Taking it all in

Had a setback today with what should have been a reasonably simple repair to the house. The previous owner's installed a water heater that was bigger than the old one.... this had the unfortunate side effect of meaning that the vent hole that had been cut into the brick was below the heater's vent level. So the technical term for what we have is a "negative grade condition", i.e. the pipe points down toward the vent, and in the crook of the vent gas can build up and explode.

You would think the previous owner of the house would be responsible for this. They are after all responsible for ensuring that water heater is strapped into place so that a minor earthquake doesn't topple it, causing it to explode. But we are not so sure. The previous owners disclosed that the vent from the heater to the exterior of the house had become decoupled and that they weren't responsible for coupling it. It has since been coupled --by a nice guy that their real estate agent dispatched-- in a manner that could only be described as a code violation. Still, I can't be sure we're not going to have to take the hit here.

These sorts of things pile up after you move in. The rainy season comes along and the next thing you know there's an inch deep puddle just outside your front door. The brick at the bottom of the puddle, is thick with algae and getting thicker. The puddle is right where your doormat should go, only if you put it there, it gets soaked through and fools people into thinking they should use it.

Meanwhile the brick paths in the backyard are slowly being overtaken by weeds tall enough for the wind to blow them around. Where do these things come from? The plant beds in the back yard were covered in tarp, the tarp was covered over with bark and yet --no matter-- the weeds just keep coming. The problem implies a range of products that I am only dimly familair with, in an aisle of Home Depot that folks who shop at Farmer's Markets probably aren't supposed to venture down.

I am experiencing strange reactions to the weather. I know it takes wind to for a storm to move on, to clear out the clouds and fog. But a morning of 20 to 40 mph winds toppled my olive tree and prompted some sudden staking and lashing of a tree still very much in its' pot. Now we have more atypically warm sun, which makes A. and the cats much happier. But every time the sun comes out, more of the weeds appear.

Maybe the rain going away is a good thing after all though, because I've just noticed that rain water has taken to streaming into our basement. Confounding all expectations, the previous owner placed a drain right where the streaming happens. This is one of the few design considerations that seems to have held up to even the most casual of scrutiny.

The door from the kitchen to the backyard for instance has a threshold that is routinely below the waterline for for the doorway. It is constantly wet, and we've both nearly slipped on it numerous times. All of this does not deter the ants though, who have arrived and just keep on arriving despite daily mass executions. Despite the occasional rendering of their tribe into a kind of paste as we slip our way into the kitchen.

Most of the time I feel that the onus is on us to handle these things with aplomb, to not sweat the small stuff, and to not let the bastards get me down. In closing, I'd like to give a shout out to one such bastard. I don't know who he is but his tag is on the telephone pole outside our house, and also on our garage door:

I Have an Olive Tree

A couple of christmases ago we visited the Ridge winery on Lytton Springs Road. They had large olive bushes on a patio outside the tasting room, and I was hooked more or less immediately. When we entered escrow on the house, one of our first trips was to East Bay Nursery, where I lobbied for a couple olive trees in the backyard. I didn't have to lobby hard. The tree makes a pretty compelling case for itself, and there's an enormous one across the street from the house. Any olive trees of ours would have contextual relevance.

Still, I was thoroughly surprised to come home from work on the night of my birthday and find one in the backyard. I was, to be fair, more surprised to find stakes for it in the bathroom - my first thought was that they were giant rain sticks of some kind. As a friend of mine said,"Wow. What a f*cking thoughtful gift."

It's taken a few days for the weather to be dry enough for me to get out there and photograph it.

Lights out

We took our annual Christmas walk through the neighborhood the other night. We usually stick to our side of the lake, but this year we crossed over the 580 freeway and followed Trestle Glen Road for a few blocks before heading up into the hills between Grand Lake and Park Avenues. It's the sort of neighborhood that folks aspire to live in (whereas people describe our neighborhood as cool or nice). For instance, a guy pedaled up to our place a couple of weekends back sporting several hundreds dollars worth of bicycling footwear. It turned out that he lived on Trestle Glen and was considering buying a place in our neighborhood for his daughter.

It's difficult to describe this area without addressing the relative wealth that distinguishes it. An interesting and possibly telling point: of the 10 businesses Google Maps flag as local to or serving Trestle Glen none are actually on that road. Houses throughout the area are typically large, impressively appointed, and unusually well maintained. Along Trestle Glen in particular, a housing association maintains strict guidelines with regards to yard maintenance (I'm dimly recalling that there is a preferred yard services vendor for the association that is more exclusive than preferred) and appearance in general. In one 2 block stretch I counted 14 wreaths that looked haltingly similar. While this sort of thing is pretty common in subdivisions these days, it is also thoroughly contrary to most people's perceptions of Oakland.

Visiting wealthy neighborhoods to check out christmas lights brings its own set of expectations, and for the most part we were let down. A few houses really went the distance, but mostly we saw big Christmas trees in large street facing windows. Along the way we did notice some new types of christmas lights, including the large nested orb of light you see below.


A tree full of these is pretty impressive:

Light in December

Winter is gathering some momentum this week. We've made multiple braises, concocted multiple squash soups, and the days just keep getting shorter. I grabbed the shot at left after aelis pointed out the sunset, I think it was just after 4:30 in the afternoon. She finds the shorter days depressing, whereas I feel as if I have a special relationship to the accelerating darkness - my birthday falling on the winter solstice. We fall on either side of the question of rain as well.

The quality of light this time of year reminds me of a trip we'd taken to Ireland a few years ago. We arrived in late December and it felt as though there were only a handful of hours of full sun to be had. The photo below was also taken at about 4:30pm, just after we'd come back from an early dinner in Belfast.


Of course, this being California and us living in one large city and very near another, we have pollutants to help give our sunsets additional postmodern oomph: