Ocean Beach Style

Are you a young woman in her fifties? Here's a great new look for you.

Start with a pair of size L or XL Bjorn Borg's. Pull them way up. Tuck your shirt into your underpants. Talk about panache! Besides looking chic, his tucking-in alleviates the torture caused by the sewn-in-tag in back that feels like a big burr if you don't have time to find an X-Acto and remove it.

Squeeze into a pair of jeans that falls a little below your waist. Presto! Ready for Beach Java.

I Found a Map

Summer Time

Now that it's fall, it's much warmer and the weather is gorgeous. I'm wearing a t-shirt for the first time in months; and I put my Ugg's away.

8 Days a Week I Love You

Remember day-of-the-week underwear? Well, if you're size L, today is your lucky day. You can buy Bjorn Borg's for $2.29 each if you don't delay, act today. I ordered EIGHT PAIRS for $17.94, and when I heard that UPS package hit the steps this afternoon it was like sunshine on a cloudy day.

Some hints: Act now. Use the link above and start on about page 5. I'm convinced the reason these are still available 10 days after I ordered them is because their web site is the worst and you practically need to be a hacker in order to make it work. Use Firefox.

Saving Face

This wonderful movie just happens to be written and directed by Alice Wu. Alice Wu just happens to be the very last partner I had in our Daily Write "Round Robin" class, which ended last week.

I just finished watching it. The story, the actors, the music–where have I been all this time? You've got to see it if you haven't already.

Name That Tune

© Linda Davick

Happy Birthday, Lisa!

Happy Birthday, Lisa! Can you believe that I found three birthday cards for you this evening? You might even be inclined to share one with Ken Smith. You can choose which one. The other two are yours.

Prompt: Food Poisoning

That's Tom's sister Diane and her husband Marshall. The three of them are trying to decide what we should do for dinner.

We decide to have a bottle of wine and a cheese plate at that little bar in the Cliff House. It happens to be jazz night! A Latin Jazz group plays and Anna Estrada is singing. The music is so sweet and fun that a little girl gets up and spontaneously starts to dance in the middle of the triangular balcony, and the singer throws her some rattles.

Outside on the deck we order Chinese for delivery and when we get home, there it is. A delicious evening so far.

A few hours later on my way to the shower, I sit down on the bed. Then I find myself curled up on the bed talking to god! "Oh god. Oh man. Oh shit," over and over. I remember this same conversation from an earlier time in life, but this evening I know I haven't drunk too much. I feel nauseous and chilly and hot all at once and manage to open the window wide and collapse back on the bed, resuming the conversation.

Suddenly I know that if I can make it to the bathroom everything will be all right. I fling up the toilet lid and everything in the world I've ever eaten in my whole life exits the temple of my body orally.

All is well. I take a shower and get into bed. At 12:30 the whole thing happens again. At 3:30 it happens again. At 5:30 it happens again.

At 8:00 Tom receives a text message from Diane: "Marshall is sick. We need to cancel our trip to the farmers' market."

I'm still a little shaky--headache and stomach ache--but cognizant enough to realize that if there is ever a time to step on the scales, it's now. I know that over the course of the night I will have lost those 5 extra pounds. I take everything off including the earrings I had forgotten about. I step up, and I now weigh more than before.

Stephen Hawking has a new book out called The Grand Design. In it he says:

Regarding the laws that govern the universe, what we can say is this: There seems to be no single mathematical model or theory that can describe every aspect of the universe.


I'm going to order the book right away because I know it will explain how I can eat 5 pounds of food, throw up 10 pounds of food, and weigh five more pounds afterwards.

At any rate, by 6:00 this evening I'm ready for a walk on the Coastal Trail, and by 7:00 no Saltines for me–it's chile verde time!

Book Release Party

Our new book came out today! Janet Schulman wrote it and I drew the pictures.

It features the same ten kids who appeared in our Halloween book. They all live in a purple apartment building by themselves–no adults allowed. But they do have a cat.

It's called 10 Trim-the-Tree'ers.

Mood Swing

This is a mosaic by Sonia King called Mood Swing, and this post is about my giant mood swing yesterday.

Tom and I had bought tickets for the AIA S.F. Home Tours. This is the 3rd one of these extravaganzas that I've been on. They're always a bear because of traffic and parking. But there is always one house that makes it all worthwhile.

That house belonged to a mosaic artist named Sonia King. It was the next to the last house we saw. Before that, the trip was an endless trial of finding the house, finding a place to park, removing your shoes so you could enter the house, and being reminded of the rules: no photos, no children under 12, no opening anything that is closed or touching any surfaces or furniture, and no using the bathrooms.

Frankly it was exhausting. And to make matters worse I had agreed to go to the farmers' market at the Ferry Building with Tom beforehand, a place I equate with hell on earth.

In the midst of the tour, we stopped off at TipTop Shoe and Vacuum Repair to pick up a pair of Tom's hiking boots, and then went to the bank, and then sat down for what we thought would be a relaxing Mexican lunch which quickly turned manic. More exhausted than before we ate, we made our way to House #6: The Mosaic House in Golden Gate Heights. I fell in love with this house almost immediately after walking into it. It just had that ineffable "good feeling." It smelled nice too. We won't even go into the view. And I'm sure it cost millions, but that's not the point. All the houses on these tours certainly cost millions. But almost none of them have that indescribable good feeling.

Well, I ended up talking to a friendly woman who was standing by the window. She wore a big pink shirt and glasses. I didn't realize it for quite a while, but she ended up being Sonia King, the owner of the house. The house was full of her art work. I fell in love with her. But I fell in love with her house first, and with the pieces in her mosaics second.

Suddenly the tour came alive for me, and everything about the day was worthwhile. Have you ever had an experience like that? After spending time in her house we were so excited that we actually drove downtown to CB2 to look at a rug covered with striped bugs. But it was too brown. And after that we were stopped by the police and issued a ticket for driving in the bus lane. Even still, the day retained its magnificence.

Soon as I got home I looked up Sonia King on line. Was there a possibility that she might teach a class? Maybe I could make mosaics out of the beach glass I've collected. It turns out that this summer she's taught workshops in Istanbul and England ... but in November she'll be teaching a 3-day intensive at the Institute of Mosaic Art in Oakland. WHOA! I race over to the website to sign up. Sold out.

Bicoastal Breakfasts

Florida flapjack / San Francisco sushi

Five Lousy Pieces

It was a dark and stormy night.

Blanket

12-Minute Write

(Instead of a word or a phrase, today's prompt is a photo that looks like strands of pasta)

Tom is out of town and Tom cannot eat wheat. So Anne and Peter invited me over for a gluten fest this evening. We didn't have spaghetti. We had a gigantic Arizmendi pizza. With shitake mushrooms and peppers and basil added by Anne. Oh God, but the crust. Wheat! It was nothing like Amy's frozen gluten-free rice crust.

We began with some piano. They have a big black grand piano in their living room. I had brought over some Sofia sparkling wine, but last time we began with that Peter had a hard time playing the piano. So this time, we waited to open the bottle until Peter had played a few numbers. He began with Satie. Carmen picked up her squeaky toy and jumped up with Anne and me on the couch and squeaked along with Peter. He went on to some jazz and ended again with "It Had to Be You."

Then we poured the sparkling wine, and looked at a painting Anne had just had framed. It was a painting of her parents flying across the country to visit her. New York was on the right, and San Francisco was on the left. Her parents' suitcases were flying across the sky, and their black dog was waiting for them back in NY. I showed some animation I had just finished.

The only bad thing that happened was when Anne brought out this GREAT BELT by Joan & David that was too big for her. She always has something to offer me that is too big for her. I love it that she always has something to offer me that is too big for her. But this time, I tried it and was deeply disappointed to find that even though it was too big for her, it was still 6 or 7 inches too short for me. Peter then had to demonstrate how the belt fit him.

We talked about the show at the de Young--Anne went on and on about it. (Birth of Impressionism.) I had been bored and tired-out by it, but to her it was something else entirely. She had ridden her bike over and seen it today for the fourth time.

When the pizza came out, they asked how big a piece I wanted. I said I wanted a quarter of the pizza. They both said, "ALL RIGHT!" and smiled really big. I thought this was a strange response, so I asked how big a piece they were having. Peter quickly explained, "We just have different eating habits from you, that's all." I noticed they each took an eighth of the pizza instead of a quarter and wondered if that had anything to do with my belt problem.

For dessert we had homemade green tea ice cream with double dark chocolate brownies from Arizmendi.

Maybe tomorrow I'll have some spaghetti before I pick Tom up at the airport. But for now, Good Night.










a glutinous pizza

Eating Solo

I've been eating solo for a whole week because Tom has been out of town. If I published a cookbook of my diet, this art (found on the sea wall today) would be the cover.

I'm finding less and less beach glass. I'm wondering if beach glass season is drawing to a close. What seems to be all the rage now are those purple razor clam shells that are hinged open. The beach is littered with them.

Friday Nite

Found 9/1