aqua fortis

Showing posts with label Modesto Madness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Modesto Madness. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

In the News

A couple we vaguely know--friends of Rob's sister and her husband--were recently featured in the Home section of the Chron. The article's mostly about their home decor, but my favorite part was this:

The couple is house-hunting, hoping for more space and a garden. Not to mention, Wong Jackson said, her condo neighbors tend to be students who "all still think I'm going to Cal as an undergrad and ask me what my major is!" Clearly, it's time to move on.

I have to say...I've owned a house with a garden for the past six years and people still frequently ask me if I'm a student. Heh. Anyway, the article reminded me that we will never be featured anywhere for our home decor because we still haven't put any pictures on the walls. I am not kidding. It's a long, stupid story. If you know us well enough, you'll know that Rob has a weird thing about putting too much visual clutter in the environment.

The other problem is, evidently anything we hang on the walls in here requires drywall anchors, and I'm waiting on Rob to show me how to attach the drywall anchors so that I can put stuff up. Theoretically, I'd also like his input on where to hang stuff, but it's been six years and there are very few non-utilitarian items on the walls: 1) a sushi clock we bought in Japan; 2) a love spoon we bought in Wales; 3) a bulletin board in my office (which is partially utilitarian as it is). But I do wish I could at least put up my signed Edward Gorey lithograph, and maybe a few of the framed etchings from Rob's late grandmother's antique store.

Rob was mentioned (albeit obliquely and namelessly) in the local rag in an article about a building fiasco at the college where he works. Evidently, however, he's been relegated to the role of disgruntled employee by Mr. Anonymous Concerned Taxpayer With No Actual Knowledge of College Politics.

By the way, in this opinion piece, where it says "Some students and faculty wanted to preserve the quad at MJC, so President Richard Rose and a college committee chose a location just north of the Art Building," for "some students and faculty" read "One stubborn administrator with zero concern for the health, safety, noise, or other hazards created by slapping up a building right next to Art." For "We believe the student services center needs to go on the main campus, the one that people think of first when they think of MJC," read "We evidently are not concerned enough about the tax dollars we've already spent on the huge, empty, waiting-to-be-built-upon open spaces still available on the newer West Campus."

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Valley Life

Saturday, I decided to take a drive out to a local farm and apiary I'd heard about, Beekman and Beekman, in order to buy some honey wine for Mother's Day gifts. I found out about it rather fortuitously, by editing an article about their upcoming Lavender Days Festival for the local tourism newsletter.

The honey gift shop and tasting room ended up being farther away than I thought. On MapQuest it looked like it was fairly close to our friend Brian's house, which is a ranchette in the area (and home of the annual Pig Roast). However, it turned out to be a few miles further out into the country. I got to drive out past the town of Ceres, through orchards, past a brand-new allegedly "green" and energy-efficient housing development, past nut processing plants, past the La Favorita radio station office, to the charming farmhouse where the honey wine gift shop was.

The lady inside invited me to taste four types of honey: sage, alfalfa, orange blossom, and buckwheat. The buckwheat honey was the most intensely flavorful. I kind of thought they should use those teeny ice cream sampling spoons for the honey tasting, but they only offered toothpicks for dipping. I personally could have used a teaspoon, but that's just me...

Then the lady carded me for the three bottles of honey wine I bought. I showed her my ID and she exclaimed in surprise at how much older I was than I looked. "So you're what," she said, "about 40?" Evidently 2008 - 1977 is not 31, as I'd previously thought. I gently corrected her.

I decided to try a different route back home, thinking the honey place might be closer to the freeway, possibly a slightly faster journey than country roads, even though I can jam at about 55 or 60 out there (and will get tailgated if I don't). I take a little scenic orchard drive for a few miles, relying on my sense of direction to locate the freeway. I take the exit that leads me through Ceres again on the way home--our house isn't that close to the freeway, so you can take any one of 3 exits and be roughly equidistant.

I passed the Modesto airport on the way back to my house (featuring a handful of flights per day to LAX and SFO! Costing a mere gajillion dollars! Probably.). There was a slight traffic jam, and I looked up to see a little biplane doing very unruly loop-the-loops in the air. Whoever was piloting the thing needed some practice. I kept thinking "Oh, shit! He's goin' down!" And then the plane would gradually pull up and go looping around again.

Anyway, this is a nice season in the Central Valley. (Not to mention we got garlic scapes in the CSA box last week--I'd never seen those before. Photo to come.)

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Flickr Fiction's New Home; Modesto Madness

So, of course the Berkeley student who stole the Nobel Prize medal out of the Lawrence Hall of Science is from Modesto. Of course. In other news from today's Modesto Bee, a young man died of autoerotic asphyxiation, and the city prepares for Graffiti Summer. Incidentally, a friend of ours was stabbed in the leg at Graffiti Summer when she was 16, which apparently prompted a downplaying of the festivities for a few years. Yes, Rob and I moved to a very strange place.

We Flickr Fiction-ites now have a new group home on Ning for your convenience - bookmark the site for easy reference and viewing of everyone's writings. My contribution for this week is called "At the Top" and starts thusly:

"Huffin' and puffin' and blowin' your house down," Scott Mason said, grabbing a protruding part of the rock with his right hand and pulling himself up to the top of the boulder with sheer brute strength...

Visit our "Ficktion" page for more.