Then we went to the state capitol.

I’m sorry if you were trying to have a conversation Mr. Yelling Into His Cell Phone. Apparently my son disrupted your ranting as he ran past you on his way through the ironically named “peace” garden.

Hello homeless man! Were you sleeping on that there bench? No longer! Meet my daughter, the one who has never met a stranger, as she awakens you with a hearty “HI! MY NAME’S SOPHIA! WHAT’S YOURS?!?! ARE YOU CAMPING MISTER?”

Hello Mr. State Trooper! I bet you were hoping that today might be the day the capitol building finally gets taken over by terrorists or that, at the bare minimum, someone gets mouthy enough for you to remind everyone that you do, in fact, carry a sidearm. You live for that stuff don’t you? Too bad! You get the Matulich Clan instead and while my children won’t do anything that would come close to justifying your sixteen hours of annual pepper spray training they will most certainly make you wish that I’d updated my birth control. It’s ok, admit it. I don’t look like I’m perpetually on the verge of tears for nothing.

…and that’s how we spent most of this morning. I tried to take photos on the grounds of the state capitol while my children tripped over homeless people and ran screaming into traffic. Once we got inside I tried my best to pawn them off on a few of the guided tour groups but the staff proved a little too adept at finding me – which made me realize that what this world needs most are incompetent docents.

Anyway. Here are the results of our little trek. And now I’m off to have a drink, or ten.

Rose sculpture at the capitol “peace” garden that was anything but so long as we were there.

Monument to Father Junipero Serra.

Fountain with palms.

Capitol dome.

State assembly floor.

As if there’s a difference.

Stairs.

State senate gallery.

Meet Jack.

Jack is a german shorthair pointer we picked up from a gsp rescue near Marysville. Jack is a somewhat odd animal. So far as we can tell he doesn’t bark, whine, whimper or growl. He does make an odd groaning noise when you rub his ears, a sound which usually precedes a graceless flop into your lap. He is socially inept. He loves people in general and kids in particular. He has a habit of walking right into the middle of whatever you are doing. He can, at times, behave like an over-caffeinated monkey. I am totally in love with him.

I wanted very badly to take photos of Jack but it turns out that Jack is terrified of my camera. My husband suggested that this might indicate that the dog had been beaten which, I am sure you will agree, is totally absurd. After all, I can’t think of a single person who would go about beating dogs with a $1,200 camera, can you? Well, maybe Warren Buffet or Bill Gates could afford to go about beating animals with pricey electronics, but neither men seem the type to do so.

Of course, shortly after Jack’s retreat in the face of my camera he cowered when I picked up the remote, my laptop, the playstation controllers and a clock radio.

“See?” I told my husband, “He hasn’t been beaten. He’s just a total luddite.”

Anyway, so what I wanted to say is this: I know I have a few runners that read because you e-mail me all the time and flatter me by asking my opinion about running-related things as if I actually know something about the sport. (I mean, wouldn’t you be surprised if at some point you showed up in Northern California and discovered first-hand that I was just another yahoo in Asics who executed what can only be described as a controlled fall for twelve miles?) But I will tell you this: if you are looking for a good running partner, get a gsp. These dogs can go for days. And when they aren’t going? They’re total couch potatoes. And they don’t shed. And, apparently the don’t bark either. And they’re pretty darned smart. And they can walk on water. And tutor you in math.

Then there are times when the benefits of living here come very, very, very close to eclipsing the myopic din of blood oaths against capitalism. 

Yes, I’m talking about the benefits of living in wine country, where you can almost get drunk enough to make hippies tolerable. Yes, I have photos. Yes, I am hard up for material for a post. 

Wall with grapevines trailing up it.

Prickly pear and nopales cactus.

Winery door. 

Mission San Francisco Solano.

Holy water font at Mission San Francisco Solano.

Limantour beach.

Running on the beach.

…but also because they never pass up the opportunity to serve up humor on a capitalist platter. Like last night. My father sent Christmas gifts to all of us from Afghanistan which arrived in large wooden trunks sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. My sister Bethany was subsequently enticed to wrap said gifts and present them to us under the tree. For instance, my daughter Sophie starting to unwrap her gift:

…and my daughter wearing the burqa my father sent to her:

The burqa in the intentionally incongruent packaging, just in case you didn’t catch on to my sister’s awesome sense of humor:

My future sister-in-law-even-if-she-and-my-brother-don’t-realize-it-because-I’m-keeping-her-no-matter-what posing in our new burqas. (Also, her blog is here.)

My husband, looking very much like an extra in Charlie Wilson’s War:

My brother posing in my burqa because he’s never been one to be left out:

Merry Christmas!

…and since I’m already several doses in to my self-prescribed treatments I feel it only fair to spare you my drunken misspellings and horrible grammar and ply the interweb with photos of my offspring instead.

Like this photo, taken of my son when he ran into the living room yelling himself blue so that I would take a photo of him. Then he started showing off. Then he executed what I can only assume was supposed to be some suave, ninja-like move before falling flat on his back.

Good times. You know what kiddo? The only thing your prom date’s doing to like more than this is are all the photos I took when you were two and couldn’t keep your clothes on.

Had enough of my kids? Too bad. Here’s a photo of my daughter glaring at me as she digests roughly three times her body weight in turkey after Thanksgiving dinner.

She better hope she has my metabolism lest those eating habits drive her to Jenny Craig. Or bulimia.

Here is a Christmas tree. But it’s not my Christmas tree. You want to know how I know? It’s a real tree in real dirt with real pine needles that fall off when you shake it. My tree is some polymer job that never turns brown and requires frequenting dusting.

Also, this Christmas tree is now decorated, packaged and on its way to Afghanistan. Since my dad always took us up to Mokelumne Hill to cut down our own tree when I was a kid I felt it only fair that I make sure he has his own fresh tree over there in the land of goat herders and burqas.

It wouldn’t be Christmas without tamales, and this year kicked ass because this gringa was invited to help make several dozen of these heavenly pork-filled bodies.

Masa, which – after gobs of lard had been added – was most definitely Not Kosher.

One of the many piles of tamales which – after the pork had been added – was even less kosher. Dude, these tamales are so good that someone is most definitely getting deported.

After I was through injuring the man to whom I am legally and spiritually bound til’ death do us part (or at least until one of us scratches up the cash to retain a halfway decent divorce attorney), we both leaped out of bed to rescue our offspring and escape the hellfire that was most certainly engulfing our home as we slept.

Except that it turned out that there was no fire. The spousal unit and I conducted a quick inspection of our vast estate and turned up nothing more incendiary than an old gas can corked with a dirty rag atop a pile of newspaper next to the water heater. We shrugged. He went off to get the ladder. I stayed inside to calm a semi-hysterical toddler and a parakeet with a nervous disorder. Apparently our smoke alarm had gone off just for the hell of it.

Within five minutes everyone was back in bed.

Within ten minutes the alarm was going off again.

Within fifteen minutes we were in bed once again.

Within twenty minutes the alarm was going off again.

Within forty minutes we were in bed once again, but with both eyes open and a ladder at the ready.

Within fifty minutes the alarm was going off again.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Within an hour we were searching the internet for the number to the White House because it became obvious that somehow, somewhere, the signal between our home and Gitmo had been confused and we were now being subjected to a program of sleep deprivation that had originally been intended for some prisoner named Husain.

This continued throughout the night and by 10AM the next morning both my husband and I were twitching. Our daughter had shut herself into a closet that didn’t have a smoke alarm inside. The parakeet was close to cardiac arrest. I decided to call the fire department.

Within ten minutes a fire engine was parked at the end of our driveway and several hunky  very professional young men in uniform were crowded into my kitchen, climbing ladders, inspecting wires and otherwise puzzling out the mystery of our wayward smoke alarms. Also, they were incredibly hot, er, thorough.

Dude! Why hadn’t I thought of this before? I wondered as a particularly well-toned member of the department bent over to retrieve a battery he had dropped. He stood up. I tossed another battery onto the floor.

After an hour of checking batteries and poking around the attic space, not a single problem was located.

“These alarms? Sometimes they’re just sensitive.” One of the guys said. “Give us a call if you have any more problems.” He flipped his card onto the counter and tipped us a wink before inviting my daughter to tour the fire engine parked out front. She played with the plastic souvenir helmet they gave her. I drooled. My husband ran inside and began dialing the phone.

“Hello, is this the Victoria’s Secret customer service line? Yeah, yeah… my wife and I are experiencing technical difficulties with one of your bras…”

The problem is this whole twenty-four-hours-in-a-day thing. It disappoints. It is a woefully inadequate amount of time for me to accomplish everything I want to do. Like take photos. And go to school. And bathe my husband in GHB-laced pudding.

Which is why I’m considering a move to Mercury since a single Mercurian day is the equivalent to 59 earth days which should be long enough for me to knock out at least two-thirds of my to-do list if I cut out items like eating and parenting my offspring.

So! How about I skip this post and do my normal lazy thing and throw up more photos, brought to you courtesy of the field trip that I took with my funeral education peeps last Friday…

Here is a group photo of all of us, taken in front of Cristy Vault Company’s world headquarters in Colma, California. Know why I don’t have any photos taken inside Cristy Vault Company’s world headquarters? We all had non-disclosure agreements foisted upon us prior to our tour in which we signed away our right to tell the public that their vaults are constructed by a magical army of unicorns and leprechauns that sprinkle fairy dust everywhere. Pity. The leprechauns especially seemed to like having their picture taken.

This photo was taken in the Neptune Society’s columbarium. It is a pile of cards, notes and letters written to both the deceased and visiting survivors.

This is a photo of a companion niche with the remains of a Chinese couple inside. California is home to the largest Chinese population outside of China itself. Therefore it is never a surprise when you run into the various expressions of this expansive culture. This niche, like many others inside the columbarium, had food left outside of it in a nod to Chinese custom.

Here is one of the many rooms that surrounded the bottom two floors and were formed of floor-to-ceiling niches.

Another niche before which food had been left. The packaged stuff next to the persimmons was unidentifiable as anything other than fuzzy balls of mold.

For obvious reasons, a niche provides limited space in which a person’s life, personality and values can be summed up. It is always  interesting to me to see how people condense the essence of their loved one into ten words or less. The plate on this individual’s niche is inscribed quite simply with the words, “Gay and proud.”

An incense holder on the floor outside the niche of a Chinese man.

A statue of St. Ignatius stands inside the Church of St. Ignatius on the campus of the University of San Francisco. The campus is one of the west’s oldest Jesuit universities.

 A tribute to La Virgen de Guadalupe stands inside the Church of St. Ignatius on the University of San Francisco campus. The photograph really doesn’t do this display justice, as the flash destroyed the ambiance created by the candles that surround her. Kneelers can be seen in the extreme foreground.

Interior of the Church of St. Ignatius. Architectural proof that we Catholics are good for more than just lopping heads off and drinking. Woo hoo!

Candles sit before a statue of St. Ignatius. The lighting of candles and offering of prayers is probably one of the loveliest – and more misunderstood by non-Catholics – practices within the church.

Here is the cornerstone to the synagogue we visited – Temple Emanu-el in San Francisco, California. This tour turned out to be quite wonderful as it was led by a pair of Jewish women who were more than enthusiastic about showing us through a gorgeous building while sharing information about the history of their faith.

An outside view of the sanctuary of the synagogue taken from the interior of the courtyard that surrounds it. I was surprised by the presence of a metal detector and security guard outside the temple’s entrance, and we were informed during the tour that the courtyard surrounding the entrance to the sanctuary had been constructed as a need for security made itself more apparent.

Here is a photo of stained glass and a chandelier inside the main sanctuary of the synagogue.

A menorah stands above and to the front of the congregation in the main sanctuary.

Books sit atop one another next to the ark in the Temple Emanu-el.

A flower spray sits at a grave on the grounds of Cypress Lawn in Colma, California.

Anyway, with today being a Monday and all and what with having two exams this week I don’t have a ton of time to post the f-lists right away. Therefore I’ll compile them in a post for Friday, so if there are more of you out there who’d like to give the internet an earful about those things you are sick of and never want to hear about again, leave a comment or e-mail me here.

…and now I’m going to post a bunch of photos from the weekend.Because I’m lazy like that.

A father and son paddle out in the surf at Lovers Point in Pacific Grove, California on October 26th, 2008.

A teenaged surfer hauls out of the water and heads over the rocks to the extreme end of Lovers Point where the larger waves are.

A mother and her son stop to take in the view from the Pacific Coast Highway where it winds through Monterey.

A sign designating the site of the Stanford-run Hopkins Marine Station.

Anchor Rock.

Bubble station at the JDRF walk in Pacific Grove on October 26th, 2008.

The fruit of a banana tree in my backyard.

A sign along the PCH during the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s annual fundraising walk.

Well, the morning started off with me having my transition point ganked by Athlete Number 948 who had apparently failed to realize that while number 948 was relatively close to 958 which was my number, they were not in fact one and the same. Luckily for her, Athlete Number 948 reappeared before I had the opportunity to douse her wetsuit in Tabasco or deflate her bicycle tires.

The incident was quickly forgotten however when, just five minutes later – I was at the inflation station letting the air out of the tires on my coach’s bike. To be fair, I hadn’t intended to let the air out of her tires but it sorta happened because, well, I’m retarded and I don’t know any better.

So it was that during the moments when my coach and I were supposed to be down at the beach enjoying a nice pre-race anxiety attack I was still in the transition area pleading with random strangers to please, please, please help me operate this hand-held device, I believe it is called a bicycle pump? Because I haven’t yet mastered the use of simple tools and I need to un-sabotage my coach’s equipment.

Finally we made it down to the beach in time to see this:

Of course video, photos and words cannot adequately convey the beauty of kelp forests or the thrill of the open water experience either and that kind of made up for the multiple elbows I took in the nose and having my goggles ripped off in the kelp.

In other words: the swim was crazy fun. However, I just have to ask: would it have been terribly unfair to shove the photographers off the cliff and into the sea? So far as I can tell there has never been a flattering photo taken of anyone wearing a wetsuit and I, for one, wouldn’t be heartbroken if I could make a beach exit without these people standing around prepared to create images of me looking like a bloated harbor seal.

Anyway, the rest of the race was pretty much a blur; I did intentionally crash on my way into Transition 2 when I failed to unclip from my bike in time. Basically, it came down to crashing or staying on the bike and being disqualified and I chose to eat asphalt. And if that choice makes no sense to you whatsoever then don’t worry – it just means your normal.

This is the entrance into T2 where every bicyclist except for me dismounted in an orderly  – and vertical – position. I only post this photo to show everyone the big DISMOUNT sign that notified people as far away as Japan that THOU SHALT GET OFF THINE BIKE HERE. And? Just in case athletes missed that message the sign was flanked by a bunch of over-caffeinated race officials shouting “DISMOUNT! DISMOUNT! DISMOUNT!”

Such features are very useful for people who, unlike me, have mastered the art of disengaging themselves from the tiny clips that keep their feet attached to their bike.

So after the swim was the bike and after the bike was the run and when my coach caught up to me during the run we looked at each other and simultaneously mouthed the words, “Dude, seriously… next year we sit on the sidelines and drink beer.”

Um, yeah. It would appear that our friend doesn’t have a particularly strong sense of self preservation.

…or a wife who shies away from forwarding photos. For this I am grateful since – if she had considered the ramifications of distributing this – she might have considered the possibility that it would end up on my blog and refrained from hitting “send”.

Just do it. Indeed.