Washed up ruins

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

My first-ever photo-taking excursion was with my friend Caela while we were living in San Francisco. It was seven years ago already. Caela had spied these ruins of an old public bathroom that had fallen when the cliffside gave way and had since been graffitied.

The site is a place called Land's End. It's at the tip of the San Francisco peninsula overlooking the strait where the San Francisco Bay meets the Pacific Ocean. In the top photo, you can see the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. To get down to the beach, we had to follow a long and windy path and step over a lot of obstacles. We'd timed it so we could watch the sun set over the Pacific Ocean, which was great, except when we found ourselves having to follow the same long and windy path back out in the dark. Obviously, we made it out safely.
 

I'm participating in the Photo Hunt today with the theme Ruin(ed).
Click here for more about the Photo Hunt and to view other participants.

Wordless Wednesday: More San Francsico

Here are three photos from my trip to San Francisco last week. The first is of various mushrooms inside a store at the Ferry building. The second is of the Bay Bridge taken from behind the Ferry building.



This last photo is of the fortune cookie factory in China Town. It's a little hole-in-the-wall place off a back alley. You literally walk in the door and you're in the middle of the factory watching this lady make cookies.



To see more photos of my trip to San Francisco, visit my San Francisco set on Flickr.

Click here for more about Wordless Wednesday and to see other participants.

Wordless Wednesday: San Francisco

In honor of my current trip to San Francisco, I pulled out a few old photos I took when we lived in San Francisco back in 2001.



These giant legs were over a store at Haight and Ashbury streets. I have no clue if they're still there. It's one of my favorite quirky photos of the city.



This photo was taken at Land's End. It's right at the tip of the San Francisco peninsula overlooking the strait where the San Francisco Bay meets the Pacific Ocean, which is the Golden Gate that the bridge is named for. My friend Caela is taking a photo of the sunset while laying on the ruins of an old public bathroom that's fallen with the cliffside and has subsequently been graffitied. This was my first photo excursion with my first digital camera.

To see some of my other favorite photos of San Francisco, visit my San Francisco set on Flickr.

Click here for more about Wordless Wednesday and to see other participants.

A Beacon Time Capsule - April 13-19

A brief look at where this blog has been:

A year ago, I was blogging about:
I was on a blogging hiatus.


Two years ago, I was blogging about:

Acting class = surprisingly fun -- about my attempt to shake things up in my life by taking an acting class.

'Shout out for my homiez' -- my first attempt at link love.

Dead trees with print on them? -- about the future of newspapers.

Family outing and Parking (?) at the outlet mall -- about an excursion with my mother and sister.

Remembering the Great Quake -- about the anniversary of the San Francisco Earthquake.

Prior to that:
This blog didn't yet exist, but I back-posted an article from April 13, 2004, titled Frustration with contests, about my results in a love-scene writing contest.

In praise of my little yellow truck

My little yellow truck just hit 100,000 miles yesterday.

Of course, I managed to miss the grand moment. Saw it 20 miles pre and 30 miles post. It's probably for the best that I missed it, because I might have been tempted to pull out my camera and document the event. Using a cell phone while driving is bad enough, but using a cell phone to take a picture while driving has to be much worse -- and who would want to see that photo anyway?

I'm probably jinxing myself here, but my 2001 Nissan Xterra has spent her working years doing the daily commute in the Chicago area, and shows no signs of even contemplating retirement yet.



Oh, I remember when the little yellow truck was young. She cut her milk teeth on the steep grades of California Street in San Francisco, showing off for all those ancient cable cars chugging alongside her. She wasn't even a teenager yet when she carried Marriott and me cross-country to Chicago. (Am I carrying the metaphor too far? By "wasn't even a teenager yet" I mean she hadn't hit 10,000 miles. Oh, and did you catch the cross-country reference? Xterra. Cross-country. Get it? Talk to me privately if you didn't.)

The little yellow truck is the third vehicle I've gotten to drive past the centenarian mark.

First there was the blue muscle car - a 1972 Pontiac LeMans (350 V-8) that my grandfather used to own. The only thing that would have made her cooler (all the guys told me) was if she had two doors instead of four. But, hey, we all have our faults.

Then there was my little red car - a 1991 Pontiac Sunbird. She had front-wheel drive, a sun roof and a really nice ability to never show her dirt (one of the guys at work was constantly asking if I'd just gotten her washed -- like I could afford to pay for regular car washes while working at a weekly newspaper). In her later years, the little red car developed a few quirks, but she served me well.

I guess I have a thing for thinking about my cars in terms of color, but at least they have color. All my husband's cars over the years have been the "little black car" - how boring. ;-) But, then again, my husband and I don't always agree on nick-names, as he likes to call my Xterra the "big yellow bus", which actually brings to my mind images of those short buses the school district used to drive students with special needs. I digress.



Since this is a post in praise of my little yellow truck, I won't complain about her gas mileage. It's a fault that's not unique to her. Most of her friends on the road are guilty of the same.

Instead, I'll praise her for her virtues. Her faithful service. Her ample passenger and cargo space (Loki and Thor positively adore her). Her stadium seating and rooftop basket that give her a distinctive profile. And her quirky little first-aid kit that gives her such a cute bump on her rear, even if the kit contents are probably out of date now.

I'll stop blathering on now. I know she's just a car. But yet...

Australia - Day 1 - Travel Day

Nearly 30 hours in transit. Give or take.

The morning started out sleep-deprived. I was up most of the night packing and trying to finish a project for work. I successfully got everything packed (although my suitcase could have used at least another round of culling), but the project didn't get finished.

Then we spent far too long with Felicia going over dog/house sitting issues. Loki and Thor adore her, and she's watched them several times before without problem, but the fretting was for our benefit. With Thor's history, and especially after his stunt at the vet's office in May, only a total lockdown would allow us to relax on this trip.

Finally, it was noon. We said our goodbyes to the dogs and Felicia, then we were off.

Or so we thought.

The taxi wouldn't start. A mechanical delay in our driveway -- run back in the house, get the dogs excited, grab my keys, pull out my truck, jump the taxi, pull the truck back in, run the keys back in the house, get the dogs all excited again, say goodbye again, and pray that this wasn't an omen of bad things to come on this trip.

Now we were really off.

All seven of us met up at the airport. Mom, Jeff (my brother-in-law) and my nephews came together in a taxi, while my sister came in via the El from her half-day of work downtown. (Heather was going on even less sleep.)



Dave and I were in First Class to San Francisco. I'd been hoarding Mileage Plus miles for years to be able to afford Business Class on this trip, and since this leg didn't have a three-class airplane, we got the First Class treatment. Although, I didn't get to fully enjoy it, since I was still trying to finish my project for much of the flight. But hey, it was something to do.

Mom, Heather, Jeff and the boys decided to hang out at the SFO airport during our five-hour layover, but not me and Dave. We were in San Francisco. So, we hopped on BART at the airport and did a quick dinner and tour of Union Square and Chinatown. We tried to pop in on Skip at West Coast Leather (I'd done some freelance work for him while we lived in San Francisco and later), but the store was closed.

At least the Fortune Cookie Factory was open. Tucked away in a little alley in Chinatown, it's always a favorite stop of mine.

Silly us, we'd forgotten how cool San Francisco weather is in July, and spent much of the time shivering. I should have remembered, since the July day in 2001 when I found myself turning on our house's heating system is scarred on my brain. (Mark Twain is credited with saying that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.)

Felicia emailed while we were in San Francisco to let us know the dogs are doing well. I'll post that email, since Felicia is so good about reassuring us that Thor won't do anything stupid.

We met back up with the family in the International terminal with plenty of time to spare for our 11 p.m. flight.

But then came the truly difficult part of the journey -- Mom couldn't get on the flight.

As the widow of a retired United employee, Mom was flying space-available on this trip. Well, there was space available on the plane, but no standbys were given seats. Something to do with load factors and wind and fuel. (Not getting a seat is a gamble all employees are prepared for and used to -- the price for extremely inexpensive travel. If you want to be guaranteed a seat, you buy a ticket like everyone else -- or hoard miles.)

So, we boarded and Mom found a hotel room for the night. She'd try again in 24 hours on the next SFO-Sydney flight...

I worked on my project again on the flight to Sydney, finally calling it "done enough" at about the point we flew over the International Date Line. It didn't help me at all that the laptop somehow mysteriously forgot how to cut and paste, and I had no room to spread out all the documents I needed to trace to. Dave at some point suggested that I'd worked on it so long, I shouldn't have to call Tuesday a vacation day at all. If only. But again, it gave me something to do.

The best I can determine, I got maybe four hours sleep on the plane. This is where the Business Class seats really paid off as the seats reclined into a nearly flat bed. (That's in addition to having our own personal television sets and the food actually having flavor and texture.)

The sun was rising as we finally landed in Sydney. Our first hint of daylight in the roughly 14 hour flight.

It had been maybe 26 hours since we pulled out of the driveway. We still had about four to go in order to get to Melbourne, including the layover time.

We'd left Chicago and San Francisco on July 3 and arrived in Sydney on July 5. The Fourth of July was spent in pitch blackness somewhere over the Pacific, eaten up by the International Date Line.

Leaving San Francisco, five years on

It was five years ago this month when Dave and I moved back to Chicago after about a year-and-a-half in San Francisco. We moved out there during the height of the dot.com boom, just in time to watch the bubble burst. As we watched numerous friends lose jobs and struggle to get new ones, we made a judicious career retreat out of San Francisco.

We loved the city, though, and to me, my time there will always be a benchmark in my life.

Since I didn't have a full-time job then, I was in charge of overseeing packing and the movers, then driving the car halfway across the country to our new home in the Chicago suburbs. My girlfriend Marriott lived in San Diego and had the time available to travel with me. So I took a detour through San Diego to pick up Marriott, then we started our trek to Chicago, mostly following the path of the old Route 66.

To both of us, the trip was a fantastic experience. Every day along the route, we emailed a travel journal to our friends and family, and posted photos online for them to view. At many stops along the way, I mailed postcards to my dog, Red, who was waiting for me at my parents' house. (Yes, I knew she couldn't read them.)

I've kept those emails and postcard, and have posted them to my blog in the 2002 archives. The journey starts here: Travelog Prologue: Haley's Solo.

Treasures and memories

I discovered estate sales when we lived in San Francisco a few years ago. I'd be driving though the Sunset District and see a sign, and since parking was fairly easy, I'd pop in. It was a way to explore the houses in San Francisco. The row houses are just so different from the houses I'm used to in the Chicago area, and I'd love to have an excuse to go into one and poke around. I'd usually buy an old book or two, perhaps look at some of the tea cups wistfully. Mostly, it was a glimpse into someone's life.

When we returned to the Chicago area, I couldn't find the sales quite as easily. My husband and I stumbled on a good one and I bought a couple paintings for the hallway, but most of the time we were disappointed. The estate sales were often glorified garage sales in our suburban area of newer subdivisions. Someone had already gone through the exercise of purging before they moved into the house probably just a few years previously. We needed houses in older neighborhoods where people could accumulate for decades. When I stumbled on http://www.estatesales.net/, I finally started finding the sales I like. Fortunately, many are real close to my office.

I don't usually buy much, but I might. Mostly, it's an exploration into a neighborhood and an unknown person's life. Sometimes it leaves me a little bit sad.

Take the sale I went to today over my lunch break. A labyrinthine ranch house in an older neighborhood. The man obviously owned at least one, possibly more Burger King franchises. Tons (and I mean tons) of toy promotions all over the place. Boxes of Pocahontas, Toy Story, Scooby Doo stuff still in wrapping. Disney tie-ins galore. Then there were the Christmas decorations, the train models, the basement bar with the old empty liquor bottles, the military clothes in the closet, old saxophones and accordions, the vintage lace wedding dress, the boxes and boxes of romance novels - Nora Roberts, Jude Deveraux, series Harlequin - the plaque that said "I love you Nana and Papa", the tell-your-family-history fill-in-the-blank book (unwritten in, of course), the prayer books and religious paraphernalia, the dog crate in the garage and the book with the chewed-up corner (I've got one of those at home already). A lifetime of dreams and aspirations, precious collections, cherished objects.

As I explored, I created a history for these people, and I wondered about the dozens of people exploring the house with me. What were they seeing? Why were they buying what they were buying? A house to furnish? Collectibles to resell on eBay? A toy for a nephew?

I walked out of there with one $2 Star Wars Return of the Jedi glass. In shades of orange and brown, the glass depicts a scene: "In the Tatooine desert, Han Solo takes aim with his laser pistol while Luke Skywalker brandishes his Jedi lightsaber above the Sarlacc Pit. In the background, Jabba the Hutt's giant sail barge bursts into flames." I'd found it in a box in a corner of the basement.

"The missing piece of a collection?" the check-out lady asked. "No. It's got Han Solo on it," I replied, like that explained everything. How could I say that I was a writer and this character I've created has a fascination with Han Solo? I was buying it for my office - a precious possession for a person who didn't exist except in my head and on the pages of an unsold manuscript.

As I was walking down the tree-lined street back to my car, my treasure cradled in my hand, an older gentleman asked, "Did you leave anything?" I smiled. "Oh, there's plenty there. Trust me."

I wonder what treasures he walked out with. And I wonder how they are ever going to clear out that house.

There's a sale next weekend that looks especially intriguing to me, but it's pretty far away - all the way in Lakeview in Chicago. "This 2 flat has been in the family for 4 generations. Come and dig through the packed basement on a rare treasure hunt! Nothing was ever thrown away!"

Whiskey delivered and a wedding 'comemmOrated'

My two bottles of Hotaling's whiskey arrived safely, and one was immediately repackaged and transported to New York over the weekend to give to a friend from our San Francisco days.

That same bottle will then be transported across the pond to London, where Marc will, I hope, put it somewhere near his Golden Gate Bridge dining table. It will be one well-traveled bottle of whiskey (San Francisco - Chicago - New York - London).

Marc and Lesley also had a gift for me. A year ago, when Prince Charles married Camilla, I asked if they could pick up some sort of souvenir for me -- perhaps a tea cup if it wasn't too much effort. I thought it would be a hoot to have. A lark. Well, Marc and Lesley delivered, and then some. LOL. This cup is classic. Typo and grainy photos and all. (Even the wrong date, since the wedding was delayed by a few days for Pope John Paul II's funeral.) My husband has already called dibs on it. Any time he needs to use a mug, he promises, it will be that mug.

The wonders of the internet

I post a need... and someone responds.

Thank you, Lewis, for doing a search for Hotaling's whiskey, finding my site and reading about my search to acquire some of the whiskey, then directing me to Vintage Wine & Spirits near San Francisco. (This is a lesson to me to try using a different search engine sometimes!)

I've placed an order, and if all goes well, I will soon have some Hotaling's whiskey in my possession. (If anyone's looking, the store appears to be down to its last three bottles in stock.)

Just to tie this in to another previous post, the two bottles I purchased cost almost exactly what I made in the garage sale last weekend.

Hotaling's Whiskey

Ever since reading on the Anchor Brewing website that the company had produced a special-edition commemorative Hotaling's Whiskey, and then writing about it last month, I've been interested in acquiring a bottle. After doing a little research locally and scouring the internet, I emailed the brewing company directly to find out if any local distributors carried it.

Here is the response I received yesterday: "Our Hotaling's is available only in California. Unfortunately, since we bottled only 30 cases of it, it is sold out."

The funny thing is, I don't even like whiskey. (I aspire to, though.) What I like is the history surrounding the whiskey. The San Francisco connection. Plus, I know it would look really nice in the bar my husband and I had built in our living room.

I know I'm not the only person attracted to the idea of the Hotaling's whiskey. For the small number of hits this site receives, I've noticed that a percentage of people have found my site through internet searches for Hotaling's whiskey.

And in my quest to find the bottle, I admit to doing a little searching of my own. Here are some interesting sites I found:

• Discussion about Anchor's Hotaling's Whiskey: Whisky Magazine
• About Anchor Brewing Company : San Francisco: Designated Brewery
• About the history of Hotaling's Whiskey: Guided by History: In Good Spirits: "Hotaling"
• Someone who tried the Anchor Hotaling's Whiskey: Cocktails with Camper English: Hotaling's Whiskey

Remembering the Great Quake

If, as they say, God spanked the town
For being over frisky,
Why did He burn the churches down
And save Hotaling's whiskey?

So goes the poem by Charles Kellogg Field written shortly after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. According to the Anchor Brewing Company, which has produced a special whiskey to mark the occasion:

After the disaster, several clergymen asserted that the catastrophe had been divine retribution, visited upon the City by the Bay for its wicked ways. Thanks in no small part to the pluck, resolve, and ingenuity of its staff, however, A.P. Hotaling & Co.'s Jackson Street whiskey warehouse survived. And so, "while millions of dollars worth of normally non-inflammable material was reduced to ashes," as the Argonaut would later report, thousands of "barrels of highly inflammable whisky were preserved intact in the heart of the tremendous holocaust."

Yesterday marked 100 years since the San Francisco Earthquake.

I miss San Francisco. The mountains. The ocean. The bay. The nightlife. The history. The hills. The people. I could go on and on. There's so much to love about the city.

It's been fun reading and watching all the coverage of the 100-year anniversary of the quake. I wish I'd made plans to be there. I would have loved to be on Market Street at Lotta's Fountain at 5:12 a.m. yesterday.

To read some excellent and extensive coverage of the anniversary of the earthquake, go to the Great Quake page on SFGate.com.

(Aside to Mom and my sister: Can I add a bottle of the Hotaling's whiskey to my birthday list? It would look nice in the bar...)

Travelog Prologue: Haley's Solo

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2002 1:44 AM
Subject: Travelog Prologue: Haley's Solo

January 4, 2002

I have arrived safely in San Diego and am at Marriott's house. Very tired after nine hours of driving by myself and a few nights of minimal sleep as to-do lists rolled around in my head and kept me awake.

The movers left at about 3:30 yesterday, then I ran around frantically doing last-minute weeding, cleaning and general chores until after midnight. (I did stop long enough to watch Survivor on television, naturally.) I was out of bed by 7 this morning with more chores and packing to do, and finally left the house in San Francisco for good at about 11:30. Another hour to run around town with errands (ie: get an oil change for the car), and I was finally on the road at 12:30. Whew!

I took U.S. Route 101 from San Francsico and most of the way to San Diego. Very pretty and much more interesting than the way Dave and I drove in October (Interstate 5). Winding expressway through hills and valleys, and a tiny portion (1-2 miles in daylight) along the ocean. It wasn't nearly as gorgeous as Highway One, but it was still great scenery. I'd recommend it to anyone. Unfortunately, I didn't have time for a couple of stops I'd hoped to make, such as the Jekel Winery, the Hearst Castle, and an Elephant Seal colony near San Louis Obispo, but there will be future opportunities, I hope.

Once the sun set, I stopped for dinner at this touristy restaurant called "Pea Soup Anderson's." They'd been advertising on billboards for the previous 60-plus miles, so I had to stop. I even had the split-pea soup there and (gasp) liked it. (Peas are a vegetable, afterall).

Most of the day was driving, which was fine, except for my various aches and pains from all those chores I'd been doing. Thank god for my music selection. The Metallica and No Doubt were good, but the best driving music was from a band called Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies. They cover old favorite songs to a very fast and loud beat. So I could sing along to very energetic renditions of "Stand By Your Man" and "So You're Going to San Francisco." (Trust me, the irony of the last one wasn't lost on me.)

So, at 10 I got to Marriott's house and here I am promptly on the Internet. I guess I'm in withdrawal since I haven't been connected since Wednesday morning.

Tomorrow we're up bright and early to try to hit Sedona, Arizona by sunset. I think I'll let Marriott drive the first shift.

That's it until (hopefully) tomorrow night.