fashion/garment district photos

Well we're still biting finger nails over Marius' job interview. We were told we would hear today but didn't and so we figure they are still having a hard time reaching Joel.
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However, Jo and I had a great time exploring the fashion district in LA this weekend. So much so that she is now arranging a return with several of her friends from work for early December.

What's so great about this area? Well, we didn't go to any of the clothing or accessory shops in the area. We limited ourselves to the fabric intersection of Maple and 9th. We hit the "mall" first and fell in love with many fabrics. Although we didn't find much at the famous Em-Be's Fabrics , we did right across the hall at Niki's where they even did a burn test for us before we bought.

However, before we could commit to buying any fabric we felt we needed to see as much as possible. As a result our first purchases were beads and findings. Very inexpensive beads and findings at that. The string of agate below was only $20!!!

and a close up of a couple of them...

I also found leather lace super cheap. Each spool below is 100 m and I only paid $14 for each of them. I'll knit them up into a bag like one I did a few years ago with cotton suede tape that may not last much longer. It was space dyed so I used linen stitch. Stay tuned for swatches for the new bag.

When we had finally exhausted the nearby fabric shops (and nearly all of our energy), we returned to Niki's to buy fabric. Jo bought five different fabrics for a fire bird (bird not the car) quilt she's working on and I got this butterfly brocade. Some day it will be a jacket.

While, it wasn't expensive in the grand scheme of things, it was for the garment district. I'm sorry I'm switching names here but when I was double checking store names I realized some people refer to the rodeo drive area as the fashion district. We certainly didn't go on a shopping spree there!

In an attempt to fend off urges to buy it I gave into an evil, evil, man who kept lowering his price on this other fabric until I ended up paying only $2.50/yd. It isn't silk or even part silk like the butterfly fabric but at $2.50/yd. who cares? Not me certainly!

Of course buying it didn't serve it's intended purpose as I clearly went ahead and bought the butterfly fabric as well. Oh well.

Here we are once we finally made it back to Montclair. Notice the ever-present shiny forehead I'm sporting. This time I felt like the activities of the day could actually explain it if nothing else. It was fun and we were exhausted!

urgh and ice cream

Okay, I had no time to even get the photos off of the camera much less shrunk to upload to blogger.

Instead, for today's post I feel the need to gloat. I dragged (yes, much arm twisting was involved here folks) Joanne to Handel's Homemade Ice Cream stand last night. While there, we noticed that they had posted a list of the 10 best ice cream places in the U.S. since they were ranked number one. I must admit that their hot fudge is pretty good but they are many places and so not so very deserving of a good gloat. However, second on the list is Dr. Bob's ice cream. Now they are deserving of a gloat. They were closed last night, today and tomorrow but I promise a full report with photos on Tuesday when they are open again. They have an entire line of ice cream that uses Scharffen Berger Chocolate AND the only place where you can get an ice cream cone with their ice cream is in the next town over. Yeah baby!

Oh, yeah. We also find out if Marius got the job in St. George tomorrow (we think). Keep your fingers crossed!

Fashion District

Joanne, a friend from college, is visiting this weekend from Flagstaff.

We were supposed to go camping in Joshua Tree but (again, always with the buts) it's peak season there so there wasn't a campsite to be found.

Instead we went to the Fashion District in LA. An obvious alternative to rock climbing eh? We hit every fabric, bead and notion shop within five block of the 9th and Maple intersection and spent way more money than we should have.

I didn't want to lug our SLR around with us but I'll take photos of everything tomorrow and post them.

If you've never been and you do anything that involves fabric, you need to go.

Running out of fingernails to chew

So Marius wrote a quick email to the folks in St. George.

It turns out that they can't reach Joel, our Ph.D. advisor. Those of you who are at all familiar with Joel are groaning right about now. The man is notoriously difficult to reach much less get a response from unless you are standing in front of him.

It's funny. For a job that I would almost be happy if Marius didn't get, and that I was certain just yesterday he would get, I'm very nervous. He really wants this job and in his heart of hearts is really hoping that I don't get a position someplace else. I don't mind this since he is willing to take my ambitions into consideration and WILL leave if I get a great job someplace else. Since it is so important to him though, I hope this comes through even if he ultimately leaves it for me.

We've been told that he will hear from them on Monday regardless of their success at reaching Joel (who knows what that means, that they'll call to let him know they're still having problems?). Keep your fingers crossed folks.

cooking with intention photos

We had enough of the black-eyed peas and Swiss chard left over last week that I was able to take a photo of it. Don't be afraid, the photo was taken the night after I made the meal. It's hard to tell with the contrast of the chard but those black-eyed peas really are pink. It was a very girly looking dish that tasted really good. This photo is of the only left-overs and they were gone by lunch the following day.





And I used the cream I bought during my frustrating shopping trip yesterday, but not in the way I originally planned. For various reasons we decided we needed mushrooms last night. I don't know if the rest of you feel this way about mushrooms but Marius and I periodically have cravings for them. Normally I just dump them in a pan with some olive oil but since I signed on for the cook-along, it seemed like doing something else with them was required.




I had a huge bag of dried shiitake [sic] mushrooms I had bought a while ago at an Asian supermarket in the City of Industry so I reconstituted them and used that water to cook some really nice fettuccine I got at Whole Foods.







All of this super nice pasta you hear me mention is all the fault of reading Heat. Buford starts repeating Mario Batali's thing about how sauce should be a condiment to your pasta if you have really good pasta. Me, I've always drowned the pasta in sauce so I wanted to give the sauce as condiment approach a try. But I figured, a little sauce wasn't going to be good on crappy pasta. Not that I know good pasta but the book gives some descriptors (surface like sandpaper or a cat's tongue) and I found something at the store that matched.


Very scientific of me, I know.


I made the cream and butter sauce from Hazan's book which is just a cup of heavy whipping cream heated with 2 tablespoons of "good" butter until it thickens. You turn off the heat and cook the pasta and at this point I threw the largely softened mushrooms into the sauce hoping they would absorb some of it. That worked so well that I had considerably less sauce than before so I topped it off a bit and heated it again (fortunately the dried mushrooms could take it) and then added the cooked pasta. You toss it until coated and then add 2/3 a cup of Parmesan cheese (or more if you're me) and pinches of salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste and toss again.





And a close up:



I know some of you are sitting there wondering if I've lost my mind using shi(i)take mushrooms in an alfredo sauce. If it makes you happier, call it fusion cooking or some such nonsense. All I know is it tasted great and it definitely satisfied our mushroom craving. A tasty heart attack on a plate that is ready in about ten minutes. It turns out that super nice pasta (or at least super nice fettuccine) cooks in about four minutes. Next time I'll use chicken and put lemon zest in as all of the cooks seem to be doing these days.

pet peeve #1

I was at the supermarket (to get cream for the linguine obviously) when I discovered a new pet peeve. Since I'm supposed to be blogging every day, I figure 3x a day will make everyone so much happier -don't you agree? So I'll share.

I was walking around the produce section (of a major chain that shall remain nameless since I'd rather you all imagine me at the local farmers' markets or at least at Trader Joe's) where they have set up t.v.'s playing videos about the produce. Primarily they have some guy showing you how to cook things in a way that you could never duplicate given your lack of note taking material but that's okay since you're really shopping and are only barely paying attention.

Today the video was to entice you into playing with root vegetables. It's autumn and most of us start thinking about squash, meat and root vegetables as a good idea so it makes sense. They had lovely images of things that I immediately thought would make great dinner material (clearly the purpose of the video). I go to look for said root vegetables.

Do I find them?

Of course not.

They don't have a single root vegetable for sale that they don't carry year round (meaning carrots and potatoes).

WTF! Here they are, clearly paying a great deal to reach my subconscious and insinuate the thought to buy what they want me to buy (and quite successfully I must say again) and yet they don't have the friggin' stuff for sale! If I weren't going out of town this weekend, I'd just realize it was fate reminding me how much better the farmers' markets are. But I will be going out of town this weekend so I wasn't even left with that solace.

Hence, this is now a new pet peeve. Supermarkets take note. If you don't have the stuff for sale, don't try and convince me to buy it. It only results in me associating your store with serious frustration.

Seriously.

cooking with intention gone awry

So last night I had some very high-end (non-machine extruded) linguine that I planned to serve with Hazan's cream and prosciutto sauce. But when I went to start dinner I discovered that while we had nearly all of the ingredients we had no cream. Given that we both take cream with our coffee and we drink coffee every day, this was a bit of a surprise.

So we just broke out the standard comfort food of pasta carbonara. If you haven't tried it with whole wheat spaghetti, I suggest you do. The flavor really accentuates the simple sauce. I never make it with regular pasta these days because the whole wheat is so much better. I have to admit that I don't follow a recipe for carbonara. I just throw olive oil, garlic and bacon into a pan to heat, add the cooked spaghetti and toss, crack 2-3 eggs on top and toss and then add a ton of chopped fresh parsley and toss. Only once or twice have the eggs cooked too fast and ended up as bits of egg with noodle as opposed to sauce.

If I have a chance to get to the store before this evening, I'll cook up the linguine tonight and post photos of it all.

elections

I am very grumpy today. Not with blogger but with the state of California.

When I moved from Santa Barbara at the end of the summer, I sent in my change of address form to the DMV and checked the box to change my voter registration. I never received a new voter card or anything which made it virtually impossible for me to vote yesterday. I was told I could have driven back up to Santa Barbara and probably voted but who is going to drive for six hours to vote? I'm not that much of a patriot.

However, the election went exactly as most expected for the state so I suppose I can take comfort in the fact that scary propositions were all shot down. However a few propositions I was in favor of also went down.

I honestly believe that if California doesn't dump a ton of money into alternative fuel research, no one else will. The whole accountability thing was a red herring since NSF isn't expected to produce specific results. They are expected to keep track of the research they fund and to not continue to fund unproductive research programs. Most folks would agree that that's reasonable and there was nothing said to indicate the new research program in California would not have done likewise. Sadly the state fell prey to the huge advertising campaign funded by the oil companies claiming that it would raise gas prices. This is in spite of the fact that FactCheck.org did an independent analysis showing that if it did raise prices, it would be so minimal as to not have an effect on the state budget or consumers.

Maybe next time.

Philadelphia and the Main Line

I had so much fun visiting Bryn Mawr again. It's always nice to find out that the students from your alma mater are as intelligent and motivated as you remember.

I gave a math heavy lecture on applying game theory to ecology in the morning. Given that I had only arrived the evening before and it was 6am PST (9am EST) it went rather well. Students asked good questions and there may even be one that ultimately wants to do similar research in grad school (the ultimate compliment). I then had a chance to eat lunch with some undergrads in my old dorm and talk about getting into grad school, being a female scientist and all of that fun stuff.

In the afternoon I gave a seminar on my dissertation research and nearly every one seemed to enjoy it and find it interesting. I also had an opportunity to reconnect with an old acquaintance who was the only other ecologist Bryn Mawr produced during the 90's. She is there for the year teaching classes for a faculty member on sabbatical for the year.

The next day my parents drove up from D.C. and we spent the day in Philadelphia's art museums. Here I am at the Gates of Hell at the Rodin Museum. This is a project that Rodin worked on his entire life. The only reason it looks the way it does today is because he died and wasn't able to keep working on it. His studio used to store it wrapped in wet cloth so that he could continue messing with it.

Next is my father and me inside the museum in front of the Burghers of Calais. This was a commission from Calais who expected the figures to be depicted in a very heroic manner. They were very upset when they saw the finished product as Rodin's style was to show real emotion. Each man in the piece is based on one of his friends whom he had read the story of the siege of Calais and then chose one of the men to model for Rodin.

We also made it to the Philadelphia Museum of Art right down the road but we found out that the art my father was interested in seeing again had been a temporary visiting display and the pieces were no longer there. Instead we had a nice time wandering around looking at the great impressionist collection they have there. Here I am with my mother in front of "the pond."

That evening when we got back to the hotel we alarmed to hear an employee apologizing to a guest for being unable to find a dinner reservation before 9:30 for that evening at any of the local restaurants. My dad is not a night owl and cannot handle eating late. So we went back to our rooms and I flipped through the hotel guide and started calling around. On the first try I got a reservation for 6:30 (a bit early for me but just fine for my dad) at a place called Savona. I had never heard of the place, nor had my parents. The description in their little ad looked fine though so we headed out... and hit the jackpot!!!!

This place is fantastic. If you are in the area and can afford a rather expensive meal (entrees ranged from $30-50 and there weren't many bottles of wine for under $100, although we did find one that was good), go to eat at this place. Below is the only photo I have of us there because we were too busy eating to think of photographing the food. I had a venison steak with a mushroom flan, a currant and chestnut risotto and wilted brussel sprout leaves. It was excellent. It was incredible. It tasted wonderful and interesting at the same time. And I am a bit jaded when it comes to good restaurants as I have found that many do not deserve their reputations so that is saying something. My mother had a dover sole that was perfect and felt very indulgent and my father had lobster that was good but he learned he wasn't a big fan of gnocchi that was the base for the dish. For desert we split a serving of chocolate four-ways which consisted of coconut white hot chocolate, raspberry and chocolate swirled panna cotta with raspberry foam, vanilla sugar cookie and 64Valrhona gelato sandwich and (my favorite) a dark chocolate and hazelnut creme brulee. I will dream about this food.

mail order husband?

Okay, this is cheating a little bit since my flight back from Philly got in late this evening and I have no energy to really post.



I'm not sure if Summers is still reading my blog but I had been promising her a S. African mail order husband for about a year now. Don't get excited Summers, he isn't in the U.S. yet (although you will be the first to know when he is). I just wanted to post a little teaser. This photo is from years ago when we were living in Oak Park, IL and Jaco visited us en route to Chile from where his plane to Antarctica departs (he's a meteorologist for an adventure company that supports trips to Antarctica -did I tell you?). His only flaw is that he spends half the year down there every year. Otherwise he is a good and charming man who knows how to treat a woman. Still interested?

the happy parents to be

Here is my college roommate and her husband Farooq. Let's hope they like the baby stuff I got! I'll try and get pictures from Jen once the baby is around to actually model the stuff.

Needless to say, I am also knitting up a storm for this kid. Fortunately Jen isn't due until after the holidays so I have a prayer of getting it all done along with my holiday knitting.

Oh and I've changed the nablopomo symbol for Jeanette. While this one implies an equally violent fate, it seemed better suited given that I'm and ecologist and all (and really dislike handguns).

And just in case anyone missed the irony, earlier today (meaning less than half an hour ago!) I complained about how I had been posting every day but blogger dated the posts for the day I started writing each one so it looked like I had posted three times on Wednesday. What do I do? I go insane and post three times on Saturday morning. Eh, I'm still stuck in the hotel outside of Philly waiting for my parents to drive up from D.C. to visit so what else am I going to do, work or something?

St. George and the two body problem

So this is a post I wrote just before going out of town so that I could upload it in case of limited internet access. However, looking it over, there really isn't anything I feel should be changed and it's what's going on in my life right now. So having figured out the issue with blogger dating posts, this should come up as being posted today instead of yet another Wednesday post.

Most folks don't realize that something like 90% of all female PhDs chose people with PhDs as their life partners. This number is much lower for male PhDs (this implies that there must be many more male PhDs than I ever met but the pattern does seem to hold true based on my own experience). This makes finding tenure-track positions that much harder because you have to find two in the same geographic area when finding one can often be difficult enough. To some extent I'm fortunate as Marius has no interest in a position that requires research. While those jobs are not necessarily any easier to come by, it is much easier to find a position that requires research and a position that doesn't in the same town compared to trying to find two research positions.

Last weekend Marius and I made a frantic drive out to southern Utah so that he would be on time for a job interview he had out there at Dixie State College (yes, that's really their name and no, they don't think it's funny -the area used to grow cotton, badly which is why they don't any more but they kept the name).

I was completely freaked out to be honest. I have heard stories about how Utah Mormons can be a rather exclusive group out of fear that their children might grow up to marry non-Mormons. When I posted to some of my list groups about it, I heard more of the same. We have no problems with Mormons but we don't enjoy the thought of being ostracized from the community we live in because of our faith (or lack thereof). Of course the whole reason he applied for the job is because St. George (where Dixie State is located) is less than an hour from Zion and Bryce.

He rocked his interview and I fully expect him to get a phone call on November 10th with a job offer. Fortunately he also asked the hr guy he had to interact with some pointed questions about the community and got really great reassuring answers. In addition, the pay isn't bad, the benefits are unusually excellent and the cost of living is much lower than any place we've ever lived. Plus, they will happily offer me a job the next time they get funding for one.

BUT (and you knew that was coming didn't you?) they have no money to facilitate research. I don't need much since my research is funded externally but I do need a greenhouse and grants don't generally cover construction of buildings.

Ugh. So if I went out there I'd have to give up my research program. I don't talk about it much here on the blog but I derive a great deal of satisfaction from my research and feel that I am making a significant contribution to the field of plant ecology every time I design a new experiment. Most plant ecologists don't consider the fact that plants can interact directly with each other (i.e. plants communicate with each other using chemicals instead of sounds) and so there are big gaps in our understanding of plants that I am working to fill. There are only two other people remotely interested in the topic in the U.S. and three labs working on the topic outside of this country. To give it all up would create some hard core regrets sadly.

So, if Marius is offered the job, we've agreed he can accept it (assuming they pay him enough and all that) and I can spend the next 18 months looking for a job that will allow me to continue with my research. If I get one and there are opportunities for Marius to teach in the same area, we will both move out to where ever the new job is. If I don't get one in the next 18 months, I will have tried my best and I will move out to St. George and teach. This isn't giving up lightly. If I don't get a job that I want in the next 18 months, it's unlikely that I ever will. And it isn't that I dislike teaching, I love it. I just also love my research. Even if I ultimately move out to Utah, it isn't all bad. It's hard to complain when the view outside of your windows looks like this:

and there are five-ten state and national parks within a 30 minute drive. Yes, there are much worse things in life.

grumpy with blogger

Okay, so I have been posting while out of town. Before I left I started some posts and saved them in the off chance that I didn't have a connection at my hotel but could steal a few minutes on a college computer to upload a post.

When I discovered I had a real connection where I was staying I opened up those posts, rewrote them dramatically, and then posted them. What I didn't realize until just now is that blogger dates the posts for the day and time that I started them as saved drafts!!!! So despite blogging every day, it just looks like I went a bit insane on Wednesday and posted three times. Grrr...

Oh well, I'll still try to post every day despite not appearing to rise to the challenge.

cooking with intention

Carolyn over at curlypurl had a nice idea that I was sort of coming to privately, a cook-along. The idea is to increase the amount of real cooking one does for ones family (I'm taking this to mean lacking in prepared foods -those prepared by someone else that is). Now I try to do this already but last month I really got going on this idea particularly trying to incorporate more creative vegetarian meals into our dinner cycle. So for now I will be trying to increase the nights that I don't just make an omelet or a pizza for dinner and I will be inflicting the story of those meals on you all.

Neither of us are vegetarian but I was at a bookstore and found Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian while looking for a good pumpkin curry recipe. This is a fabulous book. I have now made five meals out of it and we have LOVED four of them. The fifth was a chili recipe that is fine but nothing special or worth noticing even. I haven't even made it out of the legume section but even Marius has liked everything and he used to expect meat every night of the week.

So far my favorite recipes have been the ones using black-eyed peas. Maybe it's a southern thing (how many of you knew that I was originally from the south?) but I think these are the most under-rated legume on the market. They aren't trendy. You can't even find organic ones at Whole Foods. But they are awfully tasty. Tonight I made the black-eyed peas with swiss chard and sauteed some chicken with garlic, lemon zest, tomatoes, and parsley. This is officially the first time I have cooked swiss chard so of course I used the red stuff which resulted in pink black-eyed peas. It's such a pretty vegetable, how could I not? After cooking the beans you add the chard and cook it for another half an hour with a bit of salt. Once everything is nice and soft (and the water has cooked down which takes about 3x as long as Jaffrey says unless you raise the heat), you add lemon juice and olive oil and then heat more olive oil in a separate pan with a dried red chili and finely chopped garlic and onions. This then is added to the bean-chard mix and tossed.

I don't have photos of the meal since Marius ate it all but I'll try and keep evidence of these meals in the future. We still have left-over chili but it's in the fridge in single serving containers and isn't very photogenic at this point. Next week I'll experiment with mung beans since you can find organic ones at Whole Foods in the bulk section so I now have two pounds in my kitchen.

the things we do for our alma mater

Okay, this is going to have to be a wimpy post. I have just arrived in Philly to visit my alma mater. I left California at a time that I would have likely been going to sleep at the last time I was on the campus of my alma mater (with the exception of the last reunion).

On top of it all, I have promised my beloved former department not one but two lectures on my research. One of which is scheduled for 9am EST. That is 6am PST!!!! What the hell was I thinking? Fortunately there is a place to buy good coffee on campus and I will avail myself of that repeatedly I am certain.

The good news is that I can hit the bookstore just in time to buy Bryn Mawr College baby gear for my college roommates' soon to exist 90% certain that it's a girl baby. I really do feel for this child. She will have a pair of amazing and very intelligent parents but might experience just a little bit of pressure to attend a seven sisters college. Not that I can blame her mother. We loved (and hated) our years at Bryn Mawr. I think it did amazing things for both of us and I feel that I had a much better college experience than my friends who attended big co-ed state universities. I actually feel that more girls/women should consider single sex colleges. I went because it was the best school to which I was accepted and I was worried about the whole all-female thing. It turns out it was one of the best things life decided for me although the year I spent in Israel just after graduation did a great deal to help me put my hard core, Bryn Mawr nourished ambition into perspective. I'm not sure that I would be a biologist today if it weren't for Bryn Mawr and the professors I had there.

Could you imagine my obnoxiously anal yet flighty mind trying to make it in a career outside of academia?

Better not.

nabloporno

Ack! I'm not sure if I can manage it but I'm going to try and take up the National Blog Posting Month (or nablopomo) challenge. Why in the world would I want to commit to this when I have ten job applications to submit, three manuscripts I'm working on, two lectures to prepare for this friday AND I will be out of town for at least two long weekends and possibly four?

Who knows. I'm insane, that's why. I will probably fail miserably but I figure it might be entertaining for my friends to watch me fail miserably if nothing else.

At least this one counts for day 1.

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.

oh so L.A.

As I was uploading those photos, I had the news on in the background. Of course there is some high speed car chase going on just down the highway from us that they are filming live.

I think this is the second one I've seen since I moved down here less than a month ago and I almost never watch the evening news.

as promised -sorta

I don't have a photo of the silk sweater I made for my mother but I'm working on it. In the meantime...




























...my first branching out scarf is done! I have even bound off and woven in the ends although these photos are from just before that point. This is BFL that Thuy and I dyed with Smart and Final food coloring. I spun it up on a spindle and knit it as a single. The one I knit in Moco quiviut is also done but looks really dumb without being blocked. I had two skeins of the quiviut (one in navy and the other in a burgundy/wine hybrid color) and one skein was not enough to make a scarf even though I used the second skein for the garter stitch border. To lengthen it I added a bunch of garter stitch to both ends but that part seriously flares out while the lace section pulls in. I will block it to within an inch of its life and it should all even out... I hope!

Martha asked what had broken my cable. It was, of course, the cotton linen stitch afghan that will not end:















Sadly, when I spread it out to take the photos I discovered this:
















Yup. It pooled. I had three cakes of yarn that I got from a sale bin when we were in Cary, NC years ago. The first skein worked up nicely with only a little pooling. The second skein started out the same so I stopped worrying about pooling. Clearly this was a mistake. Normally I don't mind pooling colors in my space-dyed yarns. I just REALLY don't like regular pooling, which is what I have in this afghan now. If it had formed interesting patterns, I might feel differently but regular blobs really aren't very appealing.

So.

I will rip it out. And the afghan that will not end, will take that much longer to end so that I can alternate between skeins to break up the blobs. On top of all of this, it looks like I will run out before it is the size I want (2lbs of cotton only goes so far apparently). So now I'm on the hunt for a solid cotton to compliment this color-way. Given that it's basically a deadened rainbow (basic colors with a bit of black added to them), I have lots of options. Suggestions anyone?

Oh, and for the record, my replacement cables arrived yesterday from Denise. I'll let you know how they work out but I still love their customer service.

photos and films

I took the promised photos on Sunday but haven't had time to upload them and it's too late to do it tonight. We spent the evening watching the documentary "Why We Fight" which, while dated, is documentary about the industrial military complex as evinced by post-Vietnam wars in the U.S. (with an obvious focus on Iraq). None of the information was new (at this point although had we seen it when it came out we would have been more than a bit outraged -did you know that over one billion dollars of our defense budget between 2002 and 2003 was spent on domestic advertising?).

I'll upload the photos of my knitting projects tomorrow and everyone can see why I must rip out nearly half of the linen stitch afghan I've been working on for the past year (on and off). Sadly I haven't spread it out much in the past couple of months and so only noticed some really bad pooling when I took the photographs. So now it will be the project that takes me forever and a day to finish.

score one for procrastination!

So I still haven't broken out Marius' nice fancy dSLR camera to take photos of my knitting (but I will by the end of this upcoming weekend Martha!) . But I must share my small victory today.

In Santa Barbara we didn't have a very big apartment. In fact it was so small that my desk doubled as our dining room table. Well we're in a bigger place now and had bought a second hand table from a grad. student who was leaving town right before we moved. However, we have been lacking dining room chairs since we moved into our new place. Since our new table has gray metal legs, I've been wanting to find something like this:



















Now this chair is being sold at DWR for $370/chair. It was on some t.v. show and is insanely expensive now given what it is. Hunting around online however, I found these:

Which are nearly identical to the above chair. The biggest difference is that the front legs are round as opposed to squared off (and the chairs are bolted together as opposed to being all one molded piece). I agree that the first chair looks better, but how much better? Certainly not the $330 difference in price. That's right. The cheaper chairs are just $40 at kmart of all places (just FYI: our table does not look like the one in the photo).

So I procrastinated on going out and buying the chairs for weeks until last night. I drive out to the nearest store and find that they are sold out of the chairs. This is not because people saw the chairs on t.v. and realized how similar (but much cheaper) the ones at kmart are, but because they didn't sell and so were placed on clearance. At the store I'm at they can't even tell me what the new price is since they don't have any information on them now that they are all gone. I go home a bit discouraged because I assume that this will be the case at all local kmarts. They are still available online for the original price as a last resort (for a $35 shipping fee) but I decided to brave near rush-hour traffic today and try another kmart today. They HAD them! They not only had them in stock, they had almost 100 of them. And the best part is their clearance price is just $8/chair. Yup, I spent a total of $32 on these bad boys, less than what one chair would have cost me if I had bought them at their regular price.

So I have learned my lesson for the week. Procrastination pays.

I LOVE Denise needles

So I contacted them (last night!) about sending the broken cable for a replacement (and mentioned that it has happened once before -both time with heavy projects). I also asked if they had thought about reinforcing this part with a bit of metal (both breaks were at the exact same place) even though I realize that such a suggestion is a bit presumptuous. This was their response.

Hi Erin,

I'm so sorry to hear about a SECOND cord tip snapping!

One is unusual, but two is miserable. Occasionally, a kit that is exposed to extreme heat or cold somewhere during the course of its travels can exhibit this type of fragility. Another possibility is that the machine that forms the cord tips was not venting properly when your kit was being manufactured. This can allow air bubbles into the material and cause weak spots. Either way, we'll send you out a new set of cords right away.

Our manufacturer has made some hidden improvements to the tips over the past year, and he's also being extremely careful with the air/material mix as well as humidity in the material when he's making them, so these new ones should do just great on even very heavy projects. We have considered making the cord tips metal, or having the internal part be metal, and I'd like to see something like this happen, because though the breakage is normally very rare, it's still NO fun when it happens!! Thanks for your input on this.

We'll get the new cords right in the mail to you. The post has gone for today, but these will be in tomorrow's. Many apologies again, and please let us know if you ever have other questions or feedback. Happier knitting ahead!

All the best,
Emily McKeon

info@knitdenise.com
http://www.knitdenise.com
888-831-8042




How fabulous are they?!??? It makes me glad given how much I tell people to buy these things. Last night I was having a moment where I was worrying that I had given away many of my INOX and that I was now going to have to buy a new set for my heavy projects. Nope. I'm perfectly happy to believe them that these tips are stronger.

At least until one breaks on me. :)

My very first project

Once that last post went up I realized that my blog was sadly lacking in photos. So, since we haven't taken any new pictures (that I still have), I dug up a photo of the very first thing I ever made out of yarn. Of course it is crochet (how many people knew I learned that before knitting?) and it is Red H***t, but it was before I knew any better. Plus it went to a dear friend of mine who likes to machine wash things to death so I'd probably still use an acrylic yarn to make her a blanket today (just not that acrylic). She and her husband use it to cover and frightening chair they own from the late 60's/early 70's that is in no possible way ever going to be "retro."

Note: I think that yarn is excellent when used for dog blankets that will be seriously abused so I don't completely hate the stuff.

Denise needles breakage

Today I had a cable from my Denise needle set break. This is the second time this has happened to me. Both times, I was over half-way done with an afghan (so the project was getting heavy) when the black connector piece just snapped in half. I'm generally a huge fan of these needles but I'm beginning to wonder if anyone else has experienced this. Perhaps I need to keep my heavier projects on other needles from now on (even though I know the company will replace the cable asap and I own both of the super long cables that they make just for afghans).

Of course this happened at a knit group I was visiting in Santa Monica and anyone who heard the snap immediately started checking to see if they had a substitute needle that I could borrow. Fibery people are really wonderful sometimes. For all they knew I could have made off with their needle and never shown my face again (because you know that's just the sort of person I am).

an unpacking extravaganza

It's been an exciting Saturday night in the van der Brien household but I have finally reached a point in unpacking where the place just looks messy as opposed to unpacked. We are very excited about this as it means that the floors can finally be cleaned (Marius has been living here with the fortress of boxes for just over a month -yuck!). Even the patio is beginning to look like a place where one might choose to spend an hour with a glass of wine.

There will be photos eventually although not of the NYC trip as I had been promising several posts back. It seems that our point and shoot digital camera is the major fatality of the move and I hadn't downloaded the photos yet. urgh! Cameras can be replaced, the photos cannot -the lost shots also include the lovely cake Susie baked for me.

The other fatality was the lid of a semi-high-end commercial (an oxymoron right?) yixing teapot that M got me several years ago as a Valentine's Day present. He, being the sweetheart that he is, said I could get any other pot I wanted to replace it (sadly it cannot be replaced as only a few were ever made). Where upon I pulled up the website that is selling the teapots of one of the craftsmen of factory 1.

Now this may not sound like much but there are only two "factories" that are recognized as producing authentic yixing teapots (factory 1 is the "original" and the other one is supervised by someone who spent most of his career at factory 1). This is where the masters work. The lowest rung on the ladder is craftsman. The teapot by one of these lowly craftsmen that I lust after sells for $425. As dear as M is, he did say that he meant one of the less authentic teapots.

Wanna see it?

Here's another one by the same guy.

So you see, it could be worse...

note to readers: Please don't go and buy the first pot (I know you're all running around with $400 burning a hole in your pocket!). It has been for sale on this site since I started collecting and I live with the pipe dream that some day I might actually be able to buy it. Of course, then I'd probably break it in a move and lose what little sanity I have left.

A true collector would scoff at this as people in Taiwan have been known to sell their homes to buy a one of a kind pot by a dead master. This would be the little sanity I still have that I mentioned above. House=higher priority than pretty clay teapots. See -that must count for some form of sanity.

I'm still sad though as the one that broke was one of my nicest yixing pots. Murphy's Law I suppose. It couldn't have been the machine made pot my mother got from some museum catalog not knowing anything about them other than the fact that I have a small collection, the one that, if I really loved it, could be replaced with a simple internet search (and Mom, if you're reading this, I REALLY appreciate the fact that you even thought of getting me one at all). No... it has to be the one that NO ONE on the planet can get for me again unless by some odd twist of fate I run into one of the few other people who bought one when they were made.

Okay, so I'm having a little pity party for myself here when I have a nearly equally fine and unbroken pot still in my collection.

Oh yes, poor me.

-although I have to wonder what it is about me, teapots, and moving. My brown betty and another mass produced teapot broke in the move from Chicago to Santa Barbara. I suppose they're beginning to sound like a bad thing for me to collect. Odd.

our niece

Okay our house is still a mess. I'm not going to upload photos of anything even located in the place as it is just depressing how many boxes still need to be unpacked after two weeks.

So, in lieu of anything about our life, I bring you Liza, our niece (Marius' niece to be precise). How cute is she?

And Cossett (my bil's dog) is the reason we would really like a whippet one day. She is great with Liza as you can tell from the photo. We've really missed Liza's first few years since they are in Kansas but we got super cheap plane tickets for Thanksgiving so we'll get to see her then. I guess people don't fly to Kansas for the holiday -perhaps they all vacate the state. It should be interesting...

photo from Memphis trip

Some of you know that I had to go to Memphis early in August for a conference. At the opening evening they had an Elvis wandering about and taking photos with folks.

What you may not be able to tell from the photo is that the black on his chest is all hair. This must be the most hairy chest I have ever seen in my entire life (and most of you don't know how hairy my PhD advisor was/is). This leads me to share my moment of embarrassment with you all.

The Elvis walked up to me to shake my hand but I caught a glimpse of the chest first.

And I COULDN'T look away!!!!!

I swear it was just like when a guy stares at your chest without once looking up at your face when you're talking to him. I was shaking his hand and he was talking to me and I was still staring at his chest!

Except for the fact that it wasn't in the least bit sexual. It was just pure astonishment that a chest like that even exists in our world. Fortunately the folks around me explained that he clearly thought it was sexual and enjoyed my reaction. Go figure. It makes me wonder if guys and breasts are like that ever.

So the folks from left to right are: my friend Tony from grad school, the Elvis, my friend Sophie from UCSB and then me laughing my a** off. It's grainy because it's a scanned Polaroid. Gotta love it.

moving

Okay, I had no time to blog this weekend since we were moving the other half of our stuff and, yet again, we ran into problems.

We are moving less than 200 miles away and yet eight things have managed to go wrong during the move. Now if they had ruined the move or destroyed our belongings it would be sad and frustrating. Fortunately it somehow all managed to work out in spite of all of the bad stuff that kept happening which turns a poor me story into a great cocktail party story. It almost verges on being hysterically funny if you know me well enough to imagine my face as each new thing happened. Hint, I do not handle stress well.

Three weekends ago we rent a Uhaul van and schedule movers to help us unload the van when we get down to Claremont (Pomona area just east of Pasadena for those not familiar with the area).

We get to the Uhaul place just before 10am (when they are supposed to open) to find a sign on the door saying that they are experiencing a power outage and will open once ComEd has fixed it. The only problem being that the place had power as did the rest of the building. I called Uhaul in a panic and they couldn't get me another truck until 2 pm, way too late to meet the movers. The folks on the phone promise to try and find another truck. Meanwhile I am also desperately trying to reach this guy that we bought a sofa from and had made arrangements to see once we had the van to pick up the afore mentioned sofa. So we had no truck and I couldn't reach the guy with the sofa OR our movers to make sure that the delay wasn't ruining our chances of moving that day.

At around 11am, this guy shows up and opens the store. He tries to support his sign by claiming that the locks are electric and that he can't open them until the power comes on and uses his car key in the lock to show that it won't open (charming fellow clearly). Marius is really ticked off at this point and starts lambasting the fellow who tries to argue back -very badly I might add given that we've just seen him try to use his car key to open the door. Since none of the yelling was getting us our van, I interrupted to suggest that we would file an official complaint and start the paperwork so we can get the van. He claims that he can't print anything out due to the power outage and so begins to fill out paperwork by hand. By the time we leave the place, it is noon and, as we will later find out, we are missing a second copy of our rental contract.

We do manage to get the sofa and get the van loaded but the delay has put us smack in the middle of Saturday afternoon traffic and it takes us an extra hour to get down to Claremont where the movers have been waiting for us for hours at this point. They were very kind and did really wait in a fast food place near our new complex until we got there at 5:30pm (2.5 hours later than our contract with the movers stated). They didn't have the third person I had paid for but it turned out they could get everything into the apartment in plenty of time and we even had time left over to go and pick up a used refrigerator that we got off of Craig's List. We then drive to drop off the van. I'm sitting in the van trying to see all of the paperwork before locking up and depositing the key in the drop box when I hear what sounds like gun fire (it wasn't but I won't tell you what it was or you'll laugh at us). Marius suggests we get moving and we discover that we don't have the second copy of our contract to deposit with the key and there is a $50 fee if you don't deposit a copy of your contract with the key. We finally decide to drop our only copy of the rental agreement and figure we'll be completely over charged and will have no evidence to support our claim but hope it will be less than $50.

This was our first weekend in the place. Marius drove me back to Santa Barbara after we dropped off the van and life was good (once we had gotten the light bulbs that exploded upon our arrival replaced and put in a request for new keys since the first set we got didn't fit).

I drove back down the following Sunday for a new faculty orientation.

The orientation was fun and useful. The apartment was not. During the 48 hours I was there, the clothes washer flooded the closet and guest room that it was in (to the point of water seeping through the ceiling below), a stove burner wouldn't turn off and got stuck on high for several hours and we lost several more light bulbs, each one in sequence timed to a few hours after the previous one had been replaced by our lovely new maintenance man, Jorge. He really is nice and we should know given the time the poor man had to spend in our place.

It turns out that the stove has a faulty wire that was quickly fixed. The washer was a different story. Jorge checks the installation and there is nothing wrong with it. The official appliance repair guy comes and says that the pipe feeding water into the washer is cracked. Marius takes a closer look and realizes the "cracks" are actually rodent teeth marks. Oh yes. That's right, a mouse is eating our clothes washer. To make it even better, we think that we may have brought the mouse down with us when we moved as we had stored a few boxes in a shed that then developed a rodent problem. But we really have no idea about the mouse except that, of course, it is the one mouse that our cats have no interest in killing.

Move forward to this weekend. Uhaul has confirmed our van rental. I talk to a woman who tells me that the only truck available is in Oxnard (45 minutes down the highway) but that the office will open at 7am and we can pick it up at any time from then on. A few hours after this phone call, I get a second one from the Oxnard office confirming our pick-up for 2pm!!! When I pitch a fit (albeit a polite one) the guy tells me to call back in an hour to see if they are expecting more vans that might be available earlier. I do and am told that there should be one free around 10:30 or 11ish and that we should just call to confirm before we leave to pick it up.

I call the following morning and the woman on the phone has no clue that I was told this but manages to arrange for a van for us within 40 minutes. We show up, get the van and one block away I realize that they didn't confirm that they had put the utility cart we had rented into the van. I stop and open up the back to see. No cart. So I run back to the place and ask for one and just as I get it, Marius pulls up to make sure that I got the van and everything. This is a very good thing as it means I can just throw the cart into the back of his car and run back to the van before getting a ticket for parking in a no parking zone. We get back to Santa Barbara around 2pm. We had scheduled a mover to arrive a 2pm. The last time when we had used movers to help unload, they called us repeatedly to verify time, location and other fun details. We didn't hear once from the mover in Santa Barbara. We were beginning to think the guy wasn't going to show. We were right.

Fortunately we really only had half a van worth of stuff to take down so Marius managed it all without developing back problems to match my own. Moving is fun!

P.S. The mouse is now dead and the gun fire we thought we heard was a big fireworks display that was timed to only have one explosion at a time. We did eventually look up.

Susan G. Komen 3-day

Okay. I don't think blogs are a good way to fundraise but you never know, it's worked for some folks. A dear friend of mine is doing the Susan G. Komen 3-day walk in Chicago (for the third or fourth time -she'll correct me if she reads this) and has been having a hard time raising funds this year.

So if you feel like supporting a good cause (it's tax deductible) please support Jeanette in her efforts here. They will even spread out payments over a number of months if you use a credit card.

Thanks everyone!

Adventures in the front country

Given that I have yet to post photos that I've been promising, I'm going to use Thuy and her lovely shots from our hiking adventure this past Sunday. I'll try and post other photos this weekend when I'm down in Claremont with the fast connection and the computer with all of our photos.

Thuy and I decided to go on a short hike up to Inspiration Point. Thuy had tried to hike there earlier this summer but ended up on another trail and wanted to try again. In the morning, I surfed the web and found topo maps and felt relatively confident that we could find our way and Thuy said she knew where the trailhead was so we thought we were set. We were wrong.

The trailhead that Thuy was familiar with was for the Tunnel Trail (also goes up to Inspiration Point) which isn't the way that I saw on the maps (but didn't realize it at the time). The hike up was uneventful. It seems that the very little walking I had to do in Memphis last week helped my endurance quite a bit as well as my heat tolerance so I was feeling pretty good when we got to the top.

Then it was time to descend. When we started out we had mistakenly gone along an access road but were redirected by a woman and her dog. At the top we appeared to cross the same access road. Thuy, using deductive reasoning, determined the correct direction to go on the road (her reasoning was very sound, I'm not mocking her at all). Unfortunately the road quickly ended at a locked gate with a sign indicating that the owners of the land beyond the gate would not enjoy our company. We turned back and almost immediately found a sign for the Jesusita Trail with "cars" and an arrow drawn on for good measure. This trail ultimately skirted the private property which would normally be a good thing.














Not yet realizing that we had taken Tunnel Trail up to Inspiration Point, we figure we can take this as an alternative way down. After all, some helpful person had indicated that it was the way down to the cars...

So we walk down, and down and down. We're passed by some mountain bikers who must clearly be headed toward their cars so we don't worry. About the time the trail dumped us off on a private road with no indication of being near a public road, we began to worry. Thuy gets on her cell phone and calls Jaeson for navigation help. Given that we have no idea of where we are, he really couldn't help us. Now wishing that we had a GPS with us, we decided to continue down on the path where it picked up again a little way down the road. We did this for two reasons: 1. the mountain bikers went that way and 2. it is late enough that we don't have enough time to go back the way we came before the sun sets. I must admit that it was a much more scenic route that crossed the creek several times and was nicely shaded by dense trees the entire way. If we hadn't been so worried about the fact that we had only a couple of hours before sun down, it would have made for a very pretty walk.















Nearly an hour later we happen across a lone jogger who we stop and ask for directions. He very kindly indicates that we are a fifteen minute stroll from the road. The road being one that is about five miles from the road we parked on, but a road none the less. After one more nearly disastrous wrong turn at a fork in the trail, we come out at the San Roque water treatment facility and Thuy gets back on her phone to call the infamous Gina (a good friend of Thuy's whom I had never had the pleasure of meeting despite hearing a great deal about her). Gina basically drops whatever it is that she is doing and comes to pick us up and drive us back to my car. Gina is my hero. And like any good hero, she pulled up in a hot car and only laughed at us a little. Okay, she laughed quite a bit but certainly less than many others would have in a similar situation. While Gina is now my hero, I suspect I did not make an equally good first impression on her.

The lesson from all of this is that one should take the same trail down and one took up a mountain, particularly when everyone else you see on the trail is doing exactly that. We were very lucky that we didn't spend the night out in the woods. If we had taken one more wrong turn we would have been in bad shape. Granted, in SB front country, you can only walk so far while still being on the same side of the mountains. But, we could have spent the entire night walking parallel to a road and ended up who knows where. Least you think we were in mortal peril, there were occupied houses around the trail and if we were still lost come dusk, we could have braved the poison oak and left the trail to go ask for help from one of the local residents. However, it isn't very nice to think of that as your only option. It's much better to just know exactly where you are going instead of walking nearly six miles away from your car. We were lucky. Next time we will be smart so that we don' t need to be so lucky.