Museum Day

So yesterday was Museum Day and Scoob and I took advantage of the free admission to go to the Coyote Point Museum. Not only did we get free admission to the museum, but we didn't have to pay the $5 for access to the recreation area either. Woot!

The exhibits in the museum were so-so; mostly informational with a handful of interactive pieces that were perfect for the 5-year-old kids that were there as part of a birthday party.

But the real attractions were outside. The museum has several animals, some local to Coyote Point, on exhibit. I can only assume these animals came here as part of a rescue and rehabilitation program, but were unable to be released for whatever reason. And guess what? I took pictures.

A coyote. It's not called Coyote Point for nothin'.

Burrowing owl

Badger. So friggin' cute.
I could watch this badger waddle around for hours and be totally entertained.

Red fox. No not that Red Fox.

Yurtle the turtle

Great Blue Heron.

He's just so pretty (and such a poser) that he gets two pictures.

Peek-a-boo with a Golden Eagle.

Snowy Egret (?) in the sun.

Dunno who this is, but he sure was chatty.

I just liked the way this tangle of evergreen branches looked
silhouetted over the San Francisco Bay with the horizon line in the background.

Grandma, if you're watching, look away now. (Grandma is terrified of snakes.)

A very colorful San Francisco garter snake.
Unfortunately, the lighting in his case gave everything a yellow tint.

Up close and personal with a boa constrictor. (I even got to pet it!)
I'll let y'all come up with your own snake petting jokes.

I Can Read. Really.

Sometimes I stupify even myself. So this afternoon I was trying to find a place to park at a strip mall. As I pulled into a parking stall, I realized that it was marked . It said:

DELTACO PARKING

I turned to Scoob in the passenger seat and said, "Who the hell is Delta Co.?" The name didn't sound at all familiar and as I scanned the mall, I didn't see a Detla Co. anywhere. The paint was very faded and I was thinking maybe they'd gone out of business, whoever they were, and it would be okay to park there.

Scoob looked at me like I was crazy and repeated "Delta Co.?" before he started laughing—quite obviously at me.

Clearly I hadn't noticed the very large Del Taco restaurant not 20 yards or so in front of the car.

Buggies

So it was fogged in and 58° when I left work tonight, bright sunshine and 79° when I pulled in at the house 30 minutes later. What's up with that? It's freakin' nuts is what. It's supposed to hit 98° tomorrow at the house. Blech.

So pretty mellow weekend. I spent most of Saturday in pain because I'd had my first physical therapy session Friday for my back. The PT guy, we'll call him Matt (cause that's his name), asked me all the requisite questions and we covered how PT had gone with Kaiser. See at Kaiser they did this thing where I rested my upper body on the therapist while she then rotated my body to mobilize the vertebrae that are stuck. Oh I can't explain it right, but anyhow it was gentle, extremely low impact, and, aside from the first couple sessions when she totally spazzed out a muscle, painless. "Yeah," Matt said, "I'm not going to be that gentle."

You know, there are times those words wouldn't be a bad thing. They might even be welcomed. But not when we're monkeying around with my back people.

Anyhow, Matt crunched my back a few times, which really wasn't that bad because I crunch my back anyway, but when he tried to crunch my back and it refused to crunch. Oh. God. Now that hurt. He seemed genuinely perplexed that he couldn't get it to move. And then had me do all sorts of twists and stretches to reinforce the mobilization of that area.

That was followed by "heat & stim" which apparently meant a heat pad (heaven) and stimulation. And said stimulation is mild shock therapy. No joke. They've got these gelled up pads that they put on my back and a hand-held zapper thingy that is cranked up to "just shy of painful." But of course you have to find painful first before you can dial back to "just shy" of painful. That was the weirdest thing. At first it felt like little buggies crawling under my skin. Then big buggies. Then it was just tingly. I felt pretty spaced out when I left the clinic.

So anyhow, we'll be repeating that twice a week for the next month. I only hope that every day-after doesn't feel like Saturday. Oh, and I hope we can fix my back. In the meantime, I'll be doing the exercises that he gave me.

A Day at the Farm

So what about the farm? We went to the Renaissance Fair on Sunday and had a fun time. It's probably not something I could do weekend after weekend, or probably more than once or twice a year, but it was fun. There were some truly amazing costumes and real jousting. I still can't get over the jousting. I assumed it would be simulated jousting with no real weapons involved or "animals harmed in the making," you know crunchy-Berkeley style—but this was full-contact. And while the horses weren't harmed, they were winded (and beautiful). I took a couple videos of the jousting, but I can't seem to figure out where my camera has stored them or how to get them out just yet.

Dude, and check out the codpieces some of those guys are sporting. You so don't want one of those guys standing too close behind you in line. I had the hardest time not laughing my arse off the first time I noticed them, and seriously, how do you not notice them when they're practically tall enough to plant a flag in one and claim it for Spain.

Yeah, those codpieces, or is that codpi?

I had just as much fun checking out the animals and other stuff on the farm.

This shed reminded me of a similar catch-all

spot at my great-grandparent's place.

To Market, to Market

We had a busy weekend and I was just enjoying myself to dang much to stop and blog about it. Sorry. I'll try to keep my priorities straight next time that happens. So any how, you luck out because you get to hear about my weekend during the week.

On Saturday, we had a plan, but except for making it to the post office and getting lunch, we didn't follow the plan. After we had a tasty lunch at the Banyan Tree restaurant, we went next door to the Asian market to get ingredients for a couple recipes I've been messing with.

We also picked up my favorite chili pepper paste that I told you about way-back-when. There are days I can eat this spoonful after painful spoonful. Must be a hormonal thing, 'cause there are other times I think I'm going to die from this stuff (though those other some times are usually after the actual eating of it).

It's Delightfully Hot!

As we were walking into the market, I spotted one of these things on a car dash.


The leaves and little sunflower head were bobbing and it reminded me of the Plants vs. Zombies game that I'm still addicted to. Scoob has decided that I must have one and the rest of our day was spent on a scavenger hunt of sorts. We figured out that they're made by Flip Flap and Tomy, and that these little solar-powered bobbers are very popular in Japan, so we headed to the Mitsuwa Japanese market in San Jose where we did find various other bobbers, but not the sunflower one. We did, however, find an interesting (and surprisingly big) Japanese bookstore. Even though we didn't understand a single thing we were looking at, it was still fun browse.

We picked up a bottle of this miso and mustard salad dressing while we were at Mitsuwa.

It's one of my favorites!

Afterward, we meandered over to the Valley Fair Mall and strolled and browsed, keeping an eye on the kiosks for my little bobber. Some of our earliest outings when Scoob and I first started dating were at Valley Fair where we would stroll and invariably stop for a pretzel. So that was fun in a low-key kind of way, though there were no pretzels involved this time. I guess the wooing period is over. Though Scoob did buy me a new ring. I think I like it better on my thumb where the band isn't right against the other ring.

I seriously need to sit down with a nail file.

I was actually stunned at all upscale designers with stores at Valley Fair now—Louis Vuitton, Betsy Johnson, Coach, and more. This used to be the go-to mall when I was in my 20s, it now feels like it caters to a market with much more disposable income than we have, which on the one hand can be depressing yet on the other makes for some really fun window shopping where I can ooooh and aaaah over the crazy things people will waste money on—not at all like my bobber thingy.

I finished reading The Plague of Doves the other night and I really enjoyed it. It's a multi-generational story of lives and histories on a reservation and how people cope with individual realities emanating from a shared, ugly past event. In addition to the main story, I thought it was an interesting look into survivor's syndrome. And how the ripples from a single, defining and common moment or event—it could be anything, 9/11, the Loma Prieta earthquake, Challenger, Kennedy's assassination—act on each person in different ways, in this case, it's a lynching. I also think the book was hopeful in that no matter how different from each other the characters became, they were just different, not entirely incompatible. It felt a little disjointed in places, though in its way, that disjointedness complements the story. Huh. I hadn't quite realized I'd thought about the story that deeply, so I guess it was pretty good.

I started Water for Elephants last night and was hooked from page 2. I'm having to be very disciplined about putting it down.

Oh, so Saturday's plan had been to go to the Renaissance Fair at the Farm. Yup, the very same farm that had the crazy train festival last weekend. But we ended up doing that on Sunday.

Germ Alert

If the sniffling and sneezing at the cube farm are any indication, I will be miserably sick very soon. Just sayin'.

nine eleven

Eight years ago today, in addition to our national emergency, it was also the day my previous partner was diagnosed with cancer. We'd been in the emergency room overnight and had learned, just hours before the first plane hit, that he had Chronic Myeloid Leukemia.

I was so focused on making sure he was getting care (we were running into a lot of problems because he was uninsured, but that's a separate story), learning everything I could about the disease, and being the conduit between the doctors and his family that I think it was a full 2 weeks before the enormity of the attacks really sunk in.

That day was the end of normal in so many ways, and it is one of my least favorite days of the year.