my sandbox

Just left my cool job at the Center to go on to another cool job at Cornell. I told my friends at the old job that I’d keep them up-to-date via this blog, so I’m unearthing it. Look at it! It’s so dusty and creaky. It’s like a zombie. Except that I think zombies are more wet than dusty. I wonder if my mom is still checking it (the blog, not the zombie) every day? If she isn’t, does it mean she no longer loves me?

So, since my last post, there was Thanksgiving and Christmas, which were lovely, then a new semester that included an internship and a coupla classes plus my old job at the Center, and then I got a job, and another job, and a scholarship. The first job is via Cornell’s Biology Library but I will actually be working and living at the Cornell Biological Field Station. It starts June 2 and will last through the summer. I’ll be working on a data curation project involving a long term aquatic ecology data set, an online repository, two dwarves, and a wheel of cheese. There will also be the semantic web. I will tell you more about it later, when it actually happens and I know enough about it not to be nonsensical and flippant. After that I’ll be working full-time for UC Berkeley’s Bioscience Library. In a fact that turns out to be not entirely coincidental, this is also where I did my internship this semester. And I won a scholarship for one thousand dollars based on my sheer intellectual prowess. Disappointingly, it’s to be applied to my tuition rather than given to me cash in hand. Oh, and I have to take a couple more classes before I graduate, which will be in Spring 2009, unless the asteroids come and muck everything up.

So that brings you just about up to date, except for two important events. One is that Victor and I went hiking on the Tomales Bay Pt. Trail in Pt. Reyes Nat’l Seashore and saw elk, and wildflowers, and elk in wildflowers. Like this:

And, we went to Limantour beach (also in Pt. Reyes Nat’l Seashore) and found that the best thing to do at the beach is to bury Arty in the sand. Here’s how:

And so:

And then he falls asleep:

And there you have it. Next post might be from Rhode Island, or Cornell, or something. Or it could just be from here.

Boring post, but necessary to properly document our activities. Why is writing about travel (at least when I do it) so unexciting, as compared to actually doing it?

Victor and I went up to Lassen NP and surrounding National Forest for a few days in mid August to do a bit of camping and see the sights. On our way up, we stopped at the Sacramento River National Wildlife Refuge to do a bit of birding. The refuge hadn’t done their water release yet (which is what makes all the nice wetlands that attract the shorebirds and waterfowl) so it was pretty quiet, but we did see some nice stuff including a pair of willow flycatchers at the viewing platform. There were also lots of ring-necked pheasant (not surprising since they’re introduced):

We camped in Lassen National Forest, right outside the park, along Forest Road 17 if anyone’s interested. We were primitive camping rather than camping in a campground, so basically we just found a good spot in the forest and pulled the truck up. At our first campsite, we were eaten alive by mosquitoes, which we blamed on the fact that we were camped right near a pool of stagnant water. We moved to a new campsite the next night, which was much nicer. It was on the edge of a dried lake bed. It was a great spot for birds: each morning we’d wake up and there would be a bunch of hermit warblers (as well as Nashville, MacGillivray’s, Wilson’s, yellow-rumped, and orange-crowned warblers) foraging high up in the trees as they moved through on their journey south. Tons of bluebirds and chipping sparrows hung out in the middle of the lakebed, and we also saw a goshawk at the site. Here’s Victor looking at something in the middle of the lakebed:

We went for a hike up to Heart Lake on one day - saw a black-throated gray warbler on the trail, which was a nice bird to see. This was in the National Forest so we were able to bring Arty; he’s not allowed on trails in the National Park. We were hoping to swim in the lake, but it was kind of narsty with algae and such, so we just looked at it. We went for a dip in a creek on the way down instead. It was freakin’ cold. Here’s Arty at the lake:

We spent a day in the Lassen National Park. Lovely place, but as with most National Parks we didn’t really fully sample all of its pleasures because we had Arty with us and couldn’t go on any extended hikes in the park. We did leave Arty in the truck while we went on a short hike into Bumpass Hell, which I believe is what one might call a geothermal feature.

It’s got all these vents and hot springs and boiling mudpots and all that kind of thing. Good times.

We left on a Tuesday morning and got back Friday night. We had been planning on staying an extra day or two but I was fighting a sinus infection so we decided it best to curtail the trip.

Later on Friday of last week we headed out to Inverness to meet up with some friends and have a picnic. Our friend Lisa chose the spot, which Victor and I hadn’t been to before; a bench atop Mt. Vision in the Point Reyes National Seashore.

Our buddy Bob and his buddy Eric from Montana joined us. We had cheese and crackers and bread and chips and salsa and olives and wine and beer. Here’s some pics that Victor took.

Last weekend Victor and I were up in the North Bay, so we did what everyone does when they head up that direction: we went to an RV show. This was in the middle of the day on a Friday, the first day of the show, so we kind of had the place all to ourselves, except for the salespeople (who were all very nice, and who, reasonably, pretty much left us alone once they saw that we weren’t serious buyers (this assessment probably took them about .7 seconds)).

At first we were looking at the little RVs, cause feasibly, someday, we might want to set ourselves up with something like that. But eventually we migrated over to the big ol’ land yachts, cause, you know, how can you not?

We had a little photo shoot, with Victor demonstrating the various features of some of the rigs that we looked at. Maybe if we go to enough of these things we could make a calendar.

We used to have an Albertson’s directly across the street from our apartment complex.  About a week ago, this Albertson’s had a power outage (the only one on the block).  This past weekend, Victor and I went there to try to buy some meat and they didn’t have any.  Meat.  At all.  The meat case was empty.

Monday morning, the Albertson’s sign was taken down and a Lucky sign was put up.

The Albertson’s was never a very nice store.  The floors were always kind of dirty, and it never smelled quite right.  But, the brand-conscious part of my brain still perceives the Lucky as being a step down from the Albertson’s.  The store may in fact improve by virtue of being a Lucky, but it will still be tainted by its low-rent branding, at least in my mind.

It continually surprises me, the low quality of grocery stores here in California.  Back east, or at least in the southern New England and mid Atlantic states, any suburb or faux-suburb greater than 30,000 in size sports a huge, glittering mega supermarket that has everything you could ever want.  Aesthetically appealing?  Not necessarily.  But clean, at least, and fully stocked with an array of both domestic and foreign foodstuffs to dazzle the eye and palate, with firm and fresh produce, and ham hocks available from the meat department, should you need such a thing.  I thought that California would be replete with these types of establishments as well, being, you know, California, but such is not the case.  At least, not around the Bay Area:  I have in fact encountered a supermarket like this in Sacramento.

I think it might have to do with the fact that the yuppies all shop at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s here, or at the cute little individually owned boutique gourmet grocery stores.  Don’t get me wrong, I shop at Trader Joe’s too, but when I need, for example, meat, I’m going to go to a normal supermarket.  I’m not going to go to Whole Foods and pay $19/lb for meat from some grass-fed, diaper-wearing cow that only drank lattes till it was 6 months old.  But apparently the power of the yuppie dollar is not with me on this, so there isn’t demand for, for instance, regular supermarkets that have meat departments with a decent selection of different cuts, or produce that isn’t wilted and brown.  I suppose I will just struggle along with my Lucky, and hope for the best.

So way back when (maybe 3 weeks ago?), Victor and I went on a little wine-tasting jaunt, and I’m just now getting around to blogging about it.

Here’s our route:

Stop 1: Cline winery. The whole field trip was instigated by the fact that we belong to the Cline wine club, and we had just moved in the past 3-4 months, and our quarterly wine shipment was about to get sent out, and they didn’t have our right address. So we decided we might as well go up there and straighten it out and, you know, drink some wine. Cline has a separate little room for club members where you can taste whichever wine you want, rather than the schlock they have out for the sweaty masses (their schlock is actually very good, and I’m sure the masses are perfectly lovely. But it’s not every day that I get to be exclusive, so I’m playing it up). The reason we’re members of Cline is because their wine is really freakin’ good, so we were happy to sample several of their selections while there, and picked up our wine shipment in the meanwhile. They emphasize Zinfandels, but I particularly favor their Small-Berry Mourvedre, which is fruity, chocolatey, and tobaccoey, all in one. Like bundling a cigar and a chocolate bar together with a fruit rollup, and smoking it. Not that I’d do such a thing.

Stop 2 was Taft Street Winery. This has been a favorite of ours in the past, but on this visit we realized that the reason why it was a favorite was because of the Guy, and the Guy was gone. The Guy used to pour whatever captured his fancy, and tell you all about whatever it was, how it was grown on the rocky slopes so you could taste the mineral, yadda yadda. He was super chatty, and he picked out the good stuff to pour and he wanted to teach you about wine more than he wanted to monitor how much wine you were getting. This is probably why he’s been replaced by a robot. The robot only poured what’s on the tasting menu, which wasn’t very good, and she used the little pour spouts that measure a stingy little pour, and she didn’t say anything interesting. She just said what she’d been programmed to say, like “This would go great with grilled meats.” Which is pretty much what it says on the back of the bottle.

Saddened by stop 2, we moved on to stop 3. We like the wines at stop 3, but they’re kind of expensive so we just go there recreationally, and pay our $5 tasting fee without purchasing anything. Stop 3 is Sunce winery, and they have a Bocce ball court. The first time we went there, with Victor’s brother and his friend Susan G*****, we played Bocce, and they had just had a special event there so there was leftover food, so we ate some of the leftover food and finished off the wine in the bottles that had been left out for the event. So that was fun. The wine was still good, but there were no freebies, and playing bocce by our lonesomes under an overcast sky seemed uninviting, so we just tasted and went on our way.

Stop 4 is actually a restaurant. It’s Sooze’s wine bar and cafe and it’s in Petaluma, where we used to live. It’s one of our favorites: maybe 6 or 8 tables and a small bar, really intimate. Sooze’s is cool because they have half-price glasses of wine from 4-6, their wine list is well-chosen (I’ve not had a wine there that I haven’t liked), and the food is really good. We started with some oysters and something steely and white that I can’t remember the name of (I knew I should have written this post earlier). We had a bowl of olives, then I had the seared scallops with a pea-roasted garlic puree, that were just out of this world. I can’t remember what Victor had. Victor, what did you have? Anyway, for dessert we both got the molten chocolate cake, and I got a dessert wine recommended by the waiter, a Zinfandel that didn’t quite stand up to the dessert, so that was a little disappointing. They used to have this excellent Rosenblum “Rosie Rabbit” dessert wine that was excellent, like, I don’t know, sucking on rubies or something (maybe a more useful description would be, an intense berry jam flavor nicely balanced with a hint of acid), but it’s apparently gone.

Then we walked around a bit in the ol’ Luma, and Victor drove home, cause he wasn’t all drunk like me. Sometimes, Californ-I-A is aaallllright.

Last weekend Victor and I went banding in Yosemite.

We stayed with our buddy Bob, at his gracious and well-appointed field house in Groveland. The house’s main attraction was its large stone porch. Over the course of their field season many person-hours were logged on that porch by Bob and his field crew, and we did our best to boost the number during our visit.

This is a fairly typical scene.  Bob’s the one sucking down the beer; Ben was a member of Bob’s field crew this summer working on a willow flycatcher survey:

Of course, sitting on the porch was not in fact our primary mission. We banded some birds as well. We joined interns Craig, Bucky, Lanaye, and Jordan at Crane Flat and banded there for six hours. One of the highlights that day was a Lazuli Bunting:

When we band, we set up ten mistnets in established locations around the stations. We make a circuit to check the nets once every 40 minutes, and we extract whatever birds we come across as we’re doing our checks. That day, we had a rather impressive 23 birds in one net at the same time: it was pretty busy.

Here’s what a mistnet looks like:

I think I was taking a Lincoln’s sparrow out of the net in this picture but I’m not quite sure. Here’s what a bird caught in a net looks like:

Once we get the birds out of the nets, we bring them back to our banding station in small cloth bags. We put a band on each bird (unless it has been recaptured, in which case we record the band number) and determine the bird’s age and sex, along with some other data. The data goes to The Institute for Bird Populations, where Victor and I used to work. The data are used to estimate survivorship and productivity of the species that we catch: in other words, researchers at IBP can examine trends in populations of these birds with the banding data collected by folks at this station and around 500 others across North America.

Anyhoo, Victor went out with the interns the next day to Gin Flat, which is a higher elevation site. I hung back at the house cause the site was a hike-in, so we weren’t able to bring Arty (dogs are not allowed on trails in the park) and I didn’t want to leave him tied up outside all alone. But, the star of that day’s banding was a Williamson’s sapsucker, which I was sorry to miss as he’s a fairly impressive specimen:

So, there you have it.

Yesterday, at 4:42 am, half-awake, I felt the bed shake.  A fairly sharp jolt, then a second or two of gentle undulation.

I asked Victor:  “Did you feel that?”  No response.  “There was an earthquake!” Oh.  OK, Victor responds groggily.  Clearly thinking that I just had a dream or something.

I peeked at Arty, laying at the end of the bed.  Sound asleep.  I began to doubt my own senses, as the common “wisdom ” seems to hold that animals are sensitive to these sorts of things, and since last time I felt an earthquake (summer 2006, when Victor was in Alaska) Arty got all freaked out.

Victor rolls out of bed at around 6am.  From the living room I hear:  “Goddamnit!  GODDAMNIT!”  He comes charging back into the bedroom.  “You were right!”

“I know,” I respond, “What are we talking about, now?”

“The earthquake!  There was an earthquake!  It’s on the news!  Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I did wake you.  You didn’t seem to believe me.”

“No, I mean, why didn’t you wake me while it was happening?”

The quake was a 4.2 at its epicenter near Oakland, where 1400 households were without power for  a spell.  Nothing major; mostly just stuff falling off shelves and whatnot, but folks there reported that it felt pretty strong, and less undulating than your average quake.  Poor Victor was pretty disappointed that he missed out on another earthquake.  Ah well.  Our former boss seems to think that a big one is coming, so maybe Victor’ll get to experience that.

I’m a commuter, and I’m a typical bad commuter who drives my car, both ways, without carpooling or any such mitigating what-have-yous.  My round trip is around 59 miles/day, around 48 of which is highway miles.

A couple of weeks ago I started driving around 60-65 mph instead of my usual 75 miles per hour, just to see what sort of difference it made to my fuel efficiency.  My 1991 Honda Civic Wagon had been getting 34 mpg, but under this new regime it’s been getting 40 mpg (based on n=2 fillups).  Nice!

I computed how much I’m saving in gas per month:  the car is pretty much only used for commuting, and I drive 18 days per month, or 1062 miles.  Figuring an average gas price of 3.40/gallon, I was spending around 106.20/month on gas.  Now I’m spending around 90.27 on gas, a savings of 15.93/month.  Not bad.

Right now, according to weather.com, it is 68 degrees F in my town of Pacifica, CA.

In Pleasanton, which is 30 miles due east of here, it is 102 degrees F.

Granted, visibility here in Pacifica is about 100 feet or so.

Nonetheless: w00T!

Last Saturday Victor and I went on a hike on nearby Sweeney Ridge. We were ostensibly going to look for burrowing owls. Bob and Rodney, our erstwhile co-workers, are coordinating a statewide burrowing owl survey and asked us to check out this area, which apparently had burrowing owls historically.

We didn’t see any burrowing owls. It was foggy, and windy, and everything’s grown up with coyote brush- there’s no habitat. But we did find plenty of berries. The blackberries are just starting to be ripe, here, and the thimbleberries are in full swing.

I think thimbleberries have a really unique flavor, and given the fact that they’re pretty ubiquitous in these parts I’m somewhat surprised that I don’t see them around more in local cuisine, you know, “pork tenderloin with thimbleberry-port reduction”, that sort of thing. We didn’t eat the sage: that’s just an inedible garnish.

Here in Pacifica, the hottest month is the month of September, during which the average high is 71 degrees.

This means that it’s a comfortable temperature for drinking port in the evening all the year round. Huzzah!

We went down to Carmel/Monterey to celebrate my parents’ 40th anniversary. Here are some pics of the time we had. My parents are so freakin’ cute it makes me want to barf.

Me with a wine glass, number 893 of a series.

Travis’s blog-friend was apparently in Monterey at the same time and saw the exact same harbor seal as us. We didn’t get any good deals on shirts, though.

Victor mit knob:

This picture is from the day that Arty grew to giant size and destroyed much of San Francisco. Captured here during an introspective moment.

Fort Funston, San Francisco’s premiere dog walking venue, is mere minutes from our apartment, but because it’s in San Francisco we’ve had a psychological barrier preventing us from checking it out. Well, we’ve smashed that barrier and have just returned from our second jaunt in three days. Arty is a much better dog off leash, and although we’re not above breaking the law, it’s always more relaxing to take him to places where the man doesn’t frown on him roaming free. The vast majority of other dogs at Fort Funston are unfettered, and generally those dogs that are on leash are phlegmatic when it comes to being approached by boisterous young whippersnappers. It’s a happenin’ doggy atmosphere, a place to see and be seen. Victor has already run into a couple of his clients from Planet Pooch.

Fort Funston has the added bonus features of ocean views and abandoned WWII bunkers and batteries. Here’s a couple of pictures (sorry about the poor quality; it was cloudy out on Saturday):

Since we’ve moved to Pacifica, Victor and I have started taking BART into the city and wandering, semi-aimlessly, around various neighborhoods. Last weekend we checked out the Castro. Yesterday we explored the area around the Civic Center.

Got off at the Civic Center stop and headed up Market for a little while. The stretch of Market right by the BART stop is pretty ghetto, but after a few blocks we got into an interesting bit. We stopped in at a travel bookstore and bought a Lonely Planet guide to British Columbia, since we’re planning a road trip to Vancouver Island in August. Spun around once we realized we were about to overlap with our stroll around the Castro last week, and stopped in the Zuni Cafe for a bit of liquid refreshment. I had a Manhattan, made with Maker’s Mark. I had never tried a Manhattan with Maker’s before and found it quite good- the Maker’s complements the cherry flavor in the vermouth nicely. Victor had Grey Goose with grapefruit juice, on the suggestion of the bartender when Victor asked for “something refreshing with Grey Goose”. I think he was hoping for something a little more creative, but he said he enjoyed his drink nonetheless.

As we were sipping our beverages, we noticed a commotion at the other end of the bar, and like good bar patrons we flocked to the scene of the excitement. There was a fire on the 5th floor of the building next door, which was undergoing renovation. It looked like one of the plywood forms had caught fire somehow. It was a pretty small fire, but tricky to get to. Four firetrucks pulled up and we left as the firemen were assessing the situation.

Continuing on our journey, we turned up Franklin, more non-descript ghetto stuff, then down Hayes, which has apparently burgeoned into a little enclave of trendy stores and restaurants within the past fifteen years or so. It’s right near the symphony and the opera house, which probably accounts for much of its popularity: as we wandered past the Hayes Street Grill we saw a line of symphony-dressed folks waiting for tables. The bar/restaurant Absinthe and the restaurant/bakery Citizen Cake are in this neighborhood too. We thought to pick up some treats at Citizen Cake, but we were both hungry enough that the thought of something sugary wasn’t appealing.  We then flirted with the idea of stopping in Absinthe and ordering a couple of small plates and a couple of glasses of wine, but realized that this would undoubtedly result in us dropping fifty bucks or so on a small snack, and decided to just go hungry for another hour or so instead.

We turned onto Grove St. to walk by City Hall, the UN Plaza, and all those big, grand, landmarky buildings around that area.  We briefly stopped in the SF Public Library, but didn’t really look around much: it seemed to be closing when we got there at around 6pm. So, back to the BART station and Pacifica.

From a review of a vegetarian joint in the Sunset in San Francisco:

I’m sick. I’m sick for the fifth time in as many months. This is not good. I don’t know myself to be immunosuppressed, so this ridiculous frequency of common colds can only be due to my body’s rejection of the processed animal fats I consistently force upon it. (The ball and chain refers to this thought process as “girl science.”)

My first thought upon reading this was “Heh. Girl science. That’s pretty good.” My second thought was “Hey…!”

link

This is Jenny.

Victor and I used to pass Jenny every day on our way to work, when we worked where we used to work. When I first saw Jenny, I thought she was a mule, and I had some vague recollection that female mules are called “jennies” and male mules are called “jacks.” So, we started calling her Jenny.

We soon discovered that Jenny was equipped with male genitalia, but not wanting her to feel judged about her lifestyle choice we continued as before. She never said anything, but I sensed that she was grateful that we accepted her for who she was.

But now, I’m not even sure she’s really a mule. Her ears seem too short.

Jenny winters somewhere else (when we were in the Yucatan in March of 2005 we thought we saw her down there), so as the time neared when I was to leave my old workplace back in early April, I feared I would never see Jenny again. She returned from her winter quarters just three days before my last day of work. I was happy to have a chance to see Jenny one last time.

If you want to see Jenny yourself, look for her between April and October on the Point Reyes Station-Petaluma road in Marin County, California. She’s closer to Point Reyes Station, on the right as you’re driving towards Petaluma.