Week Round-Up in Photos

As I was out and about last week, I took photos for the blog, but didn't come up with any posts for them, so now I clump them all together. 

Book club members now live in the hills above San Bernardino. Here is the view from their 4 acres.

A walk through the Pomona farm showed us this statue. Presumably the goddess Pomona.

Streamers have been up at CMC since Alumni weekend. I like the reflection in the water.

The new arts building going up at Pomona College

Thai Family

On my friend Kevin's recommendation, we tried out the Thai Family restaurant in Upland for lunch today. It's in the strip mall just north of the Home Depot on Mountain. It's next to Fresh & Easy and the Dollar Tree. We took our food to go and even out of the styrofoam containers, it was delicious. I had the vegetable curry. H had the spicy eggplant. The lunch special includes a little (very small) salad, two fried wontons plus your choice of entrees, including rice.       We will be back.

Vista Track Meet

I stopped by Vista's Track Meet this morning (I don't remember it ever being at the end of May before), and I took some photos in sports mode. I was flipping through the pictures on the back of my camera to show one of the 2nd graders who was watching the meet and she told me that it reminded her of a flip book. She didn't know the term flip book, but she told me that in the olden days people would draw very slowly on paper and then flip the pages to make it go fast. Yup. 

City Banners

Now that the college students have gone home for the summer, can the 4th of July be far behind? The city banners for the mid-summer holiday are up, here in May.

But Enough About You

This book was the outer Russian Nesting Doll of my May book reading. Huh? I started Christopher Buckley's essay collection in early May, then interrupted it to read the book club book which I interrupted to read the Swiss Life book. Back to the book club book, and finally, back to finishing But Enough About You. I'm sure you don't care how I read my books, but usually it's one at a time, so that was enough for me to at least mention it.

So, this book has some very interesting essays (a few that pop to mind are some of his travel essays - to Machu Picchu and France, his introduction to Moby Dick and reflections on Catch-22), a few that I just skipped after the first paragraph (none pop to mind here), and some in-between that I enjoyed reading at the time, but don't specifically remember now. 

I'm still on the lookout for a good novel.

Zurich - 1980

During my junior year in college, I spent fall term in Graz, Austria studying German. I kept a diary of my adventure, and a few years ago I transcribed it into a Word doc. Yesterday I thought I would read what I had written about Zurich. Along with 3 other women on the same program, I flew from Chicago to Amsterdam and then we traveled around a bit (London, Brussels, Strasbourg, and Zurich) before chugging into Graz.

I took no pictures in Zurich (why not? I ask myself), but I wrote these two paragraphs about the day and a half we were there.

Thursday Sept. 25 (Strasbourg - Zurich)

     We got up and ate our own breakfast - much better than the hostel stuff.  By 10:00 we check out and caught a bus.  Unfortunately it didn't go to the Bahnhof, so we went to the end of the line and took the same bus back to where we could transfer.  It only took about 1 1/2 hours.  Then I bought a ticket from Basel-Zurich.  Then we left and transfered trains in Basel.  Switzerland is not on Daylight Savings, so we gained an hour.  It was somewhat comforting to see German - not French, but it is a Swiss-German - and it's virtually non-understandable for me.  We found the youth hostel with another couple - from Washington D.C., and then went to buy some food.  We've been talking to people in our room from Ireland, Canada and New Zealand.  My eyes are being opened wider every day.  This hostel is by far the cleanest, but most strict.  For the first time since London, I had a shower.  The water is hot here!

Friday Sept. 26 (Zurich)

     Got up early for breakfast.  First time to have hot chocolate (shockolade).  We left the hostel and got to the train station and checked our luggage.  Then we got my train ticket from Zurich - Graz at a travel agency.  To the Zurich Zoo which was wonderful, and wonderful animals.  Back to station to get food for lunch.  Wandered around.  Window shopped, saw several cathedrals (one closed for renovation).  From the other (with the Chagal stained glass), there was some sort of West Point-like graduation service.  What chaos - what fun!  Then we wandered down to the Zurich See and just relaxed.  Swans, fishing, sailboats, ahhh.  Back to the station for the rest of our good - and collecting our luggage.  We caught an 8:11 train for Graz.  Some 12 hr. ride!  Switzerland is beautiful and classy and expensive.  Want to go back sometime.

I guess I can look forward to hot water, beautiful scenery, being classy and spending lots of money. Apparently I got my wish and I am going back!

Temecula

In April we renewed our friendship with Lynne and Dick who live in Carlsbad. The easiest way to get together with them is to find a middle-ground place to meet, and food is in the picture.  Last time we met in a Dim Sum restaurant.  Because they know their food, we took them up on their Indian restaurant recommendation in  Temecula. Before we headed to the restaurant, though, we had to stop at the Temecula Olive Oil Company where we had a 15-minute olive oil and vinegars tasting. 

All these years here, and driving up and down the 15 on numerous occasions, and I'd never stopped in Temecula. We enjoyed walking up and down the cute street with shops and restaurants, and lots of loud people before we headed to Mantra Indian Cuisine. I ordered the vegetarian meal which comes with two curries, a samosa, rice, naan. All for $13. That was enough food for me to enjoy the next day for lunch, and I have to say that is some of the very best Indian food I've eaten. The best palak paneer. 

Looking on the website, I see that there is a location in Corona, so we may have to try that one out.

Deconstruction?

I had interrupted the reading of this book club book, I Love Dick by Chris Kraus, to read the Swiss Life book. Then I went back to the assigned reading. 

I know we will have plenty to discuss about this book, which is not so much a novel as it is "something between cultural criticism and fiction." Reading the afterword was helpful to me in trying to figure out exactly what was happening in the book. Or, not really what was happening, but what the author was trying to say. Which I still don't understand. Exactly.

It reminded me of when I was in grad school in music history, and our profs thought we should try to apply the literary theory of deconstruction to the writing about music. I know we read some Derrida, and I know that I had no clue what the theorists were talking about, how it mattered to anything, especially how it mattered to music and music criticism. 

Swiss Life

I follow a page on Facebook called NewInZurich. Yesterday the page touted a newly-published book called Swiss Life: 30 Things I Wish I'd Known by Chantal Panozzo. She moved to Switzerland in 2006 to follow her husband's job. That made her a "trailing spouse."  I will be a trailing spouse in Switzerland in a few months, and I know there are things I will have wished that I had known. 

I bought the Kindle version of the book yesterday (ain't instant gratification great?) and finished reading it today. If you go to the Amazon page and click the "look inside" link, you can read quite a bit of the book to get a feel for what's in store for us this coming year.

I found myself thinking, "That won't really apply to me," and "Hoo boy, I will need to be prepared for THAT!" The main differences between Chantal and me are that we will only be there for a year, I won't be looking for work, and I won't be having any babies. However, I will still need to learn how to run the shared washing machines, push and shove in line, navigate a German that will sound very strange to me, and figure out how to have a conversation that contains no small talk. 

Now if we could find a renter for our house....

Art On Tap - Klimt

Another Art On Tap at Claremont Craft Ales, another favorite painter of mine - Gustav Klimt. Last night was the first time that Art on Tap got to use the newly expanded space at CCA. 

I'm not totally happy with the outcome of this reproduction, but I had a great time spreading paint over canvas, spending 3 hours doing something completely different than I usually do. I wonder if I might find a painting class in Zurich this fall. ...