Maker For The Last Time

It's strange to do things now and think, "this will probably be the last time I will ever X". 2013 was probably the last time to go with the family to the Maker Faire. From now on they'll be going without me. G did much better this year than she did last year. I made sure to keep her well fed this time. Last year I think I starved her.

A few moments:

 Some genius had buttons made from book covers. I need a button maker.

 Mosaic covered spaceship.

Tried to facetime lil'J so he could chat with his favorite machine, the wifi was too weak.

 Fake lost in the forest of light.

 I need a whiteboard and a belt with different colored pens at hand.

This would be the best job, or a great addition to any RS/Sunday School lesson.

 When we reached the point of collapse.

It's a car, covered in talking fish and crustaceans, synchronized into a chorus.

Their performance of Bohemian Rhapsody was unforgettable.

 Playing with the metal posers.

Maskingscape.

 And saving my life - box 116 charged my phone for me.

Weekends To Repeat

There is so much to do before I'll feel ready to leave. Mother's day weekend brought some great family time. Started off with a walk around the state capital building, then dinner with my extended family, then a show with friends and family. Hopefully I can make every weekend until I leave this wonderful.

 One of those days when I love living in Sacramento.

 Siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins - dinner at Tower Cafe celebrating a myriad of occasions.

Tulips are my favorite flower.

Show time.

T and the brother-in-law

I still can't believe T and my brother-in-law have known each other for so long. The second time we met we put it together. Small world. It makes outings like this even more enjoyable.

Birthday Part IV - Sausalito

If you are looking for a lovely place to brunch, try Fred's Coffee Shop. If the lemon ricotta pancakes are on the menu I highly recommend them. They are the diameter of a soccer ball, be forewarned.

 That pink blob in the bottom left is a lone jellyfish.

I'm wishing I had cause to purchase this empty old club, if only for it's carved door.

The building did happen to be for sale.

If you feel like buying me a $4K bike I'd love one of these wood ones.

California is wonderful. The birthday weekend got several things off my list of things to do before I leave. The next week I found out I had passed all my clearances and approvals for the Foreign Service. I missed getting into the July orientation class by only a week. If the clearances had gone one week faster I would have been moving to DC at the beginning of July. Instead, I'll probably be waiting on the list of cleared candidates until January. It was still a very nice gift to have passed everything. Now it's just a matter of time.

Birthday Part III - Giants beat the Dodgers!

I've made a long list of things I want to do before I leave California's sunny shores. Included was to be sure I made it to a Giants game. The Diplomat kindly petitioned on my behalf and obtained two tickets for a Saturday game from his father. With C in tow, carrying more Giants gear than the two of us could actually wear, we headed to the city.

Stop One: The Ferry Building for treats. 

It happened to be one of the most gorgeous days. Which I'm sure was arranged specifically for my birthday.

Stop Two: The Stadium

I will say the game was amazing - beside the fact that I slipped on someone's spilled ketchup and ended up with twisted ankles on my knees in the middle of a hotdog promenade. Ouch. We had been rushing back to our seats after glancing at a TV while C procured some garlic fries and finding that the Dodgers had somehow gained 7 runs in the short time it took us to find the french fry location of her preference. But there was rejoicing in the end, so all ended well.

Warm-ups.

 C & me

I'm sure we grossed out everyone in a five seat radius as we marathon-ed through a mountain of napkins and still ended up with mustard and sauerkraut everywhere.

I also drove C nuts running around the stadium taking snapshots of letters from different signs around the stadium. I'd come up with a thank you for the tickets that I was set on finishing. I probably could have spelled out a novel using only letters from beer ads. It was a perfect font/letter hunt distraction. Except when we would be walking through a crowd and I would suddenly disappear in pursuit of alphabet trophies.

Each picture is only 1" x 1" - it is a mini thank you, hence the blurry photo in bad lighting.

The day couldn't have been better.

Birthday Part II

It's always best when your birthday falls on a Friday, at least for me. I've had so many Sunday birthdays I don't even want to think about it. Promptly after work I headed down to Berkeley to meet C and D&N. We went out for tapas, ice cream - and I may have devoured this entire box of chocolate (what was left of it by the time I took a snapshot) in about 15 min. That's what birthdays are for!

Really, the birthday weekend couldn't have come at a better time - I found out May 1st that I had passed all my clearances for the State Department. I was on high impatience alert waiting to hear back from the final review panel and in deep need of some distractions.

...and the backdating continues (I know it's cheating).

Birthday Part I

On my birthday lovely Z met me on campus for an extended lunch, and brought this perfect treat. If you haven't ever tried the strawberry shortcake cupcake at TreyBCakes you are missing out.

May = A Month of Chaos and Celebrations

I've been negligent the last month. I'm backdating these so posterity has no idea (despite my mentioning it right now) that I'm actually writing this on June 20th. The world has been spinning so quickly I've been sprinting to keep up. Because lovely T would be in DC with her husband and I had finished my MA we went out to dinner to celebrate. Nothing says celebrate like a huge pot of melted cheese, right?

So that is exactly what we celebrated with. Followed by a huge pot of melted chocolate. Doesn't get much better. It surely kicked off a month of festivities and bedlam.

It is finished

At least I hope it is.

Monday was my last graduate school hoop. The comprehensive exam. Three hours to write responses that demonstrate I've actually mastered something. Would you like to see the two questions I had to answer?

1. Construct an argument that examines and compares the significance of sight, the process of spectacle, and/or the visual arts in three different texts from your list. In your answer, you may want to discuss the irony of text invoking the visual, questions about epistemology and how we best know our worlds, and/or any other questions brought up by this topic. 

2. Using two works from your list, consider and compare how subjects in nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction confront the limits and constraints of the social formation of identity (e.g. by class, gender, race, place, or space) and employ other modes of expression (art, music, language) to augment or circumvent the narratives that have been scripted for them. In your response, you may want to address how their aesthetic choices are contextualized by the literary movement or historical moment in which they were produced.

Yeah, so...hopeful I passed. Perfection was not reached in my responses, but I was able to at least write a few pages for each question. Thinking about it still induces a certain tightness between my shoulder blades.