Friday Randomness

You know, I’ve been thinking about NaBloPoMo this year. Some years I have a theme, like A – Z, or book reviews. Other years I wing it. And there have been plenty of times over the last 20 years that I haven’t participated at all.

But these Friday Randomness posts are a whole lot of stupidness, and that is exactly the vibe I’m looking for this year. So I’ll be posting every day in November, and trying to read fellow NBPM blogs, and just putting my brain dump of stupidness into daily posts instead of combining them into one post a week. I plan to keep my posts short, too, because we’re all going to have a lot of reading to do. So, having said that, we’re at the point where I could easily have saved all of this content and used it in November, but I didn’t.

Friday, Ted and I went to see British rock band Wolf Alice at the Fox Theater in Oakland. It was fun, they were great, but wow, look at this beautiful depression era theater, isn’t it amazing?

Saturday we had evening plans in Petaluma, but Ted also wanted to meet up with a musician he has interviewed for his podcast who was in town. A Friday night concert, Saturday dinner, and Saturday chit chat was starting to feel overwhelming to me, so while he had his chat, I walked (CBWC!) around the North Beach neighborhood, which is a sunny, beautiful part of San Francisco. This is the largest of several Catholic Churches in the neighborhood, Saints Peter and Paul. Folks are relaxing in this little park, enjoying the sunshine and the airplanes above for Fleet Week. Due to the government shutdown we didn’t have the Blue Angels this year, so the star of the show was the Canadian Snow Birds. I got a few glimpses of them, but they were mostly closer to the water. I grabbed the amazing picture above from the SF Chronicle. The Chronicle is behind a paywall, but they have a free version, SF Gate, that has a lot of great pictures from the event. Mostly you don’t see the jets so much as hear them, unless you are down at the bay. But the few days prior to the event, they buzz the city while they practice. It’s a lot of fun, unless you have no idea what is going on. My first October in SF, they buzzed my neighborhood, and I was kind of terrified we were being attacked for a minute, but thankfully my friend Janet was with me and told me what was going on.

North Beach is historically an Italian neighborhood, full of restaurants and hip shops. Pizzerias and gelato shops and lots of cafes. It has a fun vibe.

I won’t say the neighborhood has a European vibe, but I will say that they try. I was getting hungry and it was going to be several hours before dinner, so I had a really tasty salted strachiatella gelato. I’ve never had that flavor before, it was delicious. I’m not a big chocolate chip ice cream fan, but this was super creamy, with really good chocolate shards.

I stopped and bought a book at a great bookstore, City Lights Books, and did not stop in and have a drink at a great bar across the path from it, Vesuvio. After book browsing (not long, crowded bookstore) and walking around the neighborhood, I finally joined Ted and his friend for a bit, then we left to go meet our friends for dinner.

Ted was born in Canada, and is a Canadian citizen. I realized something new this year, which is that Maya is a Canadian citizen too, since her father is. I’m not sure why that never occurred to me before, I guess because she doens’t have any official paperwork, which she should get. We celebrated Thanksgiving on Sunday afternoon with a traditional turkey dinner. Since there were only 3 of us (two really, since Maya is vegetarian) we had a turkey breast instead of a whole turkey.

Speaking of turkey – the other day I decided to walk around the side streets of my busy neighborhood and see how many pomegranate trees I could find.

This street didn’t have any, but they had a small flock of turkeys.

This street didn’t have any, but there was a rope ladder up into a tree. No tree house, just the tree.

This street doesn’t have any, but they have a little lot of land with grape vines. I don’t think I’ve ever seen grapes, but I don’t come down this way often. I should make an effort next year and see what kind they are growing. Very pretty.

The next day I took a different path, and hit pay dirt. I have never seen a tree with so many pomegranates. I almost took some, but chickened out, since they are not really over the property line.

And right next door, this tree. We don’t eat a lot of pomegranates, but at least now I know where to look.

Another day I walked on our trail and found the Little Free Library there looking quite messy. On the one hand, what is wrong with people? On the other hand, it was pretty satisfying to clean it up.

You’ve likely heard about our upcoming statewide election, proposition 50. We voted. I hate the idea of it, but the whole ‘when they go low, we go high’ sure as hell isn’t working, we need to stand up and fight while we have something to fight for. So we voted yes. I love mail in voting.

This week’s kitty is Julia Gulia. She’s 2, and I know nothing more about her except that she’s lovely and very sweet, and so much easier to clean up after than kittens. Kitten people, hang in there, there is hope.

I have had this box for a couple of years. What the hell? Maya gave me a wallet a few years ago, and the packaging was so nice I wanted to find some use for it. But there was no use, so I posted it on Buy Nothing. Guess what? No one wanted it there either.

But then, I thought of a use for it. It’s now in the junk drawer, and holds batteries. Yay! I’ve been wanting to organize them somehow so they don’t roll around in there. I sorted through the drawer and got rid of several other things.

Just like writing on your blog consistently trains your brain to see things as blog fodder, my decluttering project is training my brain to look around and see things as keep/don’t keep, and if you’re going to keep it, have a reason.