ursamajor | Entries tagged with neighborhood: the little hill

I didn’t #votebybike this time! Instead, knowing we have a race coming up, hyounpark and I jogged the mile-plus up to our local ballot box to drop off our votes. Afterwards, we walked over to PennDel's for post-election treats: an apple strudel for me, a chocolate cookie and necessary caffeination for him. And then we ran home. And I managed to do both of the running legs without a walking interval!

In order to not obsess over what is now out of my hands, I’m focusing on said upcoming race. I don’t think I’m making my original stretch goal of running the entire PG 5k without walking intervals; being sick last week set me back from my PRs in New York. But I think I might be able to do it by Hot Chocolate in January, the first 5k I ever did back at the beginning of this year. And I might even be able to run the entire Cookie Run next month, since it’s slightly shorter than a 5k and it’s likely the temperature will be in the low 40s, maybe even the high 30s.

So I've got a race for cookies and a race for chocolate. H wants to know if there's a race for pizza. (Yes, apparently there is; sadly, we just missed it as it was in Brooklyn in mid-September, and you have to eat the pizza during the run. It looks like there's another one in Hoboken around the same time where the pizza is at the finish line.) I do have the Hotdish Hot Dash on my radar! :D

(Original post.)

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: you can't just watch and stare while the people in charge are unfair

If William Carlos Williams could not only come over and help us out with the plums in the icebox, but the hundred-odd plums that are falling off our neighbors' tree into our yard on a daily basis, and have been for the last several weeks? We'd welcome him. We can't keep up. We really need to buy a net or something for next year, rig up some kind of system to catch them so they don't go splat. We've been retrieving the ones that survive the fall, and cleaning up after the ones that don't, but it's kind of a lot.

Our neighbors have a lovely mature plum tree in their backyard that drops tiny clingstone plums beginning in late July/early August, smaller than ping pong balls. They can be eaten raw, or they can be boiled down into something between a jam, a sauce, and a compote, straining the pits out afterwards. But honestly, running out of ideas. (On toast! with yogurt! Baked into a cake! As a side sauce for roasted meat ...) Probably I should get over being scared of Proper Canning (boiling jars! loud popping noises!) so that we can more safely preserve the jam for later in the year. It would be lovely to eat, say, hamantaschen with hyperlocal plum preserves we made ourselves! But what we've got is both too thin to work for that, yet permanently boiled onto one of the pots. Ah well.

*

Other than the plum-pocalypse, late summer carries on. Choir has begun, and there are intriguing rumors of a more challenging small-group chamber choir to audition for. Repertoire-wise, this year involves ... not a lot of new-to-me music; if I hadn't been sick in April, it would have been a very good year to add on a second choir with more challenging rep. Ah, well. I am delighted that we will have an a cappella piece during the spring concert; I do miss that, being in an orchestral choir.

( content note minor body capability navel gazing re exercise )

Current Mood: chipper

Usually, when the Space Weather report announces the rare potential for sighting the aurora borealis in Northern California, they mean like Siskiyou County, 300 miles north on the Oregon border. Tonight, we saw the Northern Lights in the hills just north of Berkeley. Stunning. (Original post.)

(I cannot believe Karl the Fog stayed away Friday night. He more than made up for it Saturday night, though, heh.)

Current Mood: grateful

Election traditions: I bike to our ballot box while hyounpark sprints up there, we drop off our ballots, and then we go get food. Bonus: running into my mom at the lobster truck! (Original post.)

Current Mood: cheerful

So relieved the rain cleared up in time for the Lunar New Year 5K hyounpark and I did this morning in Chinatown!

I know, what, these words coming out of my mouth? But bike friends convinced me to sign up for the Hot Chocolate 5K in January, and I figured that was manageable, a one-time thing with friends and chocolate and a nice jacket for swag, and also Golden Gate Park makes for a pretty course. Then Rachel persuaded me to come out for a 7K in my town in February because community ties and meeting your neighbors and climbing my second of the four big hills in our town (Cutting and Moeser down, Barrett and Potrero to go) and cute bandanas. And then I told Hyoun we were doing the LNY 5K because the tech tees had dragons and also I needed cute long-sleeve exercise tops. His reaction: “YOU’RE FINALLY COMING AROUND AND IT ONLY TOOK 18.5 YEARS! 😍😍😍”

And now the Oakland 5K is in two weeks … which is kind of establishing a pattern of me averaging a 5k every month? Um. Lesson learned: make the swag cute enough and I’ll fall for it. (I know, I know, pukajenhas been priming this pump for years, too, as a friend and Orca Running ambassador ;) ) (Original post.)

Current Mood: pleased

Me, yesterday: "... that means my posts about the Asian American Thanksgiving thing we've been formally doing for the last six or seven years, where the majority of dishes we put on the table came from recipes by Asian American chefs? ... haven't made it over here yet."

Me, today: *filled in the missing decade plus of Thanksgiving menus, including all of the formally-declared Asian American Thanksgiving ones* :D

And that brings me up to the end of November, where I had The Worst Meatball Sub EVER.

( utter abomination )

At least we ended that day on a better note; we were looking for fast food post-choir dinner at 9:45 pm on a weeknight, decided on french fries and chicken nuggets, and got in line at McD's, only to see the bright neon sign announcing that THE MCRIB WAS BACK. So

hyounpark was quite happy!

But I still wanted a damned meatball sub. So a few weeks later, we made them.

Slightly overbroiled the bread in trying to get the cheese right, but it was exactly what we've been looking for since late November. Just an easy stovetop marinara, meatballs finished in the sauce (we had Molly Wizenberg's falafel spiced lamb meatballs on hand, so not exactly trad, but it worked for our purposes), sub rolls, and mozzarella (or provolone if you have it). Simple stuff, easy to do (the most tedious part is making the meatballs), and exactly what we'd been looking for. This will totally be going in the regular rotation now.

Current Mood: hungry

Sorry I confused people with some of my posts this week! I'm currently going back and integrating old posts from various other dying blog hosts/social media into my Dreamwidth so that they're all in one stable place. I didn't realize they were showing up in the contemporary feed on reading pages, though :( Have found the tickeh that needs checking now to prevent that, though, and will do so going forward.

A more general life update - we're coming up on four years in the Bay Area. We've survived the pandemic thus far through whatever combination of vaxxing and masking have brought us, along with I'm sure a decent helping of luck; even our more careful friends and family are more likely than not to have gone through a bout, it seems. We're lucky being outdoors is a good social option for us most of the year. We still need to buy some patio furniture to facilitate this, though; right now, we have two random chairs on our porch and that's the grand sum of our outdoor seating for grownups.

( choir! )

( biking! being social! )

I miss late night bookstore dates, though. Our closest indie bookstore (about a 45 minute walk away, or 15 minutes on an infrequent daytime only bus, but not easy to get to on my geared-for-the-flats-of-Boston three-speed) closes at 6 pm, and others near-ish-by not much later than that. San Francisco understands bookstores as nightlife a little better, particularly once you get out of downtown and into the more human-scale neighborhoods, with more bookstores closing at 8, 9, 10 pm, but. I miss Harvard Books, even though I could only make it to 9 pm when I was there in June. Aging, man.

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so get on your feet and drum out that beat
this is just to say
AURORAS IN THE BAY AREA?!
Election traditions: I bike to our ballot box while @hyounpark sprints up there
So relieved the rain cleared up in time for the Lunar New Year 5K
who knew, part 2342552
d'oh! *embarrassed*

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(ˈɜːsə ˈmeɪdʒə)

Entries tagged with neighborhood: the little hill

so get on your feet and drum out that beat

this is just to say

AURORAS IN THE BAY AREA?!

Election traditions: I bike to our ballot box while @hyounpark sprints up there

So relieved the rain cleared up in time for the Lunar New Year 5K

who knew, part 2342552

d'oh! embarrassed