A better vegan potato latke picture

Yum. Just needs a couple hours prep and cooking.

Vegan potato latkes!

Well, the beginning of them.

Sometimes

The groceries don't all fit. Banana bread on the near horizon, due to the $0.99 manager's special ripe bananas!

Tonight's vegan food fest in Eugene

Cooked one pan at a time, due to logistical limitations. But it still only took about an hour. Nom nom.

You pick:

Really bored kid on a train? Or a really creative way to lounge on a train?

Headed up to Eugene to help K for a few days, then a big ol' trip to LA. Whee!

Thai tofu red curry

With onions, zucchini, a fresh jalapeno, ginger, and basil from the garden.

Hurry: it won't be hot for long!

Electrical

Replacing this busted receptacle is actually quite trivial as electrical jobs go.

It just gets a little tiring if it's on the third floor/attic, and the circuit breaker / electrical panel is in the basement. And you're home alone. And the last breaker you try is the correct one.

Ah, well: it's done now. And nice to have a electrical receptacle that is not half open.

I'm not bragging. But:

You got 58 of 60 possible points.

Your score was: 97 %

Congratulations, you passed!

Last night's dinner

Simple but delicious: pasta, sauce, and TVP made to be kinda sorta like vegan ground beef.

All duly assembled agreed: it was tasty.

Homemade vegan apple pie.

Yum.

Okay, some more complaining.

Angels Stadium is perhaps the third worst ballpark in the MLB. All of the shitty, charmless concrete prison features of the Chicago White Sox field, and Kansas City's Kaufman Field, and Toronto's Rogers. At least the latter two have nice people.

Okay, no more complaining. 30/30.

I've just completed one of the longer bucket list items. I'm seeing a game at Angels Stadium: the 30th MLB stadium I've seen a game at.

Go As! Um, I mean, go Angels. Oh, who really cares.

Probably the second

most depressing ballpark I've been to. Sad that it's 30/30. Angels Stadium, Anaheim.

Moving by bike

Hell. Yeah.

96 degrees = let's blow leaves!

But, um, it's a dry heat.

Libraries: temples of freedom!

Great story from On The Media today: Librarians vs. the Patriot Act

Many of you have heard that I firmly believe that literacy is a hallmark of a free, democratic society, and therefore by extension, libraries are temples of freedom, and librarians warriors for freedom. This wonderful story gives us yet another example of how true this is.

Damn, I love libraries, and I am so happy to support them, and sing their praises. Here are a few of my favorites:

• the cozy South Lake Tahoe branch of the El Dorado County Library, with its gorgeous views of the lake
• the breathtaking Beaux-Arts grandeur of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library
• the Salt Lake City main library with its five story wall of glass and huge atrium
• my small but bustling local branch in Sacramento, Belle Cooledge, named for the first female mayor of Sacramento, where many moons ago, I volunteered with someone's Eagle Scout project to move all of the books from a prior location. Even at age 12 or so, I was aware that I was part of something important (and it's not a small task to move all the books from one library to another, and not mess up their order.) I typed my college admissions essay at the then brand new branch, on an IBM Selectric II, an analysis of the role of the 1848 Gold Rush and its role and legacy in modern-day racism in California.  
• the library at my middle school where I volunteered for nothing other than the love of books. I had a reading contest with another student volunteer to see who could read more books in a school quarter. I crushed him, in part by tearing through almost the entire Louie L'Amour cannon of brain-candy Spaghetti Westerns. 
• the library at Hampshire College, where I spent many hours hanging out with the awesome College Archivist and talking about the history of Hampshire. 
• my law school library, where I had a work study job which made me realize that I could avoid buying super expensive textbooks, and just do my reading with the single reference copy every class had. 
• Honorable mentions to every library I've ever had a card for, from Alaska to Massachusetts. 

I love that so many librarians take their jobs so seriously, and yet are still generally so damn nice. I love that public libraries provide warmth and shelter and connectivity and bathrooms to some of our society's most vulnerable, unhoused, and homeless persons. I love that libraries work really hard to keep up with the times, even as I mourn how few people I see check out real paper books to read these days. I love that I can be something of a hypocrite and find almost any book I want to read on my tablet through one of three libraries I have a current card for. I love the librarians on the third floor of the Seward Park Branch of the New York Public Library, one of the original Carnegie libraries, who immediately and loudly enforce the no cell phone ringing or talking rule. I love that almost every library in almost every US town has free wifi when you're traveling (and bathrooms, and drinking fountains.)

I LOVE LIBRARIES.

Leftover surprise!

A wrap I made a couple days ago in Cleveland, given new life in Sacramento.

R.I.P. Tamir Rice

I'm here handing out water and sunscreen. There are many beautiful folks doing beautiful things.

The wallshelves are in!

And the door is framed, made of 100% repurposed/scavenged/curbed wood. Downstairs, old palettes are being deconstructed and cleaned and sanded. This whole build a new bedroom in the attic project is coming together!

More on cargo bikes. And mean, nasty, aggressive people.

So, this started out as a pretty vanilla taking cans to the recycling center trip. I was amused that the photo showed the end of a (long disused) stretch of railroad track just down the street from my elementary school.

Then, less than a block after I took this photo, on a slow residential street, a very angry woman who was having a hard time keeping her mail on top of her car screamed at me (yes: screamed) "IF I WAS A COP, I'D BE HAPPY TO GIVE YOU A TICKET!!!"

I briefly considered my options, mostly stopping to ask "Um... what would you give me a ticket for?" since I genuinely wasn't doing anything wrong, much less anything worthy of a ticket. (Side note: the only thing I could even remotely think of is that she doesn't actually know what California Vehicle Code 23115 says about "rubbish vehicles", since it was absolutely covered and secured in such a way as to prevent anything from falling. I am guessing that she thinks anyone transporting aluminum cans by bicycle is a criminal.)

But I made an almost instantaneous decision to not interact: she struck me as the type of angry nasty aggressive person who might very well pack a personal sized pepper spray.

So I rode on. And went through various possible responses in my head. And tried hard to decide if this was a #driverwhohatescyclists or #driverwhohatespeoplewhomightbehomelesswhorecyclecans sort of thing. In the end, it probably was best to ignore her.

Made me sad for Sacramento, though. Especially since, if we could have had a reasoned conversation, I'm pretty sure I could have explained what I was doing, and why, and that I've lived here at least as long as her, likely longer (p.s. I went to elementary school less than a quarter mile away.)