Company

My nephew and his friends are on a road trip to California from Colorado, and tonight they stopped by for pizza. Now they're headed for Santa Barbara where I'm sure the weather is much nicer.

If I Was The Queen of the Dodgers...

• Juan Pierre would play more.
• Vin Scully would call every game on every station.

Native Son

Because this book is so thick, and our book club is going to discuss it in a few weeks, I thought I'd start Native Son by Richard Wright. Three days, and I finished it. I remember that Liesl read this book for high school, and she liked it. The style (though not the content) feels a little dated to me - Wright pretty much explains everything about the Bigger Thomas' character in the third section, like a hit to the head with a brick. The story, though, is compelling.

Flip Flop

Today at 4:25 here, it is 89 degrees in Claremont and 103 degrees in Eugene....

Today's Goal Accomplished

When Hal left for work this morning, I told him that I would plan out the second week of our upcoming road trip. As of tonight, I have made a broad sketch of that route. After meeting Liesl and Chris in Eugene and backpacking with them for a few days, and hanging out in Eugene and going to the ocean and taking Claire to Portland, Hal and I will meander home. Our path will zig and zag a little. Eugene to Crescent City, California (Redwood National Park), to McArthur-Burney Falls State Park, to Lee Vining and Tuolumne for a day or so via a peek at South Lake Tahoe, and then back to the desert where we live.

July Book Club

I love our book club. We have fabulous potlucks. We have engaging and heated discussions. Tonight we discussed Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Some loved it, some were completely frustrated by it. We all had opinions. And yet, in the end, we all respect each other's opinions.

A Day at the Getty Villa

Today was our first free Saturday all summer (between one trip to Colorado and Hal umpiring other weekends), so we made plans to see the renovated Getty Villa in Malibu. We hadn't been there since the girls were young. The renovations are excellent, and the bonus for us was seeing the Chimera of Arezzo, on loan from The National Archeological Museum in Florence. This Etruscan bronze was discovered in Arezzo, the city where Claire lived last semester.

After a lovely three-hour visit, we headed to Santa Monica for lunch at the Real Food Daily restaurant. This vegan restaurant is highly reviewed, and all of our meals were excellent. Very tasty and filling.

3 Months, 9 Days later....

Today, July 24, 2009, the cottage renovation is officially finished! We got our final bill, and the trash trailer is currently being loaded and removed! Hooray! Our new tenants move in next Friday. I am washing curtains to hang, and we need to remove a wasp's nest, but other than that, we have a quiet week ahead of us.

First Fruits

First ripe tomato of the summer from my garden! It took so long to ripen, I suspect, because the area gets little sun, and most of June was overcast this year. This tomato is an heirloom called Abe Lincoln.

Quiet Summer Days?

Those of us who are tied to the traditional school year calendar look forward to the quiet of summer days. However, summer is the time when the city, the colleges, and the schools have time to get work done. This morning on our hour-long walk through the colleges at 7 a.m., Hal and I heard: a jackhammer, a cement-mixer, a leaf blower, a weed whacker, trucks backing up, etc. Sigh.