Holiday Art

Holiday cards this year created courtesy of the wee printing press that Chad made me a while back (see post from September).  Toe shark surfaced out of the back of my brain after yet another bizarre conversation with the teen.

Merry Christmas all!

Indoor, Outdoor Winter Fun

Indoor Ma: singing in one of two recent concerts.

Outdoor Ma: celebrating the first ski day since the knee injury back in January.  It definitely feels like winter now!

Zucchellin

One of Chad's coworkers kept bringing in zucchini from his garden -- but only the ones that hid in the grass until they become 4-pound behemoths.  After a few of these, I banned them from our house.  Thus, Chad created the zucchelin!

A Passel o' Projects

Earlier this fall, I got home from a bike ride, walked into the back yard, and found this:

Hmmm....it hadn't rained in MONTHS...this shouldn't be wet.  On closer examination, it was clear that water was burbling up out of the box that contained all of the partially-buried sprinkler valve.

Chad had previously rebuilt a couple of those valves, and we already knew the stuff that remained was on its last legs.  Clearly the right thing to do was to stop putting off the chore of digging out all the old valves and replacing them with new ones and just do it.  Thus the saga of fall house projects was begun.

Whoever put the old valves in buried them a little further down than perhaps they ought to.  As a result, we had to pull out quite a number of the surrounding pavers and dig a huge hole to access the valves to get them out.  Giant pain in the butt, giant mess. 

Once maximal dirt was scattered about that corner of the yard, Chad was able to get the old valves out. He carefully drew up a plan for how to put the system back together better, and we set off to the hardware store to get parts.

Of course, the desired parts that are supposedly in stock are never all actually extant at the store, necessitating some rethinking of the plans while shopping -- i.e. "What can we find here on the shelf that will actually fit together and do the job without being ridiculously impractical?"  Date night at Home Depot is so much fun.

As is usual for these things, after we got home and started on the rebuild, Chad found we needed one more part.  Fortunately, Lowes is right next to the climbing gym, so it was easy for me to pick up the critical bit of flexible hose later in the week, and Chad got the valve box all put back together, as well as fixing another leak elsewhere in the system.  And, as an added bonus, while checking all the electrical connections to the controller, he figured out how to connect the sprinkler zone in the front courtyard, which has never worked.  We had been told that zone was broken and hopeless when we first moved in over a decade ago and have been alternately running it manually or not using it at all ever since, not knowing all it needed was for a solid electrical connection to be made.  Kudos to Chad for figuring that out and fixing it!

One would think that one leak-related project was enough for the season.  However, a couple of days later, I noticed that the kitchen sink faucet, which had been starting to feel like it was full of rocks when you rotated it, now had water slowly constantly seeping from the bottom of the fixture.

I have hated this sink ever since we moved in.  It's ugly and stained, and worst of all, having the stupid divider right under the too-low faucet means you can't actually rinse out a large pot without getting water everywhere.  Why on earth would anyone design a sink in which you can't get water to pour directly into the large basin??  The sprayer doesn't pull out far enough to be useful either.

In theory, we could have just replaced the faucet.   However, after examining things from below, Chad pointed out that there was so much corrosion that the faucet was sort of welded on to the sink and that it would be awfully hard to get off.  Maybe he just said that because he knew I hated the sink so much, but it was certainly a good excuse to get rid of the whole thing.

I had assumed that we might need to call someone to take care of the installation, but we determined that the hole in the counter was a standard size and Chad was confident that it wouldn't actually be that bad of a job.  Time for another date night at the hardware store, this time to pet the sinks and faucets.  I really need to look at this sort of thing physically, to get a visceral feel for whether something looks and feels solid and up to the task.  Thunk the sinks to assess rigidity and sound insulation (important for large single-basin stainless sinks, which is what I wanted), make sure the faucet moves easily, feels solid and good in the hand, and that the sprayer pulls out smoothly and sufficiently far.

There were enough choices at the store to decide what we wanted, but what we wanted of course was not in stock.  At this point I *could* have just ordered everything off of Amazon and had it the next day, but I wanted to get it locally -- especially in case there was a problem -- so I made an order online with Home Depot to pick up the following week, and spent the week watching the old faucet slowly seeping, all the while hoping it wouldn't progress to fountaining.  

The week went by and everything arrived as expected.  I picked up the parts, had fun trying to shove the large, heavily protected sink box into the truck (it almost didn't fit), and waited for Chad to get back from his work trip.  On his first free day, he jumped right in.

It wasn't too hard to get the old sink out, shave out the corners of the hole in the counter slightly so the new, slightly-more-square sink would fit, and deal with the inevitable "it doesn't quite line up" plumbing connections underneath.

Thing were looking pretty good at this point.  We might get it all done in one day!  This is looking like a proper sink.

It's never that simple, though.  Chad told me to turn the water on while he watched underneath, and -- AAAAAAIEEEEE!  Water everywhere up top.

After drying everything off, Chad took the new faucet apart and examined it, only to find that one of the connections inside the stem was mis-manufactured.  There was no easy way for us to correct it.

For the record, this was Not Our Fault.  Chad had done everything right to complete the impressive feat of replacing the kitchen sink on the first shot.  We just didn't count on getting a defective part.

Surprisingly, we were able to get Home Depot customer service on the phone on a Saturday evening. We could get a different (sort of ugly) faucet at the store the next day, or wait three days for another iteration of the one we actually wanted to be ordered.  We opted to wait, and went out for pizza.  I declared lack of kitchen sink to be reason enough not to cook.  Pizza yields lots of leftovers that we could eat for days.

I counted those days.  By Monday night, I hadn't seen any sort of email that anything had been shipped, which seemed sort of suspicious.  Chad picked up on my worry and called Home Depot again, only to find that they hadn't actually sent out the replacement, for reasons that weren't making any sense given that the person on Saturday said that it was all taken care of.  I will studiously avoid ranting about Home Depot's internal processes; suffice it to say we gave up on them and ordered the replacement on Amazon because it could show up the next day instead of requiring four more days with uncertainty of whether we were being good schedule information or not. I will say that Home Depot was at least good about accepting the return when I took the defective one back.

The Amazon box showed up the next day, Chad installed the faucet after work, and all is well.  We finally have a real sink.  Yay.  We should have done this years ago.

What, pray tell, was the kid doing through all of this?  Ordering a Nintendo Switch with money from the summer camp counselor job.  Happy kid plays games.

Happy Kid also plans art projects requiring a large piece of wood, buys said wood, and sweet-talks Dad into helping cut it down to the desired size.

Happy Kid goes on bike rides, helping me discover a local dirt road climb that I've vaguely known about for a while, but hadn't previously managed to locate.

I did take a weekend to abandon Happy Kid and Chad, to go visit my parents.  It was a good visit, and of course involved more projects, the biggest of which was helping my dad install a new garage door opener.  It was a highly amusing process, a hint of which you can see below.

Back home, I finally got around to taking out the rest of the ever-dying loquat tree in our back yard.  As you may remember I pruned this tree back heavily two years ago to give it one more chance.  It failed that test, and continued to ail, so I dragged the chainsaw out and started hacking pieces off.  

The wood on this tree is fairly dense, so I didn't want to drop it all at once lest I accidentally take out the shiny new fence the neighbors had put in.  Plus the tree detritus all had to be cut into pieces small enough to go out with the yard waste anyway.  The neighbors' fence conveniently has a nice top platform on which to stand.

The sound of the chainsaw brought Chad outside to investigate, and naturally he chose to get in on the fun :)  He took out the largest part of the trunk once I got the top stuff shaved off.  So -- one more project knocked off!

Speaking of knocking things off, we all collectively got sick of accidentally knocking the kitchen scissors off of the inadequate magnet hook on the fridge, so Chad designed and printed me a new one with sufficiently strong magnets on the back such that I can't possibly knock it off even when madly flinging the refrigerator door open.  Sometimes the simplest things are the best!  I declare victory on all fall projects.

Halloween

As is usual this time of year, it is gorgeous and warm out, and the orb weavers have been busy at work around the back yard.

Halloween around here was pretty low-key as far as I was concerned, as I had a rehearsal to go to that night, leaving Chad to supervise the teen board game party at home.  Muahahaha.  I think he cleverly hid in the office and let the teens answer the door for trick-or-treaters.

 Chad, jolly for preschool trick-or-treaters at work.  Kid, edgy anime character that you have never heard of.  Me, not pictured (though I did draw some spiders on my neck and arms with an eyeliner pen; spouse deemed them creepy).  Hope you all had a good Halloween!

Week of Camp Ma/Birthday

As is usual, the end of the summer brought both the kid's birthday and a week when Chad was travelling a lot.  We took advantage of it to have our almost-traditional week of "Camp Ma".

The teen wanted to hunt flowers up in San Francisco, so we went to the San Francisco Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park and spent a few hours wandering about.  Kiddo is 17 now!

There were lots of interesting plants to be seen; these were especially vivid.

During lunch, I found that the phone can do good things to a photo.

Later in the week, Nim and I took a wee backpacking trip up Black Mountain.  We went ultralight, with just a tarp, sleeping bag/quilt, a bag of KFC for dinner, and a box of toaster pastries (aka Pop-Tarts, but these were a better brand) for breakfast.  Our "dissolve a Starbucks Via pod into UHT milk and call it a latte" strategy was, in the kid's parlance, somewhat suss.  One thing we noted was that by this point of the summer, the kid had slept outside, mostly unsheltered under the stars, more summer nights that not.  This semi-feral existence is indeed properly appreciated.

On the actual birthday, we decided to head out to the coast.  It was a beautiful day!

There were still a few elephant seals hauled out onto the beach at Ano Nuevo.  The scale is hard to tell, but this guy was about 12 feet long and probably weighted a couple thousand pounds according to the volunteer who was posted to keep people off the beach.

You can see a second seal poking his nose up out of the water in this one.  He seemed like he was just playing around on this hot summer day.

Further down the beach, we could hear deep rumbling noises, which we found were emanating from a pair of juvenile males practicing some of their dominance moves.  Again, it's hard to tell from this picture, but they were using their tails to counterbalance the fronts of their bodies as they reared up out of the water and slapped chests.  Quite entertaining to watch and listen to!

Back on the beach we were allowed down on, we found quite an armada of birds.  There was apparently an unusual abundance of fish in the water here that day, and the birds are not dummies.

Watching pelicans dive is always fun.  They are such unlikely looking critters.

When asked what kind of cake was desired, the kid replied "I want a confection!"  Chocolate cake with coffee butterscotch, chocolate ganache, and cream cheese frosting, covered with toasted almonds was the result.  (Fortunately Chad made it home from his work trip in time to share cake.)

And thus, summer was over and it was time for school to start.

Wee Bikepacking Trip near Downieville

While the kiddo was off being a camp counselor, Chad and I took advantage of one weekend to do a short bikepacking trip.  This wasn't particularly carefully planned, but we wanted an excuse to try out our new bikepacking quilts -- they are light and small and pack down into teeny tiny pucks that can be easily stuffed into a saddle bag.  We hadn't been up to Downieville for a while, and also had the advantage of knowing that one can ride up Mountain House Roadfrom there and hit a network of dirt roads and trails that are fun to explore even if you don't go far.  So, we drove up on Friday afternoon, briefly said hi to Linda, loaded up our bikes with our new down quilts, and rode on up the hill to find a camping spot for the night.

One nice thing about the National Forest around here is that you can pretty much camp anywhere you find a nice spot.  Once up on the ridge, a nice spot is not hard to find -- as long as you are carrying water.  We were quite conscious carrying spare water, given that the previous year's summer bikepacking weekend was challenged by water sources that were unexpectedly few and far between.

Typical gently wooded, sort of rocky area on top of the ridge, reminiscent of our first night's spot down an old logging spur:

After a restful night, we got started pretty early, as we knew it was going to be hot come afternoon.  After only a couple of miles, we hared off the main road to look at the views from Ruby Bluff.

You can really see how much we climbed up from the river the previous day getting up here.  There were a number of good spots to set up a tent here, but it was too early to stop, so we kept going along Henness Pass Road.  Eventually we hit some pavement, and followed it to the site of the Old Cornish Ranch House.  Built in 1861, Cornish House was a "large and comodious house for the accomodation of the public [which] provided smithing and hay for teamsters" for several years before the transcontinental railroad led to less use of the road.  We ate lunch in the shade and took advantage of the creek to refill our water supply.

At this point, we could have continued on, but decided to head back to the beautiful camping spot back at Ruby Bluff.  On the way, we noted the junction with Galloway Road.  Galloway is the old route into Downieville, which plunges precipitously down the hill into town. It was apparently named after an early inhabitant of the town in the 1850's; I am somehwat amused by the notion of a Gold-Rush-era judge named Galloway.

(Also note the careful packing of gear on the bike -- I made the brown frame pack to fit Chad's bike, and we had spent far too long figuring out how to securely strap all of the various bits and pieces on to the handlebars.)  

After going back to the bluff and spending most of the afternoon lazing around reading and watching birds perform acrobatic tricks as they wheeled around eating bugs, we eventually we got around to setting up the tent and having dinner.

Oh so fancy bikepacking cocktail: dried cherries soaked in a little bourbon.

The sunset viewing from this location was quite nice, as we had hoped.

The following morning brought a few photogenic clouds.

We quickly packed up camp and headed over to ride the fun singletrack in Forest City.  It feels a little different on bikes loaded with gear than it does in our normal unloaded state.  I, for one, found it challenging, perhaps exacerbated by the fact that the stuff I had strapped to my handlebar sort of eclipsed my view of the front wheel whien descending.  It felt sort of like riding by braille.

Of course one can't have an adventure weekend without at least a minor mishap.  In this case, a stick flipped up off the trail at the wrong moment and broke Chad's derailleur hanger off.  Fortunately, he whipped out the spare derailleur hanger that had been kicking around his pack for just such an emergency and rapidly fixed it.  I deemed this item (acquired circa Christmas 2013) to have been the best stocking stuffer ever.

With that, we rolled back down the hill and had an enjoyable dinner with Linda back in town.  It was a relatively mellow adventure weekend, but seemed to be just what we needed at that point!