Previous - 59. Ryecroft + Landscaping
Time
This morning I was doing a little math in my head and thinking about how I was 24 when I moved here to SF in 1976. That's the most obvious point to divide my life into a "before" and an "after." For my first 24 years I lived in cities of my parent's choosing, since then I've lived in SF, my choice.Since I moved a year after graduating from university, it is also tempting to view my first 24 years as my education, followed by my 40 years of career -- or careers. But that, too, is dramatically misleading.
I only started to read the Classics when I moved here. Even my knowledge of Greek and Roman philosophy was limited to what I had learned in a couple lower level philosophy classes at ASU. Starting to read Livy was one of those unaccountable -- but life changing -- decisions (like reading Samuel Eliot Morison's history of U.S. Navy operations in WW2 while I was in middle school) that have shaped my world view.
I also hadn't yet read Proust, Gibbon, Mann, or Fernand Braudel. It's like moving here was the start of my (auto-didactic) graduate education. If I were to meet the "me" of 1976 I would consider him annoyingly uneducated. (Also annoyingly moody and angsty, as are some of my current Buffy Board online friends of that age.)
Even in terms of military history (the subject I know best and the only thing I feel I could teach at a moment's notice) aside from the foundation in Pacific War Naval history and a superficial knowledge of some periods of European military history, I knew almost nothing. It has been a slow, cumulative process of delving deeper and reading wider. My understanding of even the Pacific War, the subject I knew best back then, has probably changed a half dozen times in the past 40 years. (This does help to put Caesar's "over-night" success in his 50's in perspective. Perhaps he wouldn't have been "Caesar" if given an army command 20 years earlier. Just as I maintain Napoleon wasn't "Napoleon" without his chief of staff, Berthier.)
My 40 years here in SF can still be sub-divided by careers: Student (2 years), bookstore clerk (7?), programmer (13?), greener (10?). Though, while the first and last sub-divisions have been the most learning intensive, the ones in the middle were only marginally less so -- for lack of time, mostly.
While I sometimes have "What if?" thoughts about attending Wesleyan or one of the Great Books colleges (or Sandhurst), I think SF has proven to be an ideal post-graduate school for me.
Peet's
I have dumped the Bank Cafe. It pains me to pay an extra dollar for my iced tea, but the impossibly slow WiFi was finally more than I could stand. Peet's opened a new, larger, location on Market a block further away, and I've been coming here now for about a week.I've written (a long time ago) about my fondness for Peet's interior design, which they've now updated. The front counter/table I'm now sitting at is still oak, but rough cut and not stained in the same way. I can't say I like it more, but it has it's own appeal. I'm sure this is much poorer quality oak -- probably pieces that would have been scrapped in the past -- so I like that they are doing something nice with wood that would have been wasted. Eventually, I will be writing on a sheet of paper and my pen will sink into one of the crevices and I will curse the high-concept of this surface, but for now I approve.
The people watching at the Bank Cafe was not bad, but this Peet's overlooks Market, our main drag, with wider sidewalks and a steady flow of a little bit of everything. The crazy woman I first noticed walking here and there in front of the cafe eventually came to rest on the cafe's seating that acts as a barier between the street and the cafe. I say "rest," but she seems unable to be "still." I would guess she's Southeast Asian. She seems childlike, in a demented sort of way -- she's been lying on her back picking at her fingers and toes since she assumed this position, never quite being still. It is hard to tell to what extent she is aware of her surroundings and, in particular, of the people around her. She seems oblivious.
I don't know if this is a Peet's in general thing or just at this location, but they play a surprising amount of Brazilian music from the '60s. Not a bad thing.
HOA
Back at my building we are in the process of seeking the origin of a leak. It is either coming from above -- though no one has any idea from where or how -- or it is rising from a poorly tiled shower in the bathroom (of that same unit that has been a thorn in my side since June.) For reasons I can only guess at, they thought it wise to paint the room before dealing with the rotted threshold between living room and bathroom. Now, understandably, they are not eager to open up that wall to find where the damage starts. We just today opened up a section of the "box" that conceals our sewer drain pipe as it traverses the bathroom to it's furthest point under the three kitchens stacked above. We determined that the water is not coming from that pipe (which would have been a nightmare to address) but that's about all we've learned. Odds are that it's coming from the shower on the other side of the bathroom wall, though, I admit, I don't quite see how.I've now painted the door and doorway (which I originally ignored/forgot) so my participation in this drama should be complete, unless it really is a leak from elsewhere in the building.
I am happy to see that we are still all being quite civil, given the summer we had. We've all lost patience at one time or another, but the HOA as a whole seems to be holding it together. Still, I will be happy to see the end of this year... and that's even before taking into account the Presidential election.
TV
To celebrate the end of my greening season, I went to Amoeba on Sunday and bought some DVDs. I finally found a copy of the version of Sense and Sensibility I love so much. And then, since they didn't have any of the TV shows I was hoping to find, I started Rizzoli & Isles. The hook for this particular murder procedural is that it focuses on a friendship between two women -- the Detective and the Medical Examiner. All of these shows have a characteristic way of starting an episode, and almost always it involves finding the body. R&I starts with a glimpse of the victim before death. I wish it didn't. But otherwise, the show has an amazingly talented cast and the core friendship is a shockingly novel thing to see on TV. (Note that this is not a new show, just new to me.)When I say it's a talented cast, I mean you know almost everyone from previous roles. Isles was previously a beloved character on NCIS. Rizzoli was on Law & Order for years. Donnie Wahlberg played one of my favorite characters on Band of Brothers.
Aside from two women engaging in a friendship that has little to do with men, the show seems pretty routine so far. It's like they had a TV Trope Checklist and were eager to check all the boxes. To be fair, I'm only four episodes in, but the tricks I learned for determining the murderer from watching NCIS and Bones and Castle and The Closer seem to still aply. And these tricks have nothing to do with evidence but instead with show pacing and how recognizable characters are. It's rare when the possible suspect you recognize from previous substantial TV roles, or from a long career now coming to a close, didn't do it.
I'm pretty sure I will complete the season I bought, but I'm not sure if I will trade this in for the next season. All the shows I mentioned above, had more interesting irons in the fire when they started. But I think this show is still on the air, so maybe what it has is engaging enough. This genre is so popular, you'd think someone would do something really novel -- and maybe someone has, I watch so little TV I wouldn't necessarily know.
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