My Favorite California Place - A Photo Album

We went on a little road trip last week down to Mendocino County, which is the next county down the coast below Humboldt, and brought back some pictures and memories. We went down to hear a favorite band play, and managed to get Mike's art into two high-end art and glass galleries in the area while we were there. So that is super awesome.

Here are pictures from the trip:













It was chilly the afternoon we got in to Fort Bragg, where we stayed:





This is Glass Beach, which has an interesting history. All these rocks are actually pieces of glass:










It was much warmer and sunnier the next day:









Standing on the footbridge looking at our motel:

















The village of Mendocino:

I Felt the Earth Move Under My Feet

So tonight, I am lying on top of my bed, curled up under my favorite quilt, reading a book. My bed is up against a wall, and my pillows are propped up against the wall. All of sudden, the wall feels like jello, and the bed feels like a water bed. I am not kidding. It was over so fast I wondered if I had just imagined it. Mike was on the computer in the other room, and all of a sudden he runs in and asks if I felt that. Yes, I most certainly did feel that.

According to earthquake.usgs.gov, there WAS in fact an earthquake in northern California tonight, a 5.2 magnitude to be exact. It was, however, 35 miles east of where I am, which is essentially the middle of nowhere. No damage has been reported, just shaking. Of this, I can personally attest.

It's a bit exciting and a bit frightening, really more frightening than exciting. This was my first earthquake experience, and frankly I'd like it to stay that way. It was so light that the hutch full of Mike's glass art just made a racket, but nothing fell or moved around. So, yeah. Earthquakes. Guess I really do live in California. Being surrounded by cows, sometimes I wonder.

My Nomadic Life

"The only constant is change," Mike said to me this morning.

I'm about to turn 27 and I'm nowhere near where I thought I'd be in life. I am, however, in transition, again. Again.

Oh, it's good, I am sure. But that does not make it any easier in the moment. Most of the time though it feels like I can barely keep my goals in mind, let alone begin to accomplish them.

Do you ever feel like life is just a rat race to keep up, pay the bills just in time for another month to roll around and start all over again, finally get into a regular exercise routine just in time to catch some stupid flu bug that makes me bedridden for weeks on end, and then when I do get back to work it's crunch time before the biggest deadline of the year, so I'm working 12- to 14-hour shifts everyday and suddenly months later I realize I haven't been taking care of myself properly, again. And am paying for it.

Since moving here I have lost touch with nearly all my friends from Wisconsin, and barely keep up with talking to some of my family members on a semi-regular basis.

I try and try and try just to be knocked down over and over again. I try to maintain positivity, but sometimes that gets old, you know?

I heard a song on the radio that included the lyric that without hope a person will die in three minutes. So that's a relief; I guess it means I have some hope in me yet. Since I'm not dead and all.

I think I worry that if I am in the same routine too long that I will begin to feel bored. But then I feel exhausted and overwhelmed when I take on all these new endeavors, neglect the important relationships in my life, and then eventually abandon the new endeavors, and am right back to where I started, except maybe even a little worse off.

Some people make it all look so easy. I wish I were one of THOSE people. Do lovely thoughts about your loved ones count for something? They don't equal phone calls, emails and letters, of that I'm sure.

On a less melodramatic note, I have been learning how to make pretty glass things, and have even made a few pendants. (OK, I have STARTED a few pendants, Mike has finished both of them because I haven't quite got that bale loop technique down yet. But I'm working on it.) So, that is fun. And of course, there is that plane ticket back to Wisconsin to look forward to. And the weather is pretty great outside right now. At least for the last five minutes. I think maybe I have been sitting at this computer too long and just need to go out there and get some fresh air.

I can no longer afford to drive my car

Gas prices locally are $4.09. Can anyone beat that? I surely hope not! So now I have set up a home office and I'm playing a game called "let's pretend I don't own a car." It's been interesting so far, to say the least. The weather has been pleasant and quite warm for the most part, but if it starts pouring I think the game is over. Well, not completely. I do have a nice umbrella and a bus pass and it's been quite fun to wander around with a backpack pretending I'm a college student or something. But seriously, $4.09? Seriously!?

Earthquake Guaranteed!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080414/ap_on_sc/california_quakes

Scary. Guess I'd better find out what one does to prepare for such an event. I only know about tornadoes...

Here's the story in full if you don't want to click the link above:

Forecast: Big quake likely in Calif.

By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer
Mon Apr 14, 6:20 PM ET



LOS ANGELES - California faces an almost certain risk of being rocked by a strong earthquake by 2037, scientists said Monday in the first statewide temblor forecast.

New calculations reveal there is a 99.7 percent chance a magnitude 6.7 quake or larger will strike in the next 30 years. The odds of such an event are higher in Southern California than Northern California, 97 percent versus 93 percent.

"It basically guarantees it's going to happen," said Ned Field, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena and lead author of the report.

The 1994 Northridge earthquake under Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley was magnitude 6.7. It killed 72 people, injured more than 9,000 and caused $25 billion in damage in the metropolitan area.

The damage created by an earthquake depends greatly on where it hits. A 7.1 quake — much stronger than Northridge — hit the Mojave Desert in 1999 but caused only a few injuries and no deaths.

California is one of the world's most seismically active regions. More than 300 faults crisscross the state, which sits atop two of Earth's major tectonic plates, the Pacific and North American plates. About 10,000 quakes each year rattle Southern California alone, although most of them are too small to be felt.

The analysis is the first comprehensive effort by the USGS, Southern California Earthquake Center and California Geological Survey to calculate earthquake probabilities for the entire state using newly available data. Previous quake probabilities focused on specific regions and used various methodologies that made it difficult to compare.

For example, a 2003 report found the San Francisco Bay Area faced a 62 percent chance of being struck by a magnitude 6.7 quake by 2032. The new study increased the likelihood slightly to 63 percent by 2037. For the Los Angeles Basin, the probability is higher at 67 percent. There is no past comparison for the Los Angeles area.

Scientists still cannot predict exactly where in the state such a quake will occur or when. But they say the analysis should be a wake-up call for residents to prepare for a natural disaster in earthquake country.

Knowing the likelihood of a strong earthquake is the first step in allowing scientists to draw up hazard maps that show the potential severity of ground shaking in an area. The information can also help with updating building codes and emergency plans and setting earthquake insurance rates.

"A big earthquake can happen tomorrow or it can happen 10 years from now," said Tom Jordan, director of the earthquake center, which is headquartered at the University of Southern California.

Researchers also calculated the statewide probabilities for larger temblors over the same time period. Among their findings: There is a 94 percent chance of a magnitude 7 shock or larger; a 46 percent chance of a magnitude 7.5 and a 4.5 percent chance of a magnitude 8.

The odds are higher that a magnitude 7.5 quake will hit Southern California than Northern California — 37 percent versus 15 percent.

Of all the faults in the state, the southern San Andreas, which runs from Parkfield in central California southeast to the Salton Sea, appears most primed to break, scientists found. There is a 59 percent chance in the next three decades that a Northridge-size quake will occur on the fault compared to 21 percent for the northern section.

The northern San Andreas produced the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but the southernmost segment has not popped in more than three centuries.

Scientists are also concerned about the Hayward and San Jacinto faults, which have a 31 percent chance of producing a Northridge-size temblor in the next 30 years. The Hayward fault runs through densely populated cities in the San Francisco Bay Area. The San Jacinto fault bisects the fast-growing city of San Bernardino east of Los Angeles.

It's Time for an Overdue Visit

It's booked. I have a plane ticket! I'm coming to an airport near you (that would be Madison, Wisconsin) Thursday, May 29 and I'll be in the area for a few weeks.

If anyone is interested in rescuing me from the airport early in the morning Thursday, I'll take you to breakfast for your efforts.

I CAN'T WAIT!

No, I do not have a cold

I just sound like I do. It's called allergies, and apparently it's part of who I am now. Ah, Humboldt County, you and I have such a love/hate relationship. This is all your fault.

I wonder if I moved back to Wisconsin if the itchiness in my eye sockets and the non-stop blowing of my nose would just disappear. Or if this is my souvenir that I get to keep FOREVER.

I'm sorry, lil sis, that I ever made fun of the way you said mom ("bob"). Now I understand just how frustrating these kinds of problems are.

The festival is over which means I have time to whine and complain again. Yay!

In other dews (that's "news" if your nose isn't full of snot), I'm taking vacation sometime this month. I am watching airline rates and as soon as I can snatch up a decent deal I'm homeward bound. Prepare yourselves accordingly. I'm generally a fun person. When I'm not complaining.

I've Made It to the Other Side (or, On Starting Over)

I have time to read books again! Clean my house again! Go for walks again! Watch the sunset again! Live my life again!

The Jazz Festival was incredible, and so hard, and lots of fun, and infinitely satisfying. I solved problems all weekend; that was my job description I'm pretty sure. There were glitches and hitches, people called me on my work cell, I solved them. At the end of the weekend we had a volunteer appreciation dinner and I had people constantly approaching me and hugging me, thanking me, for taking such good care of them, for helping them to do their jobs in an enjoyable manner. It was unexpected, and made the entire weekend worthwhile.

Up until Monday I had been working for weeks from 8 in the morning until sometimes 1 or 2 the next morning. I've never worked this hard in my life. But to see the Jazz Festival go off without a hitch (that the public eye could see), to see everything come together, and all these people joined together enjoying these wonderful bands, eating, drinking and being merry, made all that work worth it.

Now that I've had a few days of regular sleep to recover, my body and mind is finally starting to accept the relief that it is over! We made it! We did it!

So now it's back to a "normal" life, whatever that means. Today my boss and I are going to nail down that vacation time I have coming. I CAN'T WAIT! Spring is here, it's a new season, a new project, and a brand new outlook!

STRESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSED!

I shouldn't even have taken the time to post this. We're less than two days to the Festival and all I have to say is ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Back to work!

I'm in the Newspaper and on TV

Don't worry, I didn't do anything illegal: A news reporter interviewed me for this jazz festival we are putting on next weekend, and so I got quoted in the newspaper (a bunch of times). See the story below. (Can you find the misquote? There's one that I think is sort of obvious. Oh, and the typos? Maybe I should apply to be a copy editor for their paper. They look like they could use the help.)



Passing it on the next generation Jazz Fest seeks to keep community support
Meghan Vogel For the Times-Standard
Article Launched: 03/20/2008 09:21:29 AM PDT

Since 1991, Redwood Coast Music Festival's Jazz Fest has invested nearly half-a-million dollars into local senior and youth programs. But as 2008's bleak national economic forecast looms over the 18th annual Redwood Coast Jazz Fest, promoters are keeping their fingers crossed the event will continue to be a success.

”We're a little slow on ticket sales this year, because the economy's not so good and gas prices are high, but it's still hard to know how it's going to turn out”" said Naomi Clark, assistant director of the Redwood Coast Music Festivals. “We're hoping last-minute ticket buyers will come through for us.”

Originally co-founded as a nonprofit organization to raise funds for area senior programs by Humboldt County Supervisor Bonnie Neely and Assemblymember Patty Berg, the festival has donated more than $300,000 to local senior programs in its 17 years of existence. In 1996, Blues By the Bay was added to the events held by Redwood Coast Music Festivals, and the organization's mission expanded to include support of programs benefiting youth music education.

Over the years, dozens of local groups have reaped the benefit of the Redwood Coast Music Festivals' generosity. In the senior category, there's Humboldt Home Health, Northcoast Advocacy Services, Redwood Community Action Agency, Food For People, the Healy Senior Center and the Area Agency on Aging. And that's just naming a few. On the youth side, the festival has raised money to purchase new musical instruments for local schools, as well has funded concert productions and music clinics.
Festival volunteer Billie Lau noted how the Jazz Fest pumps money into the local economy. As a destination tourist event, she said, local restaurants and motels can count on the Jazz Fest to shine their coffers.

Before moving to the area to be closer to her son and her two grandchildren, Lau said she would attend the Jazz Fest every year from Corpus Christi, Texas. She moved here five years ago and has been volunteering with the festival ever since.

”It's really great because you feel like you're getting to help the community,” she said.

This year, the festival will add two new venues at Redwood Acres, Franceschi Hall and the Vickers Building. Clark said there will be art and craft vendors on hand, and that Franceschi Hall's 1,000-square foot dance floor should be perfect for swing dancing.

”We have some professional swing dancers coming, and we're really focusing on having more dancing this year,” she said. “We're trying to bring the younger generation out.”

On Saturday, March 29, the Eureka Muni is host to a dance party extravaganza featuring the saucy sounds of Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, the hard-hitting blues of JC Smith and a group CNN Showbiz labeled as “at the forefront of the swing revival,” Steve Lucky and the Rhumba Bums. During the festival, the Skillet Lickers will also be participating in a Q&A feedback sessions, or “jazz clinic,” for local high school music students.

The Friday before the dance party will also be geared toward a younger sort of crowd, Clark said. Don't worry Jazz Fests traditionalists- your favorite regulars from festivals past will still be in town jazzin' it up as well.

”Friday night will be a new modern jazz concert at the Arkley Center with The Brubeck Brothers, the sons of Dave Brubeck, and Incendio, a jazz fusion band. We hope to get the HSU crowd out that night,” Clark said.

Throughout the Jazz Fest, which runs March 27 through 30, you can catch any number of bands at the at the festival's venues of the Arkley Center, the Adorni Center, the Red Lion, the Eureka Muni and Redwood Acres. Returning artists include Cornet Chop Suey, Gator Beat and Titan Hot 7.

”We have to pass this kind of music down to the next generation,” Clark said. “They should come out and give this a try. It's an educational process too. I'm in my early 20s, but I'm really enjoying this music. And most of this music is where modern American music came from."

Ticket prices for the Redwood Coast Jazz Festival vary. For more information, visit www.redwoodjazz.org or call Festival Headquarters at 445-3378.


Click HERE to link to the article on times-standard.com.

I was also in a TV commercial, but I only have a copy in DVD format and haven't had time to figure out how to post that. It's sort of cool/annoying that Humboldt is so small, because now I walk around and get recognized. People say "I saw you on TV." And then they quote me: "In the spirit of the north coast!" (That's the last line I say in the ad.) It's not really what I had expected to happen in my life, so it's sort of disconcerting in a way. But also sort of fun. I'll take my 30 seconds of "fame". It's gotta be better than infamy, right?

P.S. I never said I was in my early 20's. I swear I said mid-20's. Mike was more than happy to point out that I'm about to turn 27 and even saying mid-20's is pushing it a little. Thanks, Mike. Also, Incendio is a LATIN JAZZ FUSION band, not just a jazz fusion band. Leaving the Latin out of that sort of made using the word fusion not as effective, in my opinion.

My California Anniversary

So I've been here a year (as of March 12, actually). So, that's some kind of accomplishment. The year's been rough, I would have to say, but now it's behind me, and I think there's some downhill in sight for a while.

It's less than two weeks until the jazz festival. (Six venues, over 100 shows, four days, just me, the director, and volunteers to run this thing - so yeah, you could say things are a bit hectic at the moment. But no worries, I'm rockin' it. Finally feeling like I am really good at my job. So, that's always nice.) I've been working 7 days a week, 12-14 hours a day. I'm looking forward to having other pursuits again.

After this is over, I think I'll take a trip back home. After that, I'm not sure what I'll do. There is this other festival coming up, Blues by the Bay, in August this year. I have some other ideas too. So we'll see where my second year in Humboldt County takes me. Hopefully much farther than the first.

The weather's been pretty nice. Spring is here, everything is in bloom. The sun is out. It's a new day.

Photoshop for Dummies

Here's what I made at my Photoshop class tonight:



This may not look like much, but it started out as four different pictures, and I combined them into one four-layered picture, wait, five-layered picture (the words make their own layer, don't I sound smart, yeah, right). I also cropped, selected, filtered, rotated, and a whole bunch of other fun verbs that I now cannot recall, these picture items to create the one "lovely" picture item you see above.

Yeah, so why did I think Photoshop was hard? Oh, yeah, because 1) my boss insisted that he did not have time to show me how to edit text in ads he made using Photoshop and 2) my boyfriend insisted he didn't have time to show me how to manipulate and edit pictures using Photoshop.

That's what I get for listening to them instead of to myself. Myself was all, "Naomi, you can totally do Photoshop without a class, girl," and I was all, "I don't know, Mike and Glenn don't think I can..."

So there were these old ladies in my class and most of Monday night was spent explaining to them where the pictures go when you transfer them from your camera to your computer; and how to rename a file and such things like that. But I did learn some useful things that the men in my life (i.e. boss and boyfriend) are just too swamped to show me, so it wasn't all for naught.

So now I will go kick some Photoshop ass. Or, at least, edit some Photoshop files at work and create some Photoshop files for Mike's work...

My Artist made the Front Page

Mike was on the front page of one of the local papers here on Monday, and now the front page is on the side of our fridge:



They got his name wrong though (they printed it as "Warren Lake") so now we call him The Artist Formerly Known as Mike Warren, or TAFKAMW (we also think Warren Lake makes a great hippie name):



This glass layout, called a rollup, was designed and created by hand by Mike:



Edited 2/28 to add the text of the feature (it wasn't really an article, so much as a photographic feature with picture captions - here are the picture captions):

TOP: The Glass Station artist Warren Lake uses a high-temperature torch to melt colored glass into a great white shark's head as another torch keeps the glass reef pedestal (upon which the shark will stand) hot.

LEFT: The Glass Station co-owner and artist Joseph Reinik holds a finished vase created with colorful glass pieces fused onto and melted around it. He and his partner in the Blue Lake business, Scott Harris, each have about 10 years experience working with glass. Reinik recently finished a class from a master glass sculptor.

BELOW: An assortment of colorful items that have been handmade ahead of time are sometimes heated and then fused onto and melted around molten glass to make a vase with multidimensional features instead of just flat layers.

Day 11 of the Flu

So, it's not pinkeye, and it's not the Humboldt Crud. It's the flu. According to the news, there is a flu epidemic (or is pandemic?) going on in 45 states right now, and the hospitals are full. This isn't that 24-hour flu that is nasty as all get-out and then you move on with your life. No, siree. This is the THREE-WEEK flu that is nasty as all get-out, and then in your weakened state you stagger on with your life.

So I have been wanting to lose some weight, but this isn't exactly what I had in mind.

Last week I went to exactly one day of work. So far this week, I've been to work one day as well, which is not exactly a good track record (nor is it my norm). Monday morning I felt OK, but by the afternoon my splitting headache and my ringing ears and my firey sore throat feeling like I was trying to choke down a tennis ball every time I swallowed (which is, like, a lot, we swallow a lot, you might not notice unless your throat hurts for six days straight) should have been a clue that I needed to call it a day. I forced myself to suffer through the day, went to my first Photoshop class that I have already paid for and was so excited about, and then Tuesday I paid for it, all day. Today, I'm significantly better than yesterday, but I think I need to not push myself. Which means, I'm working on getting to work, so I can acoomplish something, but taking a shower and getting dressed caused me to lie down and take an hour nap. It's pathetic.

I actually had one of our board members telling me Monday that I wasn't taking this flu seriously enough. Because I was at work. Um, we are four 1/2 weeks to this festival, and I haven't even gotten the vendor contracts out the the door yet. I'm trying to take it all seriously. This is just the worst timing ever.

So, anyway. I don't have the Humboldt Crud. Which is like, yay for me, I guess. Apparently it's a rite of passage or so the crazy locals say. As I've never had it, I wouldn't know if it's preferred to this flu crap that I have, but I'm seriously thinking that anything would be better than this. Definitely melodramatic, i.e. me.

Also, now that I have read that the easiest way to catch the flu is by touching your mouth and face with dirty hands, I am hyper aware of the fact that I touch my face a lot. I also wash my hands a lot, but all it takes is one time with not-so-clean hands. And my computer at work is not exactly just used by me. It's like the town bicycle of computers. So now I get to be obsessed about yet another thing. Awesome.

P.S. As I cited no sources for this little epi(or pan)demic, just type "flu current" into your search engine and you'll see what I'm talking about. Or you can just take my word for it.

P.P.S. OK, here is one link: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/usmap.htm - the states in brown mean the flu is widespread there. As you can see, Florida is currently the place to be.

On a better note

Mike and I celebrated our togetherness by him making his disgusting pinkeye girlfriend a lovely eggs, facon (that's fake bacon, it's quite good), and toast breakfast; and then sitting down together and writing a new goals list for 2008. It feels good to be a team. It feels a little bit like we're Bonnie and Clyde, but without the criminal part.

We also decided that we would celebrate our anniversary again/better/for real on March 12, when our Humboldt life together officially started. The hope is that by then I won't have [pinkeye, mumps, scarlet fever, insert obscure illness here].

Also, Mike brought me this herbal remedy called "Miracle 3000" or something like that, and he insists that a) it works, and b) I will take it at least 3 times a week so that I can stop being such a sicky.

True love in all its glory.

Awesome

The eye goo situation is now happening in both eyes. According to my medical book and my boyfriend's reaction, it's pinkeye.

Have I mentioned yet how much fun I am having?

Hi, I'm five years old apparently, and therefore I have pinkeye.

The Crud

I think I have the Humboldt Crud. I have been sick for almost a week. It started out as the body ache, fever, flu yuckiness, and then segued seamlessly into the horribly sore throat, hacking cough, snot nose, headachy, earachy cocktail that I am currently enjoying.

Sorry to paint such a lovely picture.

I am so sick and tired of being sick and tired. With Monday being a holiday, I called in sick to work Tuesday and Wednesday, went to work on Thursday, and got sent back home with orders not to come back on Friday.

I've never had that happen before.

I never thought I'd miss the days of the good ol' 24-hour-bug. I mean, it was hardcore, but just when you thought you couldn't take it anymore, you got better.

I am so bored/lonely/tired/over this crap.

Now today my eye decided that it wanted to join the party and started oozing copious amounts of eye goo. Just my right eye though. Yes, eye goo is the technical term. I might be dying.

OK, I'm not dying. It's just the crud. Yay, Humboldt.

Happy Anniversary

Tommorrow, Saturday, February 23, Mike and I will have been together for a year.

Wednesday, March 12, I will have been here in Humboldt County for a year.

And for your viewing pleasure, this is yours truly, as drawn by 10-year-old Kaya:


She made me with green eyes because initially she didn't have a brown marker, but as I did not want green hair, I searched around the house until I found her a brown marker. Whew, that was a close one.

P.S. The kids got Presidents Week off! California is crazy!

Edited to add a picture of the little artist herself, hard at work:

Don't Worry About a Thing

This has been hanging out in my favorites for a year or so; I thought I'd share it here. A very cute little boy serenades us with Bob Marley's Three Little Birds.

Enjoy!

Thanks to the Presidents...

Is this a normal thing, because I don't remember it ever happening in Wisconsin? I get a paid holiday from work today because it's Presidents Day today.

I am sick anyway, got some stupid flu-like bug, so I guess the presidents, or whoever decided to give me this day off, saved me a sick call into the office...

Online Glass Art Gallery

Click HERE to check out Mike's gallery on glassartists.org.

The URL is glassartists.org/MikeWarren, FYI.

I will be working on getting more pictures on here every few days or so, so check back in periodically. This is just the tip of the iceberg, y'all.

Edited to add some pictures, in case you need some inspiration to click my link, you won't regret it, I promise!





And there are plenty more where these came from!

On Love, Random Stranger Style

A man who appeared to have all of his worldly possessions with him in a shopping cart handed me a photocopy of this poem, handwritten on a plain white sheet of paper, as I walked by on my way to the post office:


Love and marriage,
Love and marriage
go together
like a horse and carriage,
This I tell you brother,
You can't have one
without the other.


I couldn't tell if it was the Frank Sinatra version or the theme song from the sitcom Married with Children, though I can't see how that really makes a difference. I guess I appreciate the sentiment? I can't help but wonder what made him choose this poem to photocopy and hand out to passersby. I also can't help but wonder if he handed out his little marriage poem to men too. Maybe I have been proposed to and I don't even know it!

Well, at the very least, I now know this random stranger's opinion on love, AND marriage. And I'm glad too.

'08 is Great

What's New:

Seven weeks to the jazz festival, and still lots and lots to do.

Taking a photoshop class at College of the Redwoods starting February 25.

Volunteering/working in trade for glass classes doing office work at the hot glass studio where Mike works. First glass class will be end of this month, on a Saturday. I will try to make something cool.

Being "stepmom" on the weekends to 10-year-old Kaya and 12-year-old Josh, having all kinds of fun times, including baking cookies, having snow fights*, racing to the end of the street, learning hot glass techniques at their dad's shop, watching movies like Madagascar and Open Season, having sleepovers camp-out style on the living room floor, and other bonding-like moments.

Working on getting Mike's artwork up on various glass artist websites, will post links when I'm done.

Planning a trip home to Wisconsin some time in late April/early May, details to follow once airline tickets are bought and vacation time at work is approved, not in that particular order (vacation time is unofficially approved, but not the specific dates yet).

*For the record, it only snowed here that one day. Yes, I'm bragging a little. You all have each other, albeit having each other in 10 feet of snow. Two thousand miles away from my beloved family, I have to hold on to whatever I can, so I will "brag" about the fact that there is no snow here. Ha ha. And I'm sorry. I hope you all are being safe and staying warm.

Camping out:



Hanging out at the glass studio:



Playing with puppies:

It's Snowing in "Paradise"

Yeah, so Sunday it snowed enough for the kids and me to have a snowball fight, and I don't mean like a sorry excuse for a snowball fight either. It was a full fledged down and dirty knock 'em out snowball fight. And those of you who know me realize this means that it was a completely unfair fight that I only didn't lose because 1) I know how to outrun Kaya and Josh on slippery ground and 2) I used my umbrella as a shield.

It snowed for much of the day and the snow actually stuck. I'm pretty certain I was the only person in the entire town of Blue Lake, where one of Mike's glass studios is, who had an actual ice/snow scraper in the trunk of my car. Yeah, everybody was jealous. Everybody was also making a very big deal out of it, like they had never seen snow before in their lives. While I appreciate that Josh and Kaya, who have lived in Humboldt County for most and all of their lives respectively, don't recall ever having seen it in person, my being from Wisconsin sort of colored my personal experience. Let's just say I wasn't too pumped on the snow situation. Especially since Saturday was warm enough for no coats! It's like the weather taunted us with what it could be like, and then BAM! SNOW. Ew.

Yesterday it alternated between sun and rain, no snow that I can tell, but looking up in the mountains I can see they have been dumped on with snow up there, and the weather forecast has predicted that the mountaintop communities should expect another eight inches today/tonight! That is a lot for around here. Heck, I think that's a lot for anywhere.

OK, apparently, I'm a snow scrooge. Whatever. Mike scolded his kids for getting all wet playing in the snow and then being cold because they didn't have the proper winter wear, and I stuck up for them: "They are just kids. None of us knew to have proper winter wear because it hasn't snowed here in years." Yeah, OK, he said. And then we went home and huddled under blankets with cups of hot chocolate and watched The Family Guy. The way it should be on a snowy day.

Three, Count 'em, Three Excellent Things About Today

1) I have Fridays off so I get to do fun things like rearrange my living room and clean stuff and run important errands (well, rearranging my living room is fun).
2) The sun is out! And there's no wind, so it feels like almost 50 degrees! I had the front door open while I cleaned this morning and I was only wearing a teeshirt (and pants) and wasn't cold at all!
3) I bought a couch on Craigslist (for cheap!) on Wednedsay and Mike helped me move the living room around today and now my apartment is finally cute and comfortably livable!
4) I know I said three but I just thought of another thing! I have the internet at home now! That could also be bad.

Yay!

Here are some pictures of my insanely tiny but (finally!) cute apartment:












The outside still needs a little work, but...




Here's where my car is parked, next to the barn where the cows hang out:


Edited 1.19.08 to add a few more pics:





Trying to keep the main living area warm with a space heater, these are the doors to the bathroom, our bedroom, the linen closet (uber skinny door) and the "spare" bedroom (aka walk-in closet). I just thought it looked sort of cool:

(The angle is from sitting at our little eating "nook".)

Hope you enjoyed this episode of our tiny adorable apartment as much as I do.

OK, fine, here's what I have to say about my stupid hamster

I wrote this yesterday:

My two-year-old dwarf hamster, Smalls, died. I think he got too cold. Or maybe two years is his life expectancy. I have no idea. All I know is that I fed him and gave him water and tried not to hate the boring little sucker too much, and then yesterday amidst my running around between work and errands and life, it suddenly occurred to me that his food bowl, which usually remains empty, not because I don't feed him but because he eats his food the second it hits his bowl, was the same level it had been for days, and his water too. Suddenly I'm driving down the road about to pick up a sofa I purchased off Craigslist with my borrowed SUV and I have this thought: My Hamster Has Died.

I got home, moved the couch in, made some dinner, it was late and I was hungry, had a beer, it was late and I had been working all day, and then... I couldn't stall anymore. I took off his lid and yelled and rattled his food bowl. The little bugger always comes out when I call to him.

He didn't come out.

I found him curled up in a tight little ball in the corner under his bedding. The poor little thing just curled up and died. I feel like a terrible hamster mother. I didn't even much like him, because he's a poor replacement for the dogs in my life I've had to let go as relationships come and go, he just eats and smells funny and bites me. I usually called him whatever random name that came to mind and occasionally I would reach in and pet his back while he was eating and too preoccupied to pull away and turn his sharp little choppers on me.

But when I found him curled up there I cried. OK? I cried for my dumb little hamster and my apparent inability to keep even a dumb little hamster alive.

My sweetest ever boyfriend held me and didn't make fun of me even once. He said it was OK to feel sad because it was my pet and a life and I was taking care of him. He said he probably died of old age. Or coldness. But that it wasn't my fault.

You know, the sweet things good boyfriends say when their girlfriends are sad.

He also said we'll give Hammy a proper burial in the redwoods.

I feel so sad, relieved, guilty, and curious. I just hope he didn't suffer too much. I hope it was his time to go, that he died of old age, and that he was remotely happy in his short meaningless little life.

RIP, Smalls, April 2006-January 2008. I will miss you when I think of you. You didn't even eat all your gourmet hamster food I bought you, you little punk. I'm glad I didn't let Mike feed you to the owl that lives in the barn by our house.

The details of this post are peculiar.

President Clinton came to town yesterday. He spoke to the 400 "elite" people of Humboldt County, whomever that may be (in this case it was the 400 people who managed to fit into the building). Most of the thousands of people who waited for hours in the cold went home dissatisfied.

I spent my evening purchasing a couch for my living room (finally!) and transporting it home. Although it would have been nice to catch a glimpse of the celebrity that is Bill Clinton, I have a fair-weather interest, and that means taking off half a day's work to wait in the very cold wind for hours on end only to have to either push my way in or to have waited in vain did not fit within the parameters of my curiosity.

Some people would call that lazy. I would call it smart.

In other news, the worst part about this week is that my hamster died, and the best part about today is that I brought my super comfortable office chair from home into work and it is awesome.

Humboldt Has a Visitor

Former President Clinton may or may not be coming to Eureka tomorrow to advocate for his wife, but I can neither confirm nor deny this is true.

I will have to get back to you. (I just think this is interesting because Humboldt is so rural and off the map in so many ways.)

The Crazy Weather

Here it is raining and storming so much that many people (last I heard on the radio, 1/2 a million in California alone) are without electricity. I'm not one of those people. But I feel for those who are affected by this.

Back in Wisconsin there was a 50-car pile-up on I-90 because of the intense fog, combined with the snowy weather conditions.

Here they warn you not to leave your house if you don't really have to on account of the pouring rain. Being one who drove on a regular basis in snow back home in Wisconsin, I thought this was being a bit overly cautious. But the climate here seems to lend itself to ultra slick roads when it's raining a lot. So it's really not a whole lot different than driving in the snow. Combine that with the fog. The fog here is intense.

I hope everyone is being careful. The forces that be are beyond our control. Respect the weather. That's my hippy dippy speech of the day. I won't call it Mother Nature, OK, but just respect it. The road by my house was closed last week for a little while because the river jumped the bridge. The (happy) cows by my house could go swimming if they wanted. Somehow I don't think they want to go swimming.

My Monday workday is over now so I am going home. Today the weather was so strange that I didn't know if I should bring my sunglasses or my umbrella. By the end of the day I had used both interchangeably. Never a dull weather moment here.

P.S. Snow may be cold, but you can't go sledding in the rain, you can't go ice skating in the rain, or skiing in the rain. My BF likes to say you don't have to shovel the rain off the car, but I'm cooped up inside a lot, and right about now I think I could go for a little bit of snow. At least snow is fun. Cute umbrellas and rain boots lose their appeal pretty quickly.

A Bloggy Year in Review

I borrowed this idea from my friend's blog (the word blog came from "web log" and then was shortened over time); she borrowed it from some other blog she reads.

The idea is that you take the first sentence or two from the first post of each month and that is a [hopefully] interesting way to sum up the year. (Sometimes I had to take a tad more than that for the sentences to make any sense at all; my mother never accused me of being pithy, folks!)

I didn't start this blog until I moved to California which was in March. But that's close enough:

MARCH
Driving to Cali took 3 days-ish from Friday night to Monday night. We slept in the car for a few hours Friday night/Saturday morning 130AMish to 530AMish, drove all day Saturday, stopped Saturday night @ Little America, Wyoming, less than an hour from the Nevada border...

APRIL
Sunday the weather was beautiful. It was sunny and warm and amazing. I packed us a couple sandwiches, one PB and honey on this really good 9-grain-or-something bread that Mike likes and one mild cheddar cheese and cut them in half and wrapped them up and put them in my shoulder bag. That was a really long run-on sentence. But anyway.

Then Mike and I put on our walking shoes and walked. We walked down the big hill, past the grocery store, turned into a residential area and walked about four more blocks to the Sequoia Park Zoo! It's a very tiny, charming, free zoo with amazing scenery of lots of huge trees and trees full of flowers and foliage and of course animals!

MAY
My plates have expired on my Nissan. This means I have to go get California plates now. I wonder if I could get a vanity plate that says Made in WI. I wonder if I would really want to do that. I'm rather proud of Wisconsin and always have been.

JUNE
I got another job!

JULY
Well, Hayley and Dan are back at home. They left yesterday on a red-eye home to good ol' Wisconsin. I was very sad to see them go, but relieved that they got on the plane without a hassle.

AUGUST
Today, we signed an apartment lease! So regardless of my homesickness, I'm here for at least another year. We are moving into our new apartment, in Bayside, this weekend.

In other news, Mike and I are going to make a road trip as soon as time permits. Mike has been doing really well making aquarium scenes and butterfly garden scenes in glass, and his latest is jellyfish. Those things are so popular. We are going to drive up the coast and sell them as we go.

SEPTEMBER
OK so I have finally moved. It has taken much longer than we had anticipated and hoped. But now it is done (except for all the unpacking but we are working on that day by day, slowly but surely).

OCTOBER
Two Weird Things About Yesterday:
1) The internet went down in the entire county.
2) There was a 100% chance of rain according to the forecast for yesterday and it didn't rain at all.

NOVEMBER
In the past three-ish weeks I have:
*quit my job
*started a different job
*unpacked a lot more boxes
*got rid of stuff I don't need
*cleaned a lot
*rode my bicycle a significant amount
*read a lot
*worked on growing my hair
*sang to music and danced around my house
*went for loooong walks at the marsh and by my house - it's been so strangely warm
*mostly worked a lot as job transitioning is really energy- and time-consuming

DECEMBER
It started on Saturday. The wind has been blowing so hard that it sounds like waves crashing outside my window while I try to sleep at night. I live close to the ocean but not THAT close.

Well, that's it. Though I do think some of my best work was in the two months (March and April) that I was unemployed and had nothing better to do than think up things to post on my blog. As fun as that is, it doesn't appear to support the hobby of living. So what that means is that anyone still reading this blog by now is suffering in agony at how downhill it has gone, but I do have a bit more of a life than when my blog was really good. Maybe one day I'll learn how to balance the two.

Then again, probably not.

A Year Change is a Natural Time to Reflect

So here are my lists off the top of my head:

THINGS I'M PROUD OF:
*moved 2000 miles out of my comfort zone to try something completely different
*have stuck out the hard parts of the above decision and have been rewarded for it
*earned not one but two good jobs in a really tough local job market
*successfully negotiated a job that has only been temporary in the entire 20-year history of the organization into a permanent one on my terms

THINGS I'M NOT SO PROUD OF:
*haven't talked to my older sister since moving away
*don't call my family often enough
*wasn't able to handle tough situations with former roommates as well as I would have liked (though I do feel I did the best I could at the time)
*still trying to break that impulsive nature of mine: impulse buying (Can you say Us Weekly - EW!), impulse moving across the country, impulse eating a pizza when I'm supposedly trying to eat healthier (oh, but see now I can add "being able to admit my weaknesses" to the "things I'm proud of" list!)

MOVIES I SAW IN THE THEATRE (this would be a "best of", except that these are the only two movies I saw in the theatre in 2007):
*Across the Universe
*Pirates of the Caribbean 3

BEST OF THE MOVIES I RENTED:
*Waking Life
*A Hard Day's Night
*Pink Floyd's The Wall
*Fast Food Nation (OK, this is debatable, but it IS the last movie I rented in 2007)
*The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Mos Def = Ford Prefect = awesome)

BEST OF THE BOOKS I READ:
*The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
*The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
*Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
*How I Became Stupid by Martin Page

BEST OF THE BOOKS I REREAD:
*Chocolat by Joanne Harris

BEST OF THE NEW (to me) MUSIC I HEARD:
*Cat Power
*TV on the Radio

MY ALBUMS OF THE YEAR:
*Across the Universe Original Movie Soundtrack, Deluxe Edition
*Joyful Sign by Girlyman

How about you? How was your 2007?

Sometimes There is Just Nothing to Say

I hope you all have a wonderful 2008.

Good Morning

Dear Family,

You are all in my thoughts every single day and I just wanted to say that I hope you are well and I miss you so deeply. I hope that we will see each other again soon and that it will be joyous.

Love,
Naomi

P.S. My life in California is pretty good but it would be so much better if you were here with me.

I Just Realized I'm Obsessed With the Radio.

I got rid of my television when I moved here and haven't bought another one. So I miss all the TV commercials people are talking about. Big whoop. (Yeah, people still say that! Whatever!)

But when it gets dark at 5:00 just when you are getting off work and it's cold, your after work activities are limited. I read a lot. But that's not so much interactive. So Mike and I listen to the radio and play cards or board games. Cook dinner and wash the dishes. Argue over if we want to watch a DVD or not (me: yes; him: no), argue over whether or not I own good movies (me: yes; him: no), argue over whether or not he owns terrible movies (me: yes; him: no). Go back to playing cards or board games.

Anyway.

So I have discovered talk radio and how great it can be. I always used to think it was boring. If you suffer from this "affliction" as well (yes, that would be the talk-radio-is-boring affliction; it exists, so whatever), you should just get rid of your television and then run out of things to do that are free. You too will discover talk radio. Maybe.

I'm bored at work today because it's the calm before the storm of a big project I've been working on all week. I'd go into detail, but it's probably boring to anyone who is not here experiencing it. Basically I'm at an impasse, waiting for something to happen until I can keep going. Tomorrow is the big day. La la. And blah blah.

In case anyone who is reading is wondering why I'm posting here all day instead of working. I am working. Just kind of waiting too. Waiting to get sick, or to meet this deadline and be done with this week, or waiting for the sun to stick around longer, or who knows what else. The waiting game. It's what life is all about right. Hurry up and wait.

Ugh. I can't stand my whiny self today. UGH.

Also Just Heard on the Radio...

Just in case you think I made up this humboldt honey thing, HARDLY. (Not that any of you actually thought I did make it up.)

Click here: http://humboldthoney.org/. The Humboldt Honey 12-Month Calendar is Now Available for Purchase (that's the part I heard on the radio)!

Also, if you click on the honeys, the first one is "Hayley", spelled the same way as the one and only (in my world).

That's all.

Heard on the Radio on My Way Into Work...

"Humboldt County, Home of the Nation's Highest Gas Prices."

Really, is this something to brag about? Really?

Sometimes I really really wonder why it is I live here. I've met some wonderful people, but I've also met some really really crazy/lazy/weird/eccentric people and it seems this area attracts them like flies. And this area attracts flies like flies too. Which is just yucky.

Now I just sound judgmental, don't I? Well I'm tired and crabby today. I've been fighting something for weeks now and my immune system, while it hasn't succumbed to it, is TIRED of FIGHTING. I almost would rather just succumb to whatever flu bug is trying to bring me down and just get it over with. Almost.

Since I'm clearly in a complaining mood right now, I will tell you what winter is for. It's for making the bugs and spiders go away. Maybe it's so cold your body hurts back in Wisconsin, but here the bugs are around all the time. All the time!

Really really.

So THIS is Winter

It started on Saturday. The wind has been blowing so hard that it sounds like waves crashing outside my window while I try to sleep at night. I live close to the ocean but not THAT close.

Today I asked my coworker if this is normal for winter. He replied in the affirmative, and the eavesdropping cleaning lady (OK, I directed the question at anybody listening in the room) gave me a look like I was an idiot.

If you don't think wind can blow hard enough to blow a person away, you should really give this place a try. Really.

Then again, it could be snowing. I heard Wisconsin got a huge snowstorm, and I can't say I miss THAT.

PLUS I have a really fun umbrella, which makes rain more bearable. Of course, I have to wait until the wind dies down a bit to even go out there in the first place because the rain sort of seems to be falling from the ground up when the wind and rain get together for tea. But I mean, as far as umbrellas go, this one comes with a lifetime warranty if it fails me. That's how hardcore it is here.

Anyway, it's still relatively warm and the sun was out this morning. So all in all it's not that bad... ask me again after a week solid of this and we'll see if I feel the same...

My Fortune Thinks I'm Fat

So we went to this STUPID Chinese Buffet restaurant yesterday (OK, so it wasn't stupid, but it was overpriced and not very tasty). The highlight of the experience is the fortune cookie, naturally. Well, my fortune cookie actually called me fat.

"Here we go. Low fat, whole wheat green tea."




OUCH. Guess they don't want me to eat there anymore.

Unshiny Day at Patrick's Point Last Sunday

A photo of us, for any who may be interested. It was a gloomy-ish yet warm-ish day at Patrick's Point, a nice state park with lots of hiking trails and huge rocks on which to climb. It costs $6 to get into the park, but that gives me a better sense of security that jerky vagabonds won't be breaking my car windows while I sit on Wedding Rock and watch the wild ocean do its unpredictable thing below.



The purpose of this post is to show you Mike sans dreads, because "of course" people keep asking. He was wearing a beanie one second prior to the taking of this picture, so he is suffering from some major hat head, among other inflictions, namely cutting his own hair and not allowing his girlfriend to fix it for him. :-)

Favorite Gig

My favorite part of my job is when tons of musicians send us their CD's for free and we get to listen to them and decide if we want to book them at our festivals.

Soooooooooooooo fun!

Word Nerds Unite: Give Rice to the Hungry AND Have Fun At the Same Time!!!

OK, I stole this from my friend E's blog, but it is so fun and amazing!!!

Click HERE to play a fun word game and give rice to those that need it.

What's New

I've been missing from Blogland for a while. Busy busy and what-not. In the past three-ish weeks I have:

*quit my job
*started a different job
*unpacked a lot more boxes
*got rid of stuff I don't need
*cleaned a lot
*rode my bicycle a significant amount
*read a lot
*worked on growing my hair
*sang to music and danced around my house
*went for loooong walks at the marsh and by my house - it's been so strangely warm
*mostly worked a lot as job transitioning is really energy- and time-consuming

So, I am now the full-time permanent assistant director at the redwood coast jazz and blues festival production office (the same one I temped at last summer). Full time, permanent, negotiated to work with my life and my priorities, and this is one happy and fulfilled woman.

I'm reading a book that talks about the extreme importance of living in the moment, not a moment this afternoon, or one of your favorite moments from last year, but this one. And now this one, and now this one. And this one too. Get it? It sounds oversimplified and it is. Because humans need oversimpflication or else they forget. Or that's my soapbox, I guess. I don't mean it as a lecture but rather just a snippet of something I feel like I've learned recently. And probably learned it a year ago too. Silly humans.

So, hopefully I will get back on here and give more interesting updates but wanted y'all to know I'm doing better than I ever have been since I got here and feel like I'm starting to call this place home finally. FINALLY. And Mikey and I are making big plans and actually starting to implement them.

In other news, Mikey cut off all his dreads and he looks adorable with short hair. It changes how he looks drastically, and he didn't want me to even write this so I'd better leave it at that. (And no, it wasn't my idea, not even a little bit. It was all him.)