Spires and Sanctuaries, character development

Spires and Sanctuaries, a non-demoninational role-playing game
When creating a new Member, pick an age, gender, race, educational attainment, income level, and religious background. Members start with 25 experience points to distribute across Church Member Qualities (CMQs): organizational skill, religious fervor, pastoral care and concern, musical ability, generosity, teaching ability. Members gain general experience points by participating in regular Church Activities and specialized experience points by participating in Special Activities. For example, taking the "Spiritual Journeys" Special Activity gains two religious fervor points and one general point to be assigned by the Member.

Spires and Sanctuaries is a game that encourages collaboration, and many types of Church Activities require multiple Members with strong skills (high CMQs) in various areas to operate. A "Non-demoninational Winter Holidays Pageant" requires a number of Members with strong organizational skill, 1-3 Members will extremely high musical ability quotients, one Member with a high musical ability and teaching ability quotient and a large number of Members with at least 10 generosity points.

The game master, or Minister, can award bonus points at any time to Members who make creative or kind contributions to an Activity. Members are expected to act during an Activity in character with their point levels, i.e., a Member with low organizational skill and high generosity shouldn't be capable of organizing a successful Fundraising Campaign without assistance. The Minister can take a Member aside for "counseling" at any time to help keep Members in character.

Yesterday's run destination: estate sale at 24th and Alta

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: granola
brunch: banana smoothie
lunch: ?
dinner: french fries and korean beef taco

Where's your nose?

I'm not exactly sure why playing "Where's your nose?" is so much fun, for both me and my daughter. But it is. "Where's your belly button?" isn't bad, either.

Yesterday's run destination: Yahoo Center

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: granola
lunch: grilled cheese
dinner: beans and spinach
bonus: popovers at bedtime!

A lovely visit to the California Heritage Museum

I like historic houses. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm a sucker for them, but having worked as a historic house tour guide, they have a special place in my heart. My thanks, and my sympathies, go out to the docents and staff who run historic house tours, as they answer questions, go into their canned spiels, when they can remember the details, show people their favorite chairs, or wainscotting, or whathaveyou, mix up dates, names, locations, and generally make history come alive, not least for having lived through some of it, in some older docents' cases, a whole lot of it. As I recall, a typical historic house has at some point been studied, renovated, and decorated according to a finely tuned sense of history, under the direction of a curator or professor with a specialization in a relevant period of American history. The house opens to the public, the curator or professor's colleagues come in for the opening ceremonies, ooh and ahh over a pair of 17th century cast iron andirons or ask after where she found a woodworker to reconstruct the molding, and generally show off their own knowledge of the period the house has been decorated to. Then all the experts go back to where ever they came from and the place opens to the public. Signage has not been installed. Docents have been given, at most, a quick tour by the expert and an idiosyncratically filled three ring binder of photocopies of photocopies of study photos taken of objects that may or may not have been placed in the house, or as it is now known, in the exhibit. From this information, and whatever they can find by googling "historic house [enter period here] [enter region here]", the docents, volunteers, interns, and (under)experienced and  (under)paid staff create a haze of facts, stories, myths, and garbled half-remembered oft repeated research to foist on the occasional visitor. It turns out it is possible to play a game of Telephone by one's self, as conjectures are repeated until believed and delivered as facts and facts morph, get rearranged, and shimmy to fit the interpreter's preferred story. For the rare visitor that asks a question and is given anything more than a off-the-top-of-my-head guess answer, the interpreter may go back to that three ring binder. Or google it.

Yesterday's run destination: cloverleaf around the intersection of Yale and Arizona

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: granola and banana
lunch: cheesy mashed potatoes
dinner: pesto pasta and bean salad

Roast Chicken for two

I don't roast whole chickens anymore, having discovered the joys of supermarket rotisserie chicken, which is great served as is, as a source of cooked meat for other dishes (chili, salad, etc.) and for the cleanest, easiest chicken stock ever (since most of the fat has rendered out during roasting, the remaining bones and skin make great tasting stock without the need of defatting). For the most part, the whole birds I can get in the market are way too big for the cooking-for-two-and-a-half that I'm used to. But I do like working my own flavors into chicken dishes and have compromised by roasting whole chicken breasts. Sort of. Mostly. My current recipe is as follows:

Roast Chicken Breast
1 whole bone-in chicken breast, 1-2 lbs.
a few sprigs of fresh herb, such as parsley, oregano, marjoram
1 t. olive oil or butter
1 medium onion
1/2 lemon, cut along the long axis
salt

Preheat oven to 375. Preheat small ovenproof frying pan on stove with oil or butter. Rinse and pat dry the chicken. Stick the herb under the skin, having opened a pocket between skin and meat with your fingers or a chopstick. Fry chicken skin side down over medium-high heat for 3-5 minutes or until nicely browned. While browning, chop the onion. Remove chicken and in rendered chicken fat and oil/butter soften onion. Salt to taste. Place lemon half in the middle of the pan, on top of the onion, and place chicken, rib side down, over the lemon. Bake 15-20 minutes or until juices run clear.

The onion base will come out rich and caramelized and is delicious as is over potatoes or rice, or can be used as the base for gravy.

Yesterday's run destination: Montana Ave.

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: biscuits from our neighbors
lunch: leftover salad, crepes
dinner: cheesy potato, hot dogs, frozen peas, yum

Family Journal

Here are some of the words Miriam (age 16 months) knows how to say(and English translations):
cook (cookie)
fwa (fly, as in, the toy bird flies)
bye-o (bye)
haai (hi)
hhhhaaw (cat)
oouff (dog)
ba (bird) (ball) (bath) (bed)
dak dak dak dak (duck)
tee (tree)

She nods politely when asked if she has gone to the park, whether she has or not. She points to the "yellow circle" in the book, can match shapes to put square shaped pegs in square shaped holes, turns puzzle pieces (the kind where there's one piece per animal) to fit, blows into a whistle, murrs when she wants something, celebrates accomplishing a task with a high pitched "hrmm!" noise for "all done" that Julia Child might say if she lost the power of the spoken word, claps, but not rhythmically. She likes putting the shoes away, cookies, smiling when others are smiling, finding her belly button, Sophie cat, pointing, reading in her reading corner, and lining up her two dozen odd small plastic animals on their feet. She does not like when her parents leave, even for a moment, getting diaper changed, sometimes, going down the slide sitting up (but on her belly is increasingly fun), flying in airplanes, getting vitamins, or when too many new people are around. She (sometimes) understands that only some her small plastic animals can fly, the ones with wings, even the penguins. Once she lined up all of the quadrupeds separate from the other animals. I was so proud, my heart exploded a little bit.

Yesterday's run destination: the supermarket

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: ceral
lunch: chicken marbella, orzo salad, spinach salad, cherry walnut brownies
dinner: leftovers from lunch

Sleep like a fire

Sometimes getting the baby to sleep is like kindling a fire. After collecting all of the tools, setting the mise en place so that everything I might need is at hand, I try to cajol a gentle flame from the lightest of kindling. Watching carefully, seeing what direction things might go, ready to bounce around to the other side, listening, watching, breathing with her breath. Then once it is started, an added watchfulness, wariness, as if this newfound thing might snuff out at any moment and I'm back to square one. Until, truly caught and solidly set, I can breathe my own breath, sit back, take pride in a thing well done, and move on.

Yesterday's run destination: sprint around the block

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: eggs
lunch: japanese curry
dinner: chili

Solid mud

Out on the trails in Topanga State Park, those ridiculously well maintained trails of wide cuts, switchbacks, signposts at every junction, we had a nice hike this morning before the rains came. Stayed up on the ridges, surrounded by green green shrubs and chaparral soaking up the last three weeks of early rains. The trail was dry, yellow orange mud resolidified around raw and broken rocks, shaped up in ridges and bumps, smoothed and temporary, formed until the next heavy rain.

Yesterday's run destination: Montana Ave.

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: currant scones
lunch: hotdogs and hamburgers
dinner: pulled pork and greens at Sarah's. And walnut fudge

SMPL I love you

I am a big fan of libraries. I am, in fact, a trained library scientist, though not a practicing librarian. The Santa Monica Public Library does lots of things right and one big thing wrong. The main branch is large and beautiful, with a sculpted courtyard complete with cafe, that wondrous Southern California indoor-outdoor blending, a substantial collection, friendly, pro-active staff, constant events, immaculate facility, a plan with good flow, and a nice big kids area (I'm biased). The branch libraries are modest in size but solid in their own collections, services, and programming.

What it doesn't have is interlibrary loan privileges. With anyone. Not with the LA Public Library. Not even with the County of Los Angeles Public Library system. Only among the four branches of the Santa Monica Public Library. Which is why today we're off to Marina Del Rey and exploring the wider world of LA County library services. Bye bye, Santa Monica!

Yesterday's run destination: around the block

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: cheese and basil omlettes
lunch: veggie japanese curry
dinner: homemade chicken pupusas

Still moving, a few months later

After two and a half months, I find that Santa Monica is just fine. Some parts are really quite lovely and at times its only problem is that its not Boston. The difficulties of moving are still somehow lingering (I spent a fruitless hour today on hold with Verizon trying to settle a misbilling issue from getting our phone service set up). And there are definite advantages: running the mostly empty streets in the mornings with Miriam bouncing in her stroller and humming happily along, our local duck pond and playground, hearing half a dozen different languages in the park, the ocean, the ocean, the ocean, some of the tastiest, most fruit-like tomatoes I've ever had in the farmers market this week, mountains in the distance, palm trees overhead, walking to the donut shop, warm days and cool nights, week after week. We've just come out of two and a half weeks of broken schedule, with travel and visitors and off hour work, and the last day or two has been lovely to get back into a daily routine, particularly for Miriam.

Yesterday's run destination: CVS, then Albertsons

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: Cinnamon Toast Crunch
lunch: goddess sandwich from Bay Cities Italian Deli
dinner: pizza and a movie! The Social Network was pretty good

Fearing TV, like an addiction

I don't own a TV, haven't for years. No cable, no On Demand, no broadcast. I have had screens around for playing movies, for a while an ancient TV that got no reception except the DVD player and lately I've taken to watching DVDs on a laptop in bed.When I'm somewhere with a TV, a hotel room, staying with friends or family, I love to watch, and feel dirty afterwards. I am aggressively anti-TV in my own home because I fear watching it, enjoying it, losing parts of my life to being sucked into this thing that I'll hardly remember anything the next day about except the product placements.

It does keep me out of the loop. I smile and nod when conversation turns to some popular show, or even worse, some clever commercial. I've never seen the commercials people are talking about. I've tried to calculate how much an advertiser values my time and attention, dividing the cost of broadcasting a commercial by the number of people watching it, fudging for valuing certain demographics over others, etc. It comes out to an extremely low number, a few dollars per hour at most. They don't actually value my time very highly, though even a dollar an hour (what the television station is earning off my watching) is a good deal more expensive form of entertainment than reading a library book(occasional fines=many hours of reading). Cheaper than reading a magazine($5=2 hours). More expensive than taking a walk(what expenses?). Cheaper than driving around for fun, far cheaper(50 cents a mile, generously, 20 miles an hour=$10/hour). Cheaper than going out for coffee. Etc.

TV, that sense of mindless sitting and watching, the addictive "let's see what's on next" when it almost certainly no is better or memorable or satisfying than what I've just watched, has been creeping back into my life through Hulu.  But I am saved, by my utter lack of free time. Thank you baby!

Yesterday's run destination: Montana Ave.

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: frosted mini wheats
lunch: leftover pasta and sandwiches
dinner: potato leek soup, roast chicken

We have a set of little plastic animals, from alligator to zebra with stops at leopard, monkey, nuthatch, okapi, and penguin. Becca brought a bunch to go in Miriam's toy kit for the plane rides to and from Dallas for this past weekend's wedding. Miriam bangs them together, stands them up very neatly in a line, and watches while I make the giraffe gallop across the back of the seats and the koala climb up and down her arm and the iguana waddle along the tray table.

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: Hyatt Summerfield Suites' cranberry muffins
lunch: bean burrito from DFW
dinner: chicken enchiladas at Casa Escobar

Cool quiet morning

From my front porch, I can see that the birch grove is just starting to turn to its golden hues, catching the reflected light off the fields, not too many leaves have fallen. My grandson comes up from his room and sits down on the stoop, eating honeyed toast made of bread his mother baked yesterday. The door closes gently behind him, quieting the murmur of voices down there. I take a deep breath, hoping to enjoy it, cough a bit, then a bit more, and hunch my shoulders and shudder until the Calm hits me and I can unkink my muscles and look out again at the grove, and the fields, and the town beyond. Ethan, for a boy of eight, is listening hard but staying silent. He moves as if to stomp his feet and push off, stays on the stoop, shifts his legs, leans over, picks at a splinter from the board.
The sun beats down, even at eight, but there's a good westerly today and it won't be getting too hot. I breathe in, not as deeply, and listen for my daughter inside, humming to herself as she always does. Always a tune, something, some fragment or symphony or tribute. I set my chair rocking and let it take me, back and forth. Ethan's tapping on the stair, idly, but in time to his distant mother's song, sharing with her the backdrop of their world where ever he goes.
It's won't last. He's eight now, but next year he'll be nine, and the year after that ten, just like that, and one day he won't come out of his room with her song in his heart but will just stay down there, like his sister did, day after day, talking to her friends, ignoring her family, alone and together in that cave of lights and voices she accreted around herself down there only coming out for meals and then whatever was quickest, easiest to make and get back there and even then a halo of their lives around her head never letting go not even for an instant of laughs together and songs together that we could hardly hear and just watch her go back into her room, her cave. He sits out here on the porch with me and I don't even have to ask him to look with his eyes and feel with his hands the sun on the fields and the leaves and the breeze and the pits in these wooden steps worn of decades of tracking the grit of the street into our house.

This glass of water

On the table beside me sits a glass of water. I got it out of the tap. It has some air bubbles in it, not nearly as much as the faucet in our apartment in Boston, but tastes a good deal more mineral. The city of Santa Monica used to pump its water from the aquifer beneath the Los Angeles basin, but MBTE dumped in the 80s and 90s rose in such concentrations in the ground water as to make it unsafe to drink by 1996. Now Santa Monica's water comes from the Metropolitan Water District, which supplies most of the water to Southern California.

It's not exactly clear where this particular glass comes from. The two most likely sources each start off hundreds of miles away. The older of the two systems draws water out of the Colorado River at Lake Mead, the enormous artificial lake in Nevada produced by the Hoover Dam. From there, and using the hydroelectric power of that dam, it is pumped up and out of one aquifer, across Nevada and California, across deserts and farmland (the latter only a hundred years ago simply more of the former), and into a series of smaller reservoirs maintained by Los Angeles' various water agencies. More likely even than Colorado River water is water from the Feather River. Starting from the Oroville Dam, 70 miles north of Sacramento, my glass of water on the side table ran down one river and backwards up another river bed, reaching sea level around San Francisco Bay but kept separate from those brackish waters. It is pumped across hundreds of miles of deserts and farmland (see previously parenthetical note) and over entire mountain chains. Most of the water goes into agriculture, but about 20% remains in the system by the time it gets to the San Fernando Valley and enters the Metropolitan Water District for use by city dwellers, like me. This massive movement of water does not enjoy the same hydroelectric energy source and moving water around California consumes 10-15% of all energy used by the state, primarily in the form of burning coal.

Today's run destination: Virginia Ave. Park

Today's menu:
breakfast: donut and milk tea
lunch: sesame noodles
dinner: pork baked ziti and greens salad