Space CowGirl

A visit to the Monterey Aquarium

2009-11-15T16:05:00.000-08:00

For some reason, I couldn't get the movie to publish with audio (I had selected pieces of Jupiter to go along with it), but I think it's still fun. One of my first published flip videos! (And I think the first one I've ever uploaded to YouTube!)

When life hands you tomatoes...

2009-09-08T20:14:00.000-07:00

...make sauce!

We returned from a week in Hawaii to find our new countertops installed and a bunch of ripe vegetables! Here's what we picked:

I sauteed a yellow onion and two cloves of garlic with three bell peppers I had also picked from the garden. I then added the peeled and seeded tomatoes and simmered the sauce for about two hours. I also threw in some fresh-from-the-garden eggplants and basil.

And voila:

It was delicious!

A trip to Monterey

2009-08-16T11:03:00.000-07:00

We recently renewed our membership at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and went to visit the new seahorse exhibit there. My favorites were the leafy sea dragons (below). Most of my photos did not come out very well, but I took a video with my Flip cam that I'm still working on editing. Anyone have ideas for good underwater-themed music?

After viewing all of our favorite animals inside, we wandered out to the deck to see what we could see in the Monterey Bay. Right under us, we saw two sea otters frolicking in the surf! I think we saw a mother and baby otter, since the mother kept diving down and bringing back crabs. She then ate most of the crab and the baby came over to finish it off. We were close enough to see the crabs as well as hear their shells crunching as the otters ate them!

From August 2009

Kindergarten

2009-08-27T09:52:00.001-07:00

It seems like all of my friends' kids are starting kindergarten this week. Hooray for the beginning of their academic careers!

The families we know have completely different parenting philosophies. Some are very structured and have academic conversations whenever possible (around the dinner table, in the car, while camping). Some focus more on emotional and social intelligence; we discovered recently that the kindergartener in this family (who is almost six) doesn't know all of his letters by sight. In fact, we are pretty sure he doesn't know the ABC song. He has been in half-day preschool for two years! I'm sure he will blossom when he gets to school, however. (And if not, hopefully we can help him and be his "academic buddies". Every chance we get, we ask natural questions about letters and numbers; for example, "How many bugs are there in this page of the book we're reading?" "What letters do you see on that sign?" "What letters do you think are in the word bug?")

A preschool teacher told me recently that there are many right ways to parent. As we are starting to think about our own parenting philosophy, I find comfort in the notion that it's ok to have different styles from the parents next door. Or down the street. Or in our game-playing group.

The other night, a few days before one of our friends started his school career, his younger sister suggested that we "play school." We each put backpacks on and marched around. Then we decided what grade we'd be in. The kindergartener announced he would be in second grade, I suggested I could be in first grade, and the younger sister said that she wanted to be in "half grade." (She then decided she wanted to be in first grade with me since my "class" was going on a field trip to the zoo that day.) The rest of the school day play consisted of wandering around and scribbling in notebooks (not unlike my own academic career, I suppose)!

One last school story. When I was teaching sixth grade, my co-teacher told all of the parents at back to school night, "I promise not to believe everything your kids tell me about what goes on at home if you promise not to believe everything your kids tell you about what goes on in the classroom." I always found this a little strange since I had not had experience with children not being entirely truthful. Now, however, I think I understand. The evening after our friend's first day in kindergarten, I asked him if his teacher had read him a story. He nodded. "What was it about?" "Oh, it was about Batman. Batman flew around and got this guy and fought that guy and..." [at this point, I tuned out of his story and had to try to suppress a giggle]. When he finished telling me about the story, I said, "Wow, your teacher really told you a story about Batman?" He nodded. I promise not to believe everything I hear about kindergarten!

Eggplants and tomatoes!

2009-08-16T11:07:00.000-07:00

Our garden is doing pretty well this summer. We're now consistently getting tomatoes, some cucumbers, eggplants, and string beans. The tomato plants don't look especially bushy, however, and many have many brown leaves and stems. I'm not sure how much longer they'll produce tomatoes.

We've discovered that our favorite varieties this summer are

Fox cherry
Black cherry
Big rainbow
Aunt Ruby's green (thanks, Teresa!)
Purple cherokee
Brandywine from Croatia
Jersey devil

Where the cats sleep...

2009-07-11T10:41:00.000-07:00

Macgonagall prefers sleeping with the carrots...

...when he's not in his basket!

And Montana just prefers the sun.

One Day's Harvest

2009-07-11T09:57:00.000-07:00

Our fruits and vegetables are just starting to produce! We've also picked a handful of purple peppers and one peach. Eggplants are coming soon (and we'll be able to make ratatouille)!

Pasta making!

2009-06-16T20:50:00.000-07:00

We had never tried to make pasta before, and it seemed like a fun adventure. For my thirtieth birthday last week, we attempted butternut squash ravioli! We loved the filling (butternut squash and pecans) but decided that the whole effort to make the giant ravioli probably wasn't worth the three hours it took.

They didn't look pretty, but they tasted amazing!

After the ravioli, we made fettuchini with the leftover dough. It was a lot easier since there were fewer steps (we didn't need to lay out the sheets of pasta, fill them, pile another sheet on top, seal them, and cut them).

We put the fettuchini noodles on our clothes drying rack to harden.

We ate them a few days later. Yum! We also made spinach fettuchini the following week, which was extra tasty. I think I win this month's domestic goddess competition!

Congratulations, Shannon!

2009-06-16T20:39:00.001-07:00

Shannon graduated with her MFT from Santa Clara University last weekend. Hooray!

Artichokes, sunny cat, and view from a kayak

2009-05-24T17:06:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy spring around here! Between running 4 mile and 5-k races, working like crazy, and visiting old friends, I've managed to find a few minutes to snap some shots of my amazing artichokes!

We've picked over thirty different artichokes (most of them small), and they've all been quite tasty!

This is Montana's favorite postition lately. She loves to sit in the sun upside-down!

We had a great day kayaking in Elkhorn Slough today, even though it was overcast and chilly. Here's the view from my kayak:

Ticketmaster is an inefficient monopoly!

2009-05-21T18:19:00.001-07:00

I have been trying to buy tickets to see Wicked in San Francisco for the last couple of weeks. I have tried to use their website many times, and I always get to the page where it says, "Select these seats," with the specific dates, rows, and times shown. I select the seats I want, and without fail, I get an error that those seats are not available for purchase. Even though it said on the previous page that those three sets of seats were being held for me for two minutes and thirty seconds with a countdown clock.

So I finally called them to see if I could have any better luck on the phone. As it turns out, despite a very helpful (and, I believe, competent to the best of the system's ability) representative, it took fifty-six minutes to buy the tickets. Nearly an hour! Inexcusable.

Here was my request:

"I would like to buy two tickets to see Wicked on a Saturday matinee in July or August. I want good seats. I am willing to pay $XY per ticket." (I already knew how much the good seats cost, since I had spent so much time trying to buy the tickets on their website.)

"Which date do you prefer?" she asked.

"I don't care--whichever Saturday in July or August has the best seats."

"Ok, please hold." Ten minutes later, as I started to wonder if my phone was still working, she came back on the line. "Thanks for holding. I have just gotten through July, and I'm starting on August now. Just wanted you to know that I hadn't forgotten about you. It will be a few more minutes."

Fifteen minutes elapse.

"Ok, I found seats in row L on Aug X or July Z (not a Saturday) for the price you mentioned." (proudly)

"Great! Are they in the middle orchestra or side orchestra?"

"I'm not sure, let me check."

Five minutes pass.

"They are in the side orchestra."

"Oh, I really wanted to be in the middle orchestra section. Which date has the best seats in the middle orchestra section?"

"Please hold. It will be just a moment. Actually, it will take more than a few moments. I have to search each date individually and go into the page as if I'm going to buy tickets for that day."

Twenty minutes later:

"Here are your options: row V on this date or row Y on that date."

"Row V sounds great, thanks!"

"Do you want to buy these tickets?"

"YES!"

I cannot believe that such a simple request took so long to fulfill. I can't believe that this request is so different from what most people would ask for. It seems that their database was not designed with the user in mind. If I could purchase Wicked tickets any other reasonable way, I would!

I can't travel without clean underwear in my carry-on

2009-05-15T11:40:00.001-07:00

Here are four things I can't leave home without.

clean underwear in my carry-on
My luggage never gets lost. Even on complicated multi-national trips. Last year, however, when I traveled to Australia on a business trip, somehow my luggage did not arrive for four days. Each day, the airline promised me it would arrive the next day. When it didn't, I had to run out and buy a new outfit (or borrow one from a colleague). Lesson learned: pack underwear!

herbal tea
I can't leave home without my herbal tea. Great for soothing upset stomaches and homesickness, chamomile tea is always with me. (I also learned recently that if you order tea in many countries, it will automatically be black tea. To order herbal, you must order an "infusion.")

hot water bottle
A hot water bottle again helps soothe my stomach. And since I use one at home every night, having it when I'm away from home helps my get to sleep. A bonus is that it can double as a teddy-bear!

water heater
Two items above require a water heating device. Many hotels have coffee pots, which will work in a pinch. For making a single serving of tea, however, I have an electric device that plugs into the wall and has a metal coil that sits in the tea cup. It heats the water to boiling in moments! (I've heard this is not a new invention, that it has been around for a while, but it is new to me!)

Cool Trend: Real Frozen Yogurt

2009-05-15T11:19:00.001-07:00

I am trying out using Plinky, which provides provocative question prompts to make blog posts more interesting and exciting! This is in response to, "What's the best place to get dessert?"

Everyone loves frozen yogurt these days. The new trendy frozen yogurt takes real yogurt and freezes it (shocking concept, I know)! Fraiche has the best, in my opinion. It's not particularly sweet (no sugar added, just milk and yogurt cultures) but you can add fresh fruit to make it extra tasty.

Letting go of the inner "shoulds"

2009-05-12T12:27:00.001-07:00

I have been trying very hard lately to be less stressed. I've survived the layoffs at work, which has been a stressor for the last few months. I've heard word of several instructional design positions that are out there anyway, so it seems that there are options out there. We even talked about, if worst came to worst, selling our house and buying a farmhouse in Vermont (where we could raise sheep and babies and be legally married and frolic in the wildflower-covered mountains).

Two more things I'm doing now to reduce the daily stress:

Implementing David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology to manage and keep track of tasks on the horizon
Releasing the "shoulds" from my inner voice. These include

I should practice guitar between guitar classes each week
I should plant cucumbers and popcorn in the garden ASAP
I should set up the drip irrigation system in the garden to reduce water usage
I should pull out all the bamboo and replace the fence so we can plant blueberries and lemon trees
I should feel bad about not having an upcoming run or triathlon to train for
I should pick an upcoming run or triathlon to train for

I'm already starting to feel a lot less stressed. I also just booked a trip to go visit family on the east coast so we can celebrate three upcoming milestone birthdays, which I think has helped, too!

A trip to the snow

2009-03-29T16:04:00.000-07:00

Shannon and I took a lovely weekend trip to the Sierras to enjoy one of the last snowy weekends of the year. We cross-country skied, snow-shoed, and made snow angels (of course)! It was pretty warm during the days (in the 50s) and chilly at night, which gave us icy snow in the morning and slushy snow in the afternoons. It was perfect for our activities!

March in the garden!

2009-03-29T15:43:00.000-07:00

We've been eating lots of lettuce lately!

I planted peas earlier this year, but I still think I planted them too late. Still, their little tendrils are clinging to the trellis!

I think I figured out why the carrots weren't growing all that well--I had them growing too close together. Apparently, they need to have at least 2" between them. I've started to thin them out, and they actually have grown as big as regular carrots (and they taste great, too).

A pre-strawberry flower!

Accumulating baby gear

2009-03-22T10:38:00.001-07:00

Yesterday morning, at the end of our bike and run brick, my running buddies and I were strategizing about upcoming runs and events. I'm still planning to complete a triathlon this summer, although I have not signed up for one yet! We talked about a half marathon in the fall, and it dawned on me that there's a good chance I could be pregnant by then.

Oddly enough, we've started to accumulate baby gear. And we are at least a year away from having a baby, not to mention the fact that we won't be able to use colored wooden fraction blocks or a baby jogging stroller for a while after the baby is born! When we see an amazing deal, however, we cannot ignore it. Some teachers where Shan works gave away "outdated" classroom manipulatives, so she brought them home. We were in REI picking up the stroller that her soccer team had purchased for a teammate, when one of her buddies in the action sports department told her about a jogging stroller they had just unearthed. It was apparently last year's model and retailed originally for $350. It was on sale for $35. Thirty-five dollars?!? How could we not take advantage of such an amazing deal? We chuckled as we wheeled two fancy strollers out of the store (and stopped on the way out for some Samoas; I think it's awesome that the Girl Scouts were camped outside of REI).

I've heard that in tough economic times, the rich tend to get richer. Major items (and even minor ones, I suppose) are deeply discounted. If you can afford to buy them, you can get great deals. Buying these things before we need them seems to be the key to finding amazing savings!

Overwhelmed by grocery choices!

2009-03-14T11:42:00.001-07:00

Usually, Shannon does the grocery shopping. I have a rule that we only go grocery shopping once a week, so each weekend, we dutifully sit down to plan out our week's menu together. We check ingredients and fill out our homemade laminated Trader Joe's list with a dry-erase marker. (It's even organized by aisle!)

Last week, Shannon couldn't hit the grocery store before I needed to get ingredients for baking four dozen cupcakes, so I went instead. I could not believe how many choices there were! Eggs: organic vs. natural vs. regular. In each of those categories, free range vs. cage free vs. cooped up in tiny pens. Brown vs. white. Large vs. extra large vs. jumbo. How many permutations is that?

Let's look at yogurt:

non-fat, low-fat, or regular full fat?
organic or regular?
plain or vanilla or flavored?
French village or Greek style or European style or regular?
quarts or single-serving?

I bravely waded through all of the choices, trying to remember exactly what the previous carton looked like. When I got home:

Shan: "Oh, that's a new kind of yogurt!"

Me: "What?"

Shan: "It says it's European style, not regular style."

Me: "But it's non-fat, organic, plain, quart-sized..."

Shan: "Yes, and European style, not regular style. It's ok, honey, I'm sure it will still taste great. It's like an adventure!"

I think I'll leave the grocery shopping to Shannon from now on!

At the San Diego zoo...

2009-02-25T20:03:00.000-08:00

Shannon and the giraffes

From February 2009

We wanted to sleep all day, too

From February 2009

Have you ever seen a polar bear eating carrots? We hadn't!

From February 2009

She had a clever way of propping up the carrot between her gigantic paw and a rock!

From February 2009

Cats being cute

2009-02-25T19:59:00.000-08:00

Montana sits in the laundry basket

From February 2009

Montana and MacGonagall cuddle with their favorite polar bear

From February 2009

Montana wants to come with us to San Diego!

From February 2009

Carrots & a lovely hike

2009-01-19T20:54:00.000-08:00

We finally harvested some lovely carrots from the garden! They were quite small (see pencil for size, below), but extremely tasty raw & in the split pea soup we made. It only took six months for these carrots to grow!

To celebrate Shannon's father's 71st birthday, we took him hiking at Rancho Canada del Oro. The weather was gorgeous, and the trail was perfect. Most of the trail was on a ridge filled with blue oaks and wonderful views.

2008 Garden Reflections

2009-01-05T19:54:00.000-08:00

This past year, Shannon and I put a lot of effort into digging out and creating our first vegetable garden. When we moved in to our house, the north side was one big, solid, hard-packed dirt lot. We hired some strong men to roto-till the dirt, which was a great move. The previous owners had apparently parked all kinds of heavy tractors and other trucks on the dirt, so it was pretty solidly packed!

Raised beds

We constructed four raised beds, each one 4'x8'. We used fairly cheap pieces of round redwood logs for the borders of the raised beds. We stacked two pieces of the round redwood logs (about 4" in diameter) to make the beds 8" tall. This was a nice height. We lined the logs with tar paper to prevent them from getting too wet, which I think in retrospect was unnecessary. We then dug out the dirt and mixed in fresh compost from Lyngso. I'm not convinced about the quality of the original dirt or the compost (more about that later), but we spent many hours mixing the two together (a process made easier by the Mantis tiller my dad gave us). This year, we'll be able to amend the soil with our own organic compost we've been harvesting, along with fresh worm castings we've been cultivating throughout the year.

Around each bed, we shoveled pea gravel (also from Lyngso), which I love. It prevents the whole side yard from being muddy in the rainy months. You can even walk on the gravel in bare feet.

I've seen some friends' gardens who didn't put in raised beds, and their garden had a nice wild feel to it. Ours looks nice and orderly, however, and I appreciate that aesthetic. I suppose they are not strictly necessary, however. Having the gravel paths between the beds enabled us to reach all of the plants easily (I probably wouldn't make the beds wider than about 4').

The vegetables

We planted lettuces, tomatoes, herbs (lavendar, rosemary, sage, parsely, cilantro, basil, mint), strawberries, eggplant, bell peppers, edamame, peas, pumpkins, cucumbers, beets, and zucchini. We planted most of the veggies starting in March, when many of them could have been planted a lot earlier. Some of the tomatoes did really well (especially Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, Brandywine heirlooms, Paul Robsons, and red current cherries). We've also had good luck with lettuces year-round (just picked a nice lettuce dinner tonight, in fact). We've eaten quite a few tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, and herbs from the garden as well. Other plants did well enough, like the eggplant (only I realized too late that I planted some strange green variety--no wonder they weren't turning purple!) and the pumpkin, which at least gave us one pumpkin just in time for Halloween. We had trouble with most of the other vegetables:

Carrots: after 6 months in the ground, only grew to be 1/2 cm in diameter
Beets: also seem to have stunted root growth
Zucchini & pumpkin: powdery leaf mildew
Edamame: produced very little
Artichoke: picked the fruit too late
Chard: need a lot of plants to be able to harvest much
Broccoli: very slow to grow florets

Most of these problems were no doubt due to our inexperience! I'm looking forward to trying many of them again this year. I will be armed with much more knowledge about what to plant when. I also am doing some research about companion planting and soil amendments.

I'll probably plant fewer than 10 tomato plants this year! We didn't do any canning, but we did make tomato soup and several batches of sauce that we froze.

We have a whole bed dedicated to herbs--I think that will change this year, too. I'll probably just plant the herbs in between the main vegetables. A little bit of sage goes a long way (I've got plenty of dried sage for my favorite butternut squash ravioli & sage butter sauce).

Having a garden was a lot of fun this year, and I look forward to future garden adventures this year!

December gardening

2008-12-29T17:04:00.000-08:00

Although most plants in our garden have slowed down or died out for the winter, several plants are going strong. First, our two artichokes!

I think the cosmos are confused about what season it is. The few days of really warm weather must have convinced them to bloom.

Winter hiking in San Jose

2008-12-29T17:00:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I went hiking in the hills west of San Jose. It was a balmy 60 degrees!

I had never seen manzanita blossoms before, only the little red "apples" that they become. Their perfect teardrop shape struck me as beautiful.

An Exercise in Flexibility

2008-12-28T10:02:00.000-08:00

I am not the most flexible person in the world; I am a planner. When I travel, I like to have an itinerary, know where I'm staying each night, and an idea of what activities I'll be doing. This enables me to pack and mentally prepare appropriately.

My recent trip gave me good practice in spontaneity and flexibility. Shan and I were supposed to leave on Friday evening. Around 11am on Friday, Shan started to feel yucky. This soon turned into a full-blown stomach flu. Thirty minutes before departing for the airport, we decided to research alternative options and considered cancelling the trip altogether. Luckily, I was able to work some magic with United to cancel the first half of her reservation (not something that you can usually do) and buy her a new one-way ticket for a steal.

I thus departed for NYC without Shannon. Upon arrival, I stood waiting at the baggage claim as the whole plane's luggage spun on the conveyor belt. With a sinking feeling, I watched the belt come to a stop. My suitcase was nowhere in sight. At least I had come prepared with warm clothes and essentials in my carry-on (I learned that lesson the hard way last year, when my suitcase was lost in Australia for four days).

Heading into Manhattan, where I had planned a full day mostly around Shannon's interests, I recalculated the time, weather, and desire to do each activity. I spent a lovely day with New Yorker, eating vegan asparagus soup, taking a tour of the New York Public Library (128 miles of books! organized by size! 7 floors of underground stacks! pneumatic tubes!), and playing Scrabble. We'll visit the penguins at the zoo another day.

My next interrupted plan involved picking up a rental car and driving to Vermont. Mother Nature had other plans, however. Forecasters predicted that eighteen inches of snow would fall on Vermont that day. After a gut-wrenching, agonizing decision (I wouldn't get to see my cousins, aunt, uncle, and a dear childhood friend), I stayed in Connecticut with my grandparents a few extra days. This did give me the opportunity to relax, hear plenty of Christmas carols, walk in the woods with my grandfather, and solve a giant crossword puzzle with my grandmother.

The week away picked up shortly, and I enjoyed a lovely Christmas with my family. Highlights: playing many new games (Primordial Soup! Ingenious! Dungeon Twister!), stockings filled with goodies, and presents wrapped in reused paper.