@ rest area

Gps: 36 51.733 N
120 47.011 W

A long drive

Today we drove down to Joshua Tree and took a somewhat unfortunate route (recommended by google and our GPS)

We ran into all kinds of traffic as we approached LA on 5, which basically didn't dissipate until the last 20 or so miles into J tree. We also bore the full brunt of LA traffic through Riverside, which was pretty painful. Somehow the carpool lanes don't seem to help at all. I did get a nice shot of the freeways while we were at a dead stop in traffic though.

After an eleven hour drive, we finally made it to my parents old friend Juanita's place in the desert North of the main drag in JTree, and it turned out to be a really cool place. More on this in the next post. We arrived just in time to insinuate ourselves into a dinner that Juanita was making for one of her former students. Her student was planning on applying to the MFA program at the Chicago Art Institute and Juanita was looking over her portfolio. Strangely enough, we walked in just as Juanita was showing her a picture of a Peter Voulkos piece, and the place where we currently live is a former Voulkos studio, superintended by one of his proteges. Dinner was great, as it always is when Juanita is cooking, and chloe and I had a hero moment when juanita's student's husband mentioned that he had always wanted to try kiteboarding, and we casually mentioned that we both kite basically every waking moment (ok we didn't say that).

money crushing

this is the card my parents made me for xmas. Things of note:
1)Thats me at the bottom apparently suffering from money induced hyperthyroidism
2)They had saved stationary from their stay at the hotel Empress zoe in Istanbul, more than a decade ago!

Zoe after unwrapping gifts

orchids

My parents friend dropped off a beautiful orchid today

Xmas eve

a sushi dinner for xmas eve

Zoe cuteness attack!

sling

it turns out zoe is not a big fan of the sling yet

Party time

We went to my friend Glens stateside wedding reception (his actual wedding reception was held in Brazil earlier this year). It was the first time we had left little ZZ with babysitters (the grandparents) so we were pretty nervous. It all turned out fine though, and I got to talk to some high school friends who I hadn't seen in sixteen years. Here we are, all dressed up

and a few more



Heres my CIA style surveillance shot of the bride and groom, digitally enhanced:



The reception was held in the SF asian art museum, which the family had rented out for the occasion.

nice driving

In my neighborhood (Fruitvale), you take your life into your hands by just getting into your car. The driving isn't so much aggressive as it is inexplicable and dangerous. This morning though, I saw the most egregious thing yet; I was on 880 north heading for the bridge. It was raining pretty hard and still dark out, but people were still tailgating and up to their usual antics, so I was just trying to avoid getting hit by some hard on in a beat up toyota truck. All of a sudden, i noticed something strange. It was a set of headlights, and it wasn't on the correct side of the road. At first I thought I was seeing some kind of crazy reflection off my windshield of oncoming traffic, but it turned out to be someone driving southbound on the east shoulder of 880N at ~40 mph. I still didn't believe it as I passed it, so I looked in the rear view mirror and saw him/her pulling a U-turn onto the off ramp. Unbelievable.

Brussels Sprout sparring

Tilden

We hiked around Tilden a little with ZZ today

It's come to this

I'm so un-indie that I get music recommendations from NPR these days. Yeah I know it's sad. Here are some recent songs that I actually really love

Paper planes by the Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A.. Love it.

LCD Soundsystem -- North American Scum I'm North American too!

Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse, Of Montreal C'MON CHEMICALS! Recommended by Carrie Brownstein of Sleater Kinney.

Green Gloves, The National This is a live version, and not as good as the one I heard on the radio.

I'm gonna have to listen to Blitzen Trapper by Wild Mountain Nation a few more times to figure out if they are too close to the much hated Grateful Dead for me to like them.

undecided on Vampire Weekend too.

poor marketing word of the day

I was just reading the NYtimes travel section, and came across a reference to gem "encrusted" jewelery. Setting aside the question about how tacky and/or crass jewel encrusted anything is, I wonder if other people have the same associations that I have with that word. For me, "encrusted" implies that whatever is now coating the object in question was not necessarily meant to be there. I would use it do describe the state of my shoes after stepping a turd, for example, or the wheel wells of the car after some spirited spring driving. Even if were the kind of dude who bought (or could afford!) a diamond-encrusted Vacheron, I think that "encrusted" would cause me stop writing that check (lots of time to do that with all those zeros to fill in). Anyway, it's not something that keeps me up at night really. Far more annoying is when people have a nut-encrusted fish on their menu. Don't get me wrong -- I LOVE fish to which a layer of ground nuts has been adhered to, but please, not the E word again. There must be a more poetic way of describing it.

A trip to Alta with Zoe

We went up to Alta for the day today, which was the furthest Zoe had been from home (It's usually a 2-3 hour trip). We stopped at Awful Annie's in Auburn for waffles/ Zoe feeding and changine, and then proceeded to the cabin, which was really cold. After un-shuttering and getting the wood burning stove up and running, the grandparents showed up and I got started with the sawin. You're not supposed to let the fuel/oil mixture sit for too long, so my goal was to use it all up. The thing is, a 50cc 2 stroke engine isn't very thirsty, so it took me the better part of the day to accomplish this goal. After five fuel tank refillings and a whole lot of sawing, I called it a day. We had fired up the tub, so I took a brief soak to soothe my by now semi-crippled back, packed up the Xmas tree that I had sawn down and headed back to Berkeley. The trip back was uneventful, except for the part where I set off the burglar alarm at my parents house (thanks for telling me it was on guys!). Here are some photos of the day:

absinthe

All this talk of Absinthe, and in particular, a local absinthe distillery brings to mind an interesting story (to me at least) about it.

Thirty years ago, my parents won a bottle of original Pernod Absinthe in a wine auction.



The bottle had been previously opened and apparently came from the cellars of the Crocker family. Rather than popping the cork immediately after geting it home and inducing a hallucinogenic painting spree, they saved it and put off its dramatic re-opening for an important occasion. The occasion kept being pushed back: first it was my graduation from high school, then Kenji's conversion to a U.S. citizen, then college graduation, and we finally ended up opening it when I got my Ph.D. at a little gathering of friends. Among those friends, coincidentally, was the well known UC Berkeley professor and good family friend John Casida. As it happens, John had done a lot of research on Thujone, the "active" ingredient in Absinthe (there is controversy over whether these new Absinthes are really Absinthes, since the Thujone has been mostly removed) and had worked with it himself. Thujone has a distinct odor, and as soon as we uncorked the bottle, he exclaimed that it was the most concentrated thujone solution he had ever smelled. Although John demurred when offered a glass of the green stuff, Kenji and I dove in. I'm disappointed to report that we didn't paint any masterpieces shortly thereafter. On the other hand, neither of us went mad (or madder in Kenji's case) or chopped off our ears.

Chloe and Zoe's blog

can be found here: http://chloezoe.blogspot.com/

Pt Reyes

Today we took a road rip (Zoe's longest ever!) to Point Reyes for a hike. Along he way, we stopped at Point Reyes Station to make a stop into the Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes Station


Here's my opinion about Cowgirl Creamery: They have some decent cheeses and I fully support the mini-renaissance in stateside artisanal cheeses. However, none of the local cheeses I tasted had much character. "Insipid mockeries of french cheeses" would be going too far, but that was my first reaction. I also do not see the point of transporting low grade Comte and Gruyere halfway around the world from France to a small town in rural West Marin. If you're going to burn the plane fuel, at least make it comte de Montagne! One last thing -- their cheese cooler is *way* too cold (maybe thats a health regulation though) for cheese.

From there, we continued on to the end of the road at Pierce Point here.

We bundled ZZN up:

near the farm:


and headed out. We only got about 1/5 of the way there before we got tired of pushing the stroller up hills and sat down to enjoy some baguette and Point Reyes Bleu. We turned the little poop machine around aftwerwards, and started heading back


and were surprised to see a herd of Elk!






don't worry - we kept our distance. That last shot is maximum zoom, cropped way down from the 10 mega pixel file.

After the long process of destrollerizing, changing and car-ifying the baby, we started driving back down Pierce Point Road.

I had read in Heat that the most critical ingredient for good homemade pasta is the egg. I had also read that the best eggs in the bay area can be found right in Pt. Reyes Station at the Marin Sun Farms, so we had to stop there to get some eggs, despite being almost out of gas. We also picked up some organic basil, more baguette and some pastries in town, and then pointed the Prius back towards oaktown.

As soon as we got home, I checked out our $7 (!) eggs



and got to work making a simple Fettuccine Pesto, which turned out pretty well.

Rita Mitsuoka

A long time ago, on a French road trip far, far away Chloe and I got addicted to the French Star Academy TV show. It was the first year that we were in France (2002) and I have to say that as far as reality TV goes, it was pretty good. Maybe it was less cringe-worthy than it's U.S. counterparts because your average French person is a lot less, well ... stupid than the average American. Sorry, but its true.

This was the series that catapulted Nolwenn into fame. Our favorite contestant, however got kicked out relatively early, but not before performing a spirited rendition of Marcia Baila by Les Rita Mitsouko. As soon as she announced her choice of songs, it was pretty clear that everyone in the French audience knew (and loved) the song. Chloe and I had never heard it of course, and both got it stuck in our heads, so I scoured the net for mp3s when we got back to Grenoble. I even got over my "only indie in my ipod" pretensions and rounded up a copy of the original AND the star academy version. The originial is a catchy song, and I was reminded of all of this by the sudden re-appearance of the video for Marcia Baila on youtube. The reason for the reappearance is sadly because one of the original duo (Fred Chichin) just died of cancer.

I can't remember very many other details of the show except one of the contestants running around naked, and Lionel (pronounced Leo-nell) Ritchie making a guest appearance (ohhhh, what a feeeeeling... to be daaaaancing on the ceiiiillling)!


edit: wiki reveals that the female vocalist is an actress, with a rather niche filmography, which she had a shocking confrontation with the famous Serge Gainsbourg on TV about. I didn't learn those words in my crash French class!

OKAY

I'm going to hopefully find some time to catch up on the blog in the next few days, and based on the phenomenal interest in more photos of little ZZN, chloe and I have started a ZZN-only blog which will be replete with pictures and goo-goo faces. Over here at moneycrushing, it will be business as usual. I'll post a link here as soon as the zoeblog is ready!