But...but....where will we stay?

Time for my post about where you might stay in the area, so I did what any self-respecting netizen would do in 2010, I fired up google.

I wish I had better news about hotel prices, but we live in an area that is considered "beach" and tourists pay to stay here. (A little known fact...when you come over the hill on 101 into the Pismo/Shell Beach area, it is the first time you see the ocean from the highway going south after you leave the Golden Gate Bridge. Periodically we have a tourist that is so captivated by the view that they go over the edge, often landing in an ironically placed tennis court...forewarned...)

The other bad news is that there is not much to choose from right near our house. So you will end up staying a few miles away...the good news is, of course, that means you'll be, in general, close to the beach.

Here's the page for Pismo Beach Hotels

From what I know of that list, the Sea Venture is in a nice spot, has a great restaurant (we go there often for a sunset dinner with reasonable corkage), and it sits right on the beach.

The Oxford Suites are purported to be the best value in the area (short of the Motel 6 sort of place).

A little farther away, on the more northerly part of the bay/beach are the places in Shell Beach.

These places, like the Dolphin Bay, are generally pricier.

As the bay circles back on itself at the north end, you'll find the lovely little town of Avila Beach.

Avila is the place the locals go when there is only one spot with sun. It has a protected location, and thus better weather (i.e. less fog most of the time). The Lighthouse Suites are across the street from the beach, and fairly new.

On the way to Avila there are a couple of very nice places as well. Both of these are not on the water, if that's not your cup o' tea.

We go to the restaurant at the Sycamore Springs a lot. We've also sampled several of there +/-100 hillside hot tubs. They have had a mid-week deal where you can buy a meal and get a hot tub. Or you can get a spa treatment which comes with a hot tub. Again...if that's your thing...

Also along the way, in its own little community, is the Avila Village Inn

If college town atmosphere is your thing, and you like to shop downtown (including the world famous Thursday night Farmer's Market), then here is the link for San Luis hotels.

The Apple Farm Inn has country charm, and the also world famous landmark Madonna Inn is worth seeing (the men's room has been a tourist attraction for at least 40 years......really...) even if you don't stay there.

Finally, if you remember the Michael Jackson trial, it was held in the next large town to the south of us, Santa Maria. Santa Maria is big enough to find most everything, including almost all the typical hotel chains. Here's the google link to Santa Maria hotels. 

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Reunion Reflections

In many ways, attending my HS reunion last weekend was a rehearsal for my 64 party. (For those new to the site, here's the back story.) The reunion was in Stockton, which meant Judi and I had to find a hotel (more about that in a minute), and things to do during the weekend before and after (well that part turned out to be easy...we went to Pac Bell and watched the Giants beat Arizona) the event.

Here's what I learned. The reunion committee did a great job on the event itself, but the hotel (did I already say more about this later?) and the "tourist attractions" part of the package were not so good. So I promise to get you all some hotel information by the end of the week. As to the tourist attraction stuff, I've covered that in a lot of detail starting here with airplane stuff, here with stuff to see on the way here from the north and south, here about the many golf opportunities nearby, here for those who like wine tasting, and here for assorted other information and things to see and do.

OK...about the hotel in Stockton. My best guess is that it was built by someone or a company that intended to operate it as a franchise for a large chain (whose name starts with an S), but at a certain point (apparently just before the pool was tiled over the cement) the money ran out. The hotel had 4 floors, but the building had 6 or 7 (depending upon how you count), so I assume that the top floors were to be condos or apartments. Someone told me they had one sale in escrow on that but that it hadn't closed...

So it was a brand new hotel (built in 2007 they told us at the front desk) which had no sign. Not on the building, not on the street, not at the entrance, not on the phones (the name had been sort of blacked out with a magic marker), not on the front door (well...unless you count the piece of paper taped to the door...). The room felt as if it had hardly, if ever, been used. I'm guessing that either the bank, or somebody acting entrepreneurially, had hired a (mostly incompetent) staff to keep the hotel open as it was and try to get some cash flow.

Whoever planned the hotel thought it would be cool to hire a great designer, and, I must say, the hotel looked good (at least on the inside...the outside was rather chrome/glass/boxy). But design, in my opinion, is more than just looking good. I'll give you a forinstance...the shower in our room was not completely enclosed. There was a sheet of plexiglass covering about half of the "interior" shower wall, but it was open at the end away from the shower head. Which meant that every hotel housekeeper had to mop every floor every day...and the linen service must be a nightmare, because we had to request extra towels to be able to walk on the bathroom floor after a shower. (Which, in a way, was a utilitarian use for our towels, since there was no place to hang them up...sigh...)

But to make matters worse, the open end of the shower was also next to the door into the rest of the room, and on the other side of that door was wood (or laminate, probably) flooring. Any guess as to how long that is going to survive the constant water?

Oh...did I say we got a great rate?

Live Like You Can't Go Home Again

This weekend Judi and I are going to Stockton to attend my 45th hs reunion. I left town (on a train! with a lot of books!) to attend Northwestern University in September of 1965, and essentially haven't been back for more than a few days here and there since. As one of my choir members said at rehearsal the other night: "Two days in Stockton...in August...how...fun..." Right...yesterday it was 106 there...and 72 here...sigh...

I got out my old yearbooks yesterday and looked through all the faces...especially the ones that are on the list of those who are attending the event. I remember a lot of them, but we had a big class...It will be interesting to see how many still "look the same"...

The event will be bittersweet, as I found out a few days ago that one of my hs musical colleagues (he was a year younger than I was) passed away unexpectedly. Gary Wright was one of three of us that I know of that ended up teaching music at the university level, which is a testament to the musical training we had in school (Frank...if you're reading this...thanks!).

In reading the tributes to Gary on facebook, it is clear that he was the kind of teacher that we all hope to be...involved with his students, and modeling as much as teaching. That's the thing I miss most about not teaching in an academic situation...watching students grow up, go out, and do well. Gary's death reminds me that life is short...take advantage of it...which also reminds me...I've got to go pack the good wine for the weekend...later...

To Black Tie or Not to Black Tie...

I know that's a question at least one of you are asking, and it deserves answering. I just think that people (especially the people I know) don't have many reasons to dress up any more. And I also know from experience that a dressed up crowd produces an entirely different vibe from one that is "beach casual" for instance.

So the next question might be, "but what can I do? I don't have a black tie outfit." Well...you could use this opportunity to by that once in a lifetime elegant dress up, or you could do what these people did (which, by the way, was the advice I got when I bought my first "formalwear"...a white dinner jacket to use when I played with a particular band back in the 50s...): hit your thrift store, and don't worry about whether or not it is in style...

http://improveverywhere.com/2010/08/21/thank-you-black-tie-beach/

See? Problem solved...

Maybe we'll have a beach event too... let me think about that one...

Reunions

My good (old) friend Doug Lawrence is staying with us for a couple of days. He's on a trip that included attending his first (but the class' 50th) high school reunion. He loved it, but he says that the room was filled with old people.

This Friday, Judi and I will be attending my 45th hs reunion. I'm looking forward to it, even though I will be in the company of "old" people. It will also be the first time I have stayed overnight in Stockton since at least 1980, and perhaps before. Town has changed a bit, and I'm looking forward to seeing the old houses and neighborhoods...

You don't know what you've got...

'til it's gone...

That Joni Mitchell line runs through my head from time to time, and it has this weekend...

Let's just say that I had a scare Friday evening (hint...a conversation in which I kept hearing the word "surgery," even though it was never spoken). But it appears that it was nothing serious...

In happier news, I addressed the first set of postcards...look for yours in the mail real soon...

RIP Bobby Thomson

I am a Plate Spinner

I just read a headline somewhere today that purports to prove, once and for all, that first borns are smarter. I never had the sibling problem, so there's no way to compare. But I do know that keeping my brain engaged is an ongoing quest. It's not that I get bored easily...but I don't have much patience anymore (sound of family in the background shouting "that implies you did at one time...NOT") for lightweight things.

I read once (and took to heart) that most people talk about people, fewer talk about things, and fewer still talk about ideas. Talking and thinking about ideas has become what I do most often now...sometimes to the detriment of actually doing things. In fact I just hung up the phone (really? from which tree?) from a conversation where a significant logistical business problem was solved...and in an elegant, and eminently doable way.

And because I spend a lot of time thinking about things, I tend to be interested in opportunities. I have a friend (hi Paul!) who often says, when confronted with a problem: "I can do that." For me it is more likely to be "ooh...it would be cool to..." I don't jump out of airplanes or ride roller coasters, because I'm not an adrenaline junkie. But I do tend to think that my ideas should be put into practice. Hence the title of  this post.

Lura lent me a book a year or more ago called Refuse to Choose, by Barbara Sher. I highly recommend it to you. The premise is that there are people (like me) who are interested in so many things that they can't stick with just one. One of the subsets of what Sher calls scanners is the plate spinner. If you're my age you remember this guy on Ed Sullivan...the object was to keep as many plates spinning on the end of a stick as you could...and he ran back and forth from end to end of this row of plates keeping them in the air.



That was my life.

But after reading the book, I made what I think was an intelligent decision to arrange my plates into a circle, lopping off the ones that didn't add value to my core values. Now I'm not bored, but I can (most of the time) keep all the plates in the air because I'm not running end to end, I'm circling and reinforcing my values. It's made a lot of difference.

How do I celebrate my birthday?...let me count the days...

I have a running gag with my friend Twyla that my birthday is on February 30 each year. She actually believed that at one point (for a few minutes at least). I often try to put that date on the intrusive web sites that won't let you enter until you give them your birth date. Sometimes it works...

And, of course, the obvious question is "why?" I'm not sure when this started, although it was certainly in place by the time I was an undergraduate at UCLA. Because my family has always been small (just my parents and I growing up), we started celebrating birthdays whenever it was convenient. The actual birth day became less and less important. It became more and more important that we could celebrate together, rather than making a big deal about it having to be on a certain day.

Part of this comes from the fact that my mother (and therefore us, as a family) was the only one of her siblings to move away from Sacramento. In my generation, I was the first, and for the longest time the only, one of my maternal cousins to move away from the town in which we grew up. I lived in Canada for 10 years during my life as an academic. Combine that with the fact that when you play music for a living and/or work in a church you don't have weekends off, and my schedule has always seemed to be the most difficult one to work around.

So my birthday became whenever I was together with family. After a while, so did Christmas. The "worst" year, I think, was the one in which Lura and I exchanged presents in mid April at a restaurant in Pleasanton because we were both on the way to someplace else, and it had gotten ridiculous, and we decided that we needed to celebrate Christmas before our next birthdays.

As a result, I often have spent my actual birthday more or less alone, and I've gotten used to the idea. Perhaps the best example of that was the year I celebrated my birthday at Expo in Vancouver. Nobody knew who I was (except the Sounds Alive people I was on tour with), and nobody (including SA, as I remember) knew it was my birthday. I had a great time. I never knowingly schedule anything on my birthday (I doubt that will be the case in 2011). It has become one of the two days a year that I try to take time to just do some thinking about life, the universe, and everything. Because of when it is, my birthday has become a kind of mid-year evaluation day to see how I'm doing with my one new year's resolution, and other things I decided to do at the end-of-year evaluation.

But, as you know if you are reading this, 2011 is going to be different...by design. I'm looking forward to celebrating my birthday with people, and I hope you'll be able to attend. I'm going to try to get the save the date postcards out within the next week or so. If you don't think I have your correct snail address, send me an email or leave a comment so that I can get it to you.

What's cooking?

I've been doing a lot more cooking lately...it is partly to give Judi one more night a week that she doesn't have to cook, but also because, in a strange way, I'm finally ready to do it.

I've had this aversion to cooking for a long time, and it is due to the efficiency quotient: you spend (as I'm going to do tonight) 2 hours cooking something,  and 30 minutes or more cleaning up, and I can eat it in less than 5 minutes. I think that's why a lot more people go out to eat now than when I was a kid...well...that an the proliferation of the obesity fast food restaurants.

But lately, as I said, I'm looking at cooking a little more differently. I always manage to open a bottle of wine (tonight's choice? A 2007 Preston Dry Creek Cinsault, to pair with pissaladiere, which is a naturally sweet onion tartlet seasoned with black olives, rosemary, thyme, and some freshly ground pepper...) while I'm working, and it is a great way to decompress from the frantic nature of the intellectual balancing act that comprises my work.

I'm not cooking for the party...unless I decide to bar b que...hmmm...wonder if that would work in black tie?

What is Art

I had difficulty in junior high school when I was forced, by curricula, to take an art class. The difficulty wasn't, it turns out, because I wasn't an artist, although the teacher, whose name I have forgotten, thought that was the case. One of my favorite lines now when people talk about art, as in drawing, is that "I can't draw my breath." It solves a whole lot of difficulties in explanation.

No, it turns out, the problem was that I had/have a different conception about what makes art "art." It's not that I don't like traditional art, but I am not as much of a fan of that. Judi is an amazing watercolor painter, and she does traditional art. I love her stuff. Two of my most favorite places in the world are the Rodin museum and the Uffizi. It's not that...

It's just that I like abstract weird art. Actually, although I am not an art historian (never had another art class -- unless you count film history at UCLA as fulfilling that requirement -- I think the proper term is conceptual art. The idea of something that is not quite art, but is, as a result, "art" is fascinating to me.

For example: The longest organ concert in the world

I think my fascination started early, because the specific incident in my art class concerned a sculpture project. We poured plaster of paris into those little rectangular milk cartons (yes, I know...milk...sigh...) that were the staple of lunch rooms in those days, and then were supposed to carve something, that, again, I forget what it was. My carving was abstract...no two ways about it, and I was unashamed about it. Not so good from the teacher's perspective...sigh...

But I remember that I was hooked by the time I got to UCLA and began to explore the works of John Cage -- "music is sound organized in time" --(read about him here and here), Terry Riley --again, here and here -- (In C is one of, if not his most famous work, and I was involved in one of the earliest performances, apparently, since it was written in 1964, and we did it at UCLA in probably 1967 or 1968 --I got to do the drone, which I thought was so cool -- thanks Doug Leedy and Malcolm Cole), and other composers.

So from there I got to the fluxus people, and also to the "visual" artists. I actually did a series of fluxus concerts in Regina (on April 1...nobody got the joke for a couple of years) until they made me stop. The last straw, apparently, was a piece for two tubas. They went out on stage and tried to tune, but one of them was having problems. Upon looking in the horn, there was an "aha" moment, so that player poured a tuba full of water into the other tuba and played the correct note. End of piece. Brilliant. Not so well liked by the chairman, though...sigh...

That's a long way around to this. One of my most favorite pieces of art is the Post Secret project. Essentially, people from all over the world send postcards to a guy (Frank) in Maryland with their secrets on them. Absolutely fascinating. I even dragged Judi to an installation at the Walnut Creek art gallery one time. And I like that more people than the artist are involved. The idea for this post came as a result of reading about how Frank's mail carrier recently "retired" and moved to England. She blogged about the Post Secret adventure here. Great reading.

Whether Weather...

I've been asked, more than once, "what's the weather like on the central coast." With apologies to my friends who live in Redwood City, the US (as opposed to the German) government recognizes the central coast weather as among, if not the best in the world.

Which leads to an interpolation... As many of you are aware, I have been categorizing things for years for a mental book "The World is Divided Into..." One of my categories is that people generally either live where they want to live or they do what they want to do. Seldom do you get to do both. I did what I wanted to do while I lived in Canada. Although it was not where I would have chosen to live, I grew to like everything but the weather there. When I moved back to California, I chose to live where I wanted to live, even though I wasn't doing what I wanted to do. Now, for the most part I have both...

In any event, the weather here is much like that of San Francisco, although milder. We get fog, because we live in a coastal area, but there is enough southern California slop over that the weather tends to be warmer. The first year we lived here, I kid you not, the weather almost every day was what I tell people now when they ask: "70 degrees with a little breeze off the ocean." That's not 365, of course, but more often than not.

But not in the summer. If you have heard Mark Twain's purported remark: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco," you know that we northern Californians smile at the SF tourists who arrive in the City in August in shorts...and then freeze their posteriors off.

It's not that bad here, but summer on the calendar tends to bring our coolest temperatures, and the most fog. The locals refer to it as May gray and June gloom. We've been here 5 years, and it has only been NOT foggy for the fireworks show at Pismo on July 4 once.

There's a couple of things, though. Because of the microclimates that you find along the coast, you can drive 10 miles to San Luis and have 80 degree weather, or another 20 miles beyond that to Paso and have 100 degree weather. So pack accordingly depending upon where you will visit while you are here. The other thing is that while it may be foggy, it will be in the 60s...all day and at night perhaps drop into the mid 50s.

Finally, this year has been "the worst in living memory" according to the locals. (No matter where I've lived, that term is bandied about sometime in the first couple of years.) It has supposedly been the coolest winter summer since 1971. Yesterday, for instance, when I left for church at 8am it was drizzling lightly here, although it was 70 when I got to Templeton about a half hour later. While the rest of the country has sweltered this summer, we've had very mild, although foggy, weather. Statistically that may mean that next year will be hot, but I wouldn't count on it.

So in summary: it's summery here but the weather is only consistently summery inland, and instead of summery in the summer we get wintery, except that our wintery is summery compared to most wintery. Figure that it will be in the 60s or 70s, so bring a "wrap" as my mom used to call it, and do what the locals do: wear layers and always have a hoodie close at hand...except of course during the black tie event...

Birthdays and Reunions

Missed a couple of days there...sorry...

As you know, I just celebrated my birthday, and this blog started on my daughter's birthday, which, in a lovely coincidence, is also Judi's daughter's birthday. Last Tuesday would have been my dad's 103rd birthday, and Judi's birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks. Her birthday is followed closely by her son's birthday in early September, and then we have the long wait until next year's round of birthdays come up again.
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At the end of the month, we're going to attend my 45th (gasp!) HS reunion. It should be interesting, because I haven't been to the last couple, so it has been at least 10, if not 15 years. My traditional "reunion buddy" -- Mark Wille -- won't be there this time, so it will be even more different. I'm looking forward to it, though, because there will be +/- 160 people there, so it will be a decent turnout. Bound to be a few people I know. Of course Stockton in August is no walk in the park, but at least it is a dry heat. :)

One of the reasons I'm going to the reunion this time is to (hopefully) find people that I want to invite to the 64 party. I know people change, but it's the childhood folks that will be the most interesting for everybody else to meet, assuming some of them come. Life was so much more innocent in those days...sigh...without, as Bob Seger says: "deadlines and commitments...what to leave in...what to leave out..."

I'm just sitting here...

Today started off with a two hour phone call. I'm not a great phone person...that is, being on the phone is not my idea of fun...but this was pretty good news. I'm waiting to hear about a business opportunity that I've been working at for some time, and we're very close. There's been more conversations this afternoon, and I'm expecting one more later today so we'll see how it goes.

In spite of my mild phone-a-phobia, there are people who I am in regular contact with for whom the phone is the best way we communicate. Person-to-person conversations with these people can include long blank spaces...not necessarily a bad thing, mind you. I think it is interesting to "know" someone because you have a phone (or email, or facebook) relationship with them. In many ways it is the ultimate neutral medium. You don't know what they look like, you don't know their life other than when you are in conversation with them about something mutually interesting. It makes being a hermit easier than at any time in the past, and I recognize the advantages, having a bit of hermit in me...

In other news, I just spent some time on godaddy searching for short urls in order to mount our own urlshortener system for the website articles. It's a fascinating process, and one that provides subtle (almost subliminal) marketing at the same time.

Still waiting for the proof of the next mag issue. Life goes on and it is fun to be watchin' the wheels keep going 'round...

Back to the real world

It is always a sense of relief to get an issue of the mag off to the printer. This time was even more chaotic, because for only the 3rd time during my ownership of the mag, we're using a different printer...which means there are new systems to be learned.

I'm looking forward to spending some time on the party planning in the next few days...watch this space...

In the meantime, a food dilemma: what do you serve with Judi's wonderful grilled salmon, which has a bar b que based sauce? It is a great recipe, btw:

Sauce (more or less...Judi says that she doesn't measure any more):
2 Tbs of bar b que sauce
1 Tbs of brown sugar
1 Tbs of hot & sweet mustard
1 tsp of lime juice
1 tsp of crushed garlic (she uses the kind that comes in a jar; translate to your fresh garlic according to taste)

Put the sauce on the salmon and grill it in an aluminum foil boat on the bar b que between 20 and 25 minutes

We tend to experiment with this, but over the years, a zin is a good bet. Last night we had a Ridge 2008 Paso Robles zin which was quite nice.