6 posts tagged “home”
I apologize for the redundancy (since this is another shot of our home office area). I swapped cameras with my sister-in-law the night of the 4th, but by the time I got batteries in the camera it was late. Went to bed, having forgotten to shoot something for December Views. I woke up about 2:30 and Jeffrey still wasn't in bed. Found him at his workstation, going through old cassettes, uploading songs to his recorder so he can eventually put them on his computer. So I joined him and listened in on some old (good) stuff. ;)
The top photo here is of our home office, which is where our dining table used to be (half of the kitchen). When H moved into our teensy house, we had to reconfigure. I still don't know how we've managed to fit everything we have into this tiny space (and having a garage helps big-time), but somehow I just keep finding little spaces to store things. I thought maybe I'd tidy up all the stacks of papers before taking the photo, but that seemed disingenius. This is what it typically looks like. :) That tiny B&W TV (which is 40 years old) is one I inherited from my mother years ago. I've only recently pulled it out and put it in the office...figure we might as well enjoy free TV while we can (since starting in February, we lose it). :)
As most of you know, I've been spending most of my online time this past year at Twitter. That's a screen shot of my replies page. If you're not a Twitterer, I realize it's probably hard to understand the appeal. It's gotten so hugely popular that now more often than not, people are using it to market and sell stuff--either themselves (the place has become rife with 'social media experts') or their products. But I joined Twitter 1-1/2 years ago for the same reason I use it now--the conversation. It's been a sanity-saver for me this past year.
The last photo is of Shelagh's wonderful post about her holiday gift-giving project inspired by Three Cups of Tea. I urge you to read it--and if you can give $5 (or more), to contribute to this very worthwhile project.
It made me horribly nostalgic for my own childhood, and deeply sad over the demise of a way of life that we'll never see again. It seems now like we were in such a hurry to make extinct our uniqueness so we could all share the same experiences (at the same restaurant, motel, shopping chains) that we didn't realize what we were doing until it was too late.
Since moving back to the mainland 2-1/2 years ago, I've been asked countless times why we chose to settle (for now) in Davis. I can't seem to make people understand that I chose it (I knew it, but Jeffrey had never been here) because it's still a town. And there aren't many of those left in Northern California where one can still make a viable living. Davis' vehement anti-growth sentiment has kept it from becoming yet another suburb overrun with strip malls and tacky housing developments. We live in an older duplex right downtown. The yellow tile in our kitchen is nearly identical to the yellow tile in the 1950's home of my childhood. And Jeffrey would tell you that as soon as I walked in and saw the kitchen, I told the property manager, "We'll take it." I didn't care what the rest of the house looked like--it had the kitchen I wanted...and I don't even cook. There are a few chain stores in Davis, but our downtown is still comprised mostly of independent businesses. And Davisites want to keep it that way. I have a Schwinn bike not unlike those of my childhood. None of those newfangled hand brakes for me. I brake the old way--with the pedals.
So it's probably not surprising that I spent about an hour this morning lost in the land of Flickr, surfing around looking at photos from my childhood town. Photos like this one of the Satellite. That was a favorite haunt of childhood and adolescence. Their specialty was the Pizza Burger--which I realize now was just a hamburger patty slipped inside a bun swabbed with pizza sauce. Even through my high school years, several of our drive-ins still had carhops.
Descriptions of our childhoods from that era must sound like the dark ages to kids these days. They have no idea what they're missing...
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The prompt today at Sunday Scribblings is "First Job, Worst Job, Dream Job." I don't feel like writing about any of the myriad jobs I've had. But in keeping with the childhood theme, I will share this: photos I found on Flickr of Curly Redwood Lodge. I didn't realize it was considered such a cool place. :) It's owned (at least as far as I know) by a couple I went to high school with. (Actually, I went through 1st through 12th grades with her.) They were high school sweethearts and got married right after graduation. His parents owned the lodge and they took their son and daughter-in-law into the family business. I spent my 19th summer working as a maid there. I'd been in the Bay Area for a year and was home for the summer; job options were meager and I didn't have any waitressing experience. That might sound like a horrible job, but I'd also spent my 15th summer doing it, so I was used to it. It wasn't fun, surely--but I so love to travel that I sort of got a vicarious thrill out of the constant turnover of guests. It was tiring and I had to work fast. Maybe that's why I don't like to make the bed or clean the bathroom... ;)
What's the best thing you ever bought off of Ebay or Craigslist?
I don't do eBay, but my sweetheart does. But I did buy my vintage Schwinn bike off Craigslist--she'd be my best purchase. And even better was that it was listed on the Sacramento Craigslist (Davis doesn't have its own), but the seller was only a few blocks from us. Second best purchase would be the couch hubby found us on Craigslist. A $700 Costco couch only a year old (and it looked like new) for $75. He's bought two bikes (of his own), a lawnmower for $10 and a bunch of other stuff. He's a Craigslist fiend. It's not that he BUYS tons of stuff, but he's incredibly patient. If he has something in mind, he'll patiently search through the listings--sometimes for days...sometimes (like in the couch example) for months...until he hits paydirt. :)
How many TVs do you have in your house?
Three. That sounds like I'm some sort of TV junkie, when in actuality I don't watch a lot of it. Here's the deal...
We sold our TV's (had a small one in the bedroom) when we left the islands. By the time we paid the shipping costs (we shipped everything Priority Mail...and yes, we really pared down...and we were renting a fully furnished place), it would have cost more than the TV's were worth. So we sold them and when we moved into our little house here, we bought a small Sony TV. Last summer when I went to Vegas to spend a week with my mother (which she had me spend sorting through many of her possessions with her...something I'd just done eight months before in another town), she sent me home with a large GE TV because she'd just bought herself a huge flat screen for her bedroom. (She has a vision disability, so the quality and size matter as to whether or not she can see it well.) We decided to keep the small TV in the living room (it fits the space) and we put the large TV on the corner of the dresser in the bedroom. No cable in the bedroom though, but we can pick up all of the Sacramento stations with an antenna that we did keep from our island days. Even so, it's rarely on. After I got back to the States, an old friend who--when we both lived in Portland--had borrowed an ancient TV that had once belonged to my mother returned it and I have that little 11" TV sitting on the corner of the kitchen table, right next to the antique radio...and they both work. Again, I can pick up the Sacramento stations with the (single) antenna. So our kitchen table is graced with a 1969 Zenith black & white TV and a 1940's GE tube radio. And that, my friends, is how you maintain your Luddite presence in the 21st century.
