last day

on my last day home, rick and i surveyed my parents' yard and started cooking up gardening ideas. our neighbor has a pomegranate tree and a mango tree that both have limbs that flirt with our property. i gathered ripe mangoes from the ground in our backyard. they are small and yellow and taste delicious.

nico the obscured

have you met nico? my LABF celine has two kitties, flash & nico. flash, as you might deduce, isn't much for having her picture taken. nico, on the other hand, is a man of leisure who will make love to the camera and then to your lap.

reunion aftermath

i got up early sunday morning after the reunion and went to TJs for flowers and brekkie fixings. jordan & marienne came over for pancakes and brought jordan's girlfriend monica. i wasn't sure if i knew who she was even though he told me we'd all gone to high school together. when they arrived, i recognized her from grade school! we had lots of fun cooking and making a mess. jennifer & her cool dude, alan, came by later to help us finish our mimosas.

that's jordan pictured above tickling the ivories. he's always had tremendous talent with regards to classical piano. i'm not being sarcastic.


a cat named mouse. she's our little alfa female.


the beautiful chocolate goose that is destined to never be eaten.


we all hung out long enough to digest brunch and grow hungry again. it had been a while since i'd been to oki's dog, so i had the pleasure of forcing my friends to go with me and watch me eat the signature oki's dog; chili, pastrami, and cheese on two hot dogs wrapped in a tortilla. it's under $4 and there's a signed glossie of en vogue on the wall you can stare at while your arteries cry. if you no longer have the will to live, have the oki's dog with chili fries.

10 years?

i headed to los angeles this weekend for my 10 year high school reunion. it was more of a mixer, very small and intimate; my old friend fredo organized it with a few other classmen in their spare time. it was very nice seeing those who could make it and daniel, one of my most prized high school friends, was my escort. we both went to different high schools and graduated a year apart, but we both had the same class song: in my life by the beatles.

collections

the house in scotts valley had lots of little random collections that i was compelled to document.

scotts valley

we got out of the shoebox and headed down to santa cruz where all kinds of my relatives were converging this weekend.

my aunt and uncle put us up with the rest of my cousins at a friend's house in scotts valley just north of santa cruz in the mountains. i woke up early on sunday and meditated for the first time in about a week. it was also my first time meditating outdoors! i thought it would be too cold, but it was actually nice and still. i brought my flea market ganesh, who is so cute and tiny. whoever made him even captured his broken tusk, no easy feat what with working in such a small scale. ganesh broke off one of his tusks and used it to help valmiki write the ramayana, one of southeast asia's most prized epic poems.

out of the closet and off to the flea

spent most of the weekend tidying the closet and going through tons of sewing stuff. it was exciting to be reminded of the fun projects i've worked on, partial and complete, especially this apple shaped pot warmer in progress for someone who can not be named because they read this blog and i would still like to give it to them some day.


after working saturday and spending most of my free time getting organizized, it was refreshing to get up early and leave the city for the alameda flea market, my first one this summer. my favorite find of the day was this little two year old version of carmen sandiego, apparently in hot pursuit.

adieu celine

we had a short but lovely time together this weekend, eating lots of good food and trying not to fall asleep during meditation.

one of the highlights was eating out at a thai restaurant her first night in town and seeing this sign for new zealand snapper. my favorite part is the fisherman.

om, dude

every morning at the ashram, we'd get up at 5.30 and be seated for satsang by 6. popular mantras are scrawled under the top bunk where i slept. somebody really grumpy wrote "lame" and it made me laugh whenever i saw it. i love finding graffiti in odd places, like the time i saw "jail is fun" on the back of a chair in a san francisco hall of justice court room.

after our satsang activities of meditating + chanting + lecture, we did yoga for two hours. brunch was at ten followed by an hour of karma yoga during which you assist the staff with whatever chores need to be done.

free time was usually slow and blissful. by midday everything is baking in the sun, so you're either tucked away napping in a sliver of shade or trying not to fall asleep in the library, one of the only public spaces with ac.

at 4pm, activities resumed with another two hours of yoga, dinner, and another two hours of satsang. by the time lights are ordered out at 10.30, you're already asleep because you've had quite a day!

it sounds like a rigid schedule, but i really enjoyed it! having a few days away from the great multitude of daily distractions plus all that good indian food was very pleasurable and i can't wait to do it again.


celine and i slept in a teeny cabin near the woods.


tons of blackberries grow around a small foot bridge on the ashram grounds. visiting children picked a bunch and made a pie.


right next to where we eat our meals, there are cute little bunches of grapes growing. i wanted to snatch some up but couldn't risk the karma.

retreat

k guys, celine and i are embarking on our spiritual journey to grass valley for the weekend. we will be getting up at 5.30 every morning to chant and do yoga. don't laugh.

celebration

swimming

i just spent a solid hour sifting through all of the photos i've taken in the past month or so and have for you here some lovely shots from around kathleen's pool on the 4th of july.


stephan took cogan for a swim. at first cogan wasn't too sure about being wet, but then mellowed out quite nicely.


cogan made a friend.


me, too.

loot

the renegade craft fair finally came to san francisco last weekend! i picked out a few choice items.


wild printed tunic t from raeburn ink, $32.


adorable/scary onsie from ferdinand, $16.


limited edition letterpressed print set/4 from satsuma press, $40.

sweet & kind proprietor lynn russell printed these in collaboration with artist yoo-ii, who mined inspiration from both the lily ponds found in a park in her hometown of tainan, taiwan, and the horizontal register of traditional chinese painting.

sunday

on a whim, i decided to invite a few friends over this morning for a pancake breakfast. scott & judd brought over the biggest donuts i have ever had the pleasure of devouring.

afterwards, nathan and i braved opening weekend crowds to see the dark knight. heath ledger is the best joker e v e r, seriously! he does a great trick where he makes a pencil disappear. i am so very sad that there won't be any more performances from him. he was quite a piece of work.

target practice

we went to walmart (sorry dad) and for whatever reason, nathan was moved to purchase a bb gun. the boys thought it would be fun to go shoot at the family farm where we were approached by the horsie and shetland pony pictured above.


the mosquitoes at the farm drove us back to ma & pa lintner's backyard for the rest of target practice. the boys were feeling especially patriotic, so they took advantage of free target printouts from some website.