Valentine's Day

Saint Valentine, Christian martyr, supposedly sent a letter before his execution signed "From your valentine."  And that's we buy chocolate and roses today.

Now to be honest, we don't celebrate this day of love at our house.  In any noticeable way.  (Is it too sappy to say that we celebrate our love every day?  Probably, and only somewhat true.)  But I thought that in honor of the day I will tell you about our first meeting.

We both lived at International House in Berkeley.  I visited there last fall and wrote about it here.  As in any dorm, many romances occurred.  More than 500 couples are listed on the I House: A Home to Romance website.  There were even residents whose parents had met and married at I House.  That seemed a little creepy to me and early on, I vowed that wasn't going to happen to me, no matter how many cute guys lived there.

However, fate decided to laugh at that promise, and about twenty five years ago on the patio below I met the man that I have been married to for more than eighteen years.

Although the photo is quite dark, the patio is often sunny and peaceful.  We both remember that at the table that fateful day was Jesus, a Spanish speaking graduate student that we both knew.  Nothing particularly important happened at the table, nor did we start going out immediately, but we both agree that was the first time that we actually spoke to each other.

Not an interesting story, no conflict.  That came later in the relationship. Thankfully, it's all roses and chocolates now.  (Not really.)

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Personal Training

One of my goals this year is to get into better shape.  A good friend of mine who worked with a personal trainer has been trying to convince me to work with one.  She's been bringing it up off and on for a while.  Seems that it made her more focussed, stronger, more likely to work out, etc.

So I decided to try it.  Focus, strength, frequency.  These are all good things. The personal trainer I would most like to work with lives in LA (Hi Kasseem!), but I managed to find one here and we had our first session earlier this week.

I did pull-downs and bench presses and twisting ab work with weight machines and a medicine ball, but the most difficult exercise was much more simple.  It was just a small exercise band around my ankles and then I had to sidestep my way back and forth across a dance floor.

I'm not sure which muscles it worked, abductor?, adductor?, but whichever muscle it was, it ached afterwards.

We filled out a card with all of the exercises and weights and filed it under my last name.  Now I'm supposed to go back again and go through the whole routine three times by myself.  And in three to six months, there'll be a change.

I 'll check back sometime in May or August and let you know how much more weight I can bench press.  And whether those leg muscles still hurt or not.

One To One Times Two

An unflattering confession:  I sometimes used to giggle at the gaps that some people (mostly older folks) have in their knowledge of technology.  And if that makes you think badly of me, I did confess yesterday that I wasn't as good a person as that optimistic, forgiving 109-year-old pianist.

But I stopped giggling after activating my one to one membership. Because it's clear that I am one of those older folks and although I have lots of knowledge, my gaps are pretty large, too.

I have had two personal training sessions and they have been great!  I have had the same young woman as my instructor both times.  Except for cleaning my computer during the first session (was it the first time in three years? — icky!), she keeps her hands off of my computer, and makes me do all the work.  I'm familiar with the theory that if I do the work, I will remember it better.

And for the most part it works.  During my first session, she helped me design my dock to contain only the applications I actually use.  Often after a question, she would direct me to type it into the help window of whichever application we were using, and the answer would magically appear.

Yesterday she helped me fix a mistake in iPhoto that I made over two years ago, and had no idea how to fix.  Turns out iPhoto saves your original photo and reverting back to it is very simple.  I was so happy I cheered out loud!

The only problem so far with my one to one sessions is that the apple store is in a mall.  And that mall has a See's candy kiosk.  I suppose I'm lucky that it doesn't have an actual See's candy store, but the kiosks are trouble enough for my sweet tooth.

So for my next scheduled training, I'm going to try to enter the mall so I don't have to pass by the candy kiosk.  Alternatively, I'll schedule my session for early in the day before the kiosk is open.  Plan your walk and walk your plan!

Documentary Truth

"Calmness is strength."

In an effort to fulfill my goal of seeing all of the short films nominated for Academy Awards, my honey and I went to our favorite movie theater and watched the movies in the documentary category.  They were all very good, and I am glad I got the chance to see them.

I'm not sure which film will win, but the film that intrigued me the most was The Lady in Number 6:  Music Saved My Life.  It is the story of Alice Herz Sommer, billed as the oldest pianist and Holocaust survivor at age 109.  She is incredibly upbeat and positive.


She's an amazing musician who still plays the piano every day.  Music certainly did save her life in the camps, but her optimistic personality must have shown through, even then.

She makes the statement that everything is beautiful, even bad is beautiful. The observations made by her and other survivors in the film were thought-provoking.  I could easily watch it again with notebook and pen in hand to record their statements.  I was left with the sentiment that I am not as good a person as she.

Here are the other films on the list in no particular order.

Karama Has No Walls is a fly on the wall account of a Yemeni government attack on student protesters during the Arab Spring.  Intense images of battle and its aftereffects are both searing and powerful.

A gay man who as a teenager was attacked by Neo-Nazis meets one of his attackers by chance as an adult.  Forgiveness plays the central role in the nominee Facing Fear.

Two interconnected stories come to the light in Prison Terminal:  The Last Days of Private Jack Hall.  The reality that many prisoners are dying incarcerated has led some states to create hospice care within the prison system.  One man's last days in that arrangement shows the humanity that can exist in even the most difficult circumstances.

A bit of the life of Ra Paulette, a man who literally digs caves out of mountains, Cavedigger, has beautiful images of sandstone caves in northern New Mexico. The film showcases the struggle of an artist to remain faithful to his artistic vision. Some of the obstacles he faces include lack of money, clients' ideas that differ from his, and the occupational hazard of cave-ins.

It was an emotional afternoon, and I admit that I was happy to leave the darkness of the theater and come out into the bright sunshine of the day.  But the films and the people in them stay in my mind.  The opening quote was the last thing a father said to his children as the Nazis took him away to die.  May we all be calm and strong.

A Stream of Music

Wow, what can the world wide interweb not do?

We spent last night watching and listening to a concert at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley, CA.  That's right.  We were able to watch The Dry Branch Fire Squad, a bluegrass group that we are quite fond of, from almost two thousand miles away.

Dry Branch Fire Squad

The only problem?  The concert started at 8pm Pacific Standard Time.  That means the music started at our house at 10pm Central Time.  That's past our usual bedtime!

Still, we fought the closing of our eyelids for an hour, and enjoyed the music and the excellent patter of the leader of the band, Ron Thomason.  If you watch this video, you'll notice that he talks way longer than the song lasts.

I realize that this youtube video is wider than my blog and I apologize.  For some reason, the clip won't load the way I normally do, and so this is a workaround.  Enjoy it in all its width!

Bacon Grease Can

We had bacon for breakfast yesterday morning, which we almost never do. Since I had recently seen a cornbread recipe that called for bacon grease, I asked my honey to save the bacon grease.  As he poured it into an old soup can, I realized that we always had a can of bacon grease on our stove when I was growing up.

When I mentioned it to my honey, he was surprised and said that his family did too!  Neither of us remembered when that can disappeared.  My honey thinks it was in the late 70s with all the information on heart disease.  I have no idea when it happened at my house, but there hasn't been a can on the stovetop for a long time.

But there's something comforting and homey in a can with bacon grease in it, at least for me.  And when I searched the world wide interweb, I noticed other people like it too!  There are lots of vintage grease holders on ebay for purchase and the blogger behind southernplate.com has an entire post dedicated to bacon grease.

There are recipes, fun facts and a lot of photos of bacon grease containers. Interestingly, not one of them are old tin cans, like mine is.  She's even got this great World War II era Disney cartoon about bacon grease.  Apparently, it helped win the war.  Who knew?

I'm just hoping my leftover bacon grease will make that cornbread tasty!

Academy Animation

Lists are great!  Movies are great!  What's doubly great, though, are lists of movies!  Can you tell from my exclamation points how happy that thought makes me?

The ultimate list of great movies is the one with those films good enough to be nominated for the Academy Awards.  I would like to say that I manage to see all those movies, but there is no way that ever happens. Approximately fifty films receive nominations each year and I'm lucky if I manage to see ten on the list.

However, in recent years, I have been able to watch all the short films in competition for the Oscars.  Before then, they were almost impossible to find.  But, finally someone figured out that there was a market out there for all of us insane film buffs marking movies off our lists.

So now the short films are screened in theaters around the country a few weeks before the awards ceremony.  And because the films are short, they screen all five of the nominees for the same price.  In fact, the animation nominees are so short, they usually throw in a few extra "highly commended" films on the same bill.

This year I went in the middle of the day, taking advantage of the only slightly cheaper ticket prices.  There were lots of different kinds of animation, hand-drawn, computer graphics, even some stop motion.  I can't really tell the difference between all of those, so for me it was the stories the films told that were the most important.

I have no idea what the academy looks for in an animated film, and my picks haven't been very accurate in past years, so I'll be curious to see which film wins.  They were all interesting and some were even fun, but I liked the sweet message of Mr. Hublot the best.  I'll be rooting for it to take the gold statue.

Next week, I'll see the documentaries and live action entries, so stay tuned!