sunday with friends

This was maybe a month ago? again, I could look at my calendar and try to figure it out, but meh. This is a real different post than the last one, but I think it’s just as valuable. It’s important to remember what we have, and what we’re fighting for. Truth and beauty in the people around us. Anyway.

Annie was in town, and the ladies did a bunch of stuff (trip to Sonoma, wine tasting, some kind of pedicures? maybe?), but sunday the whole group of us hung out. Brunch at portal, bottomless mimosas, followed by a brief nap and refresher, trip to the corner store for supplies, and then over to Roger and Olivia’s for multiple kinds of grilled cheeses, literally grilled on a charcoal grill. They were amazing and I was far too busy eating them to take pictures of them.

Today was my first day my new job, working for Chime (the banking startup). It seems like it’s gonna be really nice working there. I think I’m gonna enjoy doing the work they have for me. And that’s all the work talk you get.

Anyway, here’s today.

today's anti-fash action

Just got back from this, posting from the phone. Me and about 1000 other people showed up and blocked the road in front of the ICE offices in San Francisco. It may even still be going; the cops were just directing traffic around the crowd; they didn’t seem keen on trying to break it up.

I’ve tried (mostly) to keep faces out of these; because we’re about six months shy of a full blown police state, and there’s no telling how photos of people at protests might be used against the protestors. About half the people there were also broadcasting, though, meaning that me keeping faces out altogether is pretty pointless. The local news media showing up seemed almost redundant. That said, I’m glad they were there.

I couldn’t tell you how many people were there. More than 500 and less than 5000 is my best guess. I wish it was more; I wish the whole damn city were in the streets, yelling “No Justice, No Peace!” and “Immigrants are welcome here!”. This was good though.

robin's housewarming

I’m late posting, again. Something about last week was just keeping me down, and also I didn’t want to spend much time at the computer… I was short of things to post, or so I thought, and so I spent a lot of time running around doing stuff, or at least trying to do stuff, and one thing led to another and then I was out of town on the weekend, and here 7 days have passed since I’ve posted (there’s something about promising indefinitely to post every day that dooms me).

This was sometime last month, I think? Robin is this amazing creative genius and his partner Kathryn is important to the olive oil world in ways I don’t entirely understand. Warm, fun, good people, and they just bought a house practically across the street from Sophie and me. “just” is relative, in this case; I think they actually moved in in december, but with all the difficulties of moving and settling in it took quite a while for them to have the capacity to host, I think.

The collection of guests was interesting and eclectic. Food people, journalists, doctors (PhD and MD if memory serves) small children, and more than one errant photographer. There was a spread that was as good as any I’ve seen at a backyard barbecue. The kids (and more than some of the adults) were super into picking avocados off the tree in the yard.

One last thing: you may have noticed that these don’t have black borders but still look like color film photos… that’s because I had them scanned at the lab, and the lab can’t get the extra little bit of margin to get the borders with the full roll scanner. I’m fine with it, actually, because if I decided to make prints I’ll have to scan anyway, and I can include the border then. And it’s hours and hours of work that I don’t have to do.

Robin and an a child with the avocado picker clouds that threatened but ultimately did not dampen Sophie. This picture works both in black and white and color, but I was shooting color film.

niles on film

these are from the same day as my last post from niles, just a roll that took me a long time to get processed. I think i was only shooting color in the 6x9 at the time, and it was certainly before i put together the film darkroom here.

as it happens, I was in niles today, again, coming back from camping. We camped west of san jose, up in the hills at some county park that chris and angela found. The campground is what’s known as a ‘walk in’, as in you have to haul all your eqipment some distance from the parking lot. It was quite the hill, too. We were camping with the aforementioned brumfelds, and some friends of theirs, I believe journey and Marco? good people, and relaxation was had all around. I figured out how to use a stainless steel water bottle as a waveguide to boost my cell signal, and read a bit more of Death Comes for the Archbishop which is a really lovely book set at a pace altogether orthogonal from what I normally read.

Anyway, one of our camping traditions is to stop for pizza at broncho billie’s in niles, when it’s anywhere near the route home. It’s really amazing pizza, a combination of doughy on the inside and crisp on the outside, with generous toppings and sauce. It is, without question, one of my favorite pizzas, but probably also because of the ritual that surrounds it. Coming back from camping, having done the work of breaking camp on coffee and protein bars, we’re always hungry when we get to the place. I always get the Bull Durham, which is every meat topping they have. So good.

I’m off this week, in preparation for the new job starting a week from wednesday. I plan to build the bike frame, or at least make some progress on it; I need to make at least one fixture to make it come together properly. Also, I have a whole ton of scanning to get through.

Here’s today, anyway.