flying to Tampa for Bev's funeral

737 at SFO

symphony

Berkeley Symphony

We got all the walls framed (the East wall is not all in place in this picture - it's all made, but parts of it are not in place so that we had more room to work on the roof framing - which is what's on the floor in this picture - all cut and ready to be assembled in the morning.) We're expecting rain tomorrow night so we're hoping to get the walls all up and the roof on tomorrow. We think we've got all the materials we need, so we can get to work first thing in the morning and just work until it's done.

Today Reed and I are working on our temporary building behind his house in preparation for moving our studio.

Tonight, Barb and I went to see the band Rick is playing with.

Transit of Venus at the studio

Here's a picture caught by accident in the studio today as we were watching the transit of Venus.

Steam release at Henkel Adhesives

blowing off a lot of steam today - a guy who works there says they are
adjusting the boilers

Coffee at 940 Grayson

 

Steam Release at Henkel Adhesives on Grayson

 

Memorial Day morning

morning light, just before coffee

farmers market

Grand Lake FarmersMarket Oakland

test from email

Mendocino

 Perfect weather in Mendocino. We were here  for the weekend for a foldforming workshop at the Mendocino Art Center.

Mendocino Art Center

Here's the Western door to the Metal studio.

Easter Sunday

 

 

Got the taxes done and then went for a walk along the bay.

 It was high tide, so I found sanderlings, willets, black turnstones and a black-bellied plover at their favorite rock resting place.

Busy Saturday - off to Costco in the rain...

        
                 ...the Bay on the way home.

Worked a bunch this morning on collecting information for getting a loan to buy the house next door. Then I went off to the library to pick up a book I'd read a little about online and found Foster's Freeze on University and Curtis in Berkeley - still going!

Venus with the moon down in a tree...

Alegria Vineyards - Acorn Winery

On the way home from Mendocino, we stopped in at Acorn Winery. Bill and Betsy Nachbaur kindly waited for us to show up and we got a case and two bottles of their excellent wines.

another rainy day

Another rainy day today.

Rainy Days

rainy morning

good thing for a rainy morning...

been spending the morning working on a spreadsheet trying to figure out about our money for buying Tara's house, building a studio, retiring. the outside sump pump is going off every ten seconds.

What a day!

We got pre-approved for a loan to buy Tara's house, heard from Peggy about John's condition and that he'll be in rehab for a couple of weeks before returning home, heard from Madeleine Metal that she's working for Faye Weinstein as a caretaker, had a Potter Creek neighborhood meeting to talk about the current state of the West Berkeley Project [that the City is trying to finish off by the end of May], and heard from Dad that Bev is in the hospital for a couple of days...

apple tree

Worked part of two days clearing debris from under, pruning, and spraying apple tree with oil against the mealy bugs. Saw a downy woodpecker eating oily mealy bugs an hour or two later.

Tonight was a planning commission meeting on the West Berkeley Project (again) where the staff was asking for more direction prior to writing new language to be considered at a public hearing for the Supplemental Environmental Impact Report. The SEIR was written because the original EIR (which the City Council certified) was so deficient that a group of people sued. Anyway, I didn't think tonight's meeting was all that important for us to go to, but I was wrong. The weight of all the usual (and a couple of new) West Berkeley suspects speaking I think encouraged the commissioners to stand their ground a little in face of what the developers (also all the usual suspects) want. Also, I got the idea that they were somewhat miffed by how much the City Council had changed things around, ignoring much of their hard work... Patrick Sheehan was replacing Patty Dacey tonight. It's not clear to me how temporary that replacement is, but it'll be interesting to see if he's there for the public hearing in two weeks. I thought Victoria Eisen did a good job of running the meeting. She seemed more organized and crisp than the previous chairs have been.

South San Francisco Bay

this trip was a welcome respite for me from the drudgeries of reassembling the studio after getting our stuff back from the Baltimore show. It's just amazing how much work goes into doing a show - especially a big show out East with the planning & choosing of pieces to ship, the packing, the shipping, the travel, the set-up and tear-down - not to mention the long show days. Then there's the bookkeeping, the unpacking and putting away and getting the studio back in order.

A dredge working for the Cargill salt company - south of the Dumbarton Bridge

Berkeley Bowl

Shopping at the Berkeley Bowl - then a trip to FibreArts in Palo Alto to bring two wallpieces home that have been on display for a few months.

from the Sea View trail

We could just see the Sierra from the Sea View trail today.