New Claremont Blog

If anyone is still looking at this blog, I would like to direct you to my new, reimagined Claremont-based blog which I am calling Claremontography. 

I will shift focus from my life in Claremont, and point readers to those things which make this Southern California town the special place that it is. I will be carrying my camera around town more than I used to, looking for Claremont sights and moments worth sharing.

Thanks to my loyal and occasional readers for following me around, and I hope you enjoy the new format.

One Year Later....

And, like a thief in the night, we have returned to Claremont.

We are usually on vacation at the beginning of August, and apparently many of our friends are, too. We have been home for a little over a week and have seen some friends here and there, one or two a day. It's a stealth reentry.

As a note to self for our next sabbatical return: it takes about a week to get the house in order and to get back into the right time zone. Even if the house is perfectly clean (and it was pretty clean this time), we still have to find all our boxes and unpack and then realize that we still should have thrown away many things before we left. The march to Goodwill continues.

For the second year in a row we celebrated our anniversary in Claremont with dinner and a movie. This year we saw Shaun the Sheep and then had dinner at the new Sanamluang Cafe on Indian Hill. While the food was delicious and plentiful, the decor very nice, the experience left much to be desired. The bill came while we were still eating, and when I was still putting food into the takeout box, they tried to remove my plate. The acoustics are bad, so it was very loud inside, even though it was not full. I will try it again for the food, but perhaps I will try to slow down the service.

Pupusas

Last full day in So Cal. Had to eat Mexican food. Well, actually not Mexican, but Salvadoran. On Sunday we heard a spot on NPR about Salpicon in Ontario which serves pupusas. We have enjoyed, many times, the pupusas at Guaselmex in Pomona, but thought we ought to give another place a try.

The food was very good, and we will probably go back sometime - when we're back in So Cal!

Tonight we hand off the car to its new owner and tomorrow we hand off our home to new tenants. 

It's really happening!

See you later, Claremont. Have a great year!

Glamping in Switzerland

Yes, I have started a blog for our sabbatical year. I can't call it Life in Claremont if I am not living in Claremont, so I thought about it for awhile, and decided to call it Glamping in Switzerland. The first post (there are now five) explains the title.

You can read the blog here.

As I have been cleaning our house this past weekend, month, summer, I keep wondering why I don't do this more often. As L said to me today, "You can pay people to do that, you know." Yeah, I know, but I don't generally think about what lurks behind the couch until I have to.

Last time we came home from sabbatical I thought I would have a plan to thoroughly clean one room each month, and though the house would not be clean all at the same time, at least each room would have some attention paid to it.  Sounds like a good plan....

Life will be simpler in a one-bedroom flat with fewer things around.

Summer Dance Camp

Today was cleaning the living room and kitchen day - from windows to pulling things out and cleaning behind furniture and the cabinets. During a delightful break from a friend dropping by to say good bye, we were thrilled to get a text from our daughter inviting us to a small dance program at Village Dance Arts where the students who took Dance Camp this week showed off what they had learned.

There were three groups of dancers, each gave themselves a name. The oldest group called themselves the Angelina Ballerinas. (I fondly remember those books!)

The other two groups were the Sonic Pointers (I think?) and the Bunheads.

The younger girls always enjoy watching the older ones.

In addition to dancing (and making crafts) during the week, the girls learned some Taiko drumming with Miss Denise. They are working on getting a regular class of Taiko at the studio and then also getting one going for adults. Sign me up!

Specimen Days

I've had more chance to read these past weeks than I thought I would. I asked H if I should be worried that I was not concerned about having everything packed and cleaned and all the details ticked off the list. He assured me that everything is going along so smoothly that he is, in fact, getting bored.

Bags are 70% packed. Boxes and bags are mostly full waiting for last-minute items to toss in. We still need to finish cleaning, but some things cannot be cleaned until the last day or two.

So, we are reading. After the last Michael Cunningham book I read in July, I checked out his newest, The Snow Queen, but I could not finish it. It was short, but it felt to me as though he was more interested in writing beautiful prose than actually saying anything. Nevertheless, I thought I would give a previous book a go. 

I actually enjoyed Specimen Days. It's like Cunningham's The Hours in that it revolves around another classic piece of literature, this one Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The novel consists of three linked stories: one past, one present, one future. Characters continuously quote portions of Whitman's epic poetry collection. The first is a ghost story, the second a thriller, the third science fiction. A common theme is man vs. the machine and the state of humanity.

Anniversary Number 32

Eight years ago, the Claremont Village West was just starting to open and we were getting ready to head off for a sabbatical year in Chicago. We spent our anniversary going to see the movie Once at the (then) new Laemmle and then dinner at Casablanca.

Last year we spent our anniversary in Machu Picchu, the year before we were in Oregon getting ready to marry off our eldest daughter, and the year before that we were also in Oregon before we took off for Glacier National Park. 

August is a great month to have an anniversary.

This year we went to the Laemmle to see the movie Boyhood. Then we enjoyed the restaurant in our backyard where we (and by we, I mean H) cooked up parmesan and spinach chicken and twice-baked potatoes from Sprouts. 

One more week, and we are off for our Abenteuer (adventure)!

Family Movie Night for Everyone

I work with children. One of these years we will have grandchildren. So, of course, it is important to keep up with the cultural knowledge of kids. We often see the Pixar movies in the theaters, and we have Frozen on our list of should-sees. 

Last night we had the chance to watch The Lego Movie for free, along with all of our neighbors for Claremont's Summer Movies in the Park in Memorial Park. (If we'd been on the ball, we could have seen Frozen in July at Wheeler Park.) You can read more details of the set-up at my friend's blog here. 

It was pretty fun, although at first I thought we might have to go home because I couldn't hear the movie and people around us were talking. Pretty soon the other speaker came on, the crowd hushed, the sun set and the movie was rolling along. As far as kids' movies go, I liked this one, although it could have been about 20 minutes shorter.

Lots of people out on a beautiful evening

The In-N-Out Truck was there on Yale

The Happy Crowd entertained the kids before the movie started

Coffee with Friends

Really counting down now. Tomorrow I will be able to see what the weather will be the day we get to Zürich. That means that we are saying Auf Wiedersehen to our dear Claremont friends for a year. Last coffees, dinners, lunches, hugs, e-mail info exchanges, etc. 

This morning as I was waiting for a friend at Some Crust, I noticed this adorable little shelf near the door which can hold a coffee and a pastry while you open the door. I wonder what coffee shop will become our favorite in Zürich....

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry

If you love books and bookstores, you may just love this little book. I read it in two days. I'm not saying that it is fabulous literary fiction, but it has heart, some lovable characters (including the grumpy ones), and it took me in. 

The policeman in the story "believes that cops go one of two ways as they get older. They either get more judgmental or less so. Lambaise is not so rigid as when he was a young police officer. He has found that people do all sorts of things, and they usually have their reasons."

I hope that I am the kind of person who becomes less judgmental as I get older....