While Rudi and I were up in Connecticut this weekend, I snapped a series of pictures of Gramma’s house, which she sold this week. (That’s a topic for a different post.) This one, while not showing much of the house, pretty much sums up the experience for me.

I know that the following poem is about a wheelbarrow and not a wagon, but I still thought it went with the mood of the photo and my mood in general these days:

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

— William Carlos Williams

This is the second in my monthly 007: Snap a Dozen Days posts. You can find the January post here.

Last month Shannon Hale, who wrote the Newbery award-winning The Princess Academy took some time between feeding her newborn and being sick with a stomach bug to contemplate the issue of high school English class curricula.

I thought it tied in nicely with a conversation I had with one of my aunts back at Christmas. My cousin is a 16-year-old boy, and he has not found a lot that he’s interested in reading. He isn’t helped, I don’t think, by a mother who also did not enjoy a lot of what she read in high school and is disinclined to try to figure out what a teacher is attempting to get a student to learn by reading a certain text.

I think we would all acknowledge that most high school English classes leave something to be desired. Think back to when you were in high school. (I’ll wait while the black and white newsreels rewind and the scratchy violin and organ music play…)

What do you remember reading? What did you think of the books at the time? And looking back now?

I definitely remember reading some great things — books I enjoyed at the time, as well as books that I understood the importance of in retrospect. But I also recall some books that were just painful and a few that I didn’t bother to read at all. (Moby Dick springs to mind.)

But I know we can do better. (more…)

I promised a recap of the rest of the work trip in San Francisco.

Work was work. I spent far too much time inside when the weather was lovely over a long weekend. Really there’s not a lot more that can be said about that.

Outside of work, though, I did have a nice time. We didn’t really get to explore much of the city, but we did hit a couple of places (most of which involved food) I thought I’d share:

• I ate breakfast outside at that same café I found the first morning. I also ate lunch there one day. Some days I had company; other days I ate alone with my book. All of them were lovely.
• One night, after gorging on wonderful Indian food, at a restaurant whose name I can’t recall, Amani pointed us to a Cold Stone Creamery. Normally, I’m not a huge fan, but this night, the cold, creamy dessert really hit just right. (If you’re unfamiliar with the chain, you start with a base ice cream flavor and then mix in toppings to create your own unique flavors.) I got a vanilla ice cream with chocolate chips and raspberry sauce swirled in. Yum! I totally ate the whole thing.
• We ate dinner one night at a raw food vegan restaurant called Café Gratitude, recommended by one of Suzanne‘s friends. A meat eater, he’d nonetheless given the restaurant rave reviews, so we caught a cab to the Mission district and gave it a shot.

  The restaurant is inately Californian new age — the sort of place that makes Middle America distrust vegetarians. At one point, one of the waitresses came over to ask us, in complete earnestness, “What are you going to do today to promote your self worth?” Dishes have cheesy names, like I am Delightful and I am Lusciously Awake, but the food is terrific.

  Heather, Suzanne, and I split a guacamole dip as an appetizer and then Heather and I shared both a grain bowl (complete with kim chee (fermented cabbage), sea greens, and black rice) and a “pizza.” I’d considered not getting the pizza, because, having grown up amongst Sicilians, I am very picky about it. I’m glad I didn’t give in to this temptation, though, because calling it a pizza was laughable. Really, it was salad on a cracker. But it was a fantastically delicious salad on a cracker, and that’s the important thing. The rice bowl was also quite tasty, but I preferred the salad on a cracker. We concluded with dessert, but I picked the dud in the bunch with a fruit cobbler. Heather’s vegan chocolate mousse and Suzanne’s pecan pie were much better. I was never so happy to realize I had chocolate (cooked and made with milk!) in my room as after that misstep.

• I also ate at David’s Delicatessen, a Jewish deli/restaurant about halfway between my hotel and where I was working. My cheese blintz was lovely and I finished the meal with a coconut macaroon. Yum!
• Finally, after the convention was over, Suzanne taught our coworker Cee-Cee how to knit and the three of us caught the BART over to Imagiknit to check out the local yarn selection. After witnessing an arrest as we were getting off the metro and walking about a mile (it seemed like longer, getting there), we spent quite a while fondling yarn and leafing through patterns. The staff was friendly and the stock impressive. There were plenty of things I’d never seen in person and an extensive array of fibers, colors, and weights — something for everyone, really.

  At first, I walked away empty-handed, but in the end I went back inside and came out with a skein of Bouton d’Or Ksar in glacier, a pale blue yarn made of half merino-half camel. Yep, camel! We then headed back to the hotel where we sat in the lobby lounge knitting and snacking and drinking while Suzanne and Cee-Cee waited for their red-eye flights.

Flying out the next morning, I did myself (and you) a disservice by packing my camera into the overhead bin. We were leaving just at sunrise and the Bay was foggy as we took off from Oakland. But as we followed the coast north and cleared the fog, the Golden Gate Bridge came into sight in all its glory. It was breathtaking — and you’ll just have to take my word on it. At the other end of the flight, we flew over what had to have been Skyline Drive. And if it wasn’t, well, let’s pretend. After all, I have no photographic proof that declares it to be anything else.

All in all, not a bad trip. I ate lots of yummy places and came home with souvenir yarn. If only I’d managed to squeeze in a massage…

It’s late, but I wanted to share three beautiful things with you from our drive home tonight from Connecticut:

1. Although predicted to be awful most of the way home, the driving conditions were only messy for a relatively short period of time in New Jersey. In fact, for the last half of the drive, the roads were merely wet.

2. It started snowing in D.C. this morning and there are several inches piled up around the city. It looks particularly lovely on the tree limbs — deliciously wintry.

3. Someone built a snowman in a park overlooking one of the main arteries into the city. The best part? The snowman is giving all the drivers a thumbs up sign.

Three Beautiful Things from the past week:

1. Locked next to Union Square was a bicycle. Its tape, rims, and tires were all a brilliant shade of electric blue.

2. The moon was a Cheshire cat grin last night as I walked home from the metro after a movie.

3. The cats have been particularly snuggly since I got home Tuesday. All three of them nap in the same room with me and Posey deigned to come curl up under the covers with me last night, at least until Jeremiah pounced on her head.

Rest assured that I didn’t fall into the Bay last week. I just slept poorly in California and am now making up for it by falling unconscious every time I sit down.

I hope to return to full speed tomorrow with our usual Three Beautiful Things post and then resume regular broadcasts over the weekend.

My brother, Josh, turns 30 (sorry, 10(x3), Mum) today.

Josh is creative and ambitious, the owner of his own business. He grasps ideas firmly in his hands and sculpts them from air until they become firm and tangible. I’m wholly jealous of his follow-through and tenacity.

He is a dog lover and the person of Sampson, a wrinkly year-old Sharpei, who roams the hills outside L.A. with him.

Josh is quick-witted and can turn a phrase like no one else I know. He gets away with saying things you’d tolerate from no one else, merely because he is good-willed about it or funny in an understated way.

We didn’t get along so well when we were kids, but now that we’ve grown older, we can actually spend time together and enjoy it, which is great. Of course, because of this, he did have to move across the country. I try not to take it personally.

Happy birthday, Josh. I hope you and Sampson get a nice ramble in today followed by some fun with friends. Know you’re in my thoughts today and always. I love you.

I started my business trip to San Francisco luxuriously slowly this morning, which is good since I was up until nearly 4 a.m. East Coast time last night and then was awakened today by a housekeeping knock on the door at 8:30.

I wanted a cup of tea and something to eat, so I threw on some clothes and headed downstairs where I’d read there was a coffee shop. Except, of course, that I’m staying in a fancy hotel, so their version of a coffee shop less resembled a Peet’s or a Starbucks and more an old boys club, down all in dark wood and named “The Oak Room.” Not me, either in price or in atmosphere. (For the record, there is no coffee pot in the hotel room.

So I wandered across the street to Union Square, where I vaguely remembered from previous visits there was a coffee stand. Styled after a French pâtisserie, the shop offered espresso bowls of tea and delightful pastries, including a tasty chocolate croissant. I sat outside in the sun and read my book and watched people and pigeons.

Then I toured the block or so around the hotel. I ordered room service last night because the guy at the desk told me there was nowhere to get dinner at 10 p.m. I’m sure he misunderstood my question and thought I was asking about food options within the hotel instead deliberately neglecting to tell me about the two all-night diners just out the back door. They definitely look more promising for a late-night tea run than room service.

Speaking of which, room service seemed to be a more glamorous idea in my head than it turned out to be in reality. Maybe it would have been different if I’d had company. But otherwise it was just me sitting on the edge of my bed eating an overpriced salad and watching the tail end of Men in Trees. Really nothing exotic about it. Another ideal dashed by the cold water of reality, I’m afraid.

It was a busy afternoon/evening and I have a renewed sense of appreciation for those who stand for a living. Tomorrow also promises to be busy, with lots of interacting with hyper children. But the day ought to end at 5, so I’m hopeful that my friends and I should be able to spend a fun evening out exploring the city and tasting San Francisco’s delicacies.

Sorry for the late posting, but it’s been a day of traveling for me, and then the internet in my hotel room in San Francisco didn’t work without some external intervention. In the meantime, three beautiful things from the last week:

1. The branches on the small trees lining my street were solidly encased in ice by the time I walked home from the metro Tuesday evening.

2. Rebs sent me photos of her brand-new niece, who arrived on Jason’s and my birthday. The baby is gorgeous with dark hair and beautiful red lips. Newborns aren’t usually very pretty, but Sophie definitely is.

3. I got bored on the plane flight and opened my window blind (despite the fact that the flight attendants pointed out this is very inconsiderate behavior) so I could actually take advantage of my window seat on the cross-country flight. We must have been somewhere over the Four Corners area because suddenly I saw red rocks and a deep canyon (but not the Grand one).

(About this time I also noticed the plane’s wing flapping as if it were a diving board under Greg Louganis, but that was less beautiful and more scary to think about. But I suppose that someone who took physics would tell me that the wing flexing was actually a good thing because its flexing prevents it from snapping off. Intellectually I understood that. Emotionally? Not so much.)

P.S.: Thank you for all the birthday well-wishes. I appreciated them all.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, when I celebrate my 33rd birthday. Rudi and I both took the day off, but we won’t object if our respective workplaces call the day because of icy conditions and we get the day off just because.

What are we planning? Ice skating. We were originally contemplating one of the downtown rinks or maybe the C&O Canal, if it’s still cold enough. (Rudi reports that National Park Service employees were measuring the ice on Sunday and had it at 4″ thick then.) But at this rate, we’ll just be able to lace up our skates and head out to Connecticut Avenue.

If the Smithsonians are open, we might head to the Museum of the American Indian, where they’ll be holding a lecture on chocolate, as well as a free tasting. I mean, if someone is handing out free chocolate on my birthday, who am I to refuse it?

We always try to catch a movie on my birthday. This year I’m lobbying for Music and Lyrics, the new Drew Barrymore romantic comedy. Seems appropriate, no?

And there will be some pizza. And some cake. And hot chocolate — with whipped cream and sprinkles. And cake.

If we get stuck indoors for the day, I’m thinking we could always make chocolate chip cookies and knit. Well, okay, Rudi would have to play video games…

And snuggle and watch the snow/ice fall…

Doesn’t that sound like a nice birthday/Valentine’s Day plan?