July Up-Date

Hot Summer Nights - or - Hell and High Water!

OK, so for those of you who are lucky to live where there is a sea breeze or river breeze or lake breeze, you have no idea how lucky you are. For nearly the entire month of July we have been in broil mode in the mid-west. I would give my right eye for a sea breeze right now.
We thought it would never stop raining in June (record amounts that month with record flooding as well) and so when the sun came out in July we were all happy that summer had arrived. However, 3 weeks of temperatures between 90-116 (yes, 116 with the heat index!) is leading us to believe we just might be in the middle of the rapture and we get the Hell part!

Serious heat and humidity, to biblical proportions, has been upon us with nearly no rain. The only things loving it are our tomatoes, basil, mosquitoes and other bugs in the garden, and our cat Lulu who is a heat-seeking missile. The farmers we buy our eggs from said their chickens have stopped laying eggs because it has been so hot. The corn and soy bean crops are starting to be affected also. Luckily our reservoirs are full because of all of the rain in June so we will hopefully make it through the summer without any water shortages. But hey, it's not global warming, right? Yeah, sure.

We were able to start getting some paint on the house in early July before the temperatures and humidity got out of control. Once the early morning temps were starting out over 80 with 90% humidity, we decided to hang up the painting until September. Ugh! Sitting on the porch, fan going, with a mojito or gin and tonic sounds like how we will want to spend the rest of summer :o)

Here are some photos to show you what we've been up to:

Early July when it was still cool enough to sit outside to eat. Here I am with our friend Paula from California, Sally and Alex from next door.

Another dinner party with our friends the Finches (not the birds but our friends Jeff and Candace), and that's our architect Kris (on the left) and his partner Bob. We can already tell we are going to get hours and hours of fun out of our new front porch.

Some of the yummy food we create for our porch dinners. Here we have crab cakes, grilled shrimp, couscous, steamed spinach and fennel salad.

Here are a few photos of what the house is starting to look like with some paint on it. We chose this nice subtle yellow. Sort of like us........subtle. Yeah, right!!! :o)

Jenni finishing up some of the prep on the front of the house.

As the new porch is coming to completion, we can see that we will spend lots of time out here. It's warm, cozy and yet spacious.

Our cats are in heaven on the new porch. Lulu absolutely loves to lay under the ficus tree on the wall ledge. She often will lay there all day acting like the little Cleopatra that she is..

Fergus (a.k.a. Meatloaf) also enjoys basking in the shade on the ledge. I think we will make a rug out of him when he dies. :o)

Our vegetable garden is out of control. We have never had so many tomatoes, this large, in the 10 years we have lived here. There are many jars of pasta sauce in our future.

We have set up our two rain barrels that are helping us with the watering of the garden. We get an extra 110 gallons of free water storage from rain with these two beauties. You can see the special downspout we had made that can switch the gutter drainage from the barrels to the french drain system that goes underground to the back yard. We highly recommend doing this in your yard if you have the rain to support it. We water all or our potted plants and herbs and vegetables during the summer months with this system.

We are thankful every day for what we have, and especially during late summer when the sweet corn comes to market. We buy 12 to 24 ears every weekend from the farmers market starting about mid July. We bring it home, eat some off of the cob and cut the rest fresh off of the cob and send it right to the freezer. It provides us with the sweet taste of summer all winter. We usually put up about 20 pounds of corn for the winter.

There is still a bit more adventure from July to share. Stay tuned for my next post and news from our trip to The Windy City: Chicago. A whirlwind of science, technology and weather to share with you. Hold on to your hats!

D.C. and Pride - Part 2

June 9-12, 2011

The Parade

Attending a Gay Pride Festival anywhere in the world, whether you are gay or not, is always an extremely colorful, uplifting and emotional experience (your emotions could be anywhere between joy and disgust depending on who you are and how you accept others that are different from you). Go here for the history of the parade: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_parade

I (we) have had the opportunity to be a part of these celebrations from San Francisco, to England. I was a participant in three SF Pride parades in California during the 90's as a member of the California AIDS Ride Cycling Team (we cycled from SF to LA to raise money in support of AIDS services in the SF & LA gay communities). When we made plans to come to DC on this trip, we didn't even realize we were going to be here for the DC Pride festivities, so we had extra fun attending the parade while we were here.

We began our Saturday Pride event at Arvydas' house in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, where we met up with old and new friends to have a rum and coke before heading out on foot to get to the parade. It was really cool that our group this day represented so many other parts of the world. Our group of friends represented Lithuania, Russia, Slovenia, Puerto Rico, England and Colombia. Sally and I were the only Americans and english was definitely the second language. We had a blast twisting languages around all day.

A photo as we set off from Arvydas' house towards the parade route.

Sally and Vladamir (Vlad), our extremely cute Slovenian friend.

Vlad & Sal became instant best friends.

Me and our dear old friend Arvydas. We have known each other since he first arrived at UC Berkeley from Lithuania, nearly 20 years ago.

How cute is this photo of Rowan and Vlad!! They are having too much fun!

Naturally, if you are at a gay pride celebration, you will have many wonderful drag queens, transvestites, transexuals, etc............so, here we are! :o)

The beauty is, no matter who you are, the event gives you the freedom to express yourself.

Even if you are someone's grandfather or an investment banker, a teacher or construction worker and love to dress up in women's clothes in your spare time. :o)

The history of the movement is always well represented. Here is a representation of how far the community has come since the NY Stonewall Riots in 1969 started the whole movement.

Contrary to what most of the press reports, the community STRONGLY supports safe sex and condom use and we take this very seriously. When standing on the sidelines of these events, one is constantly showered with condoms and safe sex information being thrown from parade participants. This is the result of the devastating AIDS pandemic that has killed so many of our friends and family over the past 30 years.

This parade is the first one I have ever attended where the religious community has been such a focal point of the event. Every single denomination was represented in the DC event. I was extremely emotional as I watched all of them walk by us. I thought I would never see this expression of acceptance from so many of them in my lifetime.

Here is a group from the local Baptist church. I was born and raised a Baptist and thought I would never see them represented at an event like this! :o)

It was amazing to see clergy from every denomination represented.

Here are the United Methodists.

United Church of Christ

This was a very big day for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). The right to marriage vote in New York just passed before the parade giving same sex couples the right to marry in the state. There are now 7 states in the US that allow same sex unions. They keep working hard at it.....one state at a time.

PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) is always one of my favorite groups to whoop it up for in the parade. This is a great photo of a mom and her son(s).

And........here we are in line for a beer at a club on the parade route. I really do need to do something with 'my girls', dontcha think? :o)

As the sun started to get low in the west sky, I looked up from the patio where we were sitting at the club and noticed this great photo op, so I took it.

We ended the evening with a fabulous meal at Annies Steak House on 17th St.. Annies is the oldest gay community restaurant in DC. Go here to read the wonderful history about the place: http://www.metroweekly.com/feature/?ak=2012

We recommend a meal there if you ever visit the neighborhood.

CHEERS!

Oh, dear..........it's a Jenni sandwich :o)

Our time in DC was fabulous. Hopefully, we will still be calling that big house on Pennsylvania Avenue the 'Black House' when next we visit. :o)

Back to home improvement in the next post.

D.C. and Pride - Part 1

June 9-12, 2011

It's time to catch up on happenings after my trip to Kansas. The day after my mom went back to California, Rowan and I and our friend Sally jetted off to Washington D.C. for a few days of fun.

Rowan had a one day meeting at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but we spent the rest of the time visiting our dear friend Arvydas and doing some sightseeing and, of course, gorging ourselves on seafood and everything a large city has to offer. It also just happened to be Pride weekend, so there were many events to attend, as I will get to later in this post.

We stayed at the FABULOUS Fairmont Hotel at Dupont Circle. We usually don't spring for such a lavish place (we are happy staying in just about anything as long as it has running water. Remember, we have been in India!), but that is where Rowan's meeting was, so here we are! I won't waste post space on photos from the inside, but if you have ever been in a Fairmont Hotel, you know how beautiful they are.

Our first order of business after arriving was a nap :o) and then a walk over to P Street to meet Arvydas for dinner. Seafood was our first choice as we were so near the ocean. Our first thing was to get some fresh oysters in our bellies, so we ended up at Hanks Oyster Bar.

Arvydas, me and the oysters

The next day, while Rowan was at her meeting, Sally and I ventured off to see some of the sights of DC. We started with the Black House (that's what we call it now because we are so proud to have an African American living there :o) ) We stopped by to say hi to Barack and the many squirrels who were there to greet us (I think they were all working for the secret service).

The Black House

As we sat on the stone wall in the shade in front of the Black House, a squirrel came up and nearly got on my lap as I was eating my apple. I handed him my apple core when I was finished. He ran out onto the Black House lawn to eat his prize, obviously telling command central that we were OK and to let us sit there and enjoy the view as long as we liked.

No trip to Washington DC is complete without stepping into at least one of the Smithsonian museums. Sally hadn't been to the Museum of Natural History (my favorite), so that was our first stop on the National Mall.

Sally is a dentist, so the first thing she wanted to do was get up close and personal to have a look at old Trex's teeth. Definitely a meat eater! :o)

This is a most frightening sloth-like dinosaur. Good thing the sloth decided to evolve into a smaller, kinder animal. This one is about the size of a Trex. Can you imagine coming across one of these while out hiking in the woods?!!

This was the most fantastic giant prehistoric tortoise. These amazing creatures have hardly changed in millions of years.

Imagine the poop that would be on your head from this Pterodactyl !! :o)

After we had our stroll through natural history, we ventured back out into the 100 degree heat (ugh!) and took a walk through the National Gallery of Art sculpture garden. Here are a few of my favorites in the garden:

This fabulous stainless steel tree titled,' Graft', by Roxy Paine is an amazing sight.

Louise Bourgeois, Spider

After walking around the sculpture garden in the +100 degree heat, we HAD to stop at one of the carts on the Mall and get something really cold. The obvious choice was a snow cone. As we sat on a stone wall in the shade at the back of the National Gallery, we could almost see the steam come off of us as we took bites of the frosty cold wonderfulness. Whew!

As we continued to walk back up Pennsylvania Avenue, we came across many bike racks full of bikes anyone can rent for 30 minutes to a whole day. Just put your credit card in the slot and off you go, for as cheap as $3.00. There are bike stations all over the city, so you can pick a bike up at one station and leave it at another. A really fabulous idea most cities in the US should be embracing. Who doesn't want to see less cars on the road and less pollution and independence from being prisoners of the oil industry! DON'T get me started!!! :o) And, think of the exercise and how good that would be for our overweight, diabetic, depressed population. The health benefits are HUGE! Yes, I do have an opinion, as usual :o) Notice how as I write this post, we are walking everywhere and not even taking the metro or a taxi. We must have walked 8-10 miles on today's adventure.

After all that heat and exercise today, Sally and I had to have a quick nap before heading out for more night life with our friend Arvydas. Rowan snapped this photo when she came back to the room after her meeting. Oh dear..........

After our nap, we freshened up and prepared ourselves for another evening of more walking, eating and pre-Pride festivities. For those of you who don't know what Pride is, it is the yearly celebration for the gay community that takes place in towns and cities all over the world during the month of June. We just happen to be here for the DC Pride weekend. There will be more on all of that in the DC & Pride Part 2 of this post.

As we walked through the Dupont Circle neighborhood to get back to Hank's Oyster Bar (it was so good last night, we are eating there again tonight), I kept stopping to take in the architecture. The city is so old that there are many centuries of architectural style to look at. One of my most favorite things to do is photograph architectural carved faces and gargoyles. I have taken photos all over the world of images like these on buildings. A craft hardly used in modern architecture today. Here are just a couple from DC.

So, when is the last time you saw a Merman used as an adornment to hold up a window seat?

I find the lions head worn as a hat on this very Beau Arts face fantastic.

This panther/monkey type gargoyle shot out from the second story of an 18th century stone mansion. You can just imagine how it protects this building from evil spirits.

As we walked up the street past the many old brownstone buildings, we came across lots of small front courtyards that were so creative. Here is the home of an artist (he had his plaque outside) where there was a garden of large ceramic asparagus spears and two large chairs carved out of limestone. Wanted to make us sit down and take a rest right there.

Once at Hank's (http://www.hanksdc.com/), Rowan got right to her sake oyster shooter followed by a splash of beer. We followed that up with more plates of oysters and seafood. YUMMMMMM!!!!! Is this woman happy, or what!!!

We stayed out playing with Arvydas until about midnight and then headed back to the hotel for some zzzz's. We are planning another day of walking around town tomorrow, so we need our strength. It is supposed to be 98 degrees! ugh!

The first stop on our Saturday adventure was at the Human Rights Campaign National Headquarters. This is the largest LGBT organization in the country. A big weekend for everyone at the HRC.

After our stop at the HRC, we continued down the street to the National Geographic Museum.

If you have ever seen one of their magazines, you can imagine the wonderful photojournalism we saw here. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photographs inside the museum so none are featured here. You will have to go to their website or visit it in person (http://events.nationalgeographic.com/events/locations/center/museum/). I did take this great photo of Rowan and Sally just outside the museum with this wonderful bronze mountain fountain.

We also stopped at the historic Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle. The church has been at this site since 1893. Go here for the wonderful history of the church: http://www.stmatthewscathedral.org/about (Services for John F. Kennedy were held here after his death). As we were walking by, we could hear that they were having a mass. We were drawn inside by the beautiful angelic music being sung by the choir and congregation. We stepped into the back rows and just stood there and enjoyed the moment with the wonderful sound being amplified by the huge rotunda. It was so beautiful it took our breath away.

Stay tuned for Part 2..............The Parade!