Collect The Moments One By One

I don’t like New Year’s Eve as a holiday. There’s too much pressure to have the BEST day of the year be the last day of the year. But although 2008 year-in-review pieces are all over the place right now, I do like the chance to take stock and remember what moments, foods, travels, etc, made up that particular year.

For me, 2008 was pretty eventful year: I got engaged, went to Italy, and saw my sister move to S.F. after over four years in New York. A year ago this week, we saw our friends off to Oregon, and in their absence, we found time to explore the Bay Area more, spending our weekends hiking on Mt. Tam or in the Marin Headlands.

2008 Discoveries

• Bay Area Hiking – We unfortunately didn’t get in any camping this year. But we did lots of hiking, discovering a favorite trail on Mt. Tam, exploring the Headlands, seeing osprey and a waterfall in the Marin Municipal Water District, and wandering the hills above Muir Beach.
• International wines – In Italy, I gained an appreciation for decent, low cost wines, and we’ve continued drinking more international wines this year.
• Vintage pyrex- Something about the bright colors and old patterns appeals more to me than the boring old stuff available today.
• Good Society jeans
• Fatted Calf’s store at Oxbow Market
• Homemade Granola
• Breakfast at Blue Bottle’s Mint Plaza Cafe
• Anchovies! In the Cinque Terre, I learned to love acciughe (anchovies).

Re-Discovered in 2008

Ashtanga yoga – I practiced ashtanga when I first started yoga seven years ago. But this year, I came back to ashtanga and remembered what I loved about it. I also gained a tremendous teacher and new friends.

Pilates – With my sister teaching, I found myself back on the mat or on the reformer about once a week.

2008 On the Road

We got engaged in Point Reyes on a sunny weekend trip in March, but Italy was our big trip of the year. Going overseas ate up most of our vacation time and kept other vacations closer to home. Having 2 weeks off really felt like a vacation. If you can, take a 2 week trip somewhere in 2009.

A full week up at Tahoe with my extended family was a splurge. Heading back up to the lake in September, the almost off-season, was dreamy.

We went to Eugene, Oregon in October to see our friends, but my favorite fall excursion was spending my birthday weekend in Calistoga.

2008 At the Table

I tried a number of new-to-me restaurants this year: Laiola, SPQR, Bar Jules, Dona Tomas, Little Star Pizza, Uva, Berretta, Ad Hoc, La Ciccia, Chenery Park. But my favorite meals this year weren’t in normal restaurants at all. Instead, they were from Primavera, eaten outside at the farmers market, or at 18 Reasons, an art/event space run by our friends at BiRite. We attended what had  to be the best dinner party in town at 18 Reasons: dinner with wine, beer and cheesemaker Fritz Maytag. My best meal of the year was at the home of a butcher in Chianti: a six-course meal of meat at Solocicca.

2008 Soundtrack

Music often took a backseat to This American Life this year. But I listened to Jim White, Bonnie Prince Billy, Fleet Foxes, and whatever else Mr. WholeHog played for me.

2008 Bookmobile

My reading habits are sadly on a steep decline. It took me a good 6 months to finish the new David Sedaris — a book that should have been polished off in one afternoon. I took Haruki Murakami’s After Dark to Italy, but it didn’t do much for me. The one book I still think about is Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri.

(I posted my 2007 list until late last year but if you feel like reviewing it, click here.)

So This is Christmas

Last year, my sister woke me up on Christmas morning and told me not to get up yet because the dog had had diarrhea in the kitchen.

Even though the dog was on antibiotics this year, I was a little nervous when I woke up on Christmas morning to my mom opening the window blinds. “You don’t have to get up,” she said. “But you should see this.”

Outside, it was snowing. The snowflakes were huge and came down in a flurry. I watched for a while from my warm bed, trying to remember how many years it’d been since we had a white Christmas or since I’d seen it snow like this.

It continued to snow while we opened our stockings and while dad made his famous pancakes. But by the afternoon, the snow had turned to rain and mostly washed away.

It Wasn’t Like Christmas at All

Most years, I delight in Christmas. I love the smell of the tree. I enjoy selecting and wrapping gifts. And I appreciate the focus on family, friends, warmth and light in the darkest days of the year.

But this year, that delight hasn’t really shown up. I waited for it the first few weeks, but at this stage (only 3 days until Christmas! announces the snowman countdown clock on the house down the street),  I have to accept that the season is passing me by this year.

“It’s the economy, ” a co-worker said. “No one is really in the spirit this year.” And that could be part of it, I suppose. With the economy in mind, my family decided to have a more low key holiday. We cut down our gift lists and we’re buying less, selecting more practical gifts for each other.

The smaller shopping list could have meant more time for all the things that I love about the holidays, but so many other things demanded my attention this year. At times, the holiday has felt like just one more thing on our to-do list.

“Do you think the wedding stuff is getting in the way of Christmas?”, I asked Mr. WholeHog recently.  “Of course,” he answered. Instead of sending Christmas cards this year, we’re designing wedding invitations.  I haven’t wanted to be in the stores, thanks in part to a wretched experience we had when we attempted to register for gifts.

But the other night, appropriately at yoga, I thought, what if this is enough? What if the gifts I’ve bought — even if they’ve simply been ordered online and not lovingly hand-chosen — were enough? What if my sole baking project — the lone batch of molasses cookies, oh wasn’t I optimistic! — is enough?  What if those rare moments when I felt cheered by Christmas lights, or a decked out tree, or a park full of Santas were enough?

I’d planned to post a gift guide here, but perhaps what we need more than a push to buy more is the reminder that all the wishes for peace this time of year are not just for world peace, they’re also for peace of mind.

Whether the economy has taken your job or your home or just your sense of security, or whether you have too many projects cluttering up your life at the moment, I hope you’ll consider doing something that brings you peace of mind. For me, that meant finally finishing that book I started last July, and spending an evening watching Young @ Heart — a movie guaranteed to make you laugh and feel grateful simply for life.

A Time for Gifts & Giving

I’ve been slow to warm up to Christmas this year. But I’ve found that one sure-fire way to catch a little holiday spirit is to give to those who truly need assistance. Charitable organizations especially need our help this year given the economic decline.

This year, I gave to many of the same organizations that I’d supported in 2007, but there are others that also deserve your consideration, such as:

San Francisco/Bay Area

La Cocina -  La Cocina is Spanish for “the kitchen”, and that’s exactly what this organization provides: access to a commercial kitchen space so that low-income people can turn cooking skills into a business. La Cocina cranks out everything from empanadas to brownies to chai. It was behind Kika’s Treats, one of my favorite desserts and a great stocking stuffer. (In fact, much of what La Cocina cooks up can be excellent gifts. Stop by their booth at  at the Saturday Ferry Building Farmers Market, right next to Fatted Calf, to sample.)

Glide – Glide lives the Christmas spirit every day of the year, providing free meals to needy people in San Francisco. And not just one free meal a day, three meals a day.  This year, Glide is feeding more hungry people (this Thanksgiving, nearly 7,000 people showed up) and paying higher food costs.

The Family Giving Tree – Every year, with a little help from The Family Giving Tree, I get to play Santa. FGT gives people like me (and you?) the ability to make a child’s Christmas wish come true with the ease of online shopping: FGT posts  a child’s wish online, you enter payment information and they take care of getting the gift to the child.

Nationwide

NothingButNets.net – I admit that I first heard of this on The Colbert Report. A $10 donation provides a net to help those in poor areas of the world protect themselves from malaria-ridden mosquitos.

The Humane Society – The Humane Society is leading the fight against factory farming. Thanks to The Humane Society’s, Prop 2 passed in California, and the Humane Society also exposed abuses by a California feedlot earlier this year — ultimately leading the USDA to ban “downer cows” from the food supply.

Note: Be aware that donating often puts you on the organization’s mailing list. I try to get as little junk mail as possible, but my normal notes of “do not mail to this address” have generally been ignored.

It’s Christmas Time in the City

On our usual trip to the Saturday farmers market, we noticed a number of people downtown were sporting Santa suits.

Later that day, I was in Lower Haight where there were even more Santas (and one random penguin). Their destination appeared to be Duboce Park where the wanna-be Santas could play in a bounce house, or just network with the other Santas.

I was told that they were taking part in Santarchy, an annual bar hopping trip by Santa-impersonators.

It’s Not The Herb But The Spice

I’m not ready for the holidays yet. Maybe I’m still carrying a grudge against the early onslaught of Christmas music in the stores and holiday ice rinks in San Francisco. (I don’t mean to be a Grinch, but I can’t help but think of the energy used to keep the ice rinks frozen on those 70 degree days we had last month.)

Although I’m not quite ready to pull out the holiday decor or put up a Christmas tree, I am solidly ready for cookies. My friend Natalie smartly sugested that it was time for work step aside in favor of “cookie baking and consumption”. I couldn’t agree more.

My go-to holiday cookies are molasses crinkles. The recipe I use was culled from the old Craigslist food forum, back in the days when the forum was full of great cooks and recipes. (It’s now unfortunately troll-infested). They’re dead simple to make and really fast to make, too. You can go from thinking about cookies to eating freshly baked cookies in about 20 minutes. A welcome gift during this often-hectic time of year.

The cookies themselves are soft, spicy and go perfectly with a cup of tea. What better way to ease into the season?

Note: I don’t think I’ll devote all December to the holidays as I did last year, but I’m sure I won’t be able to resist a few Christmas-related posts.

Police Blotters – November 2008

My birthday month brought a wealth of funny or simply odd police blotters.

• 3:38 p.m. — A woman reported her neighbor was threatening to put dog feces in her driveway because he claims she leaves it behind from her dogs.
• 10:43 p.m. — A woman requested a welfare check on her boyfriend whom she had last heard from at 6:30 a.m. She said he might be out four-wheeling, and she didn’t want to drive up from Sacramento unless he was home.
• 5:40 p.m. — A man reported a backpack containing a large amount of drugs inside had been stolen. He called back at 5:55 p.m. to report his neighbors found it under his kitchen sink.
• 10:14 p.m. — A woman reported the tenants directly above her were making so much of a disturbance her birdcage had fallen to the floor.
• 12:37 a.m. — A woman reported someone was outside her window hooting like an owl. Police confirmed it was an owl and not a person.
• 6:28 p.m. — A man two men in a white Toyota pickup with a camper shell yelled racial statements while he was riding his bicycle; one threw a Mountain Dew at him.
• 6:19 a.m. — A caller reported a suspicious brick outside the front door. Officers found it was a bag of clay.
• 10:37 a.m. — A caller reported being punched in the face by a woman outside of a business. Officers located the suspect in her car in a downtown parking lot with a knife strapped to her leg. She was arrested on suspicion of battery and possession of marijuana.
• 12:27 p.m. — A caller reported being assaulted with a plastic bag full of doorknobs.
• 10:12 a.m. — A caller from a business reported a man was stripping and bathing.
• 10:54 a.m. — A caller reported a man was drinking in the business. He was going out to his car and pouring Jim Beam into a soda cup.
• 6:50 p.m. — A caller reported a reckless driver unable to maintain lanes. The driver was found to be elderly and lost.
• 3:15 a.m. — A caller reported a shadow outside the residence.
• 9:22 p.m. — A caller reported an elderly man, possibly in his boxers, thumbing a ride. ["Possibly" in his boxers? If they weren't boxers, what were they??]
• 1:20 p.m. — A caller reported a man washing items in the creek. The man was gold-panning.
• 5:08 p.m. — A caller reported a goose was stuck in a fishing line near the pond adjacent to the ballfield. The Wildlife Care Center was advised and later it reported the “goose was loose.”
• 4:04 p.m. — A man reported a pig was chasing him on his property and would not let him get in his vehicle.
• 9:50 a.m. — A woman reported she could smell meth cooking at the old Jewish cemetery. Police were unable to locate any suspicious smell.
• 5:29 p.m. — A caller  reported “promiscuous shooting” in the area.
• 5:40 p.m. — A woman reported a dead squirrel in her mailbox. She said she previously had found beer cans in the mailbox and has a restraining order against her neighbor.
• 9:22 a.m. — A caller reported someone just went the wrong way on the roundabout.
• 10:39 a.m. — A caller from the reported a painting called “Shaman in the Sky” was stolen from a cabin.
• 7:59 p.m. — A woman reported someone defecated on her bed. She also has heard knocking from underneath her mobile home intermittently for the last few years and has found human feces in her yard.
• 4:13 p.m. — A caller reported a goat was “screaming, jumping, drooling, laying down.”