an ascetic lifestyle of leisure

Went to Mikey's family's house for Thanksgiving. I'm not sure how we rate as highly as his family, but we are grateful because he and his brother try to outcook each other every year. Last year Izzy was only two weeks old; he's a little man now. He's a bit on the wee side -- Journey is almost as big as he is. I had an interesting conversation with Dana's dad Butch and we stuffed our faces then went home.

The next day I cooked lunch for Mom -- shrimp risotto (I forgot to put in celery and mushrooms), swiss chard, and fried tilapia. Everything came out pretty much perfect. And Saturday I cooked for Mike and Michelle -- thin pork tenderloin on rye, potatoes au gratin, broccoli stir fry, and leftover risotto. I did pretty good.

Journey has not been sleeping well over the weekend. She now has a lot of separation anxiety and is unable to put herself back to sleep, so when she wakes up at night she needs us. We've been trying various things to get her to sleep longer at night but nothing really seems to suffice unless one of us sleeps with her or we cram her face full of milk. It's a little rough. Last night she finally slept five hours in a row which was decent. Apparently that qualifies as 'sleeping through the night' according to some pediatrics society. WhatEVER.

Oh yeah, I ordered a 2 terabyte external hard drive from staples.com for $140. Man, storage is cheap these days.

After several years of flailing and procrastinating I have finally managed to rip all my jazz CDs to a lossless format, which should make converting them to any future format MUCH easier. That's about a third or a quarter of my collection. Extrapolating, I should finish the rest of my music about the time I keel over.

The subtext of ripping all my jazz first is that I would then DJ for dances. Except I'm pretty ill-equipped. So prepping for that will probably take more years. Hopefully by then I would be an actual gigging jazz musician instead.

HA HA HA right

I think about weird things when I drive. Today on my short commute I was thinking about gas mileage and how my Fit gets about 30 mpg city, while a hybrid might get around 40 to 45. Then my mind wandered to how cars in the aggregate use up tremendous amounts of gas. Then I thought about how humankind, for almost all its existence, was only able to harness human and animal power; as a result there was a limit to how much population could be fed. Then along came machines and as a direct result we were able to generate unbelievable population growth by basically converting petroleum into people.

The final thought in the sequence was "if we ever invent a near limitless supply of clean energy (solar, fusion?) the population will grow without limit, so maybe it's better we run out of gas and five out of six people starve to death". (I know, it's a pretty uncool thought. I don't actually want five billion people to die.) I kept thinking about the humanity-wide consequences of possessing a limitless supply of energy:

The planet would probably be bored out so that the top two miles or so would generate another couple dozen Earth-sized surfaces we could live on.

We would colonize the solar system eventually (although other stars would be doubtful unless the limitless supply of energy were portable -- man-made black hole?)

Most species would go extinct.

There would be a lot of warfare over who controls the energy supply.

There would either be an explosion of technology or an explosion of lotus-eating. Or both.

You would be able to travel anywhere very, very quickly.

Recycling would be effortless since you could decompose anything to its constituent elements.

We could, in theory, harvest asteroids for raw materials (especially water).

It would, basically, be the futuristic society dreamed of by Golden Age science fiction writers.



I want my flying car.

The law is all about the meaning of words. Sometimes ... mistakes happen.

http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1770189.html

HAHAHA

(thanks rfrancis)

Two vaguely interesting things:

1) The band that I keep plugging a.k.a The Rescues got signed to a record deal. They rule.

2) Over the weekend I met my mom's condo complex's manager. He's a really interesting guy to talk to. He's white, but speaks Chinese. I have better pronunciation but he has way more vocabulary than I do, which is more useful in most situations. I asked him how he got interested in Chinese. Turns out he studied under Bruce Lee for two years in downtown LA in the 60s, before Bruce became EXTRA famous (i.e. post Green Hornet but pre Enter the Dragon). How random is that?

The other random thing about that factoid is that one of Bruce's best known students, Dan Inosanto, has an academy of martial arts right next to our chiropractor.

We helped Laura and Dave move over the weekend. I haven't helped anyone move in more than eight years. I think that I must have exactly the right job for my personality because at work I am supposed to make things more efficient for the company (i.e. more profitable). While helping them move I kept mentally identifying inefficiencies and hoping they would come on board my mental game plan, but didn't say anything because I didn't want to seem like a big control freak. Well, after four hours we got most of the really heavy stuff out of their old house and into the new one, but I think we probably could have saved an hour and a half....okay, I'm a dork.

After nonstop weekends of guests it was nice to have a mostly empty house (except for baby toys all over). I re-adjusted my drum setup to fit my height better and played a lot of Scrabble and slept on the couch with Journey a couple nights so Holly could get some rest.

Wil has been staying with us for a few days while he's in town doing business. We cooked him dinner one night and he took us out to the Depot last night. He also bought us Anathem (for me) and Under the Dome (for Holly). I am never sure why I deserve his friendship but I'm always grateful. He always cracks me up when we hang out.

During dinner we had a half bottle of Ridge cabernet sauvignon '03 which was particularly delicious. Must remember that one.

We're going to help some friends move this weekend but for the first time in a long time we won't have guests. I love our guests, but it's been nearly six weeks of hotelhood!

Ryan visited for the weekend. We wrote a song, went go-karting, went wine tasting up near Solvang, ate at the Hitching Post, went to Cole's and Varnish, ate at In-n-Out, and hung out with Journey a lot. A fitting way to end a sabbatical where I did mostly nothing!

We bought a Roussane (white) from Rideau Winery and a Riesling from Koehler. I made an awesome no-knead bread (for some reason the crust came out perfectly crispy instead of too hard or too limp this time) and we dipped it into a blackberry ginger balsamic vinegar we also got at Rideau. Heavenly. Having never been to California wine country, it all seemed very familiar from movies such as Sideways and Bottle Shock: dry, sunny hills with sparse trees and plenty of drainage. The wine tastings varied in personality from extremely serious (Rideau) to doofy (Koehler). For a region known widely for pinot, very few of the reds stood out to us, but the whites were all excellent.

The food at the Hitching Post was great except for their "world famous barbequed steaks", which were merely adequate. Having a sharper steak knife and matching my interpretation of "medium rare" would have been nice. But having dinner with Ryan's dad and Andrew and Karen was a perfect way to cap off the evening. The two hour drive home was a titanic battle against food comatude though.

I'd never been to Cole's before although I've been to Philippe's several times. I like the French dip at Philippe's better but the atmosphere at Cole's is better. The sandwiches are really just excuses to get enormous amounts of nose-evacuating spicy mustard into your mouth. Varnish is a bar that is accessed via an unlabeled door in the back of Cole's (although it is transparently obvious that something is happening through the door since there is a line to get in) which is known for high quality mixology. There is a cocktail culture arising that is akin to the foodie movement of the past fifteen years: innovative techniques with more than passing respect for the traditional ways and a correspondingly slavish devotion to the culture. Since I can't drink very much I'll probably be sticking with food and wine pairings in the future, but it's fun to see my friends so engaged with the booze.

Anyway, I go back to work on Tuesday. I hope I remember how to write a perl script. It's been fantastic seeing Journey grow for two months.

More and more I find myself documenting my life in photos and as a result livejournal winds up being explication of the images. It's a little odd. I have always considered myself a verbal (written, anyway) as well as visual person, but it seems I have less to write about. Perhaps being a dad isn't quite as inspirational as, say, backpacking through Europe. Not in the same way, that is.

We went to Lindygroove's Halloween dance. I leave it to discerning viewers to determine what we were. The range of costumes was as usual over the top ranging from the old man/boy scout in "Up" (complete with giant flock of balloons) to a walking tiki bar to a mechanical fortune teller in a box to seriously detailed costumery. It was too dark to take good photographs, so you'll just have to imagine it all.

The next night Lance and Vicky (who run Lindygroove) finally got married (in Lindygroove's venue, the Pasadena Masonic temple). Lance said to me that I had had a big part in this since I had urged him to dump his previous girlfriend for Vicky. In turn I told him (in a surprising and rare moment of eloquence on my part) that after seeing him so overjoyed on this night it was an honor and privilege to be able to share that emotional intensity with him. People like me don't "get" weddings until they experience their own. And now having done so I fully understand the transformative power that a wedding truly possesses. The trappings and frippery of gowns, wedding dances and ceremonies are just the superficial (and yet vitally important) gunk that conceals the true core of a wedding: the overwhelming sense that something vastly right and correct has just happened and that you were a part of it, however small.

Holly's parents were here for 12 days. Unlike seemingly many people, I love my in-laws to death. They are the coolest, nicest in-laws you could possibly ask for. Jack bought us, at a steep discount on a floor model, a truly awesome leather recliner from JC Penney and now I have a man-chair from which I can survey my realm. Pat did monstrous amounts of sewing and cooking and laundry and baby-care. They also installed new track lighting in the second bathroom. We ate at Pann's with Laura, Dave and Chandler, and went to Zen Buffet with my mom. And it was even better because my Dad coordinated his visit to coincide with Jack and Pat, so we had all the grandparents at once.

I'm still on my sabbatical. It will end next week, whereupon I will take an extra week of time off. Mua ha ha. I am indolently leisurely.

We drove up to Silicon Valley for a lightning quick visit with my best friend Pablo and his lovely wife Angie and their son. Christopher is nearly two and a half and fully accomplished at all the two year old tricks such as screaming and crying and sniffling while still being pretty darn cute. When Journey reaches that stage I am not sure Holly will make it, hehe. Angie's mom lives with them (shortly her dad will also come) and is absolutely wonderful with children, although she has flashes of steel when Christopher throws a tantrum. I can't imagine moving from Shanghai to live in the US so abruptly, but I realized that with China's one child rule, any given grandparent will only ever have one grandchild. Having close family right there certainly gives you more flexibility with your life, that's for sure.

Journey did well on the trip. We stopped three times for feeding and diapering and Holly only had to ride in back the last 45 minutes to keep her entertained. Much the same happened on the drive home (except I rode in back) -- she's a pretty good natured kid.

We also saw my cousin Christine who had a kid a week ago. Hard to believe Journey was once that tiny -- Tessa is exactly the same size Journey was at birth. Christine's chipper as always (I think she is a genetic mutant and doesn't seem physically capable of being angry or sad) and her husband Gilbert looked utterly wrecked. He actually fell asleep in the middle of a conversation. I never did that...did I?

And of course I saw mudders briefly for a dinner at Amici's. Hard to believe I've known these people approximately twenty years in one form or another. Pablo too -- I met him at freshman camp in college.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lordjulius/sets/72157622536202808/

Holly's sister Susan has been visiting. She is an amazing cook and excellent with children, therefore I've indulged in far too much computer gaming. We took her to Sam Woo for dim sum but the restaurant is now First Capital or something and it is the worst dim sum I have ever had. Since Sam Woo was the best, it was quite disappointing. I was actually angry at the food and service, in my "steaming inside" manner.

We also went to the Getty Villa. The last time I went was prior to its closing for renovation in 1997; I could not tell what had changed since I have absolutely zero memory of anything in my life pre-digital camera. It's a beautiful reconstruction of a Roman villa built expressly to house an art collection.

And we left Susan with the baby while we indulged in a little fantasy house-shopping. I noticed a beautiful spacious airy house for sale over in the nicer part of our neighborhood. I convinced myself that we should stop dreaming about it because it is too expensive for us, the master suite is too small and the master bath is too large and the living rooms are kinda cramped. (I'd estimate the kitchen/dining area, by volume, occupies a third of the house.)

Why is California broke?



Perhaps 165 S Muirfield Road is to blame. Zillow assesses the property as being worth approximately 7.3 million dollars. How much property tax did the owner pay in 2008?

Guess. No, really, guess.















Eight hundred and eight dollars. To be fair, a little extra research shows that the address is possibly the residence of the Canadian consul general, so insert Canadian dollar joke here.

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/165-S-Muirfield-Rd-Los-Angeles-CA-90004/20779276_zpid/

In other news, we went to Zuma with Journey and Sara and Ethan. I got a nice pink sunburn. Journey survived unscathed due to our diligence in keeping her under the umbrella and hat.

Last weekend we hosted a surprise birthday party for Ethan. I have doubts as to how secret it really was to Sarah and Eric, but it was nice getting some people together for Ethan's first birthday. We made (and had brought to us) way too much food as usual so we subsisted in leftovers for a week.

We also saw David Wilcox in concert at a nice south bay venue, Brixton. The website said that doors opened at 6 and he would play at 7 so we got there about 7 and ... there was a line of people at the front door, people who trusted the website. Foolish people. So we sat around inside the club for an hour before Dave went on. But this meant we were sitting at a table right up against the stage. He treated us to a jukebox night, i.e. people shouted out songs from his back catalog and he played them (if he remembered -- he has had occasional funny lapses on stage where he riffs for a while trying to remember the next verse, and even asks the audience for hints). So for the first time I heard Dave sing "Blow 'Em Away" live, a very funny blues that was the hook that drew me into this amazing songwriter. Unlike a lot of singer/songwriters, Dave is EXTREMELY talented on acoustic guitar and employs all sorts of weird and wonderful tunings, retuning on the fly between songs so fast that he can launch into another song before the applause for the previous one even dies down. And his lyrics, again, unlike most other singer/songwriters, actually fit the music in terms of meter and stresses and rhythm. I cannot stand it when accents fall on the wrong syllables in words, for example this. There are much more egregious songs too.

My knee is mysteriously swollen and irritated so that I can't bend it very well. The orthopedist is a very doofy guy who began drawing vectors on a piece of paper representing ligaments and kneecaps and then stopped to apologize and ask what I majored in. He looked reassured when I said "physics" and went on. He says irritation behind the knee cap is causing swelling and impaired range of motion, and it should go away in a while. But that means no dancing, no go-karting, no hi-hat work, and not much walking. Bleagh.

For our anniversary we went to our favorite neighborhood Italian place, Fabiolus. Well, Hollywood isn't our neighborhood, but we love that place. My mom has been heroic in babysitting. Yay for grandmothers!

So far on my sabbatical I have been puked up on 32560 times and none of them occurred in bars, so that's some indication of what my time off is like. We plan on maybe going to SF and maybe Vegas and Holly's parents and maybe sister will be here within the next two months, so it's not like things aren't happening anymore.

Tracy and Karl passed through on their way back from Burning Man. Karl is nearly one now and crawling like a crawly thing. He was particularly interested in the odd life form lying on our floor and would crawl in place towards her despite being pantsed repeatedly by his mom. Journey is now 25 inches long and weighs thirteen pounds, ten ounces, approximately average in weight and upper middle in height.

We saw Inglourious Basterds. Quentin Tarantino's best movies all involve cheap shock and gore -- the few times he's tried to do a movie without them, they have been pretty boring. I find that both frustrating and puzzling. I fully realize that he loves wallowing in low cinema, but I don't understand why he limits himself so much. He clearly has interesting ideas and characters and puts them into wacky, fun-to-watch situations, but I defy him to do a relationship movie. He can't do it. His works are purely theaters of the absurd.

( Yet another ascension... )

I suffered my first "parental outrage" moment today. You know, that moment when you see someone else being INSANELY stupid with their child and you know, deep in your heart, that you would never, ever do something that stupid.

A woman is crossing a street, not at an intersection, in a light commercial/industrial/residential neighborhood while pushing a stroller and towing a dog. She is talking on a cell phone with the other hand. She does not look either way before stepping out into the street. An SUV rounds the corner down the street and bears down on her, stopping a few feet away. The driver is ALSO on his cell phone. The pram-pushing idiot doesn't even notice that two tons of steel has narrowly avoided hitting her, and eventually discovers the SUV next to her with more than a little surprise.

Cell phones should stop operating if their built-in location transponders detect that they are moving more than a few inches a second.

Thursday we put Journey on her stomach for a little tummy time, she pushed up onto her arms, and then promptly toppled over onto her back. Level up! *sound of coins* I captured the third time she did it on video. It is super cute.

Saturday we drove up to Ventura for Kim's birthday, which she was having at a roller rink. I've only been skating (ice or roller) a couple of times before, but at the end of my last session a year or two ago I was finally getting the hang of building up speed. At this session I resolved to conquer my fear of falling and just go for it, and I wound up skating much more smoothly -- and I even figured out how to turn without having to pick up my feet. As I observed to a friend, for me each improvement in my skating ability comes when I conquer another level of fear of falling.

At the rink we propped Journey up at a rinkside table and she leaned on the railing and squealed each time someone skated by. It was SO IMMENSELY CUTE. The constant motion and the flashing lights were all fascinating to her. Then we dropped her on her head, but no damage done.

I had a promising healer die on me due to stupidity. He had Mjollnir, bag of holding, reflection, self-made GDSM, a pet ettin that slaughtered everything in sight with 4 whacks from a unicorn horn every turn, and THEN got two wishes in a row from a throne (!) and almost a complete set of resistances when an electric eel on the Medusa level blew up my wand of teleport and then immediately dragged me under and drowned me. He hadn't found any scrolls of genocide yet -- eels and liches are almost always the first two things I nuke.

We've been lying low for a while due to cash flow issues, but honestly, a baby is pretty darn entertaining.



I have been directed to take my sabbatical at work starting after Labor Day. Apparently my sabbatical (two months) plus my accrued vacation time (five months) is making them nervous and I need to burn some of it. This is a bummer since I've been assigned to a production whose team I really like, and I probably won't be re-assigned when I am back. On the other hand I'll be able to spend lots of time helping Holly with Journey, and also do several other things:

1) Practice clarinet
2) Work out
3) Finish ripping all my CDs to FLAC format
4) uhh...cook my way through Julia Child?

Saturday we bought a white noise machine at Target. It is nothing like the four foot tall colossi that Carol owned which made the house sound like the dead were rising, but it does an adequate job of masking me tooting on the clarinet (making excellent progress, I can play low E up to Ab relatively consistently now) and the breast pump. Then we brought Journey to the YMCA pool where she splashed around. A mom and her three daughters (pre-teens) were also swimming and in the locker room the mom came up to Holly and confided that they could not stop talking about how cute Journey was. YESS! VALIDATION!

We brought dinner to Eric and Sarah, although I slightly overcooked the pork loin baked with apples. They gave us delicious gelato and ice cream from Vons and Trader Joe's for dessert. Sarah showed us our grim future in the form of photos of Ethan standing in a giant pile of poop in his crib.

Sunday we dropped off le bebe at la maison le grandmere and went to see the delightful movie Julie and Julia. I love Amy Adams but she is totally overpowered by Meryl Streep's mindblowing recreation of Julia Child. Having just seen them both on DVD in Doubt, there is no doubt in my mind that Streep is the best actress alive. Apparently she even made Mamma Mia! barely tolerable.

Later we went to Chelsea and Rob's pre-wedding reception for lamers who could not go to their wedding. They have just recently bought a huge house in Culver City done up in proper 70s wood paneling and were proud to show off some of their initial remodeling. It was fascinating to compare their heavily built-onto home with the neighbors' unmodified houses from 1946. Now that I've been introduced to the concept that, as a homeowner I can do whatever I want with my house, I'm intrigued by the possibilities.

( yet another boring nethack ascension post )

The girls are back! Yay! Journey is noticeably bigger after her two week trip. It's a little shocking. She's starting that 'shriek' phase where cries get supersonically high pitched, even cries of glee. Holly is glad to be home, and I am glad she is home. She even commented that the house looked pretty tidy!

Woo.

Downside: I slept on the couch with Journey on top of me to get her to fall asleep.

Boo.