Oops, I Did It Again

This is a much more raspberry color than last time, and done much more evenly. KT helped me this time, which was fun - apparently she has a hidden desire to be a hair stylist.


People reactions last time around were pretty easy to read. If they liked it, they said so. If they said, "New year, new color!" or "Why did you dye your hair purple?" I could tell by the expressions on their faces that they thought a color that occurs in nature would be better.


Shanelah pointed out that I just don't seem like the kind of person who would dye my hair purple. I'm the wrong age and I'm not Goth.

Talking Heads

One of the things I like about the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary is that the way they turned out might mean that my vote on Super Duper Tuesday might mean something. I'm not sure why in the past those two states (whose combined population is half that of the San Francisco Bay Area) have anointed the nominees, but it doesn't seem that way this year.


My vote may matter in the primary on the 5th, so I've been thinking about all the people running, and talking things over with friends and the volunteers at the food bank. In November it won't really matter because I'll vote for whoever is on the Democratic ticket even if it's Mickey Mouse. Well, maybe I wouldn't vote for Mickey Mouse if John McCain were the Republican candidate, but maybe I would. It's been fun to listen to the pundits complain about being surprised about what happened in Iowa and NH, and expound contradictory stuff: I listened to a woman on NPR yesterday saying, "Well, he has to win in South Carolina" about every single Republican candidate Robert Siegel named. She didn't say what would happen if they didn't win, and most of them won't.


My personal feeling is that the Democrats will win in November because they aren't Republicans. Younger people tend to be more liberal and if nothing else, so far Obama's campaign is getting the twerty-somethings to the polls ('the more you have to conserve, the more conservative you get"). More importantly, I think the economy will continue to slide, and even if the Republicans aren't totally responsible for that, it's like this: If you throw a party and the party sucks, it's your fault, even if you were responsible for bringing only some of the liquor. When times are bad, Americans vote with their wallets.



Note: Five hundred Kenyans have been killed and 250,000 have fled or been forced from their homes due to violence related to the presidential election there three weeks ago.

A hoary night, when lonely men struggled to keep their fires lit and cabins warm.

The first three times I went to the Cabin was in the winter when I flew out to Colorado during the break between semesters. The Cabin was not designed for winter use; hand-built by Phil and Marko's parents, it's got lots of single-pane windows and is insulated with tinfoil. A fire in the river rock fireplace, which is large, is the main source of heat, and there was (until about a year ago) a wood stove for additional warmth.


Jujubi, Denver D, Phil, and a good friend of Phil's, Bard, would go up to the Cabin and walked in the snow, played cards, talked, read, and listened to music and ate big country meals (read: artery-clogging) that Bard would cook. We sipped a fair amount of Yukon Jack and peach schnapps, and smoked cigars. Jujubi, Denver D, and I would often get caught up in listening to Bard tell shaggy-dog stories about raising rabbits, slaughtering sheep, driving a forklift at Coors, or building houses with his father. The slow cadence of his speech was mesmerizing even if the stories were not.


One night we were there the temperature fell and fell. The four of them played pinochle while I wrote a really lame short story and watched the fire which Phil and Bard kept burning high. The wood stove was cooking away in the corner and we were still chilled, and finally Phil pulled out the kerosene heater and turned on the baseboards. Jujubi and I, from temperate climates, had never heard of it being "too cold to snow," but the guys, all native Coloradans, told us it was.


It would not have snowed that night anyway. There were no clouds, and the sky was a dark royal blue with a big white moon and bright, bright stars strewn across it. The Milky Way was visible. . . I'd never seen such a sky. The dark blue above was reflected on the snow, which shimmered a light blue back at the stars. Standing outside for minute, I was totally taken in by the color and the silence (the river being muffled under ice and five feet of snow). I wrote a haiku about the snow, the last line of which was "What color is blue!"


When we went to bed, the thermometer indicated that it was five below zero outside. It didn't seem much warmer in the Cabin and we all prepared to sleep in our long johns, sweaters, and wool socks. Bard had his sleeping bag rated to 15 below and Jujubi and Phil took the double bed with the electric blanket cranked high. Denver D and I, both small, piled all the extra blankets onto the daybed and wrapped ourselves around each other.


After the fire died down, and because the kerosene heater was turned off, it got even colder in the Cabin. Denver D started to shiver and could not stop. As much of our bodies were touching as could, and I began to worry that he was getting too cold, not to mention that his shivering was disturbing my comfort. After a few minutes of insisting that Denver D put on a hat, I got up and grabbed a wool beanie and pulled it over his ears. Denver D was really worried himself that he was losing too much heat and was afraid to get out of bed. Eventually he stopped shivering and we were able to sleep.


In the morning there was a skim of ice in the bucket in the kitchen and our toothbrushes were frozen to the counter.

The Point

The purple is fading to grey.


I don't like that at all.

New Year's Day

Such an arbitrarily chosen day - even more so than Christmas, which was tacked onto Yule to paper over a pagan celebration. I did a little surfing and learned that Julius Caesar settled New Year's Day as January 1 to get back in sync with the sun after years of tampering with the calendar threw it off. 2050 years later we're still using it. I guess if you rule the Western world, you can start some pretty strong habits.


Zirpu and I went to Park Place and ate good luck food like ham and black eyed peas. Seems like the house was crammed with former Southerners, who were having a great time cooking, eating, and playing Rock Band. The only thing I can imagine harder to deal with than a small child with a noise-making toy is a whole family and their friends with a noise-making toy. On the other hand, spending ten minutes between songs deciding who's going to play what instrument or sing, where you're going to play, and what song you're all going to play probably counts as quality family time.




JR and I hung out in the hot tub. He got an old-school wooden tub with a wood stove to heat the water. Eco-geek that he is, he was burning Java Logs, which are made of coffee grounds. Unfortunately, they do not smell like coffee, but this is a blessedly quiet hot tub.

A Family Poem

Yesterday I heard someone talking about her family's visit for the holidays. The way she described it made me think of this:


They arrived, they cried
They laughed, they left.


I have enough friends with, shall we say, "complicated" family relationships that I really am grateful daily that my family is so easy and functional.

New Year's Day

Last week one of the food bank volunteers told me this story:


When her youngest son was six, he begged to stay up until midnight and the start of the new year. She stayed up with him watching Dick Clark on TV and when the ball dropped (again) on TV and the neighbors started banging their pots and pans, he ran outside.


"Mama!" he cried, "Nothing happened! Something should happen, right?!"


When I was a kid, I was convinced that a meteor would fly by the earth at the moment the new year began, and that I would be able to see it in the sky over San Francisco. I never did see that light streaking by, but I still expect I will if I look out the window at the right moment.