GRIZZLY PEAR
The good thing about a sourdough starter is that it forces you to make bread on a regular basis.
Or does it? You could just make pancakes or noodles instead.
But yeah, it’s been busy and I hadn’t been keeping up with the breadmaking.
So when I made a loaf today, it felt like relearning how to ride a bike.
You know how it should all work together, but the body and mind isn’t flowing smoothly.
Practice. It’s the game. Even when you got it down pat.
The other day, we went to a free event at the Discovery Children’s Museum.
A couple years ago we had a membership to this museum, so it was intensely nostalgic to watch our daughter in the same space we used to frequent regularly, just a couple years older.
It seems to be a frequent theme on this blog, but it’s worth repeating. Single days crawl slowly, but time disappears fast.
As for the trip, the girl had just as much fun as before, but we found the place equally boring as before. We still prefer Springs Preserve.
When you live in an area for an extended period, mundane places begin to pick up the residue of various experiences.
Last year (just around this time) we sold our little Mazda that we owned for nine years. I met the buyer outside of this bank because he was pulling his cash out from this branch.
This year, I met my new tenant to sign the lease and transfer the rent and security deposits between our two accounts.
Looking at it, you’d never anticipate major exchanges would happen in this little parking lot.
Until it happens.
Twice.
We once visited the Peter Zumthor’s Therme Vals which is a free standing structure spa in the Swiss mountain side.
Which is technically true.
But its also in the middle of a little resort town and surrounded by boring old hotel towers on all sides.
The photographs of the building are honest, this is an gorgeous structure, interior and exterior. But if the camera was shifted even a millimeter one direction or the other, the exterior shots wouldn’t look nearly as pretty.
Razor Thin.
Hanging out at the baths felt like standing on a mountain vista with litter in the foreground. However awesome the expanse, you are also burning a little mental energy to not think about the messy context.
Over the years, I’ve given my daughter rides between the bedroom and laundry in a bin full of clothes.
Yesterday I gave my boy his first ride in the bin.
Halfway there, she saw him in her bin and decided to jump in as well.
So the three of us did a couple loops around the house.
My heart was full.
As you may have noticed, I’ve been dabbling with reading the Tao Te Ching, borrowing all the copies available at the library and reading the liner notes and introduction.
After all, the Tao Te Ching is somewhat impenetrable.
And then I had this sudden inspiration, let’s start buying copies of this book! I’ll start a collection!
Old habits die hard.
I stayed up till midnight playing this new-to-me iOS/Android game Calculords.
It’s a cheeky digital CCG where the main mechanic is adding up number cards in your number hand to play out cards in your unit hand, but I digress.
With my current life, I don’t stay up late much, and certainly not gaming.
This morning I woke up in an odd mood.
I suspect it’s a mix of the lovely weather out, mixed with the feeling the grogginess from gaming late into the night. A gaming hangover.
Strangely familiar, a bit of deja vu, but not in my current setting, not this current life.
The kids were playing and laughing on the swings and the slides at the playground.
Honestly, I think they were having just as much fun as if they were at an amusement park.
Going on vacation is not cheap, but it is easy.
The harder endeavor is finding such joy at home, day to day.
It has been at least two decades since visiting Disneyland. I came before there even was a “California Adventure”, when this extravaganza was just an asphalt sea of parking.
With two decades of architecture under my belt, the biggest change is the understanding that there were humans behind every bit of this manufactured world. Nothing is to be taken for granted, neither the initial execution nor the continued maintenance of this idyllic universe.
When you come as a kid, it just is. When you come as an architect, it became.
Yes, you notice the seams and the people behind the magick, but it is all the more impressive this way.
We went for three days.
It really is all that.
The last time I had been in an amusement park was eighteen years ago at Six Flags, staffed with sullen teenagers manning the rides on a sultry summer afternoon.
This was obviously not that.
This was a bespoke experience to create the happiest place on earth. The theming, the architecture, the rides, the “cast”…not the prices…but just about everything else.
It shows how money really starts to matter less to the audience once you completely stack rest of the deck in your favor.
And yes, our girl was not happy about coming home to boring old Las Vegas.