Big Sur and our Anniversary

Friday was our fifth anniversary and so we went to Big Sur to celebrate. Of course we didn't realize that everyone gets married in October and so Big Sur was experiencing its prime wedding season. We were thinking that we wouldn't have a problem finding a room or a campsite. We were wrong. Why is it that so many of my travel stories include that sentence?

On the way up we made the obligatory stop to check out the elephant seals (and ground squirrels that are there to check out the tourists) along the coast.

By the time the sun was setting on Saturday we had made our way completely through Big Sur and had found that there was nothing available. Every campsite was full and even the hotels that charge a minimum of $900/night were fully booked.

But we got lucky. Gary, at Big Sur Lodge, had taken a reservation 90 minutes before we showed up from a woman who did not provide a credit card to hold the room and promised to arrive within ten minutes of her call. Since she hadn't arrived by the time we got there, Gary called the Big Sur restaurants to see if she had stopped for a meal and, when he couldn't find her, he released her room to us. While we were filling out the paper work, three other groups arrived hoping for a room. We literally got the last spot in all of Big Sur and Gary called around to verify that for us and the other people who arrived later.

Big Sur Lodge isn't on the ocean but it is in one of the state parks with some lovely trails and a small waterfall. After spending a night in front of the fireplace we got up bright and early to try and beat the wedding guests to the trails. We largely succeeded.

On Sunday we drove up to Marina to visit a friend of Marius' and have lunch at English Ales, yeah, that's right, we had "lunch." English Ales is a microbrewery that has been around a little bit longer than we've been married that makes a wonderful and tasty variety of beer that you can find throughout California. We needed to try the sampler of course. It arrived in a set of little 4 oz. glass steins that I had to largely consume so that Marius could continue driving. I thought the sacrifice was rather big of me.

That night we were able to find a campsite and then hiked down to the beach just after dawn.

The weather was lovely although it was a bit overcast at times. Even with all of the people that were in the area, Big Sur is large enough that we were largely alone for most of the time. We just have to go back again when the wedding crowd doesn't make it impossible to get a shower.

political content may not be appropriate for all ages

I have to vent. I don't know how many of you were aware of this but the Bush appointed deputy commisioner at the FDA and then later Bush appointed commissioner of the FDA (now ex of both positions thank god) is on my sh*tlist and has been for many years.

His name is Lester Crawford. He is a man who wrote books suggesting that women suffering from PMS or menopause should help their medical situations by praying more. I have no problem if you feel that prayer helps you to improve your personal well being. I have serious problems with people telling women that they don't pray enough when they are suffering from a medical condition (except perhaps when they can't provide any other form of treatment). This is the man who was in charge of the continued fiasco concerning Plan B (morning after pill). For those that did not keep up with that issue: Plan B had been up for approval as an over the counter drug for years. Congress approved his appointment on the condition that a decision be made concerning the status of Plan B. Congress did not require that he approve it for sale as an over-the-counter drug despite the fact that the FDA's external review committee determined that it was the safest drug to be evaluated by the FDA in decades. Once he was appointed he claimed that they could not make a decision due to a law forbidding drugs to have two different statuses (stati?) since he wanted to make it available as an over-the-counter drug only to women who were not minors.

Oh and did you know that he is a veterinarian by training? Yes he also has a degree in pharmacology but still...

Shortly after he was appointed to head the FDA he resigned. There was much gossip about the reasons why. It would appear that we now know why.

Yup. On top of it all, the man is a bona fide crook. There is no evidence that he profited from his crime which makes him a stupid crook.




Fiber related content. I have just cast on the back of Durrow for the third time. Not once has it been the fault of the pattern. The first time I switched sizes half way through working it and had just finished it when I noticed this. The second time was today when I realized that my gauge had grown significantly since the first time I knit it. Fortunately it's a quick knit. Of course, by the time I finish the back, I could have been nearly done withe sweater if I had been paying attention.

My Yixing Teapots

Thuy asked me to put up photos of my pots. So here they are (minus one as it is very delicately carved on the outside and I have yet to take a photo of it that allows you to see the carving).

What is a yixing teapot? It's a pot made from clay found only in Yixing, China. It comes in different colors and different textures but the main characteristic for which tea drinkers seek it out is that the clay is very porous. Many claim that the clay acts as a sort of filter. I'm not sure about that but I do know that if you take a tea and drink it in a normal glazed cup and then pour the tea into a cup made from the clay, it does taste subtly different. People talk about old teapots having sorbed so much tea over the years that tea leaves are no longer needed to brew a pot of tea in them. Since most people suggest that antique pots be sterilized before use I have a hard time believing the story but it's a nice one.

They are traditionally used to brew oolong teas. Tea leaves are often oxidized or fermented when the are harvested. Green teas are not oxidized at all, while black teas are completely oxidized. Oolongs are any tea that falls between green and black teas. I tend to prefer those closer to black teas but there are many excellent oolongs that are very close to green.

First up is my sad broken pot. You can see the crack in the lid and the glue on the side of the dragon head. What you can't really make out from the picture is that the lid doesn't quite fit into its opening anymore. It used to fit perfectly to the point that it wouldn't fall out when you poured tea.







Below is the same pot from straight on. You could almost pretend that it isn't broken except for the poorly fitting lid and the funny looking eye on the left (the crack runs through the glaze of the eye).














Next is the now infamous pot from my mother (see earlier post about my move). Very cute but not very functional and machine made.














I didn't mention that my father also gave buying me a teapot a shot when he was in China on business. It was a complete surprise for me so I didn't have the chance to warn him that they tend to cost more than your average teapot. He suffered a rather severe case of sticker shock. Still, while this isn't a very well made pot, it is at least partially done by hand and it took a couple of years before I saw similar ones for sale in the United States. It does have a flaw in it that prevents it from being used but we won't tell my Dad that given all of the effort he went through to bring it to me.




















And the last one is my very first teapot. I had recently discovered single estate teas (and you can too) and oolongs when my local tea shop (which happens to be one of the finest in this country) had their annual yixing teapot fest. Since these are the pots in which you traditionally brew oolong I felt that I needed one. For an inexpensive pot, this is a remarkably well done locust and if Marius hadn't packed it full of wet leaves during one of our moves, I'd still be using it to brew tea (it grew mold by the time we unpacked it).

More information on toxins: produce

Since folks seemed to enjoy getting the link to the Skin Deep data base I wanted to quickly post a link to a new study the EWG did on the presence of pesticides in and on store bought produce.

The idea is to provide information on those items most likely (and least likely) to hurt you if you don't buy organic. My peaches and apples will all be organic from here on out or I won't eat them. 96% of all fruit tested had detectable pesticide residues AFTER WASHING!!!!

Yikes.

neighbors can be a bad word sometimes

Last week I was walking to the gym in our complex when I heard very young kittens screaming. They were wandering out of a neighbor's patio area (fenced off) and so I shouted to try and get the woman's attention inside. I figured they were hers.

Nope. Not hers. Their mother just showed up a few weeks before and gave birth to them. They were screaming because the woman hadn't seen their mother in a few days and so she figured that the thing had been killed. She made a big fuss about how she is always calling animal control and how every cat within a twenty mile radius comes to give birth on her patio. So I asked her if she was going to call animal control seeing as how the kittens were going to just continue screaming and she had made it very clear how annoying this was.

She responded with something along the lines of "I suppose I should," sighed and then vanished from the window. I called up again to ask if she was going to call. Her entire manor suggested that she hadn't vanished to go to the phone and make the call. The same woman came back and replied "no, she probably won't." As if she were talking about another person!

Pissed off, I picked them up and drove them to the animal shelter figuring that if they were killed there, at least they wouldn't die slowly and painfully.

What is it with some people? All she had to do was pick up the phone and someone would have come to get the animals that were annoying her so much.

So yesterday I'm walking in from my car and I see her standing next to her car with the hood up. She is clearly having car problems and is on the phone giving detailed directions to someone on how to call AAA for her. If it hadn't been for the welfare of the animals, I'd feel guilty that I was somehow enabling this odd behavior. WTF?

I can wear nail polish again!

Okay, I'm jumping the gun here because phthalates are just the tip of the iceberg, but it's progress. They haven't mentioned a word about removing toluene.

"Powered by EWG's Skin Deep database, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and thousands of concerned consumers like you pressured Orly International, OPI Products, and Sally Hansen to remove a toxic chemical from nail polish. The ingredient, dibutyl phthalate (DBP), has been linked to birth defects, is banned from use in cosmetics in Europe and is considered a reproductive toxin by the state of California."

If you haven't looked at the Skin Deep database, you should. You can look up any cosmetic or personal care product you use and find out to which toxins you are exposing yourself. Getting phthalates removed from nail polish is huge because it generally isn't identifiable in a list of ingredients and you have to contact the manufacturer to find out if one of the ingredients listed contains the toxin. They will often tell you that their products contain less than the legal amount but when you are using umpteen products that all contain toxins, you can imagine that there might be an issue.

Even many "organic" products contain preservatives that have been linked to breast cancer so it's best to be as informed as possible.