Cool Like Dat

I'm usually self-conscious taking photos of strangers, but this time I couldn't resist. These 3 guys were so freakin' hip and I can only hope to be cool like dat when I'm their age.I know it's hard to tell in this photo, but both of the guys on the right are on their laptops. Sharing not only photos, but other miscellaneous technical information with each other. Sweet.

Jimmy and I finally celebrated our anniversary last weekend. We went to dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant in Palo Alto then headed to San Francisco for ice cream at...Ghirardelli Square, of course! We drove around the city for 4 hours, going to miscellaneous "Points of Interest" on the GPS, which included the Grateful Dead home near the corner of Haight and Ashbury, Billy Goat Hill Park - a park on the side of a high hill, new-to-us vista points in the Presidio, Alamo Square and the Painted Ladies, Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park and a lot more, finally getting home just after 2am. But if any of you notice the times I usually post my blogs, after 2am isn't late for us.

While we were in SF, we stopped by AT&T Park.We'll be back there all day Saturday to watch Supercross races. It'll be fun as long as it doesn't rain. I'm bringing my Kindle because I'll be interested for 5 of the 10 hours, but my mind will wander a lot, that I know for sure. I'm reading "The Lovely Bones" because I considered going to the movies to watch it, but decided to read the book first.
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The Boring Life of a Sicko

We've had a deluge of rain for the past 5 days, which is good as long as there isn't any flooding. However, there's been quite a bit of flooding in the Bay Area. There was even a tornado warning in South San Jose. Ok, I can deal with the earthquakes but I'd really rather not have to worry about tornadoes, too. I don't like driving in the rain, but the plus side of that is I've been a sicko since Sunday and didn't leave the house for 4 days. I finally had to go out today, despite the rain, because groceries don't magically appear in my fridge unfortunately. On a normal day I dislike grocery shopping so on a day when the weather is wet and I'm still not quite feeling right, I dread it. But I must admit that getting out of the house was nice because I was getting a bit of the cabin fever so there was a bright side to the re-stocking of our bread, milk and cheese.

On Tuesday, Jimmy and I celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary. 19 on the 19th. It really is hard to believe that we've been married that long. We celebrated by eating Campbell's Chicken Soup and staying in pajamas all day.

We're headed to the hideaway tomorrow. We haven't been since right after Christmas and it'll be a cold snowy wonderland. But before I got sick, we spent some time picking out stuff for the new bathroom. It was a whole lotta fun!

This isn't the vanity we're picking. We were all happy with this choice, but it's going to be flush against one wall. But see how the detailing of the wood on the bottom comes out about 1/2"? That's gonna be a problem if it's against the wall. So hopefully we'll find something very similar to this that's flush. And it won't be a double sink, it'll be a smaller vanity, 36" instead of this pictured 60". And we're picking a different counter, too.

This is the mirror that matches the above vanity. Since we're not getting that vanity, we won't get this exact mirror, but it's the style we're looking for.

We'll also put a little cabinet above the toilet.

Above the mirror we'll put up these light fixtures with...

these bells. I lurve these bells. It's hard to tell in this photo, but there are very very subtle pink, blue and green hues in the glass. It's mostly a honey color with those cool scallops, and the different colors might not even show with the bulb, but I think it's beautiful. Jimmy was the 1st one to notice them and I fell in love with them as soon as he pointed them out.

The vanity counter top will be made of Swanstone and will look like this but in a different color. We picked "Cloud White" which is mostly white with very subtle tan or off-white granite-like marbling throughout.

This is the vanity faucet we picked. We wanted a high faucet head because it bugs both of us when we wash our hands and we hit the back of the sink.

We'll have a full shower in the new bathroom and it'll also be made of Swanstone in the same Cloud White color. We haven't picked shower doors yet.

But we did pick out the shower faucet.Pretty basic.

We'll also add a solar tube in the new bathroom. Basically, it's a small skylight. The new bathroom doesn't have a window so adding this small skylight will bring in a tiny bit of natural light in.

So far, this has been the funnest part of the remodel. It's so cool to be able to design everything ourselves. I'm surprised at how easy it is. It's fun to go out with Jimmy shopping for this stuff and amazingly agreeing on everything and surprisingly not even coming close to any...um...creative arguments. lol.

In other boring news, I gave in and read the 1st Twilight book. I give it an "eh." But I'm intrigued enough to want to see the 1st movie before wasting spending several hours reading the next saga. Mostly, I want to see how the movie translates how Edward is effected in the sunlight.

I hope you read all that right before bedtime. I'm sure it will help you fall asleep.
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Whatcha readin'?

An oak tree in the Sierra Nevada foothills that could be a nice place to sit under and read a good book.

I donno what's come over me, but I've somehow managed to finish 3, count them 3 books in one month! That is, seriously, a world record for me. Ok, it took me 4 months from start to finish "Eat, Pray, Love". But as soon as I finished it, I started and finished "Book of Dead Birds" within a week and a half. Then I finished "The Glass Castle" in 4 days. FOUR DAYS! Inconceivable! I just started reading "Forever in Blue" today. I'm hoping it'll be a fast read, too. We're going down to S. California tomorrow so hopefully I'll get some reading time while we're in the car. Next on my list is "The Art of Racing in the Rain" then "Dreams of my Father". I'm loving this reading thing now that I've got it figured out. It's all happening because of the Amazon Kindle. It's amazing how much faster I can read a book on it. It took me 4 months to get half way through the paperback version of "Eat Pray Love" but as soon as I decided to get it on the Kindle, I finished the other half in a weekend. And Phin lent me the hardcover version of "Book of Dead Birds" (which btw, my favorite read so far this year), but I still got it for the Kindle because I knew that I'd be able to read faster on it. Love being able to hold up to 200 books on the thing, but my favorite part...being able to look up the definition of words directly on it. Not to mention being able to highlight selected sentences/paragraphs/pages. I highlighted a dozen quotes from "Eat, Pray, Love" that I'm planning on doing a minibook with similar to the one I did for How to Build a Global Community.

I know this must seem like an ad for Amazon, but truly, that's not my intent. I'm just so thrilled with being able to read more than 2 books a year. I used to love reading as a teenager, but after college, I pretty much stopped reading because for some reason, it started taking me months to finish one book. Even now, when I'm reading something at the same time as someone else, say for instance an article posted on a bulletin board, she will be done minutes before I finish reading that same article. I usually have to re-read sentences over and over again to 'get' it. So for me to say that I started and finished 2 books in about 2 weeks, well, I'm just ecstatic.

Anyhoo, I highly recommend "The Book of Dead Birds". A fantastic novel. And if you recall my post about the Salton Sea, this novel describes it in harrowing detail.

What books have you read that should go on my list of Must Reads?
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Bali

I've just gotten to the section in Eat, Pray, Love where Liz is in Indonesia. I went there almost 10 years ago and reading about her adventures, so different than mine, makes me recall my trip. It's hard to believe that it's been so long ago already...

It was less than a year after my mom had died, and the first time in my adult life that I had traveled to an impoverished Asian country. And while Elizabeth Gilbert's book touches on the poverty and corruption of the island's colorful past, experiencing it with my own eyes was a disconcerting experience. I couldn't help but compare the people and locale to my mom and where she grew up in the Philippines, also an impoverished Asian country. I'm pretty good at trying to keep my emotional experiences separate from my tangible ones, but the death of your mother sticks with you more than anything. As some of you know. I remember thinking while I was there, that I have no desire to ever go back. Before that trip, Bali had always sounded so glamorous and exotic. And the reality was disheartening. Perhaps it is an Island of the Gods, but it's far from paradise. However reading Liz's book makes me remember the beauty of the people and the island.

A woman carrying her goods on her head, a common way to carry things in Asia. This was taken near Ubud, where Liz lived for those 4 months.

Near Ubud.

Getting ready for a spiritual ceremony at a temple near Ubud.

Lake at Mount Batur.

At the Elephant Cave, or Goa Gajah. There is a mix of Buddhist and Hindu spiritual symbols here and is estimated to have been built around 1022AD.

At Goa Gajah, there are amazing bathing pools:
The bathing pools are divided into 2, one for women the other for men, each with three water spouting statues.

This the Mother Temple, Pura Besakih. It is Bali's most holy and Indonesia's biggest Hindu temple.

A little peak at a private ceremony at the Mother Temple.

These were our tour guides. Niti, on the left showed us around the whole day. The other man was our guide thorough the temple.

Interesting architecture at the temple.

Still at the Mother Temple. She's carrying heavy stone bricks on her head!

The flowers and plant life take over everything.

Rice terraces of Bali.

I can't remember the name of this instrument, but it's traditional Balinese and Niti played it for us during one of our stops.

A view from above. Bali is very lush. Notice the feral dog and cat. The island had plenty of feral animals.

We saw a couple of traditional Balinese dances.
This was the Barong Dance. A dance that depicts the fight between good and evil.

A beautiful Barong Dancer.

Talented wood carver in Mas.

The Temple of the Holy Water, or Pura Tirta Empul.
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Intoxicated by Alcohol Inks? -or- Does it look like I was drunk when I made this?

Whoo hoo! It rained! I've actually worn close-toed shoes for the past 4 days. Still keeping my flip-flops nearby, afterall this is California, but pretty soon I'll be wearing my boots or Uggs on a daily basis.

The one thing I don't like about the rain, especially the first rain of the season, is driving in it. But Saturday, I drove about an hour in the rain to take a class with Tim Holtz. He's been on the Carol Duvall Show several times on HGTV and DIY. Well, it was totally worth driving in the rain to take classes from him. Doris and I signed up for one class and enjoyed it so much we stayed for another class.
The first class was a collaged minibook with it's own mosaic lunch box. In the three hour class Tim showed us distressing techniques along with the fun collage techniques that he is known for. The book fits perfectly in the mini lunch box that we decorated with cool acrylic square pieces called Fragments after gluing various collage pieces to the backs.
That project was so cool and Tim was so funny and charismatic that we knew the next class would be fun, too.

And it was fun but way more challenging.
But the cool thing about challenging is doing stuff out of your comfort zone. And I was. We took a basic wooden framed mirror, added some words, covered it with flash tape then used alcohol inks to color the metal. I was not playing well with those alcohol inks. After a while, Tim came over looked at my project and asked "so what's going on here?" I said "I need help." He said "Yes, you do." How hilarious is that?! So true and so pathetic. Well, he grabbed a few colors and applied them here and there, told me to stick with those colors, continue blotting and twisting...and voila - above is the finished project. I would have liked it to be more in the green family tones, but I had messed up so badly before he got there that to cover up the yellow and pink tones I had created (don't ask), he had to add more brown and blue tones. I'm pretty happy with it, but you should have seen how a-m-a-z-i-n-g the other peoples mirrors turned out. Will i do it again? Probably not on my own. Would I take the class again? Absolutely! I need to learn more about those inks. Plus it was totally cool doing something outside of the traditional paper based classes. Even though I'm not completely satisfied with it, it'll go on my wall in the office and not shoved in the back of a closet. Hopefully Tim will come back to the Bay Area because I would definitely take another class or two with him again.
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So I don't mislead anyone...

This is "MY" bookshelf. Yup, all in a disarray. Equals my life. ;)
Most of my reading type books are at the hideaway.

The technical ones in the previous photo are the husband's.

What, me read?

I claim to not be a reader. I'm very slow. I really only finish reading about 3-4 books a year. But I've amassed quite a collection of books and surprisingly, I've at least read a page or 2 in nearly all of them. But if a book has my attention, I'll dutifully read it even though it'll take me months (years) to finish.

I was tagged by Cate to respond to these few questions regarding books. It was tough but fun once I started recalling some of the books I've read. Most of them are at our hideaway so I couldn't refer to them and my pea-brain doesn't store "titles" or "authors" so although I can totally remember storylines, I can't even google them because how do you search "that San Francisco series that took place in the 70s.". Or "that one autobiography about the girl who ran away and lived in the woods."

1. A Book That Changed My Life:
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. The parable keeps repeating itself in my and Jimmy’s life journey.

2. A Book You’ve Read More than Once:
I’m not one to read things over and over again since it takes me so long to read in the first place. But I will refer to "how-to" books over and over again.

3. A Book You’d Take onto a Deserted Island:
Maybe Pride and Prejudice. I’ve always wanted to read it but I know I’d have trouble focusing on it with all the many distractions that surround me. But if I had nothing else to occupy myself, then I’d probably get through it.

4. A Book That Made Me Laugh:
The Sweet Potato Queens’ Big-Ass Cookbook (and Financial Planner), by Jill Conner Browne.

5. A Book That Made Me Cry:
The autobiography about the girl who ran away and lived in the woods.

6. A Book I Wish Had Been Written:
An autobiography by my dad. He'd have an amazing story to tell, immigrating from the Philippines in 1924. Trying to make a living in San Francisco, Seattle, Alaska and the Mojave Desert. Living through the Great Depression and being an immigrant. Becoming a US Citizen and signing up to for the army when he was in 40s during WWII. And so on.

7. A Book I Wish Had Never Been Written:
Can't think of a single book that I wish wasn't written. Books are good. Even bad ones. I just won't read them or agree with them. Maybe something that glorifies or praises extremely horrific unmentionable wicked behavior, like there are a few movies that I think should never have been made because the topic was so malevolent. I donno though, I'm pretty big on freedom, too. Just don't hurt anyone, k?

8. A Book I'm Currently Reading:
Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals.

9. A Book I've been Meaning to Read:
Oh my, there are so many! I need to take a speed reading course or something. How ‘bout the Dan Eldon book(s) on my coffee table.

10: Now tag five people you want to hear from:
Ginnie, Jodi, Susan D, Paris Parfait and anyone else who likes to read!