Monday, September 01, 2008
looking back: Final Weekend in the Month that Would Not End
OH MY FREAKING GOD this month of August will NOT END. I realize that it may look like september where you’re sitting but this is the THIRD TIME I’m trying to get this post up, as it were, and August will not “leave the building.” I’m going to try it one more time and then I’ll give the hell up and skip to October ‘09. See you then.
It’s not that this past weekend has been bad - quite the contrary, it’s been mostly delightful. But it’s the fourth weekend in a row that was so overstuffed and hyper-agendized that I feel like I have a Fox News Ticker (tm) running across my larynx ("up next, Dan cooks supper - but will they eat it? Stay tuned - insomnia awaits. Zachary: “Where’s my bear?"). Let me try to give you a rundown and see if I can’t get into the recovery phase. I’m still in the “freaking out with all the stuff going on” phase and it’s, well, not restful.
SO: Friday night I got back from work to find my niece Delia and her parents hanging out in our living room - thankfully, expected. They brought a gorgeous handmade (by them) quilt for Jesse (may he soon be with us) and tasty burritos for us all from Darkest Palo Alto ("Paul the Castrati"). We munched them with enthusiasm and then most of us piled out to my uncle’s gorgeous place up on the hill, for a family-wide cocktail party. And by “family wide,” I mean just about every person who could travel was present, including many cousins I very rarely see and a few - I suppose they’re nephews and nieces, so let’s go with that - whom I totally didn’t recognize at all. Luckily for me the family is really very cool, especially when you get the red wine and mini-pizzas on the table, so we had an excellent time. Zach and Kel didn’t join us, mostly because Z was too wired and fried ("friared") to handle himself in a house that full of priceless art. Exactly what do I mean by that? Funny question.... at one point we were hanging out by the bottom of the stairs when one of the presumed nephews started riding down them on his butt. Lets face it, the place has an elevator, he was doing this for the sheer joy of it. I can’t blame him. However, we couldn’t help noticing that he bumped one of the many framed works lining the staircase as he came down, feet flying and butt bouncing. What did he nearly knock off the wall? A pretty well-known Wayne Thiebaud streetscape. I have to admit, it did me a lot of good to be at a party where a rambunctious 11-year-old can actually almost trash a really nice piece of art, but where it doesn’t quite happen anyway. Good times.
The next day we saw everybody again, with Zach too, at my niece Ellen’s bat mitzvah at the stunning old Sherith Israel synagogue. It was a very nice service with a really cool new sidur (prayerbook), that I would actually like to sit down and read at some point. Ellen did a great job and Zach was even brought into the action, called to serve as an “Ark Attendant” and opening the huge old sliding wooden doors at the proper moment. His comment, upon pulling his door to the side and gazing up at the gilt ark full of resplendent torahs in their silver decorations and velvet robes: “Awesome!” And in fact I think that’s the recommended response, so he’s right on track.
After the services we took a break from the luncheon buffet to sneak upstairs with niece Beccy and some of her friends to check out the topmost balcony near the dome. Okay, maybe I missed the latkes but it was TOTALLY WORTH IT.
Zach ran around and around the small circular floor, and I just gaped at the view - not out, but up and down. Really nice place they’ve got there.
(Aside: Afterwards Kel was describing something that had happened during the services that had made her a bit anxious, saying it had given her the heebie-jeebies. “No,” she corrected herself, “not that...”, pausing to let the right word occur to her. I suggested, “the Hebrew Jebrews?” but it turns out that wasn’t it either.)
Later in the afternoon we got ourselved into mufti and visited Chrissy Field to see the EnviroGlobes display. It was pretty damn cool (I’ll fix these links soon, but it’s too much trouble right now) (okay that otta fix’em) -
- but the wind was sandblasting us and it was not a pleasant or comfortable experience, so we took a short drive to let the kids play in a forest
technically, this was in the forest
(they love them that forest action) and then just went back home and got some pizza. We’ve been pizza-ing lately at Gaspare’s for the old-school style and at Orgasmica for the funky neo style, but for a change of pace we opted for Cable Car - just a block from us and always completely empty, they seem to survive on their take-out and delivery service. They’ve tried many ways to lure in the peoples - big tvs, pool tables, outdoor seating, no outdoor seating… this time when I went to get the ‘za I was, again, the only person in the house apart from staff. Also, the seating area was all torn up and a new arabic-type mural was painted on one wall. As I glanced around, the cashier, who’d trotted up from the back of the kitchen, told us that it’s going to be a hookah bar. NOW you’re talking, I thought, that’ll bring in the hipsters. As I completed the transaction one of the staff who’d been sitting back in the kitchen area walked briskly past me out the front door. Trailing behind him was an odor of burning herbs best experienced at concerts such as the Grateful Dead or Phish. Hookah bar, I wondered? Some questions earn their own pungency.
The next day we laid low for the morning (I made pancakes, which lent themselves to the lowlaying) with some playground-and-museum-concourse action in the park. Then Kel and Z and I went out to the east bay to visit friends who’d just come back from China with a new baby who was having a first birthday party. These are friends we don’t know as well as some of our old college chum crowd, but they’re delightful people and have an amazing house way the hell up in the Oakland hills. (Aside: Kel walked in on me as I was getting ready to leave for the party. “Are you wearing that hideous shirt?,” she asked without thinking. Once she’d said it she realized what a mistake she’d made, but it was too late; I responded, “NOW, I am.") They were serving carnitas as good as any I’ve ever eaten anywhere, with damn fine tamales and a refreshing hibiscus-cooler-and-tequila beverage which I wish I had more of right now.
I ate many times more than I needed and then we cruised back home so we could cook supper for Scott and Evi (Delia, as it turns out, does not eat). Dessert was a bunch of apple cake I’d bought at the new local Armenian deli-grocery-bakery, which was good enough to cause me to overeat for the third time in one day. I wound up staying up too late to try to watch Ironman for free on-line, but the site where I found it was too slow to load and I kind of felt bad to be watching a video that had chinese subtitles and in which occasionally you’d get a silhouette of someone getting up and walking out of the screening room. I didn’t realize my sensibilities were so delicate, but such blatant bootlegging just felt distasteful.
The next day was Monday, Laver Day, which we started with another trip to the park - but this time to the Big Playground, which was thoroughly enjoyed by all persons involved, what with the swings and the climbing walls and the play structures and the water features and the rest of it. Then we took a little down time at home while E/D/S visited a friend; upon their return we all went back to Chrissy Field to frolic in the water, in that it was a gorgeous day with light winds and the high tide was just starting to ebb from the lagoon. We waded and splashed and dug pits and let the warm water run between our toes, and had a great old time.
That left us just enough time to order too much food from Ton Kiang and to eat most of it, to let the kids have one last bath together (Z was too tired to be very congenial but still eventually let Delia play with the toy sea horse), and then most everybody went to bed, stuffed and comfy. Except for me, with my brains on “free rotate” and my sensibilities reeling from yet another weekend of too much stuff to keep it straight. Hence my investment in this post tonight. It’s been good to get it out of my brains, finally. Additionally, I got to debrainify with the use of our new laptop, an unprecedented technological advance in this household, all hooked (or “hookahed") up to the new wireless network that’s now also powering TiVo. August saw me get a nice new phone, too, and that “hideous” shirt that I really like. It was a big month. I will miss it, in retrospect. In the present, I am so freaking glad it’s over.
bonus, pending my repair of the above apparently broken links goddamnit (repair completed but bonus retained): the soft drink aisle at New May Wah market. Drink hearty - you could use the refreshment!
