Last Ballet

We saw our last Ballet for a while. We've had season tickets the last 2 years, purchased when Silicon Valley was humming, our house was worth more than our mortgage, and we were both fully employed. We also had season passes to San Jose Rep, and American Musical Theater of San Jose (AMTSJ). Yes, we were living high on the hog for a while there!

Unfortunately, AMTSJ declared bankruptcy mid-season, making our remaining tickets worthless, and eliminating the need to make a decision about renewal for next year. With the economy as it is, we had to limit ourselves to one season renewal anyway.

San Jose Rep won out over the Ballet. We have enjoyed the ballet more than DH ever expected to, but theater is our first love. We almost downgraded our Rep tickets, but decided to stay in our great seats after the stunning Kite Runner show last month. It really left a lasting impression, and reminded us why we love theater so much. The Rep is also a small theater, with a small stage, so even the balcony seats have a great view.

The Center for Performing Arts, however, is so large, that just 16 rows from the front seems like a mile away. Both the San Jose Ballet and AMTSJ performed there. The stage is very deep, and even today, in the front row middle (we are really going to miss these seats), some of the dancing was staged a bit far back.

So, in farewell, I am listing below some of the people and things we are going to miss about our Ballet season tickets:

1. Being in the front row in the middle--these were AWESOME tickets. I don't know how we lucked out, but like George Costanza from Seinfeld who did not want to move his car after getting the perfect parking space--this was probably half the reason we renewed last year.
2. Getting to know the dancers after 2 seasons. Some we even recognize from when we lived in Cleveland, when this ballet troupe was called the San Jose-Cleveland Ballet.
3. Karen Gabay, Prima Ballerina, who has been dancing with this troupe since 1980! Do the math folks, she's been dancing professionally for over 29 years!!! We had seen her in Cleveland.
   
4. Alexsandra Meijer, Principal Dancer, who is our favorite, and also happens to look like a friend from my office.
5. Maria Jacobs-Yu, Principal Dancer, who cannot seem to ever stop smiling. Like seriously, we think her face would break if she tried to frown.
6. Rudy Candia, soloist, who looks exactly like Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks.
7. Kaleena Opdyke, who looks like Agent Sculley from the X-Files.
8. A certain ballerina, who I won't name, but who SWEATS rivers in every performance, and must have a personal toweller waiting in the wings. She comes out dry for each act, and is covered in shiny sweat within a few leaps.
9. Ramon Moreno, Principal Dancer, who was a superb Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream this season. This show was the first ballet we ever saw together in Cleveland, so it was lovely to see it again this year before our subscription ran out.
10. Tiffany Glenn, Preston Dugger, Daniel Gwatkin, Maximo Califano, Maykel Solas, and Seth Parker.
11. Seeing male dancers dressed in Greek soldier costumes, looking all tough from the waist up, but wearing tights and leaping across the stage like gazelles.
12. Seeing the gorgeous costumes! Sigh...I am really going to miss the dancing in those floaty, pretty dresses. If I had some dresses like that, I like to think I would also move as gracefully. I always felt like such a little princess when I did ballet as a little girl. Watching ballet brought some of those memories back--that was fun.
    

What we will NOT miss about our season passes:

A certain neighbor who ate green onions before every show. DH and I would switch seats at intermission to get relief from the bad breath. Ugh!

What the haybox?

After the rave reviews of my chicken soup (Teddy asked where I got the great recipe from), I was searching online for more thermal cooker recipes. Yes, I have slow cooker cookbooks, but I wanted to see what else was out there.

I found this cool site today, and got immersed in various methods of fuel efficient and fuel-free cooking. I've read about solar cookers before, and ever since hearing the phrase, "Hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk", I've been fascinated by the idea of cooking with the sun. My only venture in this area has been making sun tea using a big clear glass jar on days when the temp goes over 100 F. My sister-in-law introduced me to that practice--and it's wonderful on a hot summer day.

But honest to gosh cooking of real food--using NO energy at all? Way cool concept! I found these pages today that I am itching to try some weekend when we are not running around like maniacs with chores and kid activities (my calendar says this should occur on the next blue moon when Venus enters the house of whatever...)

• What is a solar cooker?
• Make a solar cooker with the mylar windshield reflector from the car
• Cool kids project cooking a hot dog in a Pringles can (OK, don't bug me about the junk food nature of this project--I think my kids would be into it)
  

There are tons of other kids solar cooker projects on Google, check 'em out!

Back at that first site, I'd never heard of a haybox before, but now I have! DH was wondering what was really the difference between our new fancy-schmancy thermal cooker, and putting one of our regular pots inside one of our ice coolers. My first thought was, well, would styrofoam melt from the heat? After reading about hayboxes, and how they were used during WWII to conserve cooking oil, I think DH's initial instinct was right. We could use our cooler the same way, if we had enough insulating material to fill up all the air, and some mylar to keep the hot pot from melting it. We may keep an eye open at the summer yard sales to find something to experiment with. Of course, an old cooler stuffed with styrofoam pellets is not as nice to bring to a pot-luck as our thermal cooker, but it would be fun to test out.

In order to put a rational spin on my obsession with fuel-free or low fuel cooking, I have 3 good reasons, allowing me to deny my OC tendencies...

1. We live in California, and someday a big earthquake may cut off our access to fuel for a few days, so cooking with the sun would be a handy skill
2. We like to go camping in the summer, and this could save from using up so many of those little fuel cans. Plus frees people from babysitting the food cooking on open flame, so we can just play in the river instead
3. It's better for the environment--less fuel burned, less pollution, less drilling needed, etc.

Now, still looking for the perfect dessert recipe...

Same-Sex Marriage blog

So, I've been haunting Facebook lately, and reconnecting with several old friends. It is amazing to find old college or high school friends and fast-forward 20+ years to learn how their lives have turned out. It feels like cheating to me, as if I am jumping to the middle of a novel to find out what happened next to the main character.

Anyway, I was sad to learn one old college friend has just lost his husband in the last month. His daily Facebook statuses document the emotional ups and downs of his grief. Very poignant.

It is strange, in some ways, because I haven't seen him since we graduated. He was this awkward, sometimes goofy theater major in my dorm, and although we all suspected it, he wasn't even fully out at the time I knew him. Suddenly, he is grieving his partner whom he spent more than a decade sharing a life with. It is like I just stepped through a time warp.

He wrote a great essay about same-sex marriage, and its impact when one spouse dies. Here is the link for those interested in reading it. He makes a good argument.

I want to marry my thermal cooker

We have been testing a new kitchen device. A thermal cooker has joined the family, and a most welcome addition it is! My friend VI has been singing its praises for a while, so I finally took the plunge and got one for myself. These things are not cheap (and from what I read on the Amazon reviews, the cheap ones may not be that good).

What IS a thermal cooker, anyway, you ask? It is a cross between an Asian style rice cooker (the big fat round ones), and, I dunno, a thermos? Here's a link that decribes it well. I bought the 6-liter Tiger for myself, and the 4.77 for a single friend.

Ever since it arrived, we've been brainstorming ideas on how to use it, and we have already tried 2:

Corn on the cob: Boiled for 2 minutes, popped into the thermal cooker for 4 hours, and served nice and hot. Came out a bit on the mushy side, and I was actually surprised that the Betty Crocker instructions (yes, my cooking is that basic, that I have to look up how to boil corn!) actually say boil for 2 minutes, and let sit in hot water for 8-10 minutes more. So, maybe not the ideal recipe.

Beef Stew: Used my regular crockpot beef stew recipe, and added an additional cup of water as I was paranoid it might not be enough for the initial boiling. Boiled in the inner pot for 10 minutes, turned off heat, and popped the whole thing with lid into the Tiger for, hmmm, 9 hours. Meat was tender, fully cooked, and everything was soft. The carrots were a little firmer than they are coming out of the crockpot.

Now, part of the reason we are so excited about this, is that we love to go camping in the summer, but hot dogs and hamburgers gets a little old. We are always looking for ways to prep food ahead and cook something more interesting. We love our crockpot, but umm, no electricity while camping? And who wants to be stuck at the campsite babysitting beef stew for 5 hours? Besides, that would take a lot of fuel!

With this new thermal cooker, you have to cook for 15-20 minutes to get the thing going first (that is one downfall vs. crockpots--no babysitting at the start, just dump it in and forget about it). However, after the initial babysitting, you are done. The outer thermal casing retains the initial heat, and keeps it cooking while you go off and play. Nice. And not having to time the hot food perfectly is convenient too.

Other recipes soon to be tested: Pork & Sauerkraut, Zatarains jambalaya, and Korean Beef & Beansprout stew. Looking forward to it--YUM!

Kite Runner Premier in San Jose

Heartbreaking, and haunting. And a tiny bit of hope at the end. We saw Kite Runner at the San Jose Rep a few weeks ago. And renewed our season tickets that night. We were going to anyway, but we were checking out the upper level seats trying to save some money--the economy has us all a bit nervous. But like every time before, the show left us stunned, and thinking about hard things in life, and how people make choices and grow beyond their mistakes. We want to be up close for all of it.

It was not an easy play to see. I think it helped a little that I knew the plot before going in. Being surprised by the major events would have been pretty emotional. I understand the movie is more intense in some ways, actually showing some of the trauma onscreen, rather than offstage.

This is not a large theater--most all the seats are pretty good. Get there a little early--there is a photo gallery display on the second floor. And you can click this link to download the study guide to read ahead, if the book itself is too much.

A friend recommended the book Three Cups of Tea as a more upbeat chaser to the play. Perhaps. Have your checkbook ready when you are done. And count your blessings--even in a bad economy we have it pretty good here.

Information Overload

Too much information coming at my brain...when I am feeling especially overloaded and stressed out, I start looking for ways to cut out the constant stream of information coming at me.

Some days, I don't turn on my radio on my 40-mile commute. I usually rely on NPR for world news, and their arts and human interest stories are always good. However, when I am stressed out, I get tunnel-vision, and need all my mental energy just to focus on getting through my daily work-home-children-marriage-life-merry-go-round.

Ditto for why I changed my internet homepage away from Yahoo, which blurts tantalizing news snippets at me, and why we do not have a newspaper coming to our house. I cancelled 2 group maillists that I was on. After joining them over a year ago, but not making a single group event, I realized I just don't have time right now, no matter how much I want to go to these things.

In fact, there are times when just giving up on a fun project that has become a dreaded one, skipping a gym date (or 10), or any type of cutting back just feels GOOD. It gives me some mental space to let my mind wander, or puzzle over a work problem until I figure out just what is bothering me about a new proposal. Time to THINK. A lot of Aha! moments happen during my drive in to work when the radio is off.

Which reminds me...I bought this great book, Not-So-Big Life, last year, and started reading it as part of my annual life makeover quest (there is a reason my blog title is "Seeking"). I lost track of it in the busyness of life. The author, Susan Susanka, recommends meditation as a daily practice to stay focused. I believe it's time to go look for that book again...

Who's been eating my garden?!

One of the strawberry plants had 5 blooms on it already. Once the white petals had dropped off, I was watching it daily, as the little green nubs in the middle would grow into our first strawberries!

I went out to check on our little garden patch in front this morning, and I discovered a terrible crime had occurred! This morning, ALL FIVE of the stems had been bitten through, and the green nubs were lying on the ground, half-chewed up. This will never do--they didn't even get a chance to turn into strawberries!

Suddenly all the squirrels and birds frolicking in our backyard do not seem so innocuous. They seem downright menacing! I am tempted to deck myself out in camo and stake out the strawberry plants overnight to catch the culprit. Going overboard? Me? Why would you say that?

I found this site to research how to defend my strawberries from the depredations of suburban wildlife. Hmm, it says here that new strawberries should have their first blooms pinched off to enable a good root system to grow. Seems like maybe the critter may have done me a favor. This is similar to the advice I got on the blueberry bushes--don't let them bear fruit the first year. At least with strawberries, it is just the first round of blooms to be pinched off.

I bought these as bareroot strawberries, which was a kick. The garden shop clerk pointed me toward a huge barrel full of strawberry plants. I turned back, and said, no, I don't need something that big, I just want a few seedlings. She walked me over, like a slow-witted child, and grabbed a bunch from the top. They were very loosely packed, so they came right up, but I think they must have left a root tendril or 2 behind. She was not trying to be particularly careful with them. Then she stuck them in a plastic bag and handed it to me--not even any dirt! (Duh, Jo, bareroot--get it??) I could now see that they were actually 5 plants twist-tied together. Well, if they could survive that kind of manhandling, then they could survive my gardening!

At the least, this strawberry beheading incident is making me rethink the wisdom of setting up that birdbath in the yard...we are practically inviting them to come eat our garden, aren't we? I'll have to think about this now...

On the upside, my friend showed me her worm farm...and it really was not as gross as I thought it would be. Some fruitflies in the top layer, to be expected, but hey, it's outside anyway. Add kitchen waste and cover with mulch. Middle layer had the worms and all the earth they'd made in 9 months. And a spigot on the bottom layer for the worm "tea" to use as fertilizer. If I can get my boys to assist with maintenance, this might work after all. Since I want to plant 2 more blueberry bushes in the only open dirt the in the backyard, having a real compost pile is no longer going to work.

Lost Camera found

Wow--I am so impressed by my sewing group! We all stay in touch by email through the week, and one member of the group found a lost camera in San Francisco. She researched the photos on the digital screen, and with the help of friends and family, figured out that a vacationing family from Hawaii had lost it.

The Dad is apparently in the Air Force, and we got his division from a photo of the plane he was standing next to. A photo of a child in a Halloween costume wearing a nametag yielded the family name. And there were lovely baby photos from 2008--would have hated to see these get lost.

Then one intrepid researcher in our group googled the name and discovered the family's website announcing the birth of their youngest child. Comparisons of the photos on the site to the photos on the camera confirm this is the right family. The ladies were so fast solving this mystery, it was all figured out before I'd even seen the email thread--less than 3 hours! All there is left for me to do is to sing their praises and chronicle this feat in my blog. Well done! I love a happy ending!

Luck of the Irish

A poem for my friend, who got her house on St. Patrick's Day:

Quiet strength survives the storm
When life and love go in different directions.
You know your worth. And so do we.
New friends, old friends surround you.
Build a new life for yourself with the beauty in your spirit.
This house is just the start. Now fill it.

Lunch Break

Had a lovely lunch with 2 friends from a former work life. So much of this blog has been focused on kids (and gardening--whodathunkit?) that I want to see if I am capable of writing a post on some other topic. There is not much left of my life after I exclude work and kids as discussion topics. In fact, there seems not to be much of ME left once you take those 2 ingredients out.

Which is food for thought, as my lunch was with 2 girlfriends who are both single and childfree. Both have pets, but did not spend any time talking about them. (To be fair, I didn't ask, either--though they were polite enough to ask about my offspring) I tried to get off the topic of my boys quickly, as I am always concerned that childfree people must get tired of hearing about other people's kids.

We discussed diets, politics, gardening, and the economy. My friends looked healthy and well. We are all a bit stressed about work, but grateful to be employed. No one has a monster boss, so I would call that thriving. All 3 of us were enjoying a "work-from-home" day--a great offshoot of ubiquitous high-speed internet. We would not have been able to meet for lunch like this otherwise, as we work in San Jose, San Mateo, and San Francisco otherwise.

We did discuss Facebook a bit, and contrasted that to blogging. I don't do Facebook, but my 2 friends found it handy as a way to stay in touch and re-connect with people. More personal than Linked-In, and with privacy measures that allow you to restrict who sees your content. I may just have to check it out. I did garner 2 recommended blogs to read: Tech for Luddites and Confessions of a Pioneer Woman. Both are very interesting--check 'em out!