teresa

I have been noting good blog post ideas to myself lately without making the time to make any of them happen, so this will be a catch up post, filled with a string of events, thoughts, funny sightings - whatever pops into my mind reflecting on the recent weeks this Saturday morning.

Mom and I took a vacation a few weeks ago to San Francisco.  It was a great time.  Mom loves the city and I love to research and plan things to do.  We had such a full long weekend.  We went to Half Moon Bay, saw a Shakespeare in the park, saw Chihuly’s amazing work at the De Young, winded down Lombard Street in my car, waited our turn to go up Coit Tower, ferried it out to Angel Island to never go on the tour, saw a show - The Drowsy Chaperone at a beautiful SF theatre, saw a movie, went to the wharf and the beach, shopped, found the coolest neighborhood garden in Palo Alto, and went to a Giants Game! 

I posted many of our pictures here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elliottgoodwin/sets/72157606583191855/, unfortunately in a rush to get them off my camera I think I accidentally deleted like half of them from the end of our trip.  That has really been bothering me because they are lost forever…  I keep thinking they will some how mysteriously show up - just as they did disappear…  that is the downside of being a paranoid to do list manager as I am, sometimes you rush to get things done and things go wrong.  Deleting those pictures really makes me mad.

The other big recent event is I completed my first triathlon!  Deb and I did a triathlon near Lompoc where she lives.  It was such a great time and such an important personal milestone for me.  I set the goal of completing a triathlon either 1 or 2 years ago as a chance to set a goal that would make me learn how to swim.  I never learned to swim as a kid and am borderline afraid of the water.  So I did it, and it was so great to do it with a friend!  I will admit that the swim was in a pool so our next tri will be in open water, maybe in LV, we shall see we are still plotting.

Driving back from Lompoc I saw two older men at the pump next to mine at a gas station.  One of the nice men was cleaning his windshield as the other kept him company.  Then he started cleaning his entire car with the windshield wiper, he was so proud of his efficient use of resources.  His friend looked so embarrassed I think he would have climbed into the trunk if he could have.  I thought this was funny, i wondered how he answered the sometimes typical prompt after filling up his gas tank, Carwash?  Yes/No.

On my drive to and from Lompoc I also listened to 2 audio books.  On the way there I listened to Farewell my Subaru, as the proud driver of a fine all wheel drive Subaru that no longer makes as much sense where I live this title caught my eye.  It is about changing your life and reducing your impact to the environment.  He did that by moving to New Mexico, starting a ranch with goats and chickens, and parking his Subaru for a truck converted to run on biodiesel.  I liked it.  It could have been read a bit better.  The content was very enjoyable.  Don’t worry, I didn’t notice the humor in me driving 4+ hours to swim, bike and run while listening to a book about reducing your fuel footprint…

I drove back Saturday so that I could have Sunday to Burning Man shop.  Elliott and I have been on mad spending spree to prepare for our week + vacation to the playa.  This has included thrift stores for costumes, hardware stores for our shade structure, army surplus stores for costumes and shade, Target for misc supplies, you get the idea.  Well I spent all day running around to check as many things as I could off the check list, Elliott had a picnic with a group he is involved in so he was off the hook.  I did so good.  At the end of the day though I realized my Kulesza worry wrinkles were worse than ever.  These are those wrinkles on your phase between your eyebrows that develop from worrying particularly if your worrying is attached to your face, which seems to be a genetic disposition of mine.  I don’t think I ever noticed until a recent trip to Las Vegas when Kathi was pointing out everyone’s worry wrinkles.  I think she was thinking about shooting botox or who knows what else into hers.  Anyway mine are normally just vertical, although after a long day with customer service people that will never be as good as I was at Champs back in high school my visible dismay had turned horizontal showing 2 L’s on my forehead.  Elliott tried to rub them out for me.  I am not sure but I think I listened to a meditation on the ipod before going to bed which calmed me.

Work has been great, we are busy, with a new project that is pursuing LEED certification so we are enjoying some sustainable design as well as our efforts for sustainable living.  Today we will trek back to the farmers market for our favorite dates and whatever else shows up.  And we have a weekend full of BM prep, a party with some new friends that will be our playa mates, and probably some work intertwined in there too.   All with the vision of in a week and a few days I will be cruising on my fatty seat on my playa bike, in lord knows what kind of outfit, checked out from reality.  My blackberry will not work.  I will not be able to respond to little work things here and there as I usually do.  I plan to check out the art.  Write.  Take pictures.  Meditate.  Meet some new people.  Reflect.  And spend some awesome time with my love and friends new and old. 

I have had a day within a day and I would like to share it with you.

After leaving work, a little later than I should have I came home for a first.  Our first herb garden!  Elliott had to go out of town for an off site meeting so that left me to complete our seed planting.  Many of the seeds required soaking which was reminiscent of the wedding flowers, every cup out of the cupboards, filled with water and spread out on kitchen counters.  We didn’t get organized early enough in the weekend because of our special date to see the nerdcore movie so we didn’t start our soak until Sunday.

Tonight I had to prepare the pellets of soil by soaking them in water and then plant the seeds as instructed from 1/16″ to 1/4″ to 1/2″ deep.  I certainly hope that this measurement is not critical because I found this placement of the tiny seeds to be sketchy at best.  I started out spreading out the 3 seeds throughout the 2″ diameter pellet until after 2 or 3 I decided they could all go in the same hole in the middle.  I felt like a sushi chef, hunched over, with a spoon corralling the seeds from the glass and pouring them into the hole in the dirt, completing each implantation slowly and deliberately.  I kept a chart to know which herb was planted in which pellet, we have 2 of each including herbs like sage, basil, chives, mustard, and many more totaling 12.  We purchased the kit from www.herbkits.com.

After the herbs where planted and the lid installed  I walked to the grocery store in my “flip flops, flip flops” to purchase the remaining items I would need to make a broccoli salad.  Now all of this may sound normal to some of you but for those of you who really know me lets take a second to appreciate that I am starting a garden and cooking!  These are truly phenomenal steps for me.  I have had few hobbies at best the last few years and none of them have included cooking or gardening.

The cooking has been inspired by our recent efforts to go to the farmers market each week.  We started this as a step towards increasing our sustainability - buy local food.  It turned out it has also inspired us to eat more fruits and vegetables and to try new things.  So each Saturday we go to the farmers market, select our inspiration for the week (which has included a variety of mushrooms, eggplant, purple potatoes, green beans…) as well as our staples dates nan or focaccia for our weekly pizza dinner and so on and we are off.

So this week we bought broccoli which inspired us to make a knock off of the Costco broccoli salad.  The recipe I used is a blend between 2 I found on the internet:

• http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001949broccoli_salad.php
• http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/broccoli-salad-recipe/index.html

The second one suggested blanching the broccoli which before today I would have thought had something to do with this Golden Girl . But now I know that it means to drop food in boiling water for a short amount of time which I decided was a good suggestion.  I also followed the instructions to cool the broccoli in a bowl of ice water, the crackling of the ice made this step fun.  I modified the recipe slightly, this is a confident cooking move that Elliott taught me.  In lieu of red or purple unions I used the white onion I already had in the fridge and caramelized it using brown sugar (another trick Elliott taught me).  This is partly because Elliott doesn’t like red onions and partly because I already had white onion and didn’t want to waste it, besides it allowed for creativity.  Also I decided to exclude the bacon so the caramelized onion would add some extra flavor.  I liked the dressing of the second recipe better using honey instead of sugar.  I did use white instead of apple cider vinegar because we currently have an overstock of 2 bottles of white vinegar, a good reason why to check your cabinet while making your grocery list.  I included peas and will use raisins, although those are at the office so I will have to add them to my lunch tomorrow before enjoying.  The end product looks like: 

All of this was completed with the sound of the waterfall from our courtyard for better or worse and the slight breeze through the apartment that every once in a while catches the vertical blinds and sends them dancing into each other for a few moments, “click clack, click clack”.

Tonight I will turn in by myself and will look at the soft glow of our sun in a jar.  A pretty cool gift that my Vistage group gave us as a wedding present along with some other goodies.  The sun jar is a solar panel with rechargeable batteries and a little light.  It charges during the day and lights up at night, pretty cool.

To more nights full of planting and cooking, who knew how fun it could be!  Of course the only thing that would have made it better besides raisins and a green thumb is Elliott.

As I was begging Elliott to go to the city pool with me the other day to do laps I realized something abot myself.  He said he didn’t want to go and he would let me test it out, see how it works and then he would go with me.  Thats when I realized how being brought up to notion that if you show weekness or fear your brothers will sing the chrorus of the song ‘don’t cry out loud’ really changed my life.  I fake, act, pretend whatever I have to when I am dolng something that is new, foreign, or scary.  I walk in there like I know exactly what I am doing.  For the most part I am very thankful for this.  It allows me to try new things and get out there. 

Analyzing it further I realize this mentality does affect much of my life.  When I was a new engineer I think I asked very limited questions because I wanted to look like I knew what I was doing.  This was dangerous because the first few years of learning are critical.  At meetings with a new client I have to force myself to ask questions for understanding about their process or procedure.  Because showing a lack of knowledge or understanding is totally against my grain.

Another reflection, one of the interesting parts of married life for us has been recently we have both not been as flexible.  I think right before the wedding we were both very flexible, I guess you could say walking on eggshells, we both did what we could to keep the other happy.  Now that the stress of the big event is over we are both working to recharge.  And neither of us is being as accomodating as we were before.  So I went to the pool by myself.  Walked in there like I knew what I was doing.  Found the women’s locker room - success.  Located a lane that I could use.  And I swam over 500 yards.  I think that the lifeguard was probably sure I didn’t know exactly what I was doing as I think my swimming form is still pretty rough.  That doesn’t matter though.  I needed to prove to myself I could do it becuase Deb and I are going to do a triathlon early next month and it is a 500 yard swim.  So now I just want to do it faster, or really with less breaks which will make it faster.

So believe it or not I would like to thank my brothers for toughening me up.  Teaching me to hide my feelings.  Because that has allowed me to do and experience things that I might not have wanted to do, instead I seek out the scary to conquer!  I do however balance that toughness with a reminder that it is good to ’show your feelings’ to those you love.

Elliott went to a function tonight in SF and I stayed here told hold down the fort in the East Bay.  When we talked about his plans to go to this event I told him, oh no… dinner by myself and free to do whatever I want, what will I do (filled with sarcasm and anything but a hint of imagined loneliness).

After I dropped him off at the BART station I went by Subway for a meatball sandwhich dinner, alway a good back up plan and I went back to work.  I “worked” only a little.  Cleaned up the piles and moved paper around.  Then I went through some of emails that I tend to save up of things to do.  Like we want to go to a San Jose Earthquakes soccer game, so I had an email reminder in a folder, so I ordered tickets and deleted the email.  I had some SWE business to catch up on so I did that as well.

Soon the minutes faded into another and before I knew it, it was 9pm.  The lights flickered, the automatic building energy managements way of telling me they would be shutting off for good unless I called in with my secret code to override it.  I called in another hour of light but I am not sure if the system is on Colorado time or what but they shut off anyway.  Oh well, the building’s way of telling me to go home, which I did.

On the way I home with my bag of industry journals, business newspapers, and dishes from the office to wash at home (we don’t use paper plates anymore, its a green thing) I realized something.  It is a Friday night.  Elliott went to SF and I stayed at work because lets face it I don’t have anything else to do.

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Its funny how traveling within the US can still seem foreign.  First of all I am not sure why but apparently they do not believe in toilet seat covers in Colorado.  Until today we had been all over, public, private, one-holers and fancy restrooms - none of them had toilet seat covers.  Funny thing is the toilet seats have been cleaner than seats I have seen anywhere before which to me might seem like a contradiction.  Today I went to the restroom in the lobby and went to sit down, indoctrinated into the Colorado way, when I saw toilet seat covers next to the toilet paper, I was amazed, seat covers!  While we are on the topic I also saw my first dual flush toilet in a restroom in a building of artist studios, where we had stopped to enjoy a coffee.  The building was very “green” and these toilets allowing for #1 or #2 flushes are very popular, it was cool to see one in person instead of in a magazine.

Another observation, while driving today.  Nearly all cars going only 5-10 mph over the speed limit.  All in their own lane, charging along happily and friendly.  There were a few cars who were in a hurry, but these people were not the majority.  After driving in California for a year this felt strange.  This is typically the scene only after passing by a speed trap and it usually only lasts 45 seconds.

Our honeymoon although not to a foreign country has still provided some interesting cultural experiences.