One year ago, I left Texas and moved back to California. Today I'm stepping onto a plane to go interview in another state.

It's been a year that we've lived here -- back in the Central Coast area, my hometown, which is the part that I love best. My parents moved here in the late 1950s, changing schools, in some ways "on the run", with an old car and only enough money to buy fuel, a dozen eggs, and a bag o' potatoes. They boiled the food and headed off on their roadtrip adventure. I wanted my girls to know about this place, which my parents loved. So we could all share a sense of that continuity.

My dad ended up being a Mathematics professor at UC Berkeley. The kind of Math prof who spoke six languages, spent his spare time either dancing or writing poetry, and was both the life of the party and its host. My mom cooked the feasts that went along with the parties, and taught the guests how to speak English. When you've had my dad's life, losing family in three wars, two of those being revolutions, escaping through several countries... continuity might seem ephemeral. But it's centered here for our line, in San Luis Obispo.

A photo might help explain what it's like to live nestled in-between old volcanoes next to the sea, in a place that looks and feels (and tests, according to meteorologists, soil scientists, and other agriculture experts) as if you've been teleported suddenly to Tuscany. This is taken by my friend Florian Leibert:



Ah, so there's the proof. A funny thing is that I have yet to meet anyone who grew up in Europe who's visited SLO without feeling compelled to move here. To quote from Sprockets, "It makes me as happy as a leetle gurl." Maybe that's why the housing prices are higher than in SF :)

Anywhoo, there are many many people whom I need to answer and want to in heartfelt ways. Must hop on planes and engage in deep conversations; in that aspect I, as a little acorn, have not fallen far from my father's tree, albeit one which rooted in California instead of Khuzestan, the ancient seat of Elam. Nonetheless as a continuation of what spread from there, through classical Tuscany, to here (check your food dictionaries). Hope you get to visit sometime!

Salaam.

I used to follow a nearly faithful rendition of Alsacien dietary laws: cream, cheese, meat, bread, meat, cream, some liver, bread with butter... you get the point. Straight from the people who invented Pâté de Fois Gras. Lately I've needed to cut back on cholesterol, not in a dire sense, but enough to take it quite seriously. But I love cooking with cream-based sauces. So much. Want more. Now.

Here's my interpretation of a more Mediterranean approach for achieving similar flavors and textures:


1 can cannellini beans
1 garlic clove
4 meyer lemons
6 large sea scallops
1 bunch asparagus
1 bunch watercress
smoked samon
extra virgin olive oil
pappardelle pasta
sea salt
paprika
chardonnay


Zest lemons, then carve out the flesh, saving the juice. Mince the zest quite finely.

Drain and pureé the cannellini beans and garlic, adding sea salt, oil, and lemon juice to taste.

Blanch asparagus lightly, setting aside.

Poach the sea scallops, just a little. Then let them marinade in a sprinkle of wine, oil, and lemon juice.

Toss the cooked pappardelle with asparagus, scallops, lemon flesh, and flaked salmon. Add bean sauce. Garnish with lemon zest and a chiffonade of the watercress, plus paprika to taste.

I'm not a big fan of chardonnay, preferring alternative whites that are just now coming into vogue here in California, like at Tangent. However, in this case the tried-and-true oak and butter find their home.

Can't wait to try this approach with something that demands cream traditionally, like Coquilles St Jacques.

Well not quite Mars. But the Mars Trilogy and in fact most of the collected works of Kim Stanley Robinson came raining down on me late on Sunday evening.

I had meetings in Marina del Rey and Santa Monica this week, and had planned to take my favorite route south along the PCH - the Pacific Coast Highway. Just before I left, I checked Google News one last time to find a report that much of Malibu was burning, and that all lanes on PCH were closed north of Pt. Magu. Damn.

I drove down later than expected, taking US 101 and I-405 as my alternate route, through Calabasas and Beverly Hills. In almost every Kim Stanley Robinson novel I've read, there were dramatic plotlines related to katabatic winds. Growing up in California, of course I've known to recognize our Santa Ana winds in the fall, but generally from afar. Robinson, who grew up in Orange County and spent much time hiking throughout the Southlands, knew it more directly.

The freeway lanes riding up the mountain pass just south of Camarillo were choked. Choked with traffic, as available CalTrans crews from around the state raced to SoCal in emergency relief efforts. Choked with smoke from the fires. Choked with darkness, eerie in that it was nearly full moon but the sky was too black to see stars, even compared to most hazy LA nights.

I was exhausted from a late evening long drive, after a kiddos' birthday party earlier in the day. I was in my tiny rental Geo when the winds hit. Knocking my Geo across its lane, nearly sideways into a large CalTrans crane truck - at freeway speeds. Those were katabatic winds. News reports clocked them at up to 140 kph that night, not so far from that time and area. I felt, however briefly, some of the terror from Green Mars, Antarctica, and Wild Shore. Who wouldn't? Smoke inhalation alone was kicking up my asthma into fight or flight levels. And that damn car kept getting knocked ever closer into a large truck at high speed while I tried to navigate LA traffic at night. On a very dark night.

Our meetings went well enough. Considering that half of us were coughing the whole time through. I tried to run across the street - Admiralty Way - from the marina yacht club to our hotel, only to have my lungs protest after a few paces.

Back in Austin, I had been taking 3 steroids daily - after 4 trips to ER and then finally a diagnois nearly 18 years too late. Austin air would be fine, except that European immigrants in the 19th century had clear-cut native trees from the savannas. Scrub brush which grew in their place over the past 150 years emit VOCs daily, and especially in summer the Texas heat bakes that mix into airborne toxins worse than my lungs have ever endured in LA, Taipei, or even Moscow. Fucking Texas. My mom lost a lung in Fucking Texas.

Since our move to California, I've stopped taking asthma medication. Here by the ocean, with eucalyptus oils borne upon the fog and sea breezes inland nearly each evening, my lungs have a playground. Finally! I was born here, my mom came her to breathe freely (in more ways than one), and yet a forest fire could be lethal to me - even from a distance. Having much of the hillsides in the LA basin up in flames, most of the open spaces surrounding San Diego as well - all the way south past the Mexican border and north up to Santa Maria... damn.

At the crux of that, I went onstage at V Lounge in Santa Monica, invited by Amazon.com to speak about our experiences with AWS. Quite a shin-dig: open bar, manufactured bodies serving hors d'oeurves, some of Hollywood's top talent among tech start-ups. And then 90 fucking minutes to reach the goddamn I-405 onramp from Wilshire and 20th. All the while the sky growing unnaturally black with choke. Fucking LA.

Dunno how my brother lives down there. Not so far, actually, from V Lounge. He's in Europe anyway.

And there were fires in the back country all the way northward to Santa Maria. And the native Santa Anas at my tail.

Two weeks ago, my two year old seemed to be feeling bored, and grabbed my wallet while noone else was looking and ran off with my credit card.

A house-wide search ensued, because I was traveling up to to San Jose in just a few days. No where to be found. A contemporary panic followed.

Laurel claimed to have placed my credit card "in the fridgerator". Right. However, today, after two weeks of paying cash, the card turned up... she'd fed it into my fax machine. Hadn't needed to fax much recently.

The number 69 has the property that n^2 and n^3 together contain each digit once.

This was revealed to me by Erich Friedman, via Tim O'Reilly.

For even more interesting details, see Pretty Wild Narcissistic Numbers.

These theoretic investigations have amazing potential in the practice of polyamory.

We just returned from a little company trip to Napa:
http://ceteri.blogspot.com/2007/01/attack-at-cia-headquarters.html

Only to find that Boston went to DHS Terror Alert Red because cops there don't watch Adult Swim. Beware the MOONINITES!

Ah, but the best treat today was the launch of arguably my favorite use of OpenID yet - Jyte:
http://jyte.com/claims

Haven't tried it yet, but the Jyte widgets should work fine in LJ.

The infamous Purple House of Albata in Austin is no more. It needed paint and we're selling it, so now it is light green. A fitting color.

We haven't even listed the property yet, but already got more than a nibble. Methinks we'll be moving to California sooner than expected! After a week of intense company meetings in Napa, this is a fun happenstance to return to back in Austin.

Purple House, aka Chez DePew, runs dearly in my memories and dreams of many dinner parties, FringeWare mayhem, SubGenius mayhem, LERI mayhem, even some Scarlet Woman mayhem... and fond memories of many special friends there.