Footnotes

I wont have time to blog while I’m away so I leave you with some photos from around Santa Cruz.

The O’Neil Cold Water Classic 2009

Tags: O'Neil Cold Water Classic, Sant Cruz

It was a beautiful dawn over Monterey Bay and that’s the last nice thing I have to say today.

Two years ago we bagged the house, had it filled with a noxious, killing gas to murder the termites, we moved into the Venetian Hotel because we were terrified of the gas and…now we’ve got termites again. Do these things not have any natural predators? They’re laughing at us. (Yes, the termite is a bad photo shop job but what are you going to do with a termite? Plus, I wouldn’t give it a place of  honor in my portfolio, it’s a nasty, voracious house eating critter.)

I wouldn’t have noticed for months but for the bad luck we’ve been having with our new siding and new double pane window in my office. Both of them leak when blustery winds push rain into the south side of the house. The old windows don’t leak. I caulked them myself so maybe that’s why. In any case, I had to wipe the water off the window sill this morning and saw termite poop.  I pulled back the blinds and saw the pin holes up in the window frame. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I’m not about to spend another $2,600 on a bag job. I’m willing to try the electrocution method although even that is a few hundred dollars. I’m away for the next two weeks though, in Connecticut, so the bugs can wait.

I wouldn’t mind spending another three days at the Venetian except it’s winter and we could be swept away.

It really is an adorable place with the cutest little kitchens, and if you’re lucky a view of the water in summer. In winter, well…just be ready to run if you’re on a ground floor.

After this week’s huge storms the beaches are a mess, what’s left of them anyway. Some roads are still inaccessible, especially those in the mountains.

Despite the termites and the leaks though, I’m glad we live on a piece of flat ground with no mud slinging hillsides anywhere near us. Buildings are starting to fall after this first series of storms, their cliffs undermined by the waves. Rivers of mud run-off are tearing through neighborhoods in San Diego where last year’s fires destroyed all of the plants and trees and there’s nothing left to hold back the soil.

Ok, I’m grateful. I just didn’t think I’d be dealing with termites again so soon.

Tags: termites

While we have our electricity back, I’d thought I’d squeeze in a post. Last night’s storm was tremendous and today’s is supposed to be a lot worse with very high wind gusts and a big swell. What’s so interesting about these storms is that we’re getting thunder and some lightening and that is a very rare thing here. We’ve got some flooding and power outages but so far nothing as horrific as southern California. The summer fires denuded the hillsides and mud is pouring out of the hills.

Tags: california storms

Two views from Coit Tower of the city and the bay.

Golden Gate Park

The Heads having a shower across from the Embarcadero.

I hope Pat’s is still there. The colors sucked me in the door. Breakfast was delicious.

Tags: california, San Francisco

45,000 eggs – 39,380 pounds of flour – 5,955 pounds of butter – 5,940 pounds of sugar and 1,870 pounds of chocolate a month and what do you get? Gayle’s Bakery and Rosticceria. She’s the cook when we aren’t up to the job and neither of us felt like cooking tonight. Jim has a cold and I wasn’t home long enough to throw so much as a bowl of cereal together.

Not only can she cook, she delivers exquisite customer service. Her staff are all on happiness drugs and no matter how crazy it gets, especially at the height of tourist season, they are unflappable.

So here’s my favorite Gayle’s story. It was a dark and stormy night. Really. It was dark when I got home from work, cold and pouring rain.  I found absolutely nothing in the pantry that I could cobble together into a meal. Since I was already wet and now hungry I went back out into the dark and stormy to pick up dinner.

When I got home and unloaded my bag on the counter, I discovered that the string beans were missing. Not a big deal except that I love the way Gayle’s does string beans and I had no veggies.  I called Gayle’s not to complain, just to get a “credit”…it’s an informal thing. If something goes wrong they take care of you.

I didn’t expect the Gayle’s van to pull into my driveway with a delivery of string beans and two free desserts.

So now I’ll talk about applesauce cake. It’s gotten a bad rep in health food stores because when you try to make it healthy (non fat) you get something that’s gluey and tastes like cardboard.  Why bother? Just eat an apple if you want to be healthy.

But if you want your applesauce cake to be moist and tasty, use butter. For an intense apple flavor use dried apples. Cut them up into half inch chunks, cook them in apple cider until they’re soft. Let the liquid reduce to a nice, sticky sauce. Try adding this to your favorite recipe. You wont be sorry.

I just finished “My Life in France” and I wish I had known years ago that Julia and Paul had the marriage of the century. They were so much in love and so well suited to one another. Love and butter. That’s all you need.

Tags: Julia Child, recipe

On Nova’s Science night I found out that humans have about as many genes as nematodes and that corn has way more genes than we do. Corn.  Why corn? We have to do a lot more than corn does on any given day. It’s hard to believe that we are who we are when we’re not much more than simple nematodes with brains. Apparently, there’s only a 3% difference between ourselves and monkeys. Or was it 5%? Either way, it’s quite clear that the basic building blocks of life are shared by a great many of us.  Why a Chapeau du Pain? Because I couldn’t make a hat out of corn bread, it’s too coarse and flaky. Wonderbread however is perfect. You should embiggen this one with a click to see the detail. I actually wore my bread hat to class. See my other artsy-fartsy food here.

Tags: humor, style

We like it best in winter when things quiet down a bit. This is the Venetian Hotel in morning fog, a far cry from it’s sister hotel in Las Vegas.

The lagoon in front of the hotel is a seasonal thing. When the rains begin and Soquel Creek starts to run fast  out of the mountains, it cuts a deep channel to the ocean.

In the big storms, the waves wash right through the Venetian carrying off the garbage cans, planters and anything else that’s not tied down. I was here the day the waves crashed over the wharf. Yeah, I got wet.

Tags: santa cruz beach

I loved this place from the first time I saw it on the cliff at Pleasure Point.

The Road House was built in 1902 with a saloon on the first floor and on the second floor were beds for “extracurricular activities” as well as a massage parlor. Bootleggers buried their contraband liquor in the sand below the cliffs during the 1920s.

It was later converted into a grocery store equipped with a gas station, and the upstairs rooms served as a motel.

Then it became a loosely organized commune of students, surfers, and wanna-be film makers, tenants who tended to stay for years – sometimes decades.

The small cabins were rented out separately and the kitchen, bathrooms and toilets were all in the main house, just a few short steps across the gravel drive.

Many years before the Roadhouse was torn down, a sculptor moved in and built a beautiful iron piece that turned slowly of its own accord.

I was always especially fond of the flower and vegetable gardens that were planted everywhere and lovingly tended. This cabin, with the crooked tree, is where my friend Oren lived for years. Even after he started school at Berkeley, he kept this cabin for weekends.

A lot of people tried to save the Roadhouse from demolition. Hopes were high that it would become an historic building but it needed a lot of work and when the elderly woman who owned it passed it along to her realtor daughters, that was the fatal blow.

A 38,000 square foot lot on the cliff above the ocean, with an unobstructed view, is destined to become a condo community next door to the other condo community…just another pile of boxes crammed into the lot.

Whenever I visited my friends there the main house was always sparkling clean and dead quiet. In fact, I only saw one person in all the years that I trooped through the place.

I finally met the woman who lived on the top floor of what used to be the barn. She had a skylight and a completely open floor plan. She had been there for over twenty years. It shook and rattled in storm winds but that never bothered her.

More photos on Page 2

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Tags: santa cruz

I finally had a chance to go downtown today to pick up my stash of books. I could see that the stash had grown overnight. Some kind elf, who hadn’t been available when I went in the first time, had added a few books on stroke to my collection. I’m leaving on the 12th to go to Connecticut to help my sisters take care of my sister. The little munchkin had a near-fatal stroke on top of having long standing diabetes.

I picked up the Diabetes Association’s list of food exchanges…note the word “list”. It’s a paperback book 603 pages long. I also got the Diabetes Cookbook for Dummies, a fabulous resource, as well as the Eating Well Diabetes Cookbook.  I guess it’s apparent that I’ll be cooking. And yes, I did read that 603 page monster. I also chose Outsmart Diabetes because I’m an arrogant bitch who believes it can be done. We shall see.

It isn’t very often that I get out of a bookstore unscathed. There were a few other goodies on display that I just couldn’t resist. Julia Child’s little memoir, A Life in France, is delicious. I already started this one. Her sister never worried much about the quality of her French and she made some hysterically funny mistakes. For instance, she went to a hair salon and meant to say – would you like to cut my hair before or after the shampoo? Instead, what she said was – would you like to cut my horses before or after the mushrooms? Her car got rear-ended in Paris and the guy who hit her drove off. She chased him down in her car and cornered him right near a flic (cop). She popped up out of the open sun roof and screamed at the cop – this shit-man just spat out into my butt! I’m sure I’ve made similar mistakes and people were too kind to mention it.

In addition I couldn’t resist What Einstein Told His Cook – Kitchen Science Explained.

The Brain That Changes Itself. I figure this one can’t hurt since my sister is having to create new pathways to replace the ones that got killed in the stroke and I might find some material I can use.

Collapse – How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed. This one is a bit depressing as it reveals the reasons behind the world’s great environmental collapses – Angkor Wat (I already knew about the bacteria in the water but not the whole story), the Mayans, the Anasazi, the Vikings,  even modern Montana in the Bitterroot Mountains. The author is the same who wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel – Jared Diamond.

Frankly, I miss the library. It’s a closed a lot now that we’re broke. I thought I had enough books to last through the holiday, I took out fifteen but..in this house books are like chocolate – they go fast.

These kiosks were put in after the earthquake in 1989. They are one of my favorite changes made to Pacific Avenue. Even after all this time, there’s still one hole in the ground though where Bookshop Santa Cruz used to be.

The weather changed for the weekend. Sunny and warm. I’ve been checking out Crash’s recent temperature charts on his blog and when I see all of those minus signs I can’t help but remember the day I was in Minnesota to nanny my mother and the temperature dropped to minus 28 degrees.

Tags: Life, santa cruz

This is why I don’t Twitter. Here we go with my day. I checked my email and cleared spam from my blog. Then I went off to the Museum of Art and History to meet Marlene and Judy for a Cafe au Something at Lulu’s. Lulu’s has three locations and the man who owns this little local chain has pulled the plug on laptops. Batteries only. He felt that he was getting too many students, staying too long and not buying enough.

The Museum of Art and History – December 2009

After the museum, I stopped in at the bookstore and having forgotten my Xmas gift certificate, all I could do was leave my pile for a pick up tomorrow. Then I went grocery shopping.

I drove home and put away tomorrow’s dinner. There’s was a note from the mail person that we had missed him and we could pick up the box or call to have it re-delivered. It was my Mac mini. Gigi called to ask if I’d like to take a walk around the neighborhood and of course I did. What luck, we came across the mail truck and I captured my Mac. We’ll be going out for an early dinner in Capitola at the Stockbridge…the place on the bridge.

That’s it. Well, there is one interesting tidbit. Jim emailed a security consultant who said that once the Mac market hits 10% of the total market, Macs will be ripe for targeting and it’s only a matter of time. I live for that day. This is why I don’t Twitter. Ho hum stuff is best kept to oneself. It’s bad enough that I’ve blogged such an uninteresting day.

Tags: Life, santa cruz