birthdays were the worst days now we sip champagne when we're thirstay

this post today is being written while i listen to the new san francisco water cooler album. finally out on vinyl! it's so funny to me when albums are released in late july of 2010 but they've been in the works so long that they have 2009 on the artwork. anyway it's great and it's my friend david's band. this past weekend we spent a bunch of time with him when we were down in santa cruz.

but anyway, let me start from the beginning of the weekend. it was miri's birthday on friday! she is now three! we drove down to the monterey peninsula on friday night and spent a long weekend hanging out at my parents house.

for her birthday, my mom got her a bunch of books and jeremy and i got her a balance bike and a helmet. a pretty nice haul.

it was also my dad's birthday! presents for everyone!

meanwhile, ethel and my dad's dog homer played tug of war all weekend. they have another dog named baxter but he's kind of a grump and doesn't like to play so much. ethel and homer don't mind. when they get around each other they are in their own little world. btw homer weighs around 130 lbs and ethel weighs about 14.

while in monterey we also found a petting zoo for miri and took her bowling. growing up in that town, the bowling alley was called 'lincoln lanes' but now it's 'monterey lanes' and it's also kind of a rip off. charging for shoes for every game, not just the first one? sucks. whatever though because miri looked great in bowling shoes.

so after a few days in monterey we drove 45 min north to housesit for my uncle in the santa cruz mountains. his house is my favorite place in the world, with seriously no hyperbole at all. he grows pipen apples in the orchard in front of his house and it's super private and beautiful and just the most relaxing place ever. this is the view off of the main deck:

i took way more pictures with my actual camera and after they get developed i'll probably post some. when i was a kid, my mom and i lived in santa cruz and my uncle was a great father figure for me after my biological dad left. we are very close and have probably the most similar aesthetics out of everyone in our family. he was so, so nice to let us housesit for him and take care of his cat/plants/bird feeders. i <3 my uncle to pieces.

after coming down the mountain we hung out with david in the beach flats, ate a snack at falafel hut and napped/chilled out for a while. miri thoroughly enjoyed her apple from martinelli's. santa cruz!

we also hung out in watsonville and ate fish tacos with a bunch of friends but were too lame to take pictures. which is a total bummer because we got to hang with the cutest baby ever. oh well. next time.

you better run for your life if you can little girl

oh man i forgot that if you have a bloog it means you gotta bloog. well we've been traveling all around the central coast and bay area for the past week or two. this part of the world is just so beautiful. jeremy always talks about how i won the geographic lottery by growing up in these areas. i'm pretty content with california at this point in my life.

recently we went to albany bulb so i could shoot an album cover for a friends band. i took my official photos with film but here are some outtakes for mood (real pictures are TOP SECRET)

miri and jeremy and ethel all came along and we had a pretty great afternoon hanging out, taking pictures, getting sunburnt. now i just need to procure another copy of photoshop and get it ready for lp. i've been collaborating with my friend micah (in the garters above) for years now. he is a great artist and an awesome drummer and i <3 micah. he and miri are buddies too. someday miri is going to look at all these pictures and laugh about all these weird long haired rockers that were everywhere.

the next day we went to an awesome pool party! we spent the fourth at our friend dusty's parents house up in marin county. hanging out at parents houses without parents is awesome because they always have nice kitchens and clean bathrooms and it gets me into pretend-i'm-a-grown-up mode. it was a really good day with good and new friends, which is really nice for a party. we grilled more pizza (and burgers and the dudes ate steak and stuff) and hung out in the sun (don't mind the obscene sunburn that i had acquired the day before) and drank beer but never got drunk because we were eating and swimming and hanging out so hard.

bravest, coolest kid ever. none of the other kids there were getting close to the slide (which admittedly looked veryyyy high from the top of it and was very fast). she also fell at one point and got a cut on her leg and all the adults were like ACK and she just ate a cookie and let us hydrogen peroxide and neosporin her all up without any complaints. again, absolute coolest kid.

todo somos oscar grant

oscar grant trial is almost over. stickers all over oakland say: day of the verdict, 6pm, city hall. i don't think it will be a baby friendly gathering. i'm hoping that friends and family that have businesses downtown board up their windows in anticipation. i have a feeling that oakland pd is going to preemptively shut down the bart stations downtown and get pretty brutal to 'teach lessons' ugh.

i do not have any hope that mehserle will be convicted. not any. it's like hoping that kerry would beat bush in the general election. was never going to happen.

dogs + toddlers + gays make my brain explode

man this week has been very busy with friends in from out of town and hanging out with friends that live here and just going to a lot of parks. parks parks parks.

we live right by mosswood park, and luckily, it has a dog park.



we love this dog park. we know all the regulars, and everyone is generally pretty okay with having a toddler chasing around the dogs too.







going to the dog park is great because ethel runs around like crazy (she will chase anything, and harass any dog into playing with her) and it's all fenced in so miri is stuck inside too. we go to the dog park much more than we go to the kids playground at mosswood. there is stuff for miri to climb on, and some wooded areas for her to run around in that she loves. on tuesdays and thursdays starting at 5:15 there is a small dog meetup. the dog in the black harness is one of ethel's favorite buddies, peanut.



he and ethel are almost exactly the same size/color/build. they are both from local shelters but not the same one. maybe they are related? who knows!

we DO take miri to playground-like parks too. here is a picture from totland in berkeley on friday and the civic center playground during pride today. my friend stephen said it was like the calm in the storm because it was only for kids and their caretakers in a sea of sf pride craziness





miri had a great time though! she got handed free stickers by tons of people, saw lots of people dancing and getting naked. it was really crowded at times and corporate. bank of america booth? gross. but all in all it was fun.









miri also had her first its it today! i lovvveee its its and always ate them as a kid so i was stoked to get her one. she and jeremy shared a vanilla one and i, uh, ate most of a mint one all to myself. i love its its! it was so hot out today, we hid in the corner of a bus shelter for shade and devoured them. so good!

one thing about pride is that it is definitely crowded. the bart ride over to sf was filled with drunk frat bros yelling about boners and homos.



here is jeremy not amused:



here is miri squished in on the train.



but somehow we survived everything and had a good time and saw good friends and made it home. now everyone is taking a nap but me (all people/animals included). it was a good and exhausting day.

in hybrid moments give me a moment

this weekend was super busy! on friday my band played a house show that was super fun and then on saturday we went to the farm that we get our csa from.



jeremy said this is the 'yep, it's a farm' picture. anyway we visited eatwell farm for their annual garlic harvesting and solstice party. they're located in dixon, ca which is about a half hour outside sacramento. i've been a member of their farmshare for a little over two years and i had never seen the farm before. we also decided we were overdue for a camping trip and this one was free (big basin was $44!). also, garlic.







we went on a walk on the farm, pulled a bunch of garlic out of the ground, and the owner of eatwell, nigel walker, showed us how to braid garlic. jeremy is totally better at braiding garlic than i am.





after braiding, we all ate dinner. everyone was instructed to bring a side dish (i brought a vegan lasagna). dinner was pretty good but there were some grilling problems or something and jeremy had to wait for a while for his burger. eatwell farm also provided these really great sodas that are really good. miri loved them. especially the strawberry one.





it seemed like most of the people there were from elsewhere in the bay area (more so than from the sacto/davis area) and there were quite a few hybrids and berkeley or sf parking stickers on the cars in the field. we spent a lot of time out there in the field, chasing miri around. everyone was definitely nice but the earnestness of a couple people was a lot to take. like people referring to themselves as urban foodies and shit. berkeley. anyway i know i might come off as that to other people too so whatever. we spent a lot of time in our tent or out in the field is what i'm saying. i'm pretty sure we went to sleep last.









sunday morning we woke up entirely too early, and i think last, and ate the best tortillas and eggs ever. the coffee wasn't bad either.













and that was pretty much it! we drove back to the bay area, picked up ethel in san francisco (no dogs were allowed, sadly. we missed her terribly but she had a vacation with a great dogsitter friend of ours), and came home and grilled more pizzas/read the ny times. soo bay area.