Towse: views from the hill

We’re headed down shortly to the bucolic ville, nestled in the verdant foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, to meet our real estate guy’s tree guy.

Met up with the tree guy.

We also met the agent who was showing the place today. She said at least ten groups of people had been through, one or two of whom had been very enthusiastic, interested in where the property lines were, &c.

While we were there waiting for the tree guy and talking with our neighbors, two more groups came through.

Did folks make a New Year’s Resolution to buy a terrific house in an award-winning, topnotch school district?

Or have they decided to buy a house now before mortgage rates go up again?

I don’t know. Either way. BUY!

We had a good long chat with our much-liked neighbors next door. They’d been gone for a few weeks, visiting grandchildren over the holidays, and were gone on New Year’s when the winds blew. She said that a friend said that the winds had been 50-60 MPH which, on top of the wet-wet-wet we’d been having, caused a lot of downed tree matter in the verdant foothills.

We were so very lucky.

The tree guy was great. He knew exactly what needed to be done. He’ll take out the remaining crown and take the tree down below the section where the twin crowns split. He’ll trim off some more branches. He suggested pruning back another tree that’s close to the house and he promised to clear out dead branches in the eight or ten firs at the front of the property.

Only $1400. Only.

[insert eye-rolling thingy here]

The tree guy was giving us the particulars about someone he was giving as a reference. The tree guy had his crew doing work on Reid after the storm. Did we know Reid? … Seems during the New Year’s Day storm, a guy who lives about a block up from where Reid intersects the highway, over near the elementary school our guys attended, had a neighbor’s tree snap and fall into his house … the crown of that tree was in three distinct trunks. All three trunks snapped off in the storm, straight into R’s house.

“RS?” I asked.

“You know RS?”

“Well, yes, we do. Cub Scouts. Boy Scouts. Little League. PTA. All that kid stuff. For years.”

Seems R’s neighbor had moved away and hadn’t been taking care of his tree trimming like he ought to.

R has to deal with the result. The tree guy and his crew spent two days at R’s house, removing tree debris.

We were so very lucky. The debris and tree trimming are easily handled. The house is fine.

Lucky us.

We’re headed down shortly to the bucolic ville, nestled in the verdant foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, to meet our real estate guy’s tree guy. We had a phone call from our yard guy right after we’d set the appointment with the tree guy that the yard guy had finished cleaning up the mess.

What mess, you say?

Our youngest is on break from university until mid-January. He’s been driving south on a regular basis to see friends. When he does, he always spins by to see how the house is doing, especially this past week when we’ve been having wicked rain and wind. Check to see if the trees are okay, we say. Make sure nothing’s happened to the house, we say.

He called Sunday night (January 1st) to say a huge branch or something had fallen in back and had taken out the phone line to my old office and was leaning up against the gutters. Luckily, he was using our car, which just happened to have a saw stashed in the trunk, so he sawed through the bit of tree enough to unleash it from the house. It was night time. He checked for leaks and couldn’t see any, but, then, he couldn’t see much in the dark.

We went by the next day, Monday, to see how bad things were. I spent a couple hours just raking the branches and deadfall off the driveway and putting the debris in the recycle yard waste bin and then, when that was full, into a big pile by the garage. The driveway was now clear, but the pile was BIG and needed to be dealt with.

Out in back? We’d had a tall redwood with a split crown maybe twenty feet from the house. The two crowns were probably ten inches or more in diameter — at the point they split from the common trunk — and about forty feet tall. One side of the split crown came down in the wind and the rain.

Bad as that was, as the piece came down, it knocked against the tree next to it, taking out every branch on one side (about fifteen) on the way down.

No wonder our scout was puzzled by all the green stuff and branches and what-not all over the back patio.

We were lucky. If the tree top had dropped at a slightly different angle, it probably would’ve hit the overhang on the main house with uncertain consequences. We were also lucky that the piece coming down was slowed and buffered by the branches on the tree next to it. The house is fine. The roof held. No leaks. But the tree pieces were too large for us to handle. We needed someone with a chain saw.

His nibs put a call in to our yard guy and to our real estate guy. Our real estate guy was gone for nine days for the holidays but would be back in the office on Wednesday. The yard guy was probably away too, as he didn’t call until Thursday. By that time he’d been by to look at the project and said he’d need to hire a couple extra guys and haul everything out. He’d charge $700, including dump fees. We needed the place clear before the weekend open houses started up again.

I was pumping the pool cover on Friday when our real estate guy dropped by. He’d been thinking his nibs’ phone message meant that one of the trees had lost a branch. (his nibs says the message had been a piece of one of the trees came down and the back is a big mess). The look on Chuck’s face when he came out in back and saw the mess was priceless. Being as our yard guy is his yard guy too, he put in a call to light a fire under our yard guy. Get the mess out of the back patio, he said.

The sad bit is that the bulk of the tree top landed on my lovely decades-old azaleas which make a beautiful multi-colored bloom every spring. I fear the azaleas are totally crushed and there will be no spectacular azalea display to entice a buyer this spring. Now that the debris has been carted away, we’ll be able to see how the azaleas are doing when we go down today to meet up with the tree guy.

Life goes on.

Photos.

Today’s Chronicle Magazine also has an article about James Hong’s latest venture: ten over one hundred.

James Hong and Josh Blumenstock, who works for James at HOT or NOT, started this venture — based on an idea they brainstormed — to encourage and facilitate charitable giving.

We’d recently been wondering how much we should be giving to charity. What’s too much, what’s too little? For those that don’t belong to a religion that tells how much to tithe, it’s a big question. We know how much we’re supposed to tip the waiter, why aren’t there similar rules of etiquette about giving?

James is a neighbor and a good guy. He’s already made his pledge.

Check out the site.

The Chronicle Magazine has an article today on Ryan Phelan’s newest venture — DNA Direct. We often walk by the DNA Direct offices and the name had puzzled us.

DNA Direct: your genes in context.

Huh? Just what did they do? We’d tracked down the Web site a while back. Reading the article today, made us stop by the site to check it out again.

DNA Direct is, as the Chronicle Magazine puts it, Phelan’s controversial new venture … part of her quest to make life questions — whether about our DNA or the species’ existence — easier for the rest of us.

DNA Direct provides DNA testing — genetic testing — for individuals interested in weirdnesses or abnormalities in their DNA.

Is this a good idea? There’s some question. …

Phelan is a dragon lady, of the best sort … year of the water dragon.

Snarf’d from Miss Snark.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

The sentence is:
“Of course it is, in one sense.”

The book is:
Gift From The Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

I haven’t read the book in years. I picked up another copy (the other is lost in the boxes of books) after we made pilgrimage to Charles Lindbergh’s grave in the Palapala Ho’omau Congregational Church near Hana, Maui, last October.

Gift From The Sea is on top of a pile — five feet east of where I’m sitting — of books that haven’t been read.

Tides of Light – Gregory Benford
The Fine Art of Literary Mayhem – Myrick Land
Robert’s Rules of Writing – Robert Masello
Rising From The Plains – John McPhee
f2f – Phillip Finch
The All of It – Jeannette Haien
The Pleasure Zone: why we resist good feelings & how to let go and be happy – Stella Resnick
S is for Silence – Sue Grafton
Monster – John Gregory Dunne
The Spooky Art – Norman Mailer
The Savage Wars of Peace – Max Boot
The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion
The Modern American Presidency – Lewis L. Gould
Ask Not – Thurston Clarke

… and that’s just that pile …

Laura Lippman wrote about dieting — “Fat is a Feminist Issue” by Susie Orbach to be specific — on her Memory Project blog yesterday.

She asked, “Is it better to eat ten rice cakes and still feel hollow, or to eat double-chocolate breading pudding and push the bowl away halfway through? Last week, I opted for the latter, and I hope you did, too. But what are you doing this week? Did you ever fast? Or do something equally stupid? Because I sure did.”

I don’t diet, but I do plan to drop some weight so I can get up and down the steps — both inside (we have three levels) and outside — easier.

People don’t believe me when I tell them that every time I go out, I have to walk uphill (both ways!), but it’s true. Our walking path heads uphill to the Filbert Steps and then it’s either down the Steps to Sansome and the Embarcadero and wherever I want to go from there or up the Steps to Montgomery, then up Montgomery to Union and wherever I want to go from there.

Coming back from wherever I’ve been, it’s always uphill, but that’s what I get for living on a hill.

The closest I can get to the place by car is to doublepark on Montgomery at the top of the Steps and run stuff down the steps (42!) then over, then up the front stairs (18!) Carting anything in (or out) and keeping the kitchen stocked are minor challenges. The cars are stashed in leased parking a half-block down Union. If we aren’t double-parked at the top of the Steps, we’re toting things up from the garage.

We walk everywhere, which means I’m getting far more exercise than I used to. I’m in better shape and don’t whine when I’m going uphill anymore, but dragging around any excess weight is nuts.

My plans for the New Year are to take some sort of walkabout every day it’s not raining that ends with me walking =up= the Filbert Steps to get home until I’m in good enough shape that I don’t make detours around the other side of Telegraph Hill just to avoid trudging up the Filbert Steps.

I don’t know why but, psychologically, the trudge up those steps (223!) is harder on me than walking around the other side of Telegraph Hill and walking up Montgomery or Union or Greenwich. His nibs points out to me, in his oh-so-practical way, that if the Steps are there, coming home any other way than just straight up the Steps is a lot more work because I’m not only walking farther, I’m walking to a higher point and then walking down again.

Oh, well.

So I heard through Alison Kent that Lee Goldberg was asking for office pictures.

Seems Lee was rattling on about Jill Krementz’ THE WRITER’S DESK which has a boatload of photographs of the places writers write. He mentioned that Brenda Coulter had posted pics of her office. He decided wouldn’t it be cool if folks took pictures of their writing spaces/offices and posted them to their blogs.

Well.

He has a picture of his office, of course, and links to Jennifer Crusie‘s office, Megan Crane‘s office, more …

So, here goes. …

A picture facing northwest. Note the darling mirror-image IKEA desks. I sit in the chair with the smushed pillows. his nibs sits opposite me. How cozy.

When we set up the office space this past summer, we had to carefully figure out what we needed and how we’d arrange it. In addition to the living/dining/kitchen/powder on the first level, we have this room, a bath, a closet area, a laundry alcove and an atrium opening (topped by a skylight on the deck) on this level and the master bedroom and bath as well as the deck on the top level.

This room, then, also serves as the guestroom. People sleep on the floor of this room (or on the uncomfortable sofabed) a lot. Being as in actual practice, we usually let guests sleep in the master bedroom, we’re usually the ones on the floor here and we wanted to be relatively comfortable. We arranged the desks so that we can roll out a kingsized foam pad on the floor between the edge of the sofa bed and the edge of the desks. Just barely.

The arrangement does mean, however, that when his nibs wants to get to the bathroom or into the closet area with the tall file cabinet, he has to wait for me to scoot close to the desk edge in order to give him enough room to get by.

Pain in the patootie, it is.

Closeup of the pillows. The chair is one I bought at an office supply store for cheap back before the really cheap leather office chairs existed. This chair was cheap because it was a floor sample. I can no longer make the seat adjust, so pillows it is until I decide to break down and buy a new chair for $40 at some super duper office supply sale.

The PEACE pillow by Mary Engelbreit — purchased at the Goodwill for $0.99, is perfectly shaped to push into my aching back as I sit cross-legged on the chair tip-tapping.

The mousepad was something I got from Powell’s last year when I entered their Celebrate Ten Years of Powells.com writing contest. Still haven’t finished using up the $100 gift certificate I got as runner-up in the contest. Maybe I’ll buy Krementz’ book with the remaining dosh.

Assorted files, a rolling file drawer from IKEA. That wad of stuff on top of the red milk crate is mosquito netting I bought (at the Goodwill, natch) with intent to make some sort of rollup gizmo to cover some shelves in the office whose contents we wanted to keep away from small children’s attention when they came visiting.

Still haven’t figured out how to do it.

Notebooks.

UMAX Astra 2100U scanner. Not the latest, nor greatest, but works gud.

Combination scanner/printer/FAX behind on his nibs’ desk area. We broke down and bought one for $30 when we realized we were FAXing a lot of stuff during house negotiations. (Still for sale! Good school district! Wooded! Acre lot! Build your dream home or just live in the house what is!)

HP LaserJet 1200. Also not the latest, nor greatest, but works gud. I learned my lesson with the HP Pavilion from hell. HP printers gud. Pavilions, well. …

And there you have it. A picture of the other half of the room would show cupboards and shelves and a sofabed. Not very interesting, and not related to writing. Boatloads of books and clippings and files and folders and stuff are stashed not too far away, but far enough away, I can’t just wander down in my jammies if I need to find something. I try to keep only the essentials here.

A Resolution for the New Year: Get this space organized and get the stash space organized and figure out what belongs where. I feel half fish half fowl and unsettled these days.

It’s January! It’s San Francisco Dine About Town 2006!

Time to try restaurants you might not otherwise try and support your local restaurateurs.

I found a white feather party hat this morning as I took the garbage out. Some angel had partied too hardy.

We sat home last night, quietly drinking eggnog, watching the midnight fireworks from the deck. The younger younger guy and his friend went down after supper to check the action at the Lost and Found on Grant near Green and then walked down to the Ferry Building for a closeup look at the ‘works.

They snoozed in this morning and carb’d up on pancakes before heading to Chinatown for some grocery shopping. The younger younger guy called as he and his friend left for points south with their vegetables and fish to say that the eastern lanes of the Embarcadero were closed due to wave splashage.

We’d been planning to get some fresh air anyway, so we decided to walk down to the arrow and see what the Bay was up to, up close and personal.

We cut across on Sansome to check out the rock fall from earlier in the week.

I never could figure what someone would do with one of the three lots that are for sale there at the end of Union at Sansome.

Even less likely now, after the latest rock fall, that the Planning Department will approve any building plans for those lots.

As our esteemed Supervisor told the media, there’s a reason there’s high test fencing down at the bottom of the hill. It’s an old rock quarry for pete’s sake. Rock falls.

We continued on down to the Embarcadero and the Ferry Building. Obviously, many others hadn’t had such a sedate New Year’s Eve.

The fun started at Pier 14.

We wound up at Gordon Biersch where we had a very late lunch and then walked home through a drenching rain that had blown in while we were eating. No umbrellas, of course.

The last stretch up the steps had me feeling like the Bogart character in Dark Passage, as he drags himself up the steps after his plastic surgery, hoping that Bacall will let him hide out in her place at the Malloch Apartments.

Arrived home soggy. Tired. Cold. And badly in need of a nap.

So I napped.

Happy New Year, everyone.

May each and every one of you have time to nap whenever you need to this year.