Avoidance can be a good motivator

I finally sat down to start compiling all the records for our taxes, and was suddenly, miraculously, energized to take Sparky for a long walk on the beach, throwing the ball and picking up a big bag of storm-wrack plastic (why do you suppose so many pieces of nursery plant pots get washed up?)

As I walked, I mentally planned a terrific product design course where-in students would be asked to pick up plastic garbage on the beach, and then apply a kind of 19th century naturalist objectivity to classify each item, large or small by material, morphology, production method and probable original use. Maybe even illustrate it with stippled precision.


(image from http://starfishncoffee.blogspot.com)

If possible, they would track down retail sources of the product in its original state, and photograph them in situ. That would be easy in a lot of cases - plant pots, bottle caps, children's sand toys, shoes (all things I found today on surfer's beach in El Granada) but more difficult in other cases - complicated parts that must have required multiple part molds for injection molding, but give no hint of their utility.

I also discovered it was crucial to weed the garden, and make a blog entry...

But now I fear I must return to the taxes.

Southwest Road Trip

We did a road trip through the great South West after Christmas

We started by visiting Young's mom, brother and sister in law in Salt Lake:


That's Lorraine, looking a lot like her beautiful daughter, Kara.

I didn't get any good pictures of Demian, so I messed with this one.





Drove south in a blizzard to see Win and Mish in Bluff. We had a wonderful New Years singing and carrying on :



Hiked around Bluff and marveled at a locked tree that Win and friend Gill discovered:



And then we drove on into Arizona where we hiked Canyon de Chelly with Maria and one of her twins, Jeremy:







It was really COLD!

We ended LA to see Chuck (Hooray for Chuck!) and closed the loop back to Half Moon Bay driving the coast highway most of the way through some kind of record storm. I found out later that a bunch of highways were closed due to high winds, and there was a high tide advisory for coastal areas, but at the time it just seemed a lot easier than the snow.

Came home to no electricity, but since all we really wanted to do was sleep, that was okay.

Goodbye/hello

This is the first post of a new blog.

We are shutting down the old blog, "What's Up with Jacob" , because Jacob is now a fifteen year old boy named Blue, who deserves some privacy.

On the other hand, I am a fifty five year old woman who occasionally wants to share things, and I was feeling sad about giving that up.

Thus it begins.

I'm not so sure about this template. Figure on changes as things progress.