Another One Bites the Dust

I say that with the utmost respect. But my friend and old boss, who was snarky and sassy as hell, died last week. She'd want me to be sassy in paying respect or tribute to her.
I met Leigh in 1994 when we both worked at a stamp store in the mall during the Christmas season. She's always been a force of nature. Speaking her mind, standing up for what she believed in and jumping into something head first, flying fast. She had charisma, people automatically liked her the 1st time they met her, and learned early on not to cross her. It was very easy for me to be friends with her because she was straightforward, so I knew what her plans were and the direction she wanted to go. We were opposites, really, but we got along very well. She knew how to push me to motivate me, but knew when to stop. She understood that I have buckets of tolerance and patience, but if I'm right at the edge, to back off because I'll burst. She pushed me creatively, had a lot more faith in my abilities than I had in myself, and trusted me more than I thought I deserved. I was lucky that I was friends with her before I started working for her, because I never felt like I had to tiptoe around the boss. I could speak with her candidly.

Grand opening of her store, 1996.

In 1998 she had to close the store because her manufacturing company took off and she needed the space for warehouse and shipping.

Company photo, 2000.

Company photo, 2001.

After my mom died, she gave me a lot of leeway. She knew that I would need a lot of time to figure everything out and I needed to do it at my pace. She understood that I process things different than she does. But 9 months later, I was still trapped in my own headspace, and she bluntly but with kindness said: "ok madeline. it's time to come back to work." And I knew it wasn't because she needed me as an employee, but because it was just time to get out of my own head.

She had wanderlust more than anyone I knew. She used to tell me stories about growing up in New Zealand, her maori 'family', living and working on a kibbutz in Israel, working in the south, traveling through Europe. When she felt the desire to travel to Singapore and Bali, she asked me to go with her. I couldn't refuse.At a temple in Bali.

She bought that big yellow dragon kite above her for her son.

Another temple in Bali.

At a Hindu temple in Singapore.

After selling her business, she and her family moved to Florida because there were more programs available there for her kids. After they finished high school, she traveled a lot more. I would enjoy seeing her photos from all over the world. She was spending a lot of time in Israel again. Last month she was hiking through the sandy deserts in Jordan. The sand in the air as well as smoke from fires in Slovenia, aggravated her asthma enough for her to go to the ER. She started posting snarky photos from the hospital. Making fun of her bruises, joking around about being transferred to ICU. Showing photos of a dragon she bought for her son with an oxygen mask on, saying "uh oh, it's not looking very good". Unfortunately, it was a lot worse than anyone thought. Especially since she was still posting just hours before she passed away. And still being sassy...

It's Not Gonna Happen Again This Year

Last February I didn't blog the whole month. I almost let that happen again this February, but it's the 11th hour, and I've decided to stop the no-blogging madness.

There's no way to stick to a theme for this post since I haven't blogged in a while. So here's a random mish-mash of February 2015...

We were in Southern California for a few days...
I finally got to meet my grand niece! She's 14 months old. My niece drove over an hour just to have lunch with me and my SIL. Also got to see the nephews for a brief moment. And spent an evening and the next morning with my BFF and her kiddos.

Jimmy had to work. He was recruiting at his alma mater. I went to college 15 minutes from here, at Cal Poly Pomona. So I spent a lot of time here, too.

We were staying in Pomona at the fairgrounds. Here's a pic I shared on Instagram for Throw Back Thursday the week we were there.
Jimmy was really into car races back then. We went to the Winter Nationals in 1988 at the fairgrounds. It's hard to tell, but we're posing in front of the Grand National, not the moving truck. It was Jimmy's favorite car back then. I used to love the Saab 900 Turbo. Random.

Also shared this gem from 1987...
Our 1st selfie before 'selfie' was a common term.

We were there Valentine's Weekend...
We treated ourselves to the best fish tacos in California...at a little hole in the wall in Pomona. Two nights in a row. We lamented that Jimmy didn't like Mexican food in college. I remember hounding him for Mexican food all the time but his version of Mexican food didn't extend beyond Del Taco. Now it's probably our favorite style of grub.

Before leaving Southern California, we stopped at another favorite, Bob's Big Boy.

There's a whole hockey store down there that sells just goalie equipment. Not even regular hockey skater gear, just goalie! It's huge and Jimmy's version of my craft store. Couldn't resist a snapshot of these King-kong sized goalie pads.

Back home...
Jimmy actually went to work this way one day last week. The day before, he won a bottle of "Gorilla Snot Hair Gel" and was told to come into work with spiky hair the next day. One of their mottos is to "Be Unboring". Nailed it.

Apparently you're suppose to change the strings on your guitar every 3-6 months. Who knew?? The strings on my guitar were over 5 years old, but only used consistently for the last year or so. But they were due for a change. I was nervous changing them, but I did it all on my own. My guitar has never sounded better and motivates me to play even more.

2014 Rewind

2014 was a good year for us. We traveled more than normal, we celebrated a big family coming of age event, we spent a good amount of quality time with close friends and family. Of course, there were a few low-lights, but by and large, 2014 was definitely one of the better ones.

Here's a quick video recap of some of the photos I captured through the year.


Wishing you a very Happy New Year!

_

12.4: Christmas Past

It's Throwback Thursday, so you know what that means!

Let's look back to Christmas 5 years ago...
Christmas with my sister-in-laws. I have 6 sister-in-laws, so 3 are missing here.

10 years ago...
Christmas eve.

15 years ago...
Christmas party at Stanford for Jimmy's work.

20 years ago...
At my mom's house, the house I grew up in, with my best friend.

I blinked, and 20 years flashed by at lightning speed!
Yikes!!

Fast forward to today...
Today's Christmas Tree of the Day. I was almost home and I realized I hadn't taken a snapshot of any trees today. I thought I was out of luck, especially since I had a hard time yesterday. But this tree was right across the street. One of my crafting friends used to work in this office building.

Angeles National Forest

After Reggie's bar mitzvah, we drove up to the San Gabriel Mountains. Jimmy went to college in Claremont, I went to Cal Poly Pomona about 15 minutes away. Whenever we needed to get away from college life, we'd drive up to Mt Baldy in the San Gabriel Mountains.

This is the exact spot that Jimmy proposed to me 24 1/2 years ago. I had just come home from visiting my best friend who lived in Florida at the time and jimmy wanted to go out to a nice italian dinner. Afterwards, he wanted to take a drive up to Mt. Baldy but I complained because I was so tired from the trip. I was pretty much like "dude i don't wanna drive up there I'm so freaking tired" but in 1990 lingo.

When we stopped, he hugged me like a normal hug but i could hear and feel his heart beating a million times a minute. I was clueless. Oblivious, said to him, "your heart is beating a million miles an hour". The rest is history.

We got up there just in time to watch the sun set. I had forgotten about how beautiful it was up there. There were so many layers and layers of mountains that stretch to the ocean.

We drove a bit more and caught this view of downtown Los Angeles before it got dark.

24 1/2 years later. Where does the time go??

Throwback Thursday - My 1st Cruise

Last month I went on my 4th cruise. I'm planning on sharing photos of that trip soon. But in the meantime, I thought I'd jump on the "Throwback Thursday" theme and share some pics of the first cruise I went on.

It was the summer of 1983, between my freshman and sophomore years. My mom and I went with my best friend and her mom. We were inseparable from 3rd grade till graduation. After high school our paths went in different directions, but we still keep in touch by texting each other ever few months just to say hello. Her mom and my mom had become close friends as well, so it was a good mother-daughter and friends trip.

It was a 3 day trip, leaving from Los Angeles, stopping in San Diego, Ensenada then back to Los Angeles. I think it was a pretty good starter cruise vacation, especially for a 15 year old from the desert.

Our cabin had a small little porthole. The room was tiny and I'll admit that I would never travel in such a small room nowadays. I didn't know any better and was thrilled that our room had a little window that looked outside. At least we didn't have an inside berth with no windows at all.

I turned 15 on this cruise. Bridget got me that Berlin album. That was my favorite album for a long time. I still listen to it today.

Cruising nowadays has gotten a lot more luxurious. Of course, in the early 80s, this was pretty nice, even though this cruise line was considered as an 'economy' vacation. But all 4 of us were pretty impressed with everything. After all, there were cloth napkins on the tables. And we came from the desert and lived on a dirt road, so we were easy to impress.

The paper tiara's really classed things up. You can tell how impressed I was.

All kidding aside, it was one of my most memorable vacations of my youth.

For my own reference, I did a bit of googling about the SS Azure Seas. The ship was built in 1955 and renamed several times. From 1980-1990, she was named SS Azure Seas and was placed on three and four night cruises from Los Angeles, Ensenada and Catalina (4th day, which we didn't do). In 1991, the ship was sold and transferred to Fort Lauderdale and the Bahamas. In 2003, she retired and was turned into scrap metal. During the 80s, the official passenger capacity was less than 825. What a difference compared to the mega ships that hold over 2000 people now.

Saying Goodbye

Sunday started out as a typical lazy day at home. Around 3pm, I logged onto facebook to see what was up and I saw lots of postings about the sudden passing of someone I knew. I couldn't believe it, and actually thought that surely, this was wrong information. It was facebook afterall, and who knows what's true till you get the information from a trusted source. She was only 2 years older than me and at first I honestly thought it couldn't be true. Unfortunately, it was.

She wasn't just an old high school friend, which would have been tragic in itself. But I have known her all my life. She was also an only child, we were somehow related (it all gets mixed up in our culture sometimes how we're related but we were). I think our mother's were cousin's in some way or another. Her parents were my godparents, and up until we went to school, I probably spent the most time with her growing up. Back then, we thought of each other as sisters. I looked up to her and wanted to be just like her.

My mom made these matching outfits for us. I may have been around 5 years old, she would have been 7.

This was Christmas 1970. I was 2 1/2 years old.

We still remained close though elementary school, but as we became teenagers, 2 years became a big gap in age and we belonged in very different social circles. But we had a bond that would last forever. We'd still hang out one on one every now and then and act like sisters do. Throughout the years, as we both grew up, got married, lost our parents, we always had respect and love for each other. Even though we hadn't seen each other in over 15 years, we still kept in touch.

She had 2 boys, the youngest just graduated high school last year. Her oldest got married within the last couple of years. Her husband of almost 30 years is inconsolable. My heart breaks for my own loss, but can imagine the heartache her family and her closest friends are feeling. It's not suppose to happen at 48, it's impossible to wrap my head around it.

When I got a call Sunday evening from the oldest one in this photo, who is 6 years older than me, there was no escaping the truth. She had just returned from the hospital and gave me the details. She was considered the oldest "sister" of all of us. I could always count on her the most, as I'm sure she was the one who always had the most responsibilities. After my mom died, she gave me the most help when I had to go back and forth to the High Desert every few weeks to sort everything out. She was always there and helped the most on arrangements. Once again, she's there to step up the responsibilities as oldest 'sister' with the passing of one of our own.


One funny little anecdote I remember from junior high school...
I was in 7th grade science class. One of the boys sitting next to me asked if was related Lourdes. I said yes. I can't forget the tone of his voice when he said "She is the hottest girl at this school."
At the time I thought it was funny that a 7th grader was saying that about a 9th grader, but you know what? It was true. Everyone at that school knew that she was one of the prettiest girls there.

11.12.13 From My Dad to My Mom

My best guess is that he gave this to her in 1969 or 1970. I may have a lot of my own momentos, but I don't have very many of my parents to each other so I cherish the few I have.

11.10 This letter from 1986

I mentioned recently that Jimmy and I sent lots of letters and cards to each other in the first two or three years of dating. Reminiscing over these momentos makes me love him even more.

Here's what the letter said so you don't have to strain, if you're interested:

July 5 or 6 or whatever (The Trip to Paris)

This is a very long and tedious trip. I am very confused about time. Right now, it is midnight where you are, 8:00am in London, and 9:00am in Paris. We land in about 45 minutes, over a half hour early. The flight to New York was O.K. It got extremely turbulent about an hour before we landed. I got a little air sick but I was O.K. At New York, we had a little over 2 hours to kill. We bought some hot dogs from a hot dog cart in the Airport and ate them. We walked outside, because the airport didn't seem like New York, it seemed like California. We went outside and were completely enclosed by the terminals, so we really couldn't see the city. It was like the airport was a big circle and we were in the middle. We went back in, and I tried to call you 4 times between 5 and 6 your time, but no one answered. Then we left for Paris at 9:25 New York time. The flight has been pretty dull. I realized that it would be 10 days again before I got a hug and that really hurt.

Biko? or Kakanin?

I've been thinking about this filipino dessert for months now. 1st off, I couldn't remember what it was called. So I had trouble finding a recipe online for it, and I couldn't find it in my mom's treasure trove of recipes. But i did a google search for filipino sticky coconut rice dessert and "Biko" came up. I was pretty sure that wasn't what my mom called it, but all the google images looked like it was the right thing. Anyhoo, I finally found one of her recipes but it wasn't called biko. Maybe because her dialect was Ilicano and she called it something else.

Well, apparently I made her recipe in 2005. I write notes on the margins of successes/failures, etc. When I made it, the rice wasn't cooked enough...al dente as I noted it. Her recipe didn't say anything about cooking the rice before baking it. All of the online recipes say to cook the rice before baking it, so that's what I did this time, and I also used this recipe as another guide.

I hate to say this, but it was a disappointment. Something wasn't right. I think it was the rice. Where do you find "Sweet Rice"? Online said it was the same as "glutenous rice", so I used what I thought was glutenous rice, the rice I had was labeled 'sushi rice' but it wasn't right. And it wasn't sticky enough, either. Maybe because it said to rinse it and that removed the gluten? And it also tasted like it could have used just a pinch of salt. I might try making it again in another 8 years. But there will never been a substitute for my mom's cooking.

Any tips or tricks or hints would be appreciated.



Kakanin
(I always thought it was pronounced Kan-kah-nun. lol)

Ingredients:
2 cans coconut milk
1/2 cup water
2 cups sweet or glutenous rice (don't use sushi rice, that's what I used!)
1 1/2 cups brown sugar (it could have been sweeter. but maybe if I used sweet rice, it would have been.)
1 tsp. vanilla

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350F.

In a large pot, bring coconut milk and water to a simmer. Add rice and continue simmering till rice is fully cooked, about 15-20 minutes, stirring continuously so rice doesn't burn. Rice should resemble risotto. Remove from heat. Stir in brown sugar. Pour into a buttered 9x9 baking pan and smooth top evenly. Cover with aluminum foil, bake for 45 minutes. Remove foil and bake an additional 30-45 minutes. Cool slightly before serving.



My mom in the center of the action, carving the turkey. 1984.

75% Contained

Good news regarding the fire...it's 75% contained and as of noon today, the advisory evacuation for our community has been lifted.
But there is a part of this map that kind of concerns us. That line of red closest to Mi-Wuk Village and Long Barn. We're thinking it's a backfire, but that's just a guess. Jimmy's brother, the one who comes up every summer with his 3 boys, has a close friend who has a cabin inside that perimeter. It looks like that part hasn't burned, but when we looked closer on the maps, it seems like it got within just a few hundred feet from their home. This family's cabin is one of the founding families in this area and their family name is well known. It's kind of funny in a coincidental kind of way, that Jimmy's brother is good friends with one of the members of that family.

I spent the weekend taking snapshots of the momentos that I brought back with me. I'm glad I have digital images of these in case anything does go awry in the future. Some of these things I never really looked at since my mom died 15 years ago. I found letters of recommendations from her previous employers when she worked as a cook, housekeeper and nanny for American military families in Manila. I found the letter that the founder of Apple Valley sent to her to request her visa application that started the process of her coming to the United States. I found my mom and dads wedding invitation. Turns out this whole time I had the date of their wedding wrong by 2 days!!
Among the hundreds of things I copied were my parents citizenship and naturalization certificates. My dad was 38 years old and my mom was 66. That newspaper article is from 1969 and my dad is in the background as the bartender at the Apple Valley Inn. And of course I had to share a postcard from Jimmy early on in our relationship when he went to Paris and London after graduating from high school. It's dated July 1986. (If you noticed the address, no we weren't married yet, just silly teenagers in love and already knew that we were going to get married after college.)

Everything Will Be Ok in the End. If It's Not Ok, It's Not the End.

I just read that quote on a facebook friend's photo and I'm trying to take that saying to heart. The firefighters have created a couple of "contingency line construction in advance of the communities in the Highway 108 corridor." Our hideway is in that corridor. Basically that means more lines of defense.

The Rim Fire grew overnight another 20,000 acres, but it's a little more contained. It's an odd notion for me, as a layperson, to have it still growing that much, yet be more contained.. Oh, now I get it. I just didn't think it through before I wrote that. What really matters is that our community continues to be protected as much as it possibly can be.

Here's a cool animated gif I found at Mother Jones.
It shows how quickly the fire grew and how it's still growing, but nothing like it had been.

They've extended the Evacuation Advisory to Pinecrest Lake.
We were there a month ago with The Crew.
I'm in the Zodiac with the rest of the adults towing the canoe with Jimmy and the younger kids, towing the oldest nephew on his surfboard. It's a no-tow lake. We like to see what we can get away with. heehee, just kidding. What they actually mean by 'no-tow' is no recreational tubing. We're just towing from the dock to our little cove on the other side of the lake. We've done this for 6 years and no one has stopped us. We're going very slow.

Jimmy and I did this ride on our ATV last year. 80% of where we were is now ash. Everything from the 1 minute mark, along with the hills in the background, are gone.


These cows were probably displaced. They're less than 1/2 a mile from the fire in this video. Those hills in the background are all gone.

Thankfully, the community has made a big effort to find places for cattle to be kept till the fire is over. There are various ranches that have opened their land for people to take their horses, cows, goats, etc. And the Red Cross shelter allowed you to bring your house pets.

Inciweb and My Motherlode have been good sources for fire updates.

Rim Fire

So. I suspect everyone knows about the Rim Fire near Yosemite that's burning out of control, right? Well, it started near Groveland, a small community on Highway 120 that goes to Yosemite. It's pretty far from our hideaway and we never would have thought we'd be threatened by it. There was just too much land between them and us for it to even get close. Well, as you probably know, the size of the fire grew exponentially and by Friday morning, it was within 8-10 miles from our cabin.

This was our regular weekend to go up. We left San Francisco after dinner Thursday night and expected to get there around 10:30pm. On the drive up, as we split away from Highway 120, we were able to see a shockingly huge orange glow in the distance to our right. But we still didn't realize how close it was to our place.

We started smelling smoke, but just thought that the wind was blowing the smoke in our direction, so of course we would smell it.

We got to the hideaway, the smell was very strong. But it was nighttime, so we couldn't see any evidence aside from some ash on the driveway. We had to open the windows because it was warm, but closed them before going to sleep because we had read that the air quality was unsafe and all windows should be kept closed during the duration of the fire.

When we woke up, we were shocked at how brown and gray the sky was. I called my cousin who was suppose to come up later that day with her family for a fun weekend on the boat and ATV. It was still early, so I was still convinced that the smokey haze was just that and not that it was close enough to actually be a worry. I told her they could still come up, but I was very concerned about them breathing the smoke, and that we wouldn't be able to go out on the boat or ATV. We decided it would be best to postpone our fun weekend for another time.


In the meantime, Jimmy left for a meeting at the water company and I read more about the fire online, realizing it was closer than I had thought...
Less than 10 miles from our cabin. Logically, I knew it was very unlikely to hit us because this community is relatively large, around 4500 homes in our and other nearby communities. I knew that the firefighters would do everything to save the homes and keep the fire away from this area. But I also know that fire has a mind of its own and wind plays a major role in what will happen. So I took video of all of our valuable possessions in case the worst happened and we needed that information for insurance.
And I started taking photos of as many momentos as I could. I have boxes of letters and cards Jimmy and I sent each other over the years. It would be sad if we lost the physical pieces of paper, but at least I've captured digitally what we wrote to each other.

Ashes collecting on our car, less than 15 hours after we got here.

There was a community town hall meeting at 2pm. We went with our neighbor, who is a retired Forest Service Firefighter, so he has a lot of experience and knowledge on what was happening.
I was surprised at how many people where there. All the seats were filled and several people had to stand. We guessed there were over 300 people there. They gave us a briefing of what was happening. Explained what the different evacuation terms meant and what we'd need to do if we received one. They let us know that the local fire department maintains a defensible space of clearing surrounding the town. And that there were over 1500 firefighters there to protect our homes and fight the fire. (As of this post, there are over 3000 firefighters working on this blaze.)

Afterwards, we left with our firefighter neighbor and drove towards Toulumne so he could get an eye on what the smoke was doing.
He was careful to say anything specific but he did express concern.
I took a few snapshots from the backseat.

You can see how dry the brush is, feeding fuel for the fire.

Here's a short video I took during the drive:


I didn't feel like making dinner, so we drove down to Sonora to pick something up. When we got back, we realized that our town had received an Advisory Evacuation Warning. That basically means that you don't have to leave yet, but get your emergency supplies and most treasured valuables near the door or in the car. If you receive an Mandatory Evacuation Order, you need to leave now and won't have time to collect your things. While I evaluated what to take back to San Francisco with us, Jimmy went over to the neighbors to get a little more information. We decided to wait till the morning to leave.

We both woke up early from the thick smell of smoke. We did a little research and it hadn't spread as much overnight as it had the past few days. But we still planned on leaving that day. I packed up 3 small boxes of our most important momentos. Just the rest of our letters and 2 boxes of my parents momentos. But we had to leave so much behind.
These are just some of the precious personal things we had to leave behind, not to mention all of our furniture, the boat, the ATV and the cabin itself that has been the source of so many of our most treasured memories.

While we were packing up the car, the neighbor came over and mentioned that the smoke coming from the area he was most concerned about looked a little bit better. Since we have faith in his expertise, we left feeling a little more hopeful. But we also know that winds can pick up and change things in the blink of an eye.

An assembly of firefighters gathered in our town for what looked like a briefing. We are so grateful for all of them, risking their lives to save ours and our homes.