In St. Petersburg Florida for an industry convention. On the lawn of the Museum of Fine Art there’s this bombax tree: 
No leaves this time of year, but a zillion giant red flowes. Impressive.
Also, a little over a mile away is St. Mary Our Lady of Grace, a lovely octagonal church I’d visited before years ago under similar circumstances, but failed to get pictures of this time.
Aaaand – that about sums up the highlights. Off to Tampa and a flight home. More book reviews coming up soon.
Ok, I’ll own up to doing a classic old guy thing: a couple years ago, at age of 58, needing a commute car and no longer having a full passel of kids to haul – I got a convertible. A 2010 VW Eos. Didn’t spend the retirement money or anything -6 year old car. Low miles, super well maintained. I can pretend to justify it, but – nah. Whim.
Well. Old balding guy with a slightly girlish hardtop convertible (our 20 year old daughter puts way more miles on it than I do, when she’s in from college – it looks good on her.). Trouble is, with a 10-15 minute commute and busy weekends, when do my girl and I get to tool around with the top down, wind in what’s left our hair, looking cool?
Last Sunday, we were surprised to find that we actually had a few hours in the afternoon unbooked. It was 70F outside, sunshine, and the recent rains followed by a couple weeks of sun had turned the Brown Golden State green. We headed out to a road that winds around the far side of Mt. Diablo.
On the map, the roads all show as tidy white lines. On earth, once you get a couple miles in on Marsh Creek Road, you’re on a single lane of bumpy paved road that tends to get washed out in places in rainy years. Two cars can squeeze past each other in many places; in many places not. It gets wider and better paved at Morgan Territory Regional Preserve, then drops down to Livermore Valley from there.
Mt. Diablo is pretty dramatic. We, however, were winding about its flanks and foothills, so the beauty was more subtle.
It was fun. Didn’t feel like a kid again or anything, but it was fun driving with my sweetheart.
Onward: We had discussed doing beans and rice for Lent as a family this year. Now, cooking at the Casa de Moore typically runs from pretty good to excellent, so beans and rice are not exactly likely to be much of a sacrifice. The Caboose, soon to be 14, wanted to be involved. I said we should do a batch or two before Lent so he can get the hang of it.
Cajun Red Beans and Rice:
Enough. I’ve got a bunch of reviews to write, and politics and science and Science! provide endless hours of terrifying amusement. Back in the saddle.
Elim Grove is a B&B in Cazadero, a tiny town along Austin Creek among the redwoods, ferns, and moss about 6 miles from the Russian River and the coastal town of Jenner.
My wife and I come back here whenever we can get away because it feels like another world even though it’s only 2 hours from the Moore Compound/House of Lost Play.
There are a couple of 1,000 year old redwoods on the property that the loggers somehow missed, but even the second growth pups are huge – it’s been maybe 75-100 years since the redwoods were logged in this area, they’ve had time to grow back.
The only day we could get away this year was yesterday, and Mark, the innkeeper, had one cabin with exactly that night free – otherwise, booked up in either temporal direction.
It was lovely:
Had a lovely time. Now doing the California yuppie tourist thing and stopping at boutique bakery and cheese shop to pay ridiculous prices for some snacks. They are very yummy, though.
Happy St Sylvester Day and Feast of Fools! Still 6 days of Christmas to go!
May God bless you and yours with good cheer and peace on this holy day!
Preparing a feast for 35-odd people (insert obligatory in laws joke here) and, having been on my feet for pretty much 3 days straight of shopping, prepping and cooking (40 lbs of pork butt and about 60-70 ciabatta rolls for pulled pork sandwiches, among other things), taking a break before rallying once more into the breach.
Something like that.
So, midnight mass, then Home to put the pork in the oven and bake the last couple batches of rolls, and in bed by 3:00. My beloved, who is part vampire or at least can get by on remarkably small amounts of sleep, maybe came to bed later – I wouldn’t know, as I was out cold and she was already up by the time I woke.
We made coffee and tea, and the 8 of us – 4 kids, g-ma, aunt Clare in from Baltimore, my wife and I – gathered round the table to see what we got in our stockings.
My beloved commanded that I take pictures. She wasn’t any more specific.
Some people are so hard to please.
I don’t cook with leeks a lot, but I’ve cut up at least dozens of leeks in my life – this is the first time I’ve come across this:
Setting aside the immediate thought: are leeks evolving into or devolving from onions RIGHT BEFORE MY VERY EYES? was struck by the beauty of it all. Details of this, and the next also fascinating if less dramatic leek I cut into:
After stopping to admire and photograph these beautiful vegetables, chopped them into bite-size pieces, mixed with halved Brussels sprouts, added a little olive oil, liberally salted and peppered them, spread them on a baking sheet, as roasted them in the oven. Earlier, had done the same to potatoes, yams, beets, and carrots, added whole garlic cloves, added thyme and rosemary and roasted separately – they take longer. Then mixed them all together and brought them to a post-caroling pot luck.
Several older couples attended -older than me, even. Imagine. A couple of people told me to tell my wife (who was off at the airport picking up incoming offspring) how good the vegetables were.
I smiled, and said I surely would.
Most years for the last decade, we Northern Moores have headed south the weekend before Thanksgiving to visit my little brothers and their families. Turns out, it’s generally cheaper – and a lot more fun – to rent a Newport Beach beach house at off-season rates than to put 6-7 people up in a Motel.
So, this year, we had 3 of the 4 extant children, grandma and a houseguest friend in a house at the north end of the beach one block off the sand. It’s been fun. Had the brothers ( and our elder daughter’s boyfriend – a first ‘family meets the boyfriend moment! He is a very nice young man) over for dinner yesterday.
Right now, the 5 of us left went to the Balboa Fun Zone for ice cream, then took the ferry over to Balboa Island from which we watched the sunset: 
Catching the return ferry back to the van, then to the house where there’s chicken to barbecue. Head home tomorrow.
Life is good.
Finally. It’s really only been 15 months since I started this project, it just seems like forever. Anyway, not *done* done – still need a door and a roof and to install the Mexican tiles, but: we made pizza tonight in our very own brick oven!
When we last left our intrepid yet reckless home improvement maniac, we had just put the first coat of stucco on over the ceramic insulation batting and chicken wire. The next day, the Caboose and I got up early and threw that second coat on before heading off to Sunday Mass:
Then, this morning, we put on the finish coat:
Since we were done well before noon, figured a new pizza oven needed an epic pizza peel, so I gathered scraps and drug out the table saw and clamps:
Around 6:00, we started the fire:
The dough was on its second rising:
Let the coals burn on the area where we’d be putting the pizzas for about 20 minutes, then shoved them to the back, swept the ash to the back as well (more or less) then started in with the pizzas:
We ended up making 4 medium-small pizzas, which proved plenty for five people. Things I learned:
Way fun.
Will review Riverworld, the novella, when I get a minute. I picked it up from Half Priced Books the other day as it is listed on John C. Wright’s list of essential SciFi reading, but I suspect he probably meant to include some or all of the 5 novels set in Riverworld, not just this one story. In the meantime:
Took Thursday and Friday off after we returned from our epic eclipse trip, mostly to work on the Brick Oven of Doom! In the last episode, I’d gotten the more or less decorative clay brick arch done, complete with a hand-cut stone keystone, and was feeling pretty good.
Next step: install ceramic insulation, chicken wire and 2-3 coats of stucco. On a roll…..
Weeeell, seems I miscalculated, mismeasured, or maybe used inside instead of outside dimensions, or something – because I came up a couple feet short! AHHHH!
What you see is a nice 2″ thick layer of high temp ceramic fiber insulation coming up short. What to do, what to do? Had some perlite left over from an earlier stage, sooooo – mixed it with a little Portland cement (5 to 1 perlite to cement ratio) built a little form, and cast a 2″ thick, 6″ high wall of insulation around the base. Don’t think perlite has anything like the R-rating as the ceramic fiber insulation, but I’m not ordering more since it takes a week and money to get it.
Effectively lost a day. Then, yesterday, tried to continue – and temps hit 105F. Even I, a madman, am not working in the sun under those conditions. Today, more of the same. So my dream of finishing this frustrating project this weekend died. I only need 2-3 days more!
On the other hand, my little orchard I planted end of winter/early spring is doing great:
And a couple of our 4 avocados:
13 trees in total. 2 of the 4 avocados are doing great; the other 2, planted in winter, are showing signs of recovering after looking so sad I almost yanked them up.
Following close planting – 18″ between related trees in a single bed, maybe 7′ between beds – because I don’t want big trees, I want small trees, and close planting (and relentless pruning!) gets you there.
Sigh. Maybe next weekend will be cooler?
On Tuesday, we toured the Nevada Northern Railroad yards in Ely (pronounced Eel-ee) and took a little train trip up past McGill. It was pretty:
On Tuesdays, it’s the #204, an old diesel locomotive from the 1950s, pulling the train:
We did get to tour the engine house, and see the old steam #40:
While it’s cool to see people keeping up old trains – the Ely yards are so isolated that, when the copper mining petered out, it just got abandoned instead of scrapped, thus accidentally preserving a piece of history – it saddened me to see all the beautiful tools sitting idle. 75 years ago, dozens of men spent their days running those huge lathes, a couple forges and smithies, a huge steam-powered wrecking crane (for lifting the inevitable wrecks when you’re running copper ore day in day out) and otherwise doing the sort of blue collar work of which a man could be proud.
Now? It’s a passion for a few hobbyists and obsessives, who keep a couple very cool steam engines running and few miles of track maintained. It’s nice, but it seems like a mausoleum to a better age.
Then we drove to Carson City down 50, “the Loneliest Highway in America” according to the signs. This stretch alternates between winding through mountains and crossing breathtaking plains. On this particular afternoon, thunderstorms were rolling through – or we were rolling through thunderstorms – so that the already beautiful scenery benefited from beautiful clouds, rainbows, and that lovely lighting that seems to accompany desert storms. Lonely but lovely, at least on this day. My Honest State Motto for Nevada (not a favorite state) is now Nevada: Not as Ugly as You Remember.
Wednesday morning, drove up to lake Tahoe to catch mass at St. Theresa’s in South Lake Tahoe. The drive up to the lake from the east side takes 20 minutes; from the west side almost an hour. That’s partly because starting from Carson City is starting at much higher altitude, and partly because the Sierra are much more abrupt on the east side, which is the leading edge of a massive granite uplift. A beautiful drive.
I’ve mentioned St. Theresa’s before. I managed to not get too obsessed over the horrible woodwork this time.
The two remaining kids wanted to jump into the lake before we headed down:
Verdict; Not as cold as feared. I will note that 10 minutes of wet was plenty, however.
Then back home, about a three hour drive.
Took today and tomorrow off to work on the Brick Oven of Doom. Back to working with regular clay brick and nice cheap regular mortar – turns out to be a lot more fun than those expensive refractory bricks and even more expensive refractory mortar. Here, take a look:
That’s the finished front arch. The door fits underneath it up against the slightly smaller inner arch, thus sealing off the heat and smoke better. Wanted to see if I could cut a stone keystone using a diamond blade on my 4.5″ angle grinder:
Cool, huh?
So this project has gone back to being fun. Tomorrow, I throw on 4″ of ceramic insulation, tie it down with chicken wire, and throw on the first coat of stucco. Then, between coats (I am anticipating two undercoats and a brown finish coat) I’ll install the Mexican tile.
Fun, right?
Coffee is a wonderful thing: had a couple cups at about 6:00, got some work in before 8:30 Mass, was starting to drag a bit, then had a quad-shot latte around 10:00, came home and worked until about 2:00, hit the wall and napped until 5 (good thing, too, as it was about 100F at that point) and then laid bricks until dinner. Yay, caffeine!
So, stressful week, still have a number of less than pleasant things to do, so, guy that I am, spent the day working around the house. Some trivial stuff like raked and watered the back lawn, watered the orchard I’ve put in in the front yard (front yards are useless – so mine’s got 13 fruit trees in it now, arranged in adorable planters of one kind or another) and a bit of tidying up.
(Now in Year 2 of what will most likely be a 4 year front yard project: got the trees and most of bricks along the walk in; need a wall, walk and fence along the street, a brick planter along the south side, and an expanded front porch. And a ton of clean-up. Among other things.)
But mostly worked on the brick oven. When we last left this insane project, I was trying to add about 12″ of shelf along the front, so that one would have a little space to use to get pizzas and bread in and out of the oven. Concocted an insanely complicated plan to bolt on an oak and Douglas fir butcher block shelf. Eventually realized it had too many ways to go wrong to leave much of a chance to go right. Soooo – poured a little slab using the threaded rod I’d already epoxied into the oven slab as rebar, added some cross pieces and – well, it looks OK:
Got some 6″ and 2″ square Mexican tiles to add a colorful surface, which is why it’s down 1/2″ from the oven floor.
After finally deciding the shelf issue, was ready to start building the oven! Got almost two courses in:
Tomorrow, with any luck, I can get the walls up and start building the framework for the barrel vault. The ceramic insulation pads I ordered got here – it’s not enough! Need to order some more. The 11″ square Guadalupana tile arrived for the arch on the side. Need to get done Current state:
It’s going to be really cute when I get it done.
And we had dinner out back in perfect California weather: low humidity, nice temperature, light breeze, no bugs.
And then got the killer sunset:
All in all, a very nice day. For a change. If I can gt a couple hours of writing in before bed, it will be darn near perfect!
Yard Sale of the Mind 
