Summer Reading

Read (or at least start):

• Fresh Air Fiend by Paul Theroux
• Ulysses by James Joyce (22 CDs of audiobook, aborted)
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (in progress)
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sachs
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin
• Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle by Moritz Thomsen

Online book club, anyone?

Richmond Field Station

Today I got to go out into the field and play Restoration Ecologist. Tromping through fields of invasive grasses, with steno notepad and camera in hand, I had a great time learning to identify native and invasive plant species.

I can't believe how much I miss working outside; I'd forgotten the power of hands-on learning. This is going to be a fun summer.

Juncus phaeocephalus in bloom.

Blue-eyed grass

Killdeer egg.

The City.

Davis, CA

I spent the last two nights in Davis at Ramon's place. It was a nice way to end the year. I rode the train up, and the pacing of train travel helped calm me down after what has been a somewhat hectic academic year, a year that left me practically carving tally marks into my bedroom wall (instead, I wrote blog posts).

Anyway, it just so happened that I showed up in Davis the same day as the Tour of California. Pictured above is Lance Armstrong (!).

After the start of the Davis stage of the tour, Ramon and I ate at Fuji's, an all-you-can-eat sushi boat restaurant. The lunch special cost twelve bucks each and the Asian inside of me made it a personal vendetta to get my money's worth, even at the price of physical discomfort (because what feels better than a good deal?). Pictured above are our stacks of dishes. Mine is the one on the right (!). Ramon is thinly suppressing a look of utter pain. We were getting looks from the other patrons sitting at the counter every time I tried to entice Ramon into eating "just one more" plate of sushi.

(The sushi boat rounds the corner. The tail of a tempura shrimp sticks out from the end of a small roll of sushi, topped with roe and what appears to be coleslaw.)
Both: Oh my God...
Me: Do you believe in love at first sight? Because I do. (Grabs the plate from the sushi boat.)
Ramon: I don't know, you can have this one...
Me: No man, we saw it at the same time.
Ramon: [Sigh.] (Picks up a piece with his chopsticks and barely fits it into his mouth.)
Me: Yeah? Is it good?
(Ramon looks queasy.)
Me: Keep chewing, hang in there. You're more than halfway; you only need to eat six more plates.
Ramon: (With a mouthful of food.) No!
Me: Dude, it'll be easy. Watch this. (Shoves the endpiece into his mouth. The tail of the tempura shrimp barely makes it in.)
Me: (With a mouthful of food.) Holy crap this is decadent. This is why the terrorists hate us.
Ramon: I can't do this.
Me: That's defeatist bullshit, man. (Gesturing with chopsticks.) Now get in there and eat some sushi.

All told, we made pretty good account of ourselves. Between the two of us, we ate twenty plates of sushi, two dishes of fried red bean balls, two dishes of cake, and a dish of oranges.

The bike ride back to Ramon's house was not a pleasant one.

Day 76

Confession: When I was 13, I took a rock from the top of Half Dome in Yosemite. I wanted a reminder of what had been the best day of my young life. I've since lost the rock (given it away, actually), but I still have my memories of the afternoon that I stood on top of the world.

Day 54

So, I've been doing some planning. Nothing much, just my usual feverish bout of shuffling through course requirement sheets and the like. I'd say this happens every semester or so. I spend two hours thinking I'm recharting the course of my life, only to change it about three months later.

Well, on this current tack, I've got some goodies lined up for myself. For example, one of the classes I plan on taking is simply titled "Trees." Then there's "Wildland Fire Science," which involves a field trip for a proscribed burn. But right now, I'm pretty stoked at the prospect of going abroad. It seems to be all the rage these days, and I sure as heck don't want to be left out of the fun (my brand new passport is just itching to get its first stamp). Specifically, I really want to go to the island of Moorea in French Polynesia, which oddly enough has a UC Berkeley field research station there. Basically, the deal's like this: I go to French Polynesia, my school gives me units.

The decision was not a hard one to make.

But before any of that fun stuff happens, it seems like there's still a formidable amount of drudgery left to slog through. I still have a good deal of weeder courses left: classes engineered to destroy the human soul. The current gameplan involves me staying in Berkeley over the summer to learn all that there is to learn about organic chemistry. Carbon is such a wacky element.

Day 50

Today I decided that I want to thru-hike the JMT Sobo (translation: I want to walk from Yosemite Valley to Mount Whitney, non-stop).

It's something I've wanted to do since I was 13; I promised myself that I'd hike the whole John Muir Trail as I stood on Half Dome, looking over the Yosemite Valley. I think it only hit me today that I've finally accumulated the skills, equipment, and independence to do so in the six and a half years that have since elapsed.

Summer Snapshots

Crusty sourdough bread from scratch. Homemade jam. Swimming in Lake Mississippi. Sleeping under the stars. Kombucha mother that resembles snot. SF Pride. IT'S IT. Sunbathing on Elena's roof. Kite flying and picnicking at the beach. Ruins of the Sutro Baths. Karyn's messy room. Biking through Golden Gate Park late at night. Burritos with crinkle cut fries in San Diego. Riding the bus across the Bay Bridge. Craig the rooster in a cardboard box. Speeding past the ocean, through the fog, down highway one. A boombox playing a cassette tape of Hawaiian chants.