Category Archives: Bay area, Calif.

Crab season

Carol and I both noticed the sign in Trag’s supermarket: cooked and cracked Dungeness crabs at $4.99 a pound; winter is crab season in the Bay area. We asked the man behind the counter how big a crab to get, and he said, “Sounds like you haven’t bought a crab before.” We said we had just moved from the Massachusetts coast. “Oh yeah, lobster and all that,” he said. He picked out a crab, cracked the legs, and wrapped it up for us. We took it home and ate it right away…

Carol had never had Dungeness crab before; I’d only had it once in a restaurant. We ate the whole crab in one sitting. It’s better than lobster, with a lighter, more delicate flavor (and no icky green stuff in the guts that you have to decide whether eat or throw away).

Rainy season

Thanks to El Niño, we’re getting a string of winter storms this week: high winds, cloudbursts, lightning, threats of flooding. The San José Mercury News reported at midnight last night that “effects [of yesterday’s storm] on the Peninsula were mostly minor, but widespread.”

I woke up yesterday to find that power had gone off briefly last night. The commute from San Mateo to Palo Alto was long and slow. It was raining lightly when I left San Mateo, just hard enough to run the windshield wipers. In Belmont and Redwood City, there was no rain but the announcer on the radio said there was heavy rain in the Mid-Peninsula. Within five minutes, I had driven into a cloudburst: the windshield wipers could not keep up with the rain even at the fastest setting; lightning lit up the sky; the road was an inch deep in water; and with the exception of a few idiots who chose to risk hydroplaning, traffic crawled along at 30 miles an hour. South of University Avenue in Palo Alto, the rain stopped.

I’d guess we got well over an inch of rain in the morning, most of it in a few heavy downpours. In the middle of the day, we saw the sun for a brief moment before dark clouds rolled in over the coastal range and let loose another heavy shower which turned the church’s rose garden into a two-inch deep pool of water. The rain has tapered off now, but the weather service predicts that a low pressure system will move into our area over the weekend, bringing “substantial rainfall, and with the ground already saturated hydro problems are possible.” That means more creek flooding is expected.

I wouldn’t wish flooding on anyone — but speaking as a New England expatriate, I’d rather have El Niño flooding than ice storms, blizzards, and hurricanes.

A little earthquake

Day off from work. I was sitting and reading, eating a late breakfast, when I felt our house begin to shake gently. It went on for a good 2-3 seconds, long enough for me to start thinking about ducking under the table. Then it was over. If I hadn’t been sitting and reading I could easily have missed feeling it entirely.

USGS Web site says it was magnitude 4.1 quake centered somewhere around Milpitas.

Such bad news from the northeast, oh dear.

Stupid alter ego Dan is still feeling under the weather from his mild bronchitis. But Mr. Crankypants is here to keep this blog up and running. Today’s topic: the weather.

Mr. Crankypants is feeling particularly cranky because of the weather today. The weather here in California wasn’t quite perfect. It only got up to 61 degrees Fahrenheit. And it got too bright and sunny in the middle of the day, so much so that Mr. C. hurriedly had to smear on some more sunscreen. Why, at one point it got warm enough that they left the doors of the Palo Alto church open (not that Mr. C. would ever admit to actually attending church services).

At the same time, Mr. Crankypants notes with glee that a major snowstorm hit the northeastern United States. Dan’s dad measured 10 inches of snow on his deck. Heh, heh. E, a regular reader of this blog who lives in Washington, DC, has posted pictures to her Facebook page showing what looks like 16 inches of snow in her back yard. Heh, heh, heh, heh. In New Bedford, former home of Mr. C., they got 20 inches of snow. Bwah-hah-hah-hah!

Seriously, Mr. Crankypants feels very bad about all the snow to hit the Northeast. He feels bad that so many people had to cancel church services today. He feels bad about all the people who had to shovel all that snow. He feels so bad he thinks he will go out into the back yard and pick an orange or two to make himself feel better. Then he will walk down the block to admire the Bird of Paradise flower that is in full bloom in someone’s front yard.

Update: Mr. Crnakypants notes that E, a yoga instructor, has advice on how to shovel snow properly without hurting yourself. You in the northeast can follow that advice, while Mr. C. is outdoors doing sun salutations on the green grass in the warm California air.

Chant workshop to feature renowned singer

In the Dept. of Shameless Self-Promotion, here’s a press release for the upcoming chant workshops here at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto:

Marsha Genensky, a nationally known singer with the classical music group Anonymous 4, will lead a free workshop on singing Gregorian chant on January 31 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto (UUCPA). Anonymous 4 is a critically acclaimed a capella group that sings early music.

Participants in Genensky’s workshop will do more than just sing together. Jack Owicki, one of the four organizers of the workshop, says the workshop will be an opportunity for spiritual practice as well. “A flourishing spiritual practice requires a good balance of head and heart,” Owicki said. “I already get plenty of intellectual stimulation in my religious community, but I could use some more direct emotional connection to others and to the world as a whole, and chanting will help with that connection.”

Genensky will be returning to the Bay area to lead the workshop after Anonymous 4’s December East Coast tour.

“Singing chant in unison is a challenge, but a wonderfully rewarding one,” she said. “As we sing these beautiful, single lines of music together, the group will seek and find a ‘unity of musical intent.’ It is in the seeking and finding of that unity that communities that sing chant form deep bonds and rise to higher spiritual experience.”

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Overheard

On the train this morning, I was trying to read an article about recent research on adolescent brain development. In a seat somewhere behind me, a cell phone rang. A woman answered the phone. “I’m going to change my phone number,” she said, “I’m serious. I don’t want to talk with you any more. I’m done with you.” It sounded as though this woman had just dumped a man, someone she thought of as no good. “I go off to work, and you just go out on the streets, having fun, getting drugs, doing whatever. I sick and tired of it.” She talked to him for a while, then ended the conversation — I was cheering her on in my mind, even though I was only hearing her side of the conversation, even though I didn’t know either one of them. A minute after she ended the conversation, her phone rang again. She delayed picking it up, but at last she answered. She was less polite to him this time. After a short time, she ended the call. A moment later, her phone rang again. Don’t answer it, I said to myself. She answered it, but barely let him get a word in edgewise. At last she told him why his mother didn’t want him around either: “That’s why she doesn’t want you there, you’re always disrespecting her, if you can’t respect your mom, I don’t want to deal you. Good bye.” She hung up. Her cell phone rang again. She talked to him, and ended the call quickly. By this time, I was just tuning out the conversation — she had to know that you can’t have a private conversation on the train, but I still didn’t want to listen. I’d guess that her cell phone rang a few more times, but I wasn’t paying attention. Then it was quiet behind me, and I realized that she was gone.

Feast day

Our Lady of Guadalupe is both the Catholic patron saint of all the Americas and a symbol of Mexico; today is her feast day. (She is also beloved of many feminists, who make some interesting interpretations of the aura which is always depicted as surrounding her.) Our downstairs neighbors put a little statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe under the little orange tree that’s between the garage and the house. In between rain showers, I made a photograph of her yesterday afternoon:

No oranges were harmed for this photograph.

Heavy frost in San Mateo

Carol burst into the bathroom when I was taking a shower. “It looks like it snowed!” she said. We went to the door of our second story porch to look out at the white fuzzy stuff on the roofs of nearby houses. It turned out to be a very heavy frost, the result of last night’s below-freezing temperatures and nearly 100% relative humidity. The sun was melting it quickly, so I grabbed a camera and stood just inside the back door, still starkers from the shower, and took a couple of pictures of the last remaining white frozen stuff, with two palm trees in the background.