Gospel Sing and Church Potluck

I love to sing.  I can carry a tune and I love to harmonize.  For the past several months I have been really enjoying singing with the newly-formed Women's Choir in church.

For several years now, I have been wanting to organize an Old-Fashioned Gospel Sing where all interested parties gather to sing through old hymns and gospel tunes.  Today, we did it.  The Women's Choir hosted a potluck after church, not knowing how many people would show up, so we planned, hoping for 50 and ended up with 58!

One of our very best gospel pianists at church accompanied us as we sang our little hearts out for almost an hour.

It was so fun that we started thinking ahead to other kinds of singalongs.  One idea is to have a marshmallow roast, eat s'mores, and sing around a campfire (in a fire pit) on a summer evening.  Another idea is to have a Cole Porter night, although I have no idea what kind of food would go along with that.  We are not a singing culture so much any more, but perhaps we could foster some new interest in becoming so.

Diversion

So, I finally succumbed and bought a New iPad (not to be confused with the non-existent iPad 3).  I am learning the ins and outs and differences between this device and my trusty laptop and desktop.  Older daughter asked me yesterday what I liked best about it, and I thought for a moment.  Besides the fact that I really enjoy the "touch" aspect of it, I think I what I like that is different with it is that I can play "Words with Friends" with my younger daughter.  (I can also text, made easier with the voice recognition software.)  Despite the fact that I am woefully unskilled at this game (and Scrabble), it's fun to play a game over several days and have this additional connection to someone I love.

I also look forward to traveling with it instead of a laptop because of it's small size.

So, yeah, it's pretty fun, and I'm sure that I will find more treasures within this cute device.

Banks of Fog

We always start our day with some NPR (KVCR to be precise) including the weather report for the Inland Empire.  This morning we were warned to be on the lookout for banks of fog.  I thought about that phrase, and it occurred to me that it would be fun to write a poem that had the phrase "beware the banks of fog, my son" (with apologies to Lewis Carroll).  However, the day got away from me with this and that and a bunch of time spent with friends playing music (string trio and recorder group), so a poem never materialized.

But, I DID take a few photos this morning before I went to the gym (and before the fog dissipated), and I DID think about my favorite fog poem by Carl Sandburg. Here's a fun little youtube video of a fast-moving fog bank....

New Soup Recipe and a Little Concert

Here's a new "keeper" recipe for a Hearty Sausage and Sweet Potato Soup.  I made it Tuesday night and we enjoyed the leftovers last night.  This time I used spinach as the recipe said, but next time I am going to try kale instead.

After dinner on Tuesday, I heard a student recital at Boone Recital Hall at Scripps which you can read about on my music blog.

Lost in Place

I really enjoy perusing the used book cart at the Claremont Library.  A few years ago I bought a copy of Louise Erdrich's The Master Butchers Singing Club and not only thoroughly enjoyed reading it, but I think I've loaned it out to about 5 or 6 friends and relations who also thoroughly enjoyed it.  I'd say that was $1 well spent.

More recently I came upon Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia by Mark Salzman.  I have read his Lying Awake and seen the movie about his time in China called Iron and Silk, and I know I should have read more of his work before now.

I finally got around to reading this one (if you own a book, it usually gets to the bottom of the pile since the library books are pressing you onward with their due dates).  It was funny.  I liked it very much.  Mark was a kid who followed through on his passions until they wore themselves out - from kung fu to cello to Chinese.  Now I really do need to go back and read more of his work.

Flamingoes

It took a little calculating, but I think the last time we went to the San Diego Zoo was in 1999, just before we went to live in Palo Alto for the year.  I seem to remember that after our trip we learned that the panda we had seen was pregnant.  

Anyway, we enjoyed seeing the zoo again, and it seems to be even bigger and better than we remember with different levels to walk on to see animals from different angles.  

I particularly enjoyed trying to photograph the flamingoes, which reminds me of a great b&w print my dad took at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago back in the 60s.  Unfortunately I do not have a scan of that photo, but if my mom or dad sends it to me, I will add it to this post.

San Diego Model Railroad Museum

As if a spring break trip to Arizona was not enough traveling for us, we spent this past weekend in San Diego.  H had a conference starting Sunday, so we went down with our friends on Saturday to make a fun weekend out of it.  Knowing that we wanted to go to the Zoo, but also do something else, we headed for Balboa Park in general and then looked at the map.  I had forgotten how many museums are in the park.  I don't think any of us had ever gone into the Model Railroad Museum, so we decided to give it a go.  

Along with a troop of cub scouts, we enjoyed all the exhibits and marveled at the amount of time and money that has gone into creating so many different scenes.  Since this is an ongoing project, we could see various stages of completion.  At one point there are just tracks laid out and photos from Google Earth next to them so that the finished models can be accurate.  

Maulik Pancholy at Scripps

Taking a question from a student

Thursday night we went to Garrison Theater at Scripps to hear Maulik Pancholy speak about life in the acting world as an Indian. (He called himself an American Indian which is not to be confused with Native American.) We have seen his work on 30 Rock and most recently on the new sitcom Whitney.   He brought clips of his work from his early days, when roles for his race were quite stereotypical spoofs of Indians in turbans (Pancholy does not own one - I guess they didn't sell them in Indiana where he grew up), through his more recent work where his ethnicity is not his prominent trait.

Arizona Food

It wouldn't be a complete telling of a trip without mention of some of the excellent food we had.  Yes, this was one of our food trips (although the scenery was pretty great, too!).

I will just talk about two of our favorite places to eat, one in Phoenix, one in Sedona.  I think we may have liked Rice Paper the most since we went there twice.  This sweet little place was conceived of as a sushi bar, but then the owner changed her mind and made it into a Vietnamese spring roll bar.  I tried both the Spider Spring Roll (similar to the sushi by that name with tempura crab inside) and the Vegetable Tempura Spring Roll (with asparagus, mango and avocado).  I do like my tempura.... We also shared a bowl of Vegetarian Pho (the picture shows how large one half of a bowl is) both times we went.  The first time we were too full for dessert, so that's why we went back the second time.  We just had to try the ginger creme brûlée.  It was definitely worth the return trip for that.

Our favorite place in Sedona was recommended to us - the Elote Cafe.  This hopping place does not take reservations, and we arrived at what we thought was opening time - 5:00.  There was already a line and a 45-minute wait for a table.  We chose to shorten the wait and sit at the bar which ended up being part of the fun experience.  We enjoyed chatting up the bartender as she made prickly pear margaritas as fast as she could.  This place is pretty pricy, so we decided to try three appetizers for our dinner, and that was a pretty good call.

The signature appetizer is the elote (Mexican name for corn on the cob).  After roasting the ear of corn, it is seasoned with whatever they use to make it completely delicious.  This version takes the corn off of the cob and you eat it with a spoon, or dip it with the chips provided.  I suppose I could buy the cookbook to try it at home, but I am sure that it would come up short in my kitchen.  We also had the seafood tacos (nothing like fish tacos in Ensenada) which were just the right kind of spicy and delicious, as well as the roasted beet salad (with pumpkin seed-encrusted goat cheese balls).

Soldier's Pass - Hiking in Sedona

When looking for a good hike in Sedona, I was overwhelmed with choices, and I think that not many of them are bad.  So, I looked for one that was about 5 miles with not too much elevation gain.  I chose Soldier's Pass because it fit that criteria as well as touting a large sinkhole (the Devil's Kitchen), some arches, and seven sacred pools.

We found the sinkhole and pools (the pools are nowhere as impressive as the seven sacred pools on Maui, but they are still nice to see on the hike), but the guide said that the side hike to the arches was via an unmarked trail on the right, and we passed a number of such possibilities that we didn't want to try them, just in case the arches were not at the end of them.  So, no arches.  But we did see lots and lots of beautiful scenery, including red rocks galore.  

We also ran into some Carleton alums along the way.  They noticed my shirt and started a conversation which gave us not only a pleasant interaction, but a nice 20-minute rest.  They live in northern Minnesota but spend every March in Sedona and April in Palm Springs.

 This is the Devil's Kitchen.

 One of the sacred pools (or puddles).

 Not exactly arches, but some caves in the distance that were pretty enough to photograph.

 From near the top of Soldier's Pass, this is our view with Sedona in the background.  We had about an 800 ft. elevation gain.

 This is a rock formation that I particularly liked.  It looked like a group of people.