I have been re-connected with friends from all time periods of my life - high school, my trip to Israel, college, track, volleyball, work - people have just been popping out of the woodwork! And it is so fabulous to be in touch with people again and find out what is going on in their lives, but it is also starting to take a lot of time to keep up with everyone.

The most surprising and really special people that I have been in touch with this last week is my mission team members from when I went to Israel in 1995. That summer was so intense and made a huge impact on my life and the people that I went with became almost like family. But when we got back to the U.S., we all scattered back to our homes and I lost touch with everyone except my best friend, Krista. I often thought about these people, because when you are in the conditions that we were in together, you form special bonds and you remember them, even if you don't know where they all are. I never thought I would get a chance to communicate with most of them ever again. Then last week, I received an invitation to join a group from my friend Jimmy, who also went on the mission. When I checked it out, I found 5 other members of the team also in the group. I was ECSTATIC!! So I've spent all week catching up and watching as we try to hunt down other members of our team. It's been like a little mini-family reunion and all the wonderful (and not so wonderful) memories have been flooding back, as we all reminisce about that summer. I never thought that Facebook was much - but I didn't know it's possibilities. This has been an amazing treat and just a wonderful week getting back in touch with people I thought I would never hear from again. So, this is why I have been remiss in getting the posts up - more important things at the moment...

So, without further ado, pictures and story from our wine-tasting adventure on Monday:

We set out Monday morning with our friends Rochelle and Lindsay. Rochelle has a car and very very graciously agreed to be our chauffer for the day (and our designated driver, although we really didn't end up needing one).

It just feels so good to get out of the city every now and then. And the day was beautiful - blue sky as far as the eye could see. A perfect day for wine country...

We didn't really have much of a plan - we had a map of all the Sonoma county wineries and a listing of all the places that offered complimentary wine tastings. You see, most of the wineries in Napa and Sonoma actually charge hefty tasting fees. Most of the wineries in Napa are like $40 a pop. That's almost four times as much as I usually pay for a single bottle of wine. So, we were focused on free tastings, and that led us mostly outside of Sonoma and up north to Healdsburg and the Russian River Valley area. The surprising thing is that there is way more wineries up in this area anyways - just not as well-known.

We turned off on highway 121 to Sonoma and immediately started to seeing the fields of vines.

Our first stop was just outside of Sonoma - the Jacuzzi Family Wineries. Because it was free. And basically the only winery in Sonoma that is. We found out when we got inside that this is because it just opened in 2007. They are still trying to attract people.

It's always a little nerve-wracking for me walking in to do wine-tasting, because I don't know the first about wine. Except that I like it. I pick a wine because it's cheap and it has a pretty label - which I'm sure would be extremely frowned upon by people in the know...I always feel like the pouring people are just going to ask me to please let myself out. But we had a very nice lady who poured our wine for us and we got to try 5 wines - 2 whites and 3 reds. The pinot noir was terrible but the rest of them were pretty good.

So, after surviving our first winery, we set out on the road again. By this time, it was about noon and we were getting hungry, so we hit Whole Foods to put together an awesome picnic. Lindsay and I did some cheese-tasting to complement our wine-tasting and picked a delicious cheese, if I do say so myself. Can't remember the name of it, though. Darn. Then we got baguettes, grapes, salami, tapenade, and some mixed olives. Rochelle had brought some gruyere, crackers and sausage, so all in all, we had quite a feast. We pulled over at a winery that had a picnic area and bought a bottle of Pinot Grigio. The winery lent us glasses since we were eating on the premises and we sat down to one of the best lunches I have ever had.

With the warm sunshine, the setting, and the good conversation - it was perfect!! I think we all ate a little too much, and had to roll ourselves to the car to continue our wine-tour. We headed north towards Healdsburg and the free wine-tastings...There are vineyards as far as the eye can see - every available space is planted...

After passing Santa Rosa, we got off highway 101 and hit our second winery of the day: Martinelli Winery - no relation to the apple-cider folks...we think. We got to try 5 wines at this winery, as well, and I thought they were all fantastic!! In fact, as wine goes, I think this was my favorite winery of the day. Unfortunately, their cheapest bottle was $30 and it only went up from there, topping out at $70 for a bottle of some red wine. Yikes. A little above my price threshold.

The next winery was a little ways away, and we wound through more vineyards and crossed a pretty little creek. The sun was starting to get lower in the sky at this point, and the light was beautiful. A lot of the vineyards had stuff planted between their vines, and one field was all blooming with little yellow flowers. In the sunlight, it looked so cheerful and summery.

Our next winery was one of the smallest in the county - Porter Creek Vineyards. A very interesting Scotsman poured our tastes of about 7 or 8 wines, and "tasted" with us the whole time. He was quite entertaining and really took a fancy to Rochelle. He gave us the most in-depth information about the wine that we were tasting out of all the wineries, and we spent the most time at this one. I made my first wine purchase here - a bottle of a red wine that I can't remember the name of. It was a fairly obscure grape, though - not one I've ever seen before. But it was yummy. In a store, I never would have paid this much for a bottle of wine, but in the tasting room, among the vineyards, with all the first-hand information about how the wine was made, it seemed like a much better deal.

It was 4:30 at this point, and our wine-tasting day was almost over. We hurried through two more wineries - Arista and Armida (where there was a fantastic red wine) - and I purchased one more bottle of wine, and tied a record for most bottles of wine ever purchased in a day. The sun was really getting low at this point, so we stopped for a moment and enjoyed the beautiful views:

All the wineries were closed now, so we called it a day and headed back into the city. All in all, I thought it was a wonderful, successful day. We tasted a lot of wine, had a great lunch, saw some beautiful scenery, and enjoyed each other's company. Couldn't ask for much more!!

Nothing special

Some general musings:

1. Yesterday morning, on the way into work, I accidentally, without noticing, pushed a button on my I-pod that set it to repeat whatever song was playing, indefinitely. I didn't realize this until I was walking home from the bus stop last night and wondered why I was still listening to the same song as when I walked out the door this morning. Average morning commute + average evening commute = 40 minutes. Of the same song. Before I realized something was off. I've never claimed to be the sharpest tack in the box, but...

2. I ate half a bag of macadamia nuts last night without suffering any negative consequences. I was told in my youth that macadamia nuts, when eaten in excess, can give you (ahem) the runs. Now I believe this to be an elaborate scheme to keep me from eating all of the macadamia nuts by myself. Because they are tasty, my friends...

3. Sloth begats...more sloth. All week long, when I come home from my run, I have been telling myself that I will sit on the couch for only a half hour and watch one episode of Friends. I then proceed to spend all night on the couch, rising only to hunt for the remote control...Nothing is getting done. I have now realized that the key to solving this problem - no sitting down. Period. So I will test this theory tonight. I will wash dishes and start bread before the run, then proceed directly to the kitchen upon returning from the run...

Hope everyone had a fantastic week! The weekend is here YAY!

Big Sur is beautiful - especially when it's 84 degrees out

What a wonderful weekend!! With beautiful, sunny skies and temperatures in the 70's-80's, there was much outdoor enjoyment to be had.

Saturday I got started on the garden. Barely. My plot was all full of weeds, and hadn't been touched in months, so I spent my time just digging the weeds into the dirt, and loosening up the soil. It was fabulous to be outdoors on such a beautiful day, with the smell of the earth and the trees...The garden itself is very nice and peaceful and well cared for. I took some before and after pictures of my plot and it looks much better now. This Saturday I will buy some compost, lay down some newspaper to smother the weeds and then cover it with the compost to promote decomposition and add some organic matter to the soil. It looks like really really nice dirt, though - fluffy and more sandy than clay. In Portland, we had pure clay and in some places, hard pan, which is just a fancy way of saying that the dirt has gotten so compacted and hardened that it is like concrete. Not easy to plant in. So this SF dirt should be delightful. Also, I checked out a book on gardening in the Bay Area, and it turns out that here you can basically grow things year round, because we don't have frosts. So I can start planting in February! Cool. The only downside to our climate here is that it doesn't get warm enough, long enough, for crops like tomatoes and peppers. Boo. Oh well, I guess we'll be eating fresh lettuce and broccoli, instead of corn and melons. Assuming, of course, that anything grows at all - I'm not known for my green thumb, or my attention span...

Sunday was the best day. I got a discount on a car rental from Enterprise so Neil and I headed down South to Big Sur for the day. What a perfect way to spend a day! We saw beautiful vistas, bountiful wildlife and 84 degrees!

We took Hwy 101 South to Salinas to bypass Hwy1, which we already saw on our last day trip, and joined Hwy 1 at Monterey/Carmel. (where we ended our last trip). We stopped at the first turnout - not realizing that there are turnouts every 10 feet along this strip of the highway.

Another couple also at the turnout pointed out a Sea otter down in a big bed of kelp. He was just floating on his back, taking a nap I think, with his little paws folded nicely on his belly. I took a picture of him, but then it was so far away, I accidentally erased it later cause I couldn't figure out why I would take a picture of a bed of kelp...

When we got back into the car, we noticed the temperature gauge said 80 degrees. We're from Oregon, and it is NEVER 80 degrees on January 11th, so we took a picture to commemorate the moment:


We continued our drive, stopping at almost every turnout for pictures. It was just so beautiful!!

Because we had driven so far (about 2 miles) along the coast, we decided it was time for a break, and stopped to walk down on a great beach that we spotted...The waves were large and an amazing shade of blue/green and it was warm enough to take off socks and shoes and wade in the water. It wasn't really cold.

So now we have two beaches to return to. We probably could have spent all day here, but there were grey whales to see, so we headed onwards. This is the migratory period for the grey whales heading south to Mexico and Neil was super-excited to see a whale. In February, they head back north with their babies, so they're closer to shore then, but we had high hopes of spotting one or two. At our next turnout, we saw our first spout of the day. It was so much fun! Then we started seeing spouts EVERYWHERE! There were so many whales out - I don't know if we just hit a good day, or what, but if you just stared blankly out at the ocean, you would spot one after another, after another. Neil had wisely thought to bring our binoculars with us, and if happened to be looking at the place where there was a spout, you could also see the whales backs and tails. So cool... At the first turnout we stopped at, the water was very choppy, so I didn't get a good chance to take any pictures...

We drove on a little further, and Neil pointed out some birds that were circling up ahead. I thought they were just hawks at first, but as we got closer, they kept getting bigger and bigger and then we noticed the crowd of people who had pulled over to look at them, and realized that they were condors. And so, of course, we had to pull over and get a better view. Which was simple, because they were flying right overhead. And not just one time, but over and over again. And not just one of them, but 11-12 of them. It's almost like they were posing for the pictures. They were SO big and so cool. Neil later said he could have stood there and watched them all day.

One landed on a rock below us, and up close, they are not very attractive birds. They look a little bit like vultures. Close up picture from the internet:


They are much prettier when they are flying around...

I finally tore Neil away from the birds and we headed out again, only to run into another bird: a pelican sleeping on the side of the road. Of course we had to get out and walk up to the pelican to snap a picture. I thought he would get scared and fly away, but he was totally blase. Didn't bat an eye, even when the flash went off:

Again, almost like he was posing for us. Did the wildlife know we were coming?

Some more beautiful scenery:

Then we hit the whale jackpot. We came to a turnout and immediately started seeing multiple spouts together, in numerous places. There must have been a whole pod traveling together. I think I once saw 6-7 or seven spouts at the same time. And backs and tails - the whole works. Neil and I sat there sharing the binoculars for a long time.

And the ocean had calmed, so I got some pictures of the spouts as well.






So, that was about the end of the wildlife spotting, and we just continued our lovely drive with the windows down and the breeze in our hair, and pulled off to one last turnout to enjoy the sunset...

The sun set, and we headed back to Hwy 101, and the trek back to San Francisco. We realized that we had come much farther than we thought when we saw the sign saying 170 miles to San Francisco. The return trip was long, dark and boring - but worth it for the day that we had.

Back in San Francisco, we headed to Neil's friend Cathy's house for "family dinner". She and her roomates prepare a home-cooked theme meal for anyone who wants to come every Sunday. This weeks theme was Korean. Unfortunately, we missed the dinner. But we arrived in time for cake! And some nice time with friends to cap off a wonderful day!

I get Martin Luther King Jr. day off as a holiday (I love my employer) and so we might be planning a trip to Napa/Sonoma. Can't wait!!