California, get ready...

This summer, Art (at the tiller) sent a music video of himself playing in a band to his cousins in California. This home-grown band is called Radio the Ape. They are a local group of high school boys who have been playing together and writing music for about 3 years now. Last year, they won the local "Battle of the Bands." They were psyched. Their music is pretty catchy. The lyrics are good and they play pretty well. I particularly love the singer. (He's my youngest son!) I wrote in a previous blog about how great they sounded at a graduation party. Well. Their music video made the rounds out there in California. Art's Aunt sent it to her friends and they sent it on to their friends. It finally made it to Pierce Brosnan's personal assistant, who CALLED our hometown boys and invited them to play at the Jane Goodall Foundation's Day of Peace Festival, on the Santa Monica pier. I was in the house the night she called when they all gathered around the phone in Matt's room at the top of the stairs. The excitement was palpable. The boys were shaking they were so excited. I wouldn't have been surprised if one of them had burst into flames that night. They appointed Chris (my oldest) their "manager," since he had produced their sound recordings and knew a little about the biz.

We had a parent meeting the next week to discuss the possibility of actually making it happen. I was almost as excited as they were, and immediately volunteered to accompany the boys on their trip. We got the confirmation letter from the organizers -finally! The trip was ON. Robin and I used all our frequent flyer miles to purchase round trip tickets to LAX for 105.00 each. And we leave this FRIDAY.

I am excited for the boys, but secretly excited for me. I hope to meet Mr. Brosnan and get a photo taken with him. I know I will have a VIP pass as I will be "with the band."

This is one of those internet chance hook-ups. Four boys from small town Upstate get air time in California via the web because their Aunt knows somebody who knows somebody who took a second look and invited them to play gig at a Peace Festival in Santa Monica. My head is spinning. I guess I need to do laundry and pick out my outfit in which I will meet and greet celebrities who dig peace.

To view the video that got this all started:


And check this out: they are on the web page!
http://www.dayofpeaceca.org/htlm/music.html

What's wrong with these pictures?

When looking at these pictures in the waiting room, I was reduced to a pile of giggles and couldn't even fill out the heath history forms. There is something WRONG with these. I think if I had been really scared or nervous about seeing the chiropractor, this brochure would have sent me running, screaming into the street.

"Now just lie still, Mrs. Ploss. We are going to take care of that crick in your neck...EXECUTION STYLE!!"

(And BTW, Leon, you might just be right...)

A Sign of the Times

You know you live in a small town when your neighbor gives everyone she knows large bags of freshly picked peaches and tomatillos, and because of this, the local grocery store is cleaned out of cilantro before you can get there yourself. Parsley? lots. Cilantro? It looked like the coriander buzzards had swooped through.

This Old House

I live in a house that was built in the 1890's by a local baptist Minister named McLallen. It was a grand old place and was very modern for its' day, as the 3-hole latrine they used was actually attached to the back of the house. (No traipsing through the snow in the middle of the night) The holes have been covered over, shelves have been added and now we use it for storage. We fondly refer to this closet as "the 3-holer." The 3-holer provides great cold storage for food and drinks at Christmastime when the fridge gets full. I can only imagine what it must have been like to sit in there to use the facilities in the winter of 1897! Robin has suggested knocking this part of the house off, but I couldn't bear to demolish such a quirky piece of history. We had to rescue a sick cat out from one of the old holes once. She got in through the crawl space, got injured and we had to pry the seat covers off. There's still a bit of funk under that shelf after all these years.

At one point this old house was a nursing home. They were probably able to house 5 or 6 people here, and I am guessing that is the era when they laid down institutional asbestos tiling over the old wood floors. We have 2 bedrooms that still have it on the floors, and have covered a lot of the rest of it. There are 2 stairways in this house, a front stairway and a narrow back stair. It reminds me of my grandmother's house. She always referred to the back stair as the servant's stairway. Could be. Our floors are NOT level, we have cracked window panes, missing storm windows and creaky floors. But I like this house. It has character. There are some really cool wooden details in this house that are hard to find in new homes- like pocket doors, matching doors throughout, wide trim and large tall windows. Plus, this place has good karma. Happy people have lived here, and still do. I've had more than several people tell me this- people who have visited and people who have lived here while I've been in Japan. I think perhaps houses have auras, depending on their history. Ours has a happy one, at least.

I will tell you that one day shortly after we moved into this house, Nathan came down stairs from his room and told me he'd seen someone reflected in the mirror behind him. Nate was getting dressed in front of the mirror and saw a little old man in a wheel chair just looking at him. When Nate turned around to look in his room, nothing was there. I asked him if he felt afraid. Nope, it was just an old dude. He wasn't frightened he explained very matter-of-factly, as if he were telling me his light bulb needed changing. We've never had any experiences like that since. I'm sure all the drumming and electric guitar, all the loud singing and piano playing has been enough to clear the air of any lingering spirits.

We are planning on doing a few things to increase the energy efficiency of this old drafty place, so we started with an energy audit. This really nice guy named Blake (who lives in town here) came by to check things out. He checked for insulation, took pictures of every room, checked our appliances, our crawl spaces, our basement, our attic. The very coolest thing he did was to close up all the windows and doors and seal a very powerful fan blowing out into one of our doors. Then he and his assistant went around to find leaks. They went in search of blowing air. When it was all said and done, he congratulated me on having the windiest house he had ever audited. Wow! I feigned excitement, "What do I win??"

They will send me their report with prioritized suggestions for improvement in a couple of weeks. I guess we'll go from there.

I highly recommend it.

Robin and I are winding up our Honeymoon week in Maui. It's been great, other than a few minor inconveniences such as a chronically clogged toilet in our suite (not our fault!) and a sunburn rash on Robin's shins sooo bad, it looked like he waded through a fry cooker. Luckily, the sunburn didn't hurt, nor did it spread to all points of his exposed skin like it did on our Thailand trip. We have been very careful about the sun. Did you know that they make a spray-on 85 SPF? And I've heard there's even a 100, but I haven't seen it anywhere. I marvel at the people who seem to be able to lie about in the sun and just bake like roasted potatoes, turning a golden brown. Me, I turn crispy pink, sweat profusely and get bored, or too hot to breathe or even read. I am much more into adventure. Call me Action Alice.

We rented a jeep and have had it out on a couple of days with the top off, listening to reggae island music and visiting some of the local restaurants and art galleries. I think it was Sunday night when we wandered into a few galleries and talked with some of the owners. One man saw me point at a painting and get really excited about it. It was a beautiful seascape at sunset. The water breaking over the rocks and the colors and light dancing off the wave crests were wonderful. He pulled the painting off the wall and took it into a room with different lighting to show us how it changed with changing light. We talked politely about the painting, and then he told us to make him an offer. I chuckled and said I didn't think we were really in the market for a new painting and he told us that he'd make us a deal. Turns out the painting was ONLY 15 grand. I tried to keep a straight face and not laugh out loud. Turns out we chatted a little more and discovered that we all had teenagers and so chatted some more and parted like old friends. As we walked out of the gallery I leaned into Robin and said, "We're not in Kansas anymore!" Another gallery had a wonderful painting of a wooden boat, floating in a calm orange sunrise or sunset that also completely charmed me. I went and asked the woman in the gallery how much that one was...only 23 thousand. Sheesh.

On Monday we went para sailing. As soon as I saw it on Sunday, I decided it something I had to do. People in tandem and alone were being pulled behind speedboats, flown under parachutes, way above the beautiful blue water up in the beautiful blue sky. What could be more thrilling? Para sailing is the perfect metaphor for 25 years of marriage. Initially, it's a little scary. Are we sure we want to do this? Can we keep the parachute aloft? The lift off is scary, thrilling, extremely fun. Once in the air, I could relax and enjoy. We took pictures! We hooted and hollered! Then uh oh. The boat slowed and we dipped slowly down, near the water, fearing a dunking...and then full throttle up again! Up and down we went, mostly flying high, but with a couple of dips along the way. But there we were, right next to each other. Whatever happened to me was going to happen to Robin. Near the end of our ride, the pilot of our boat gave us a nice dunking and we dragged along for a few moments, getting soaked followed by a final soar above Maui, and the nearby islands. Sometimes you are up and sometimes down, but you're in it together, and in marriage, you're not necessarily harnessed together...but you get the idea.

Tuesday, which was our Anniversary was a full day. We took an early morning kayak trip to go snorkel with the sea turtles. The wind was in our faces as we paddled North to a protected cove. The turtles put on a good show and there were more varieties of fish species there than at our hotel beach near Black Rock. Our paddle back was much easier, the wind had come up and we tried to surf a couple of the bigger swells. Our boats were NOT sea kayaks. After lunch, we enjoyed massages. Then in the evening we took a sail on a huge catamaran. The wind was over 20 knots and the captain reefed the sails as we headed into the wind, but on the return reach, he let them out and did we fly! It was a gas and a half. We were going 8-10 knots and more when the wind gusted. Loved it.

On Wednesday, we putzed around in town. Had some errands to run, some paperwork to attend to and generally had a quieter day. We drove up North and found some windblown stretches of more rugged and less developed country, beautiful views and lots of people looking for the quiet beaches.

Yesterday we got up at 3:30 (ugh. and again I said ugh.) to catch a flight to The Big Island to go view the active volcano. This was a full day trip, and quite interesting. Hawaiians don't have municipal water, they have no mail delivery service and some have no cell service or electricity service. The side of the Big Island that we saw looked pretty depressed, the houses were not big, and yet the average cost of a one bedroom house is 400 thousand dollars. Most of the people here work low paying jobs and live pretty simply. Our bus driver/tour guide/singer-hula performer kept reiterating that point. Simple, laid back life style. On our tour we visited a waterfall (not as high as Taughannock) and walked through a lava tunnel. We viewed the steaming crater atop the volcano while eating lunch. We went to Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut factory, and an orchid green house. The very best part of the day was visiting the newly formed land area of the island. Since March of 2008, the Big Island has gained 500 acres of new land. It's a barren, black, gritty wasteland of lava rock as far as the eye can see. There are the coolest formations in the lava, twists and ripples, waves and folds, frozen in time as the lava rolled down the mountain and cooled. We walked this black wasteland out the the ocean where there is a black sand beach. The area where the lava is still rolling into the sea was far away. There is no easy way to walk out there. But we could see the steam rising up where the hot lava meets the water's edge.

A memorable moment came when a family was standing at the cliff's edge and got completely soaked by a crashing wave. The bus driver had warned us about this before we had gotten off the bus. The young boy, who looked to me to be a punk in maybe 7th or 8th grade (isn't that when they are all punks?) immediately whined loudly in his unchanged voice, "Oh no! My phone!" Every now and then when I see how completely dependent our kids are on their instant gratification electronic gadgets, I think that if we are ever faced with the apocalypse, I am going to move in with the Amish.

Today we had to ship a couple of boxes home filled with shirts for the boys, Macadamia nuts and Kona coffee. We took a picnic and sat by the waters edge at a covered picnic table at a municipal park. While eating, I noticed sea turtles a little ways out, coming up to breathe and hang out on the surface. We watched for a long time, and saw 8 or so. A couple of them were in close, feeding off the shallow reef right off shore. What a fabulous sight, to see the HUGE old turtles, coming up for air, being tossed about in the waves and hanging out near the shore just for us.

Couch-potato to 5K in 9 weeks

I've never thought of myself as a runner. I hated basketball in high school because it involved so much running! I am however a huge fan of walking and have walked great sturdy distances in the past for fund raising, fun, and just to get around. I longed for a pedometer in Tokyo. I would have been completely pleased with the daily results.

In May, when Matt and I were on opposite sides of the globe and he was sending me his birthday list, I struck a deal with him that went like this: "I get you what you want for your birthday, and you do the couch-potato to 5K training program with me this summer!" Surprisingly, my youngest (who by the way would be an gold-medal champion if putting butt dents in armchair cushions was an Olympic event) didn't bat an eye and agreed. We both agreed that we'd be there to motivate each other and that we both needed something to get us in shape.

I am here to report that we are in week FOUR and going strong! I am jogging for 5 and 3 minute intervals now and am able to recover relatively quickly between jogs. I was mostly worried about pain and injury (I am no spring chicken after all) and have been pleasantly surprised at how well paced this program is. It's off a cool-running web site.


In the first week, Matt and I set out from the house together and warmed up on a 5 minute brisk walk. I am a fast walker, and could blow way ahead of him. But then, as we started the jog, he would delight in blowing right past ME, allowing me to effectively "eat his dust," as it were. During the walking intervals, I would catch up and sometimes pass him, giving him the opportunity to enjoy passing me multiple times on each run. Were we sucking wind? You betcha!
We worked out together for the first 2 weeks, and then started going out separately, but still sticking to the training schedule. This morning, I got up early and went out with Chris. I simply can't do this in the heat. Matt slept in and ended up running around the block (it's a country block- about 2.29 miles) in the rain. I am proud of him. He's been talking about joining the cross country team this fall. I would be delighted. The coach is a fantastic guy and his friends are all on the team.

I guess my point is that if I can do this, anyone in reasonable shape can do this. Even if you think you are not a runner. I'm not sure I'll keep it up for the long term, but whatever. I'm getting in shape, losing some of the good-food flubber I accumulated in Tokyo recently, and challenging myself to persevere through the nine or ten weeks it takes me to complete the program. Who would have thought? Not me, not in a million years.