earthquake madness!!

We had a little earthquake today in LA. 

I was studying at the Burbank Public Library and there was a short rumble followed by a bigger jolt. It couldn't have lasted more than 7 seconds. We all looked around at each other. At this point you could tell who was from SoCal and who was not- those from SoCal went back to reading, those not headed for the doorway (myself included). But nobody really got there because it was over by then. 

Turns out it was a 5.8 with 24 aftershocks and counting. I don't have any picture to post because nothing really happened. 

I went home to see if all was well, and it was. A flower vase had fallen off the tv spilling water and flowers, but nothing broke. Frog seemed a little shaken up but felt better after some kisses. Frack came out from the bedroom, maybe just a little suspicious. 

So I guess I've lost my earthquake virginity. It was fun.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELIOT!!!

Our good friend eliot often celebrates our big events with pictures and singing videos. She is pretty awesome. 

Well, today, eliot turns FOUR! So we'd like to say Way to go eliot! Happy birthday!! We love you!

Frack is just so cool

Frack is just so cool. I've been home a lot recently, so I've been able to observe his sleep schedule. 20 minutes over here, 20 minutes over there. Etc.

Sometimes he lays like this:
Sometimes he lays like this:

And sometimes he lays like this:

Our friend Dan gave us a great "pouf" (a squishy ottoman) that I've gotten a lot of use out of. but when I'm not in it, Frack is.

Frack says "Thanks Dan!"

I am inspired by Frack, and I think when we build a house we will focus on creating many places to sleep, instead of having a designated bedroom. 

frying makes everything taste better

Another wonderful wedding gift was the deep fryer. Ohh, the deep fryer. All things taste better when they've been battered and fried.

Jesse is an ambitious and adventurous cook. So his first days with the deep fryer saw many things. First of all, potato chips. Quite tasty. Thin and crispy.

The next thing Jesse made was deep-fried herbs. I didn't understand until I saw them. He took sprigs of fresh herbs like basil, mint and sage, dipped them in batter, then deep fried them. They were DELICIOUS. I ate a lot of them. David (Jesse's brother) was over and he and I just kept eating what Jesse was bringing out. There were other things Jesse fried, but I don't remember what. I was enjoying my gin & tonics. More than I realized. Luckily, David made us some salads, so that helped my cause. More than my deep-fried cheese curds. Which were delicious.

So a night full of deep-fried foods was really good, but I will say that I can't stomach the smell of basil, mint or sage (even typing them makes me a little sick). And hangovers don't like greasy foods. At all.

I'll be ok. In a few weeks. 

Until then, I think we're keeping the deep fryer closed up for a little while. But soon, we will fry again. Because it is so good. 

baby cuke

So far, the cucumber plants have yielded zillions of flowers. ZILLIONS. And they just drop off, one by one, about a week after they bloom. No pollinators. How is that possible? Maybe it's the bee crisis

Anyway, I've been trying to pollinate them myself, but it's darn hard. I've attempted to pollinate more than a dozen flowers, but haven't seen any results. Until today. Here's my first cucumber. 

Did you know that fruits are just developed ovaries of a flower? 

Frack embraces our lifestyle

I swear I didn't set this up.

In case you are unfamiliar, these are devices for the Wii, the tv, and the Xbox.

a weekend

Jesse and I took the train to San Juan Capistrano for a romantic little day trip this weekend. We had a lovely time. We love analyzing and discussing things together, and this trip provided plenty of fodder for us.

This is the waiting area of Union Station in Los Angeles. It's a beautiful station with marble floors in beautiful patterns and gorgeous woodwork all around.

My husband. I just think he's so handsome.

This is a shot of the LA river. In LA, rivers are lined with concrete. I can't tell you how disturbing this is for an ecologist. On so many levels. Ugh.

Usually there are trees and shrubbery growing down the middle, indicating the volume of water that flows here in SoCal. It's also covered in graffiti. Charming.

We got a fabulous picnic bag for our wedding from Jesse's cousins, the Richters. We LOVE it. It was the inspiration for this trip. Here we are setting up. Jesse also packed 2 cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, which brought us to a greater level of picnicking.

This little town is quaint and touristy. Outside of the walking tour (which was about 7 blocks long) was a regular town with liquor stores and laundromats. Proof that it's always just an illusion.

San Juan Capistrano is a Mission town. The mission here is really remarkable. But it cost $10 to get into, and since our goal was to go on the cheap, we just looked over the walls. We did go into the new church around the corner and sat listening to music for a little while. That was free. We left before they passed any collection dishes.

There was a petting zoo on the other side of the train tracks with a lot of cute animals. This boar was chilling out in the water tub. I imagine his roommate was annoyed. Jesse hates it when I cool my feet off in his water glass.

Napoleon Dynomite's llama doppleganger.

We were in this town for a while. We got there at about 1 in the afternoon and the only train going back to Union Station was at 6. I didn't think 5 hours would be hard to fill, but with 7 blocks of antique stores, it was. We finally decided to have a drink. Jesse's beer was truly the coldest in town. Do you see that it is filled with ice? My goodness. 

This is a little jail cell made in 1897. You just can't help but be a tourist here. There's no chance of fitting in- if you're in the 7 blocks of the walking district, you aren't a local. 

There was a wedding going on in town. We peeked in (from the outside, we didn't crash...) just to see what they had done. It's amazing how much more interesting weddings are after you plan one. Of course, our wedding was leaps and bounds more awesome than this one:) We love our wedding so much, we just can't help but think it's better than any other wedding on earth. Maybe because it was ours.

While we were waiting for our train, the wedding party came down for photos. Jesse admonished me for taking pictures, but I pointed out that they knew full well that there would be a huge crowd waiting for the train. The bride undoubtedly loved the attention. I know I would have:)

And that concludes our tour of San Juan Capistrano. 

flowers = fruit

The cucumbers have bloomed! They have lovely yellow flowers. I found 3 flowers this weekend, but now there are so many (full flowers or buds) that I don't bother counting. I hope someone comes to pollinate them soon. I tried to pollinate them myself with a q-tip, but the pollen is not exactly accessible. I just don't understand these flowers. I'm a behaviorist.

Here's a bud on one of the tomato plants (it's green and small, near the bottom of the photo). Hasn't bloomed yet, but it certainly will. Can't wait.

damn

I used to play saxophone. Not well, and I didn't enjoy it. And I don't think my fellow saxophonists enjoyed me playing either. I still cringe when I remember lecturing Erin and Kevin on volume. I even made hand signs and USED THEM FREQUENTLY to indicate when they were being too loud. So embarrassing. Sorry Erin. I'd apologize to Kevin too, but I don't think he reads this...
Anyway, in high school, they needed a baritone sax player. So I volunteered. Why not? It was a good move, because a very fun guy played tuba. Scott McKinley. And we goofed off 100% of the time. Much to the chagrin of Mr. Edmonson. I think one or both of us got kicked out at least once a week.
Scott and I invented a game called "who'll drool first?". It consisted of us clearing our mouths of any saliva, hanging our heads and waiting for who would drool first. Pretty sophisticated. And classy.

There were strategies like thinking of lemons (didn't work) or, well, that was my only strategy. But once the drool hit the carpet, we'd jump up and cheer. Again, much to the chagrin of Mr. Edmonson.
And Scott could do a really great imitation of Goofy when he's jumping off a ski jump (you know what I'm talking about: "waaa hoo hoo hoo hoo!!"). But even better, Scott would do it through his tuba, so it would be projected throughout the whole band room.
These activities took place while Mr. Edmonson was instructing the trumpets or the flutes or some other group on their piece in the music. If you've ever been in band, you know that it's mostly sitting around having to be quiet while the teacher instructs one group. And since Scott and I were tuba and bari sax, our parts were insanely easy (oompa, oompa, oompa etc.), so we needed no instruction. But we did need a lot of stimulation, as we were both a little on the hyper/silly side of things. Hence the games and general ruckus.

Anyway, along with most of my other friends from high school, I lost track of Scott pretty soon after graduation (like the next day I think. I'm not very good at that stuff.) But I recently heard from him (Hi Scott!) and checked out his blog. And he posted his results for a typing test online. I think I'm a pretty darn fast typer, partly as a result of working for my brother at one point. I typed up interviews he had videotaped, so I got fast (because if you fall behind, you have to rewind and all that, which is time consuming and annoying). Scott's score was 80 words per minute, which I thought was cute, because I was pretty sure I was in the mid-100s.

Well, I'm not.


59 words

Speed test

And that's after taking it THREE TIMES.

we got a wii

We decided to stimulate Japan's economy with Jesse's economic stimulus check (thanks W! You're an outstanding leader!). It is a lot of fun and very very different from other video game platforms. Jesse's a big video game player, but I am not so much. My favorite (and only) video game until the Wii was "finding nemo" for ages 6+. But the Wii has a lot of non-fighting games- not that I'm against fighting games (ok, just a little), but they're boring. I like skill/exploring games. And the Wii rocks that angle.

However, Jesse and his brother David (who is in town for the summer, which is great) have a Mario Kart history. So when we bought the Wii, we also bought Mario Kart.  

So I took some pictures tonight as they played. The screen is glowing eerily because it is sucking the energy from the players' brains.

Jesse has the Wii wheel and David is on the Wii-mote with nunchuk playing online against other people in their living rooms across the world.

My Wii video game is "endless ocean" which is perfect- I am a diver that just goes and dives in the tropics. That's it. I go wherever I want, play with the fish (feed them, take pictures that I can look at later, etc.), explore. And the music is so relaxing. The whole experience puts me to sleep.

So wii're pretty happy with the wii.