Quixote

Last Sunday I toured and tasted at the winery with N, T, and KW. It was another unseasonably warm day, and we enjoyed it. I didn't get any very good photos of the full Friedensreich Hundertwasser effect, probably because I had only my phone with me. In the end we bought a few bottles of rose and Marco, our guide, did not charge us for the tour. I hope he didn't mind that we were not expert wine tasters. I have never been able to distinguish a fifty-dollar bottle from a hundred-dollar bottle.

Goodbye, Pete Seeger

I don't have anything much to say about him. I always respected him. is all. He was born 11 years before my parents. My parents, who lived through much of the same history but in a different way. I love my parents, very much. I love the people from their generation who tried to think things through and behave according to their beliefs.

blast from past

I took a walk with Tom on Friday afternoon and he bought me coffee. As always it was strange to see him. It is the past and the present all in the same moment. Disorienting. I feel a pull, still. At the same time I don't know him. I think I can see how it would have worked, or not worked. I can see this with Carl, too. I guess I am well enough off by myself.

Last night's moon rising -- it was so lovely that I had to stop and take a phone picture on my way home.

birds at bon tempe

I'm sitting on the couch, as I often do on a weekend afternoon. Thinking about this and that, feeling a little anxious -- shouldn't I be doing something, on my last day off? It is warm in here, now that the sun has moved west. Maybe I will get up soon and start sanding the kitchen window frames, but maybe I won't.

That said, I've had a great holiday break. I had two days by myself, which were especially nice after all the time I spent with other people on the trip to Asheville. I painted the fence Ben built, and did some garden maintenance. On New Years Day I walked with A and then had coffee and bagels in A+B's kitchen. In the afternoon I drove to Berkeley to have dinner with N+T. N and I went to UCP to drop off some new years cards; it was uncanny to walk through the building with nobody there.

Today I had a good walk with KW -- we had been planning to do a walking tour of Potrero Hill but the tour leader canceled. So we walked on our own, up the hill and then back down among the derelict buildings on Pier 70. Eventually we got hungry enough for lunch, or rather an odd selection of savory and sweet food accompanied by brunchy alcoholic drinks. After we parted ways I walked home, carrying a plywood sheet I found leaning against a building on Illinois St.

The other day I went birding with J and K and Nick and Nel, J's former Richmond neighbors (who are experienced birders). Truth be told, for the most part, I watched them watch. We walked around Bon Tempe Lake; they identified 33 species. Me, I saw crows, mallards, mergansers, cormorants, woodpeckers, small birds zooming in and out of the trees (Nel told me they were juncos), and a heron.

Afterward we went back to J+K's and talked about a lot of things. Sometimes we argued, and sometimes we agreed. Nick showed us a book about Donald Olsen, who designed both Nick and Nel's house and J's former house. I hadn't realized the houses were designed in tandem, but when I saw the photos it all made sense. J made chicken and rice and a salad, Nick made mango salsa, and Nel had made an apple-cranberry crisp. I made nothing, though I did bring a bottle of wine.

Asheville

Went for a walk one day, up Old Toll Rd. For part of the way I chatted with a nice woman with a smallish dog who comes from Georgia, lives on Griffing, and has two adult daughters. After 17 years in California I find the humid green NC summers overwhelming; but the landscape is beautiful in the winter, when the trees are bare.

It was a good visit, except for the difficulty of sleep. I felt pretty desperate that last night -- eventually I dragged the mattress off the metal frame and across to the opposite side of the room, and that helped. The thing that helped the most was getting back into my own bed.

Went for a walk with A this morning and then had bagels and coffee with A+B and A's father. I am grateful that they are my neighbors; looking forward to seeing and knowing them in 2014.