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.

mini-moon

Jesse and I spent a few days on San Juan Island after our wedding. It was a nice way to wind down (sort of) after our big day(s).

I caught this wild kelp on the beach. It put up quite a fight, I am still nursing my battle wounds and I'm sure I'll be scarred for life, but I won and it was worth it... 

There was so much to see. Jesse humored me on the dock.

Here's what we saw on the dock there. See the shrimp? there is also a sea urchin, mussels, an orange scallop and white sea anemones, not to mention all of the kelp and sea plants. So cool.

These white sea anemones were seemingly impervious to the effects of gravity. The entire scene (above) was under the impression that vertical was horizontal.
Sometimes you've got to get really close to see the  cool stuff.

Handsome guy. He's my husband.

Cute couple. Husband and wife. It's still fun to say it.

She's still here!

Hooray! After 3 days of being missing, our little katydid has returned! I'm sure she was here the whole time- our apartment isn't exactly easy to come and go from if you were a katydid. I don't know where she was hiding, I'm a pretty good bug finder, but she was darn well hidden for 3 days. What a gal!

garden update

Shortly after I planted my seeds, we had a cool spell here in Burbank. And by cool, I mean the 70s. Nonetheless, I ended up rotting most of my seeds (pretty much everything- the beans, the jalepenos, the basil, and the other herb for jesse that I can never remember). The cucumbers came up, as did the tomatoes. I've replanted the others multiple times, but the seeds either dry out or rot. I can't seem to find the right water level. The weather here is hot now (in the 100s all last week), so I water, but the seeds rot, so then I replant and don't water and they never germinate. Oh well. At least we'll have cukes & maters.

Here are the cucumbers. 

I'm enjoying training the little tendrils to the stakes. Any plant behavior works for me! The other side of this long planter is full of beans. I'm determined to get some beans this summer. I plan on pickling beans this fall and I'm HOPING that they come from my garden.

Here are 2 of the tomato plants. I got 6 plants, which was going to be a little much, I realized, so I gave a couple to my friend David. 

While Southern California is a good place to grow things because of the reliable sunlight, it is not a good place for mosses and ferns. I set up a corner of my deck as my "Seattle corner", with 6 pots of moss and 6 of ferns. Every day I misted these friends, usually more than once per day, keeping the soil moist and drainage good. In spite of all of the love given to these plants, they have wilted and failed. A little bit of my heart cries when I lay eyes on this corner, but I tell that bit 'Don't you worry, some day we will take naps on moss and play in the rain again'.

Here is that sad little corner.

Most sad is the news that the katydid seems to be no longer in residence. She has been growing fast, with long green wings that have ornate veinage mimicking leaf veins. I spooked her earlier today and she flew! but just to the wall 2 feet away. I captured her and replaced her on her jasmine plant (on a new piece of lettuce) and left her alone. I figured I should take a picture of her, as she has changed so much since the last picture, but when I went to find her this afternoon, she was MIA. I scoured the plant, but I think she is gone. I'll look for her again and let you know if she turns up.

I think I'll go look right now...

The ceremony

I thought I'd post the transcript of our wedding ceremony, since it was a small group that got to witness it and we enjoyed it so much. Christine (our officiant) spoke some of it freely (not off the paper), like the welcome and the metaphors, but this is as close to what happened as I can remember:)

Christine welcomed everyone to the space and mentioned the beautiful break in the weather that gave us the yellow oval sunspot on the wall in the space. The space was illuminated and felt fresh and warm (except that it was about 58 degrees).

She talked about how the Skyspace is special. It is a space that holds us, is here for us to explore, and supports our growth. It is a shelter that protects us and contains us. And it gives us a point of view so we can observe together, reflect and learn.

Then she gave us a few moments of silence to reflect on these ideas and their relation to our event.

The ceremony continued:

"Dear Community, We gather here this evening because Jen and Jesse have decided to marry, to declare to their community that they will live among us as a couple bound to each other in love. Jen and Jesse will take turns exchanging their marriage vow. Their promise is the same, one to the other."

Jesse: "Jen, today I take you to be my wife. Whatever life may bring, I will love and care for you always."

Jen: "Jesse, today I take you to be my husband. Whatever life may bring, I will love and care for you always."

Chrstine: "We will now need the wedding rings. Let's pass them from one person to the next to me and I will bless them for us."

The people on either end of the families had been given the rings. My brother Jason had my ring and Jesse's uncle Ken had his ring. They passed the rings to Christine.

"These beautiful rings, chosen with care, will be the visible symbol of the words Jen and Jesse have just spoken. May they be cherished signs of courageous love to them for the rest of their lives."

We exchanged rings, saying "With this ring, I thee wed."

Christine pronounced us (almost) by saying "Jen and Jesse are now a couple before God and their community."  (we were saving the legal pronouncement for Saturday, 06-07-08).

Christine then blessed us as a couple: "We will now offer a blessing for the couple. God, we ask your blessing on this young couple. May they become wise in the ways of love, cherish your world, and each other, and live long and happy lives together."

She then concluded with a sending prayer that makes me cry every time I encounter it.

"Go out into the world in peace,

have courage,

hold on to what is good;

return no one evil for evil;

strengthen the faint hearted;

support the weak, and help the suffering;

honor all people;

love and serve each other and the world,

rejoicing in the power of love."

With that, we cheered and kissed and everyone applauded. Someone called to see our rings, so we walked around the oval, showing them to each person. Then we all sat together in the space, switching seats periodically to enjoy the room and each other.

Done and done.

On June 7th (that is, on 06-07-08), Jesse and I got married. It was wonderful and beautiful and meaningful and delightful. We enjoyed ourselves so so much, from the ceremony to the reception, to the day after and to now. 

For posterity, I will summarize the events... All took place in Seattle or nearby.

On Friday, June 6th, Jesse and I had a very beautiful and intimate ceremony attended by our immediate family (namely, my dad, mom, brother, his dad, mom, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, grandma and grandpa) as well as my best friend Jen Johnson (whom I still refer to as Jen Miller, but I will catch up to her married persona soon). The ceremony was officiated by a very close friend of ours, Christine O'Connor.

The ceremony was at the Henry Art Gallery in the James Turrell Skyspace.  This space is just so wonderful to be in. It's a small oval room made all in vertical wood boards lined with a bench all the way around. In good weather, the center oval of the ceiling opens to the sky, featuring clouds, birds and the occasional jet plane passing by. It is a beautiful and spiritual place. 

Jesse and Christine waited in the Skyspace, while the rest of the party lined the short bridge that leads to the space. A little background- this is Seattle's coldest summer since 1917. The week leading up to our event had temperatures in the 50s. Fahrenheit. As in "January". Nonetheless, we're pretty crazy about each other and love Seattle, so we were still thrilled to be there.

Back to the story, 

Friday morning, the day of the ceremony, some blue peeked our from behind the clouds and we were able to have the Skyspace open for our ceremony. Even better, as Jesse and Christine waited for my dad and I to arrive, the sun burst out from behind a cloud, shining a yellow oval sunspot on the wall to their right. Jesse pointed it out to Christine, excitedly (he is a lighting designer, after all), and when he looked back across the bridge, there we were. What a cool series of events.

So dad and I walked across the bridge among all of our loved ones, both of us giggling (I had been crying-happily- all day long, up until minutes before). Dad handed me over to Jesse with a handshake and Jesse and I hugged for a while. Our loved ones filed into the space and took their seats on the benches along the perimeter of the room, as we stood in the center. Jesse was pretty giggly, and I was all smiles. It was so great to have such a small group of people so important to us in such a small, peaceful room for this important life event. The intimacy was delicious, the connection between us was so strong.

Once we had all settled in, Christine began the ceremony. It was a really lovely ceremony, and I think I'll write it up on another post and link to it here.

After the ceremony, we all stayed in the space for a while. After this, we all transported to Anthony's Home Port on Pier 66. It was a lovely dinner and a great celebration. Not to be the types to end any celebration before it's time, Jesse and I went with our siblings and their significants to the Pike Place Brewery where all of our friends had been invited to celebrate with us. That was a great time. So many friends came out to celebrate with us. 

The next day, Saturday, Jesse and I hosted a reception in Snohomish at Swans Trail Farms.

This venue is absolutely gorgeous and the family who owns it are wonderful beyond words. 

Our decorations were made almost entirely by my dad. This picture from our friend iLana Solomon shows a full table setting as well as the view from the dining/dance area.

The centerpieces were sections of a tree with a small pot of moss in the center. Each place setting had a couple of green napkins, a pressed gingko leaf (done by me) with a rock holding it all down. Fantastically, my dad made a wooden coaster for each guest, branded with a special "JJ" design that he created himself (you can see it on the top of the cake we're cutting a few pictures down). 

Our colors were green and we focused on using all natural products. Even the "plastic" cups and flatware were made entirely of corn starch.

After setting up (actually, after watching Jen Johnson take care of the setting up, she is awesome) and having our formal pictures taken (by our friend and artistic photographer Lori Erickson), Jesse and I hid out in a car in the parking lot. At 4:30, we had our grand entrances. At this point, Christine welcomed the guests and summarized our ceremony of the previous night for them. But since we wanted our wedding date to be 6-7-08, she had saved the final pronouncement for the reception. So she pronounced us man and wife there in front of everyone. This picture is from Sarah Soifer.

It was very exciting and beyond joyful. It was so wonderful to look into the barn and see so many people we love all cheering us on and celebrating with and for us.

 

The venue was gorgeous. Here is a photo from Aaron Klein (boyfriend of Jesse's sister Anya) that illustrates the beauty of the backside of the farm. This whole place was remarkably beautiful.

Dinner was catered by Kaosamai Thai and was delicious. Doug and his wife Sumalee have a restaurant in Fremont (in Seattle) but for catering, they have a truck outfitted with a kitchen, so the food was absolutely fresh. They were fun to work with and so helpful to us and our guests.

Toasts were made by Jesse's brother David, my brother Jason, our good friend Dave Snyder, my dad, and Jesse's parents. The toasts were lovely, we enjoyed hearing from all of these people. It's so great (how many times have I said "so great" in this entry? There just aren't enough words to describe these wonderful events) to hear what people think of your partnership. Like when someone you think is really great says something like "you're just so fun to be around, I'm so glad you're my friend" and you think to yourself 'wow! Really? Me? but I think you're really great!'. So to hear these toasts from people we love and look up to was so meaningful. I cried more than once. 

Our first dance was to the song "I'll Back You Up" by the Dave Matthews Band. It's a beautiful song and the dance was more special for us than I can describe. 

(photo from iLana Solomon)

Our wedding cake was made by Kathy Gundesen, a friend from high school. We had 7 cakes laid out all over the cake table on different sized wood pedestals (made by my dad). The cakes were 4 layers(!) and green tea flavor (fabulous) with white chocolate icing and vanilla/chili powder filling (you just don't know how good this is until you try it). So yummy. The templates for the fern design on the top of the cakes were designed by our friend Kristy Hilands. Kathy also etched tiny fiddleheads around the sides of the cakes. 

(photo from iLana Solomon)

We danced into the night to great music DJed by our friend and my old swing dance partner, Joe Ross. 

This more or less captures the series of events. There's more, of course, but this is a long post already, and I'm supposed to be working on some ecology stuff, so I'll leave it at this. 

I should end by saying how happy we are. We're a lucky couple, Jesse and I. Best friends, deeply in love, we hope this lasts forever.