Musings
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Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore
Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore ~ Robin Sloan Clay Jannon is a recently laid-off web designer in 2012 San Francisco. As with so many of us, as his job search goes on, his criteria gets less and less fussy, until he finds himself working the overnight shift at a 24-Hour bookstore in the part of North Beach that is known for strip clubs. Business is practically non-existent, and those clients that do come in tend to be very odd and also they don’t buy things, they borrow, and it tends to be the same books borrowed by different clients. What’s going on? Clay knows enough coding to create a program…
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My Date with Fauvism
One of our local museums, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is home to one of French artist Matisse’s most famous works, La femme au chapeau (Woman with a hat). I’ve had occasion to visit and enjoy this beautiful painting many times over the years, so when they dedicated an exhibit around the painting, I thought, huh. Do I want to spend $40 to see this, a painting I have seen many times and can see for less when it is not in a special exhibition? The answer was, probably not. However, a few months ago, I did a thing. I have been bitching recently about how few…
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Six Things Saturday
I didn’t get to a Friday Randomness this week. Usually I write my posts throughout the week, and publish early on Friday (at 4:23, my mom’s birthday), but I didn’t get to it, and I didn’t even write this post on Friday in time for an early Saturday post. C’est la vie, I’m going to post in real time. 1 – CatsLet’s start with some very good news…kitty Anastasia was adopted last weekend! That made me so, so happy. The staff talked to the family who adopted her, told her that she would need her own space, need time to come out of her shell, and they seemed like they…
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Money Monday
Free Money Update. It’s been just over a year since I signed up for the PayPal debit card, and thus far I have earned $628.46 by using this card to buy my groceries. I really recommend this card for anyone who likes free money, and is willing to put a little bit of effort into it. If this is not your jam, I get it, just move on. It is my jam. I am the only one around here who enjoys this stuff. It’s a little different from the standard points credit card, because it’s a debit card and you have to have money there first before you spend it.…
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Six on Saturday
After a wet end to 2025 and beginning of 2026, it’s pretty dry around here. I had to water the outdoor plants the other day, which makes me grumpy this time of year. There’s no rain in sight, which means no snow in the mountains. A quick google search tells me that our snowpack is low, but our reservoirs are in decent shape, which is a good thing. I had to laugh at the ‘Crucial Period’ bullet point. ‘the state is left rushing to catch up to average levels’. What? I mean, we don’t have any control over the weather, and looking at the 10 day forecast above, clearly Mother…
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Let’s Do Yoga Together in February (starting tomorrow!)
A few weeks ago I invited you all to join me in a Saturday yoga practice, coinciding with my favorite* virtual yoga instructor Adrien’s January Saturday series. Sadly, my invitation went out when we were already over a week into January, so if you didn’t see my post within a day or two, you had already missed 2 Saturdays of ‘together yoga’. Sarah mentioned that she would love to do yoga together, but didn’t like to start in the middle of the month. I am nothing if not understanding of such a mindset, so I told her, hey, let’s do it in February. I sent her a text and asked…
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This is 60
Wow, seeing the number there is a little alarming. Today is my 60th birthday, and while 30, 40, and 50 didn’t hit me, 60 is feeling a little different. Funny, because the last birthday that felt like a real change was when I turned 20, and I felt for the first time like my childhood was well and truly over. This is a stupid ad I keep seeing while playing NYT games. I feel targeted. So here we are, not quite a Senior Citizen for movie theater discounts, not quite eligible for Social Security, but certainly getting closer to both. When I started my blog 20 years ago, I was…
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Sunday Randomness
Today is the last day of Hanukkah. We celebrate, though we are not religious, because when Maya was little we wanted to expose her to more than just Christmas, and also because it’s fun. (Truthfully, this confused her as she told friends that we were Jewish when she was little, and why wouldn’t she think that?) We have latkes with our dinner and give gifts on the first night, and the other 7 night we just light the menorah. This year, of course, the light of Hanukkah felt dimmed by the horrible shooting on Bondi Beach in Australia. My mind immediately went to my friend Nadine, who is Jewish, and…
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Sunday Sadness
My sister first shared this on Facebook in 2017, the year our father died, and has shared it every year since. He died in July, and I remember that she was stumbling through her day to day life, clinging to work, marriage, kids, and decided she needed something to look forward to. So she came home from work one day and booked a trip to Hawaii for Thanksgiving. A privilege I know, but it really helped her to have that trip with her immediate family to look forward to, and to get away from home for a bit. Coincidentally, after my mom died in 2008, we also went to Hawaii,…
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Sunday 6 (If you include Mulder’s butt)
Here we are at the END of NaBloPoMo, so above is a picture of Mulder’s END. Maya showed me this picture she took one Christmas morning, which I had never seen before. So fluffy! I’ve mostly run out of steam, but here is a little Sunday Randomness for you. I saw these two at the weekly protest last week. I’m not sure about being aligned with Antifa, but I am definitely anti fascist. We went to dinner at a local spot last weekend, and right in my line of site was this poor guy. His light colored belt with his dark jeans looked like a plumber’s crack to me. Warn…
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Thinking About is 20!
20 years ago today I posted my inaugural post, about Thanksgiving and how I hated it growing up but now it’s my favorite holiday. I had some friends who had started blogs and were reading blogs and were talking about blogs, and I decided to join in. I wasn’t sure I had anything much to say, but Ted said that I liked talking about restaurants and meals, so maybe I could write about that. I did, for a bit, but then discovered that I actually had a lot to say. About politics, about books, about recipes, about culture. About parenthood, dogs, tv and movies. About grief and family, friendship and…
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Wordless Wednesday – Excellent T-Shirt Edition
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Getting to Know You
Some of my blogging friends have had the good idea to post a getting to know you type post, for new readers due to NaBloPoMo. So, here are a few things about me. How about you? What is your perfect day?
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Photo of the Day
Normally this picture would not warrant its own post, but I did say that my posts might get a little random during NaBloPoMo, right? So here we are. We live very close to a rapid transit station (BART), and you can see the mailbox in the background, which is where I mail letters and postcards and such. Yesterday I had a couple of things to mail, so I stopped by on my morning walk. Then I came across this tableau. A brand new walker, tag still attached, leaning against a bench. What’s the story? Does the fact that it appears to be wet underneath the bench mean anything? Was someone…
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Upcoming Reads and Foux du Fafa
Sunday, Maya and I went to the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland to Foux du Fafa around. That is what we call it when we want to just walk around a neighborhood, maybe have a meal or a drink, do some window shopping, etc. Our more specific goal for this day was for Maya to see the temporary location of one of our favorite bookstores, as they are in the process of rebuilding their old location that was destroyed in a fire last year. We started out with lunch at a pub with a nice outdoor patio. We enjoyed watching a dad party (4 young dads with their babies) and several…
