At work, the five whys is a winner for operational whoopsies. I have recently discovered that it also has other uses.
I made soup yesterday.
Welcome to the Five Whys of Sabbatical. Here's a photo for you too. Zoë sure has a super kitchen.
Here's a Leek Soup for winter evenings.
5 large leeks
10 small potatoes
boiling water
three cloves garlic
a little butter
vegetable stock
salt & pepper
Top and tail the leeks, making sure to leave as much of the green area at the top as possible. Wash, chop into half-inch rounds and place aside in a colander. Peel and roughly chop the garlic, and then sauté in the butter over a medium heat in a large saucepan with the lid on.
After five minutes or so, the garlic should be bubbling lightly in the butter. Rinse the leek rounds in the colander and add, still nicely wet from the rinse, to the garlic and butter. Replace the lid on the saucepan and turn the heat down.
Stir occasionally over a low heat for fifteen minutes or so. While the leeks steam and soften, wash the potatoes and, with the skins still on, chop into quarters. When the leeks are soft (but before they're mushy), add the potatoes to the saucepan and cover the leek/garlic/potato mixture with the boiling water.
Add the vegetable stock, stir well and simmer for 20 minutes or so with the lid on.
When the potatoes are softened through, remove the pan from the heat and blend the entire mixture to a rough consistency. Add salt, add plenty of freshly ground black pepper, and simmer the rich green soup over a low heat.
Serve hot, with fresh bread and perhaps a white fish main course.
San Francisco spoils me. Here's one from the other day:
In some kind of publishing mishap, my new resume was somehow not as accessible as it ought to have been. It's now properly published and available at http://tinyurl.com/isaach. Honestly.
Today's photo, taken a couple of weeks ago at the Alemany Farmers' Market:
It's true, and some have noticed, that my online resume was tragically out of date. And as ever, updating one's resume is the professional equivalent of vacuuming under the bed: usually done only in fairly desperate or emergent circumstances.
My sabbatical is neither desperate nor emergent, so I guess this is the exception: I've updated my resume this evening (at @ang's prompting). In all its Google Docs glory: check it out.
And now that's done I can include a photo I took the other day. Wonderful late afternoon sunshine:
Sabbatical is great so far---especially right now in a 77ºF San Francisco mid-November heatwave. Being last week in the UK for my grandmother's memorial was tough, and emotionally draining, but it was great to see my family and spend time with them despite fairly miserable circumstances.
Despite hours spent traveling on airplanes during the last week, my reading list pile hasn't really been dented yet (apart from the Tilghman, which I finished a couple of days ago). Instead I've been riding my bike a fair bit, including a couple of trips around a nice 20-mile local circuit which Wendy discovered.
Today I took some pictures of Mallard Lake along the way:
So I finished The Goal, but before I could move down my reading list I got a handful of late additions:
I'm halfway through the Tilghman. Can't decide what next.
Taken at work a couple of weeks ago:
Doing my sabbatical commute yesterday I swung by Whole Foods in SoMa on the way home to pick up a few things for dinner. While I was there I also picked up some red lentils to top up the Hepworth stockpile, last week's Cheese and Lentil Savory having depleted it.
The lady behind me in the checkout line (hi Bridget!) saw my basket and asked me what I was going to use the lentils for. She told me she'd always thought lentils would be good to eat but didn't know a good recipe for them. I explained as best I could about my grandmother's dish but ended up just giving her my business card with http://isaach.com/ written on the back. "You can find the recipe on my web site", I said.
I definitely felt a brief pang of Googler cliché. I liked Bridget, though, and I hope she likes the C&LS; she said she'd make it one day. It got me thinking about memes and genes, one's legacy and the people one meets.
I took this the other day, on a walk with Wendy:
As it turns out, the commute to sabbatical is about as punishing as the commute to work. Wake up at 6.30am, half an hour later than usual. Snooze and listen to the radio for half an hour, 10 minutes longer than usual. Get up, and by 7.10am you're on your bike heading north. Cross the Golden Gate Bridge heading out of the city at 7.40am, and at 8.40am you're in Tiburon boarding the 8.45am commuter ferry to the San Francisco Ferry Building. By about 9.30am you've arrived back home ready to start the day.
The below is a photo from the ferry, not of the ferry.
My grandmother was born during World War I and had her first child during World War II. In England at the time there was food rationing, which believe it or not continued after the war ended: in 1946 bread rationing began, and in 1947 they started rationing potatoes. In 1949 my mother was born.
Feeding a family was tough in those days: how to make sure, under ration control, that one's children received proper nutrition? Parents were inventive, and my grandmother started cooking a recipe which has since become a tradition in my family: cheese and lentil savory.
8oz mature cheddar
8oz red lentils
1 large onion
3oz breadcrumbs
a little oil
boiling water
Chop the onion finely and sweat in the oil on a moderate heat. When the onion turns transparent add the lentils and stir well. Then add about half a pint of boiling water and turn down the heat to simmering level. Simmer with lid on. Every five minutes check and stir, ensuring no sticking on the bottom of the pan. Continue adding small quantities of hot water and stirring it in until the lentils are cooked (soft) and don't absorb more water. Take off the heat and stir in the grated cheese and the breadcrumbs, and some parsley if you have it. Put it into two greased dishes. Leave one to cool (freeze it for another time) and put the other in the oven at 200ºC/400ºF for 25 minutes or until going crunchy round the edges. Serve hot.
The secret was, of course, that lentils can keep dry and good forever in one's larder; you could get away with slightly moldy cheese; and the bread could be a little stale and nobody would notice. The perfect wartime recipe.
Every now and then I cook C&LS for Wendy and me---a gentrified version, admittedly, with moldless cheese from Whole Foods and fairly fresh bread. Last night was one of those nights, and this morning I woke up to learn that my grandmother had just died.
In memoriam, Helen Willis.
As well as reading books, I plan to
Here's one I took today with my new camera:
I'm taking sabbatical from work for the last two months of this year---hurrah! Something I'm hoping to do a lot is read; I've accumulated a large stack of unread books on my nightstand (for the English: that's a bedside table) and I need to catch up. Here's what lies before me.
Reading at the moment:
Top surface of nightstand:
Next nightstand shelf down
Bottom shelf of nightstand
I noticed this example of an incredibly practical outlook on the animal kingdom a few years back in Fort Collins, CO. Of course it makes you wonder "HUMANS: Use: ...?"
I went for my "Adjustment of Status Initial Interview", otherwise known as the Green Card interview, today. This is indeed the time, like the movie, when one takes along photos of oneself with one's spouse in all sorts of places over the years, and one gets told if one's marriage is real or not.
And then, if you and your loved one can provide suitable proof that you're both gainfully employed and appropriately immunized, you can move on to the next hurdle: weeding out the Nazis, the polygamists, the Communists, the prostitutes, the drug traffickers, those unpunished undertakers of moral turpitude, and anybody intending to engage in "any activity a purpose of which is opposition to, or the control or overthrow of, the Government of the United States, by force, violence, or other unlawful means". Oh yes, you have to swear under oath that you're not an evildoer; they take this stuff pretty seriously.
We went through questions about how we met, when we got married, why we chose Healdsburg for our nuptials, and what out plans are as a couple. We produced birth certificates, marriage certificates, degree certificates and junior school gymnastics certificates. Passports and pictures; tax returns and tenancy agreements; forms and pro-formas. I-130, I-485, I-693, I-797, I-94.
And don't forget Supplemental form to I-693.
After all of this, believe it or not, our interviewer says that he wants to approve the Green Card application but can't because his computer system is down. Instead, he's going to formally mark our case as "pending further review" and approve it later on. Accordingly, he presents a piece of paper with a multiple choice form where "Further Review" is checked, along with the box "Your case has been continued for the reason(s) checked below". Failed at the final hurdle! Aaargh!
Luckily, the attorney (thanks Jennifer) points out that in such limbo I can't travel, and perhaps he can help a bit more, so the guy goes away to see what he can do. Half an hour later, he comes back with another piece of paper, similarly officially marked "I-485 Adjustment of Status Interview Results"---and again with two boxes checked. This time, though, they're labeled "Your case has been continued for the reason(s) checked below" and "Congratulations, your adjustment of status has been approved".
OK, so not quite the emphatic and conclusive result I was hoping for... but I do at least somewhat expect the Green Card to show up in the mail in the next few weeks. Hurrah!
In other news, I took this in the Mission a while back:
It's been a while since I posted, so I thought I'd break the silence by uploading a photo. This was taken a couple of years ago up at Wendy's parents' house. That's my nephew!
Day 8 in Santorini was pretty much the last day of the honeymoon: we were due off the island on a 7am flight the next morning. Faced with a crowded and crazy Fira, we decided to hike over to the next place to the south, Pyrgos.
Pyrgos is on a hill. It's five miles from Fira. It was 100°F. We were very sweaty when we arrived.
Pyrgos, though, as it turns out, is a very lovely little village with some beautiful buildings. It was super-quiet, exactly as you'd expect a little Greek village to be in the middle of a summer day. We wandered around for a little while, visited the tiny monastery, had a coffee in the village square, and then a little lunch in a tavern on the way back to Fira. All the way we were steeling ourselves for the anticipated horrific impact of the return.
It wasn't as bad as all that. We snuck back to the hotel, skulked for a while, and again escaped the town to Firostefani for dinner. Here's a photo from the way to the Kasteli in Pyrgos:
Day 7 in Santorini was time to move to Fira, the main town on the island. We'd planned some time in a separate town to get a feel for other areas of the island, but we were both reluctant to leave Oia. When the time came, it was the standard hostage-exchange scenario: this time with the Canaves Hotel Oia handing us over to the Cosmopolitan Suites Fira. It went without a hitch.
Fira was a bit crazy. We'd become so accustomed to the laid-back, relatively quiet, oh-so-civilized Oia that an insanely tourist filled commerce-a-palooza was a bit of a shock to the system. Fira was definitely that and more. We'd been given a tip that "Nick's Tavern" was the place to go, a hidden and authentic gem, so we had a bit of a look around for that... but after an hour or so of wandering we gave up and settled for "Nick the Greek's Bar" for a snack and a drink. After that we retired to the hotel---to regroup and to settle on a strategy to enjoy ourselves in this frazzled town.
The hotel was actually very nice indeed. Right in the center of Fira, so very handy, but very small and somehow secluded. Our room was fabulous, the pool was lovely, the view superb (astonishingly untrammeled by hordes of tourists), and the setting very picturesque. We skulked there for the rest of the day.
In the evening we went out for dinner and tried to head away from the crowds. North of Fira is the much smaller town of Firostefani, a short walk away; we ended up in an Italian restaurant having the most superb pizza for what might have been 1,000 miles or more. For those planning travels, note for your records that this was the very same restaurant described by some dimwitted online reviewer as "under the windmill at the top end of town" in Oia. Wrong frickin' town, englishchris. Thanks for wasting our time the other night.
I took this at the hotel. Nice place.
Day 6 in Santorini was our last full day in Oia, and we decided on another trip to the beach. We made it to the bay of Ammoudi by about lunchtime, and had another dip in the med before getting a snack at a cafe by the sea. The waiter was from Slovenia, spoke perfect Greek and broken English, wore aviators and a pink straw Stetson, but served a mean retsina. I took this snap of Wendy while we waited for our salted fish.
Day 5 in Santorini we didn't really do much. Here's a picture from 13½ years ago by way of consolation. I always liked this shot.
Day 4 in Santorini we decided to go down to sea level and check out the med. We'd been out for dinner the night before and bumped into a couple from Sheffield ("a little town in the north of England; you probably wouldn't have heard of it"), both of whom heartily recommended the Bay of Ammoudi at the northern tip of the island. We figured we'd give it a go.
A reminder for those following along at home but not quite as well as you should: Oia is 700-1,000ft above sea level, atop cliffs looking over the sea. That means that to get down to the sea you need to find a way down those cliffs... and waddyaknow they have a whole bunch of rocky steps leading down to Ammoudi beach. Perfect for keeping most of the hoi-polloi away; also perfect, as it turned out, for those wanting an intense quadricep workout.
We swam in the med down at the bottom, which was... howdoyousay... invigorating. After splashing around for a while we got some lunch (and a bottle of lovely retsina) to fuel our climb back up to town-level again, which gave us just enough time to head back to the hotel, change, and come back out to see the sunset
Santorini is famous for sunsets, of which you can find about 90,000 pictures on Google. We were expecting quite the spectacle, then, and it was indeed rather lovely. Oddest of odd things, though: when the last glimmer of orange sun had disappeared beyond the horizon, the crowd which had gathered to watch erupted in spontaneous applause. Applauding sunsets? Congratulating nature on a job well done? Do these people clap at flowers, cheer trees and give standing ovations to majestic mountain ranges?
All very unexpected. I took this photo on the way to the great event.
Day 3 in Santorini was our time to depart the Katikies Hotel and head on to the Canaves. We loved the first hotel so much by now that we waited until the very last minute to leave, reading by the pool until early evening.
When time came to finally depart, the hotel staff asked us about our "onward travel plans" and if they could assist: taxi, boat, plane, whatever. We explained that we would probably be fine under our own power since we were going just to the Canaves up the road. "Oh! In that case let us call them and have them send their bellboys to collect you and your luggage!"
There followed a terse telephone call in Greek, and then two bellboys from the first hotel turning up in the lobby and taking us and our bags to the street. By the time we got there, already there were two smartly dressed figures dressed about ten yards away... waiting. Wendy and I were pointed in their direction, and encouraged to walk with our bags the few steps towards them. Just like a hostage exchange, with orders barked in a foreign language we were passed from the custody of camp Katikies to camp Canaves.
The Canaves folk were very hospitable captors, though. We got a lovely mini-suite setup with (actually rather perilous) a stepladder from the main room to the bedroom above. Again a little balcony, this time looking onto the sea but also the town of Oia clinging to the cliffs. Wendy took this photo of me that evening:
We woke up on day 2 of the honeymoon to a wonderful breakfast served on the balcony outside our room. Overlooking the Santorini caldera, and essentially a large mediterranean lagoon, it was a gloriously luxurious start to the day.
After breakfast begun what soon became the pattern of the vacation: reading by the pool, a little swim, a little walk, lunch, a longer walk, another swim, more reading, nap, a quick swim, shower, dinner, quick walk, bed. In that order.
Oh, and then wake up and have a delicious Greecey breakfast looking at the sea.
It's a long way to Santorini. No, really. According to Google Earth, it's 6,930 miles as the crow flies from San Francisco (SFO) to Thira (JTR). That's one seriously dedicated crow! Somewhat surprisingly, stopping off in London (LHR) and Athens (ATH) takes you a mere 69 miles out of your way, for a total of 6,999 miles (clearly the Greeks and the Romans knew how to position their cities for optimal air travel from the West Coast). But enough said; it took us a while to get there.
On arrival, though, awesomeness. Sunday morning at 7.40am we arrived at the Katikies Hotel in Oia at the north tip of the island. We expected a roll of the eyes and a gruesome wait---after 15 hours of traveling---for a 4pm check-in or whatever. Not so! Sparkling wine, breakfast by the pool, a tour of the hotel, and imminent room-readiness were what in fact greeted us. We couldn't have been happier.
It's quite the place. Santorini rises out of the sea atop 700-foot cliffs, and the towns cling to the edges of the island spilling down said cliffs like a viscous liquid. The Katikies is very much a "spilling down the cliff" hotel, with 95 steps from our room (a little way down the cliff) to the lobby (higher up the cliff) and another 15 steps up to the streets of Oia. Makes for a great infinity pool, though, and some nice photos.
Day 1 we rather just hung around and took it all in. Honeymoon style.
Spent the weekend in New York, with Wendy a grateful guest at Craig and Hannah's wedding. Had a fantastic time, met new friends, and got a whole bunch of photos.
