RAFTER TAILS

Given my previous two posts, you might think that rafter tails are meant to be raft tales, something interesting about how our raft did or didn't float down to the Pacific ocean where it is even now being harvested by Japanese fishing boats or something. But no. This is much more mundane, and much more expensive. For those who don't know -- rafter tails are a an important decorative feature of Craftsman houses. They are underneath the eaves and they typically stick out past the eaves, somtimes to support the rain gutters, but almost always with a decorative ending on them. On our house, the rafter tails were mostly intact on the second story, but the ends of the lower ones had apparently been sawed off by a previous owner, possibly to install rain gutters, or maybe because they had dry rot. They've been that way for the 25 years we've lived here, but we decided it was finally time to get them back to what they were, as part of the housepainting job which will be the topic of a later post.

To backtrack just a bit, a couple of years ago we saw a guy standing outside our house paying a lot of attention to it, and paranoid as we are, we went out to ask him what he was doing. His name was Jeremy Boosey, and he was replacing rafter tails on a house that Herb Caen used to live in. So now it's two years later, and we're getting ready to do some big house projects (window replacement and painting) and we decide that maybe while we're doing that, we should get the rafter tails replaced. So we called Jeremy.
When you talk about replacing stuff on old houses, one of the things you run into is that lumber a hundred years ago was actually the size it said it was. So if you had a 2x4 it was two inches by four inches, instead of what it is now, which is 1-3/4 by 3-3/4 -- or maybe less. This means that you can't just put a new end piece on, and you definitely can't replace the whole thing. So Jeremy came up with the idea for a sandwich.


The plan was to make a pattern from the top rafters and glue it on to the cut off end of the rafter. Since the part of the rafter tail to be replaced is only about 5 or six inches, but it needs to be seamless, the idea is to make a sort of a sandwich. You could imagine this sandwich as the bread being a baguette, with fresh meat being at one end, and old meat being in the rest of it. The first plan was what I'd call the fat sandwich. He thought he would use some fence slats of redwood (the original wood on the house) but they ended up making the tails look too fat.
Next he tried the more American sandwich version (thin sliced white bread) which used plywood. This worked much better, because it had to be glued and bent because, remember, the new end is 1-3/4 inch thick, while the original is actually 2 inches thick. In the pictures, you see the samples of how the ends will look. But in the pictures, the "sandwich" is on the end. In the final version, the "bread" of the sandwich is about 3 feet long (going all the way back to the edge of the house) and the "meat" is about 5 inches long. Although the lower, replaced rafter tails are all a little bit thicker (about 1/4 inch) than the ones on the second story, it's so high up there that you can't really see the difference. Probably no one but us will ever even notice that these were replaced, but we think it makes a big difference. And all the rafter tails on the bottom part of the house (44, I think) are the new size. If we ever get a few days without rain, or fog, or dampness, or weather that's too cold, we will get the painting finished. Our relatively mild weather in Sacramento means you can paint a house any time of the year more or less, but a job that takes a month in the spring or early fall tends to stretch out to (as of now) about three months in the winter, with what seems to be no end in sight. But we're eventually going from a gray and white house to a Craftsman-inspired four color house, which will probably henceforth be known in the neighborhood as "the gypsy house."

LAUNCH DAY

We arrived at the park for the traditional boat launch and the park was closed because of high water. That's a first. I got out and walked up and there were people there fishing, so I figured we wouldn't get arrested, but we did have to walk in instead of driving down there to park. The water on the south side of the river is about 25 feet wider than it was last year. In one way, this made it easier to get the boat into the water -- since it was in the parking lot -- but more difficult to actually get the boat into the current.

Zoe and I have a tradition that we've done for at least four years with this boat. We write our hopes and dreams -- like, say, world peace -- and also things we want to get rid of in our lives -- like, say, fat -- and send them out to the universe. Hopefully the universe will take the fat and send back the world peace, though for the past few years it seems to just send back the fat and keep the world peace somewhere else. But I digress. Every year the boat has a different seaworthiness rating, and while this one is probably the best, the candle malfunction took away points.
We got the little boat out of the box -- I prefer to describe it as a mini-Rose Bowl float, only mine really floats, but it does meet the other requirements, totally decorated with flowers and natural materials -- and tried to light the candle. First of all the lighter didn't work very well because it's probably out of fluid, and secondly, as soon as we took down the box barrier, the flame went out because there was a breeze.
Well we finally decided to actually put the damn thing in the water, even though we couldn't keep the candle lit. Though, frankly, since the glue had already come off it, it probably didn't matter all that much as it would have fallen off in the raging water.
Does this picture make my butt look big? Okay, then let's cut some of it off. Thanks, Zoe. You're a true friend.

I did wish I'd shaved my legs though, because getting in that cold water made me feel like I was walking next to a cactus plant only the cactus plant was my spiky legs. The place I'm standing with the rake to put the boat in the water is where the parking lot was last year. Those barriers are the things you pull the front of your car up to.

And then the damn thing got caught in a sort of a backwater, and I couldn't get it to go back out, even though I was throwing sticks in the water and small rocks, trying to make some waves to move it out. Of course, to say I throw like a girl is an insult to girls everywhere, but it's the best excuse I can come up with for the fact that the boat was about 15 feet away and I couldn't land a stick or a rock near enough to it that the water ripples weren't on the far reaches by the time they got to the boat. Finally it came so near the shore that I was able to capture it and relaunch it totally.

Eventually, it did go out.

Postscript: Our SIS group was planning on going out to dinner tonight, so I had brought a decent pair of jeans and my old-lady dress up shoes to wear (dress up shoes means they are sensible leather shoes instead of sensivle athletic shoes) after I got my other clothes wet in the river. Except I forgot them while I was busy dragging rakes, boats, and backpacks out to the car this afternoon. So I ended up going to my birthday dinner (Gail was in Vietnam on my real birthday) in my sweatpants. We ate at Gonul's which is a sort of Turkish, sort of Mediterranean place in east Sacramento. Dinner was wonderful. We had a pris fixe dinner which included a great pear salad, a sort of sweet sort of spicy pumpkin soup, and turlu or Moroccan lamb stew, and dessert. We also had extremely large quantities of wine with our dinner, but it was something that must be favored more in other parts of the world than California. Zoe and I (since Gail & Karen don't drink) could have each had two glasses and a carafe of wine, but we only had one apiece. But the dessert made up for it. IT was a wonderful dinner.

Building a Boat, but don't call me Noah

It's not even raining today, and yet, I've been building a boat. Well, not exactly a boat, more of a raft, and for the purpose of floating our hopes and dreams down the river.

This is an event Zoe and I do every year, and we plan on doing it tomorrow if the weather is okay. This year, I'm making it out of wine corks. I had saved a nice palm frond that was a perfect shape from the summer, but when I went looking for it tonight, I couldn't find it. So I looked in the junk drawer in the kitchen. There were about 100 wine corks in the drawer, most of them from two-buck chuck, so I had plenty to work with. I drilled two holes in each cork and put them together in a brick pattern with string. I think this will work. I think i look just like Martha Stewart while I'm working. I also realize that this is a good way to put the corks together to make a hotplate. I tried to make one once before, but I tried to glue them together and it was a disaster.


I floated it in the sink, even with sample flowers on it, and it appears that it's not going to turn over -- a problem with some of my previous unseaworthy crafts. I'm guessing there will be more water and more current tomorrow than on previous launches, because they've been letting quite a bit of water out of Folsom dam because of expectations of rain. Or maybe that's over with. Not sure whether the sink is good enough to determine the floatability -- or the possibility of waves putting out the candle. I'm experimenting with some camellia flower, some marguerites, and some rosemary for remembrance.

Merry Christmas

From birthday to Christmas, it's been a pretty nice time for me. My harp finally arrived a day late, due to some glitch at Fed Ex, but not it's here, and if I can ever get those two pins to stop slipping, it will be great.

We had a great dinner at Gail's today (though it's late as I write this, so the date will probably show as December 26.) It was a really good time with good friends. Gail goes to a lot of work to make sure we all have Christmas dinner together, and all most of us do is show up and eat. Today we had ham, asparagus, squash, sweet potatoes, potatoes, salad, and hors d'oeuvres. Zoe brought some egg nog which was quite enjoyable, too.

Last night we went to the 7 p.m. service at St. John's Lutheran church. As a Christmas eve church shopper, I have to say this is one of the better services. Of course, mostly what I want to do is listen to some nice music and sing a bunch of carols. We realized after we got there that at this church the big service is at 11 p.m., so we may go to that one next year. But the 7 p.m. was very nice. I usually hate Silent Night because people get all emotional and weepy, and it's often the song where they light the candles during a candlelight service. And I think all those things were true last night, but in addition, they also sing it in German -- possibly a sort of Lutheran homeland thing or whatever -- and that was pretty cool, because you could see that lots of people in the congregation actually knew it in German and weren't looking at the words. St John's is a beautiful Craftsman inspired church which recently underwent a very long renovation of the church and also the organ. This is the only picture I could find of the interior of the church, which is from somebody's wedding, and doesn't really show how pretty it is inside.

The Roseville Galleria Flash Mob Hallelujah chorus

We've seen these flash mob videos on YouTube where people just show up somewhere and start singing or dancing or whatever. They are a lot of fun. So we heard about one that was happening in Roseville at the Galleria tonight, and Carol and I thought we'd go. They were going to be singing the Hallelujah chorus. It was supposed to start at 7:30. Carol's husband Cliff and her grandson Michael came along for the ride, as did John. We left here at 4 p.m., so we got there a little after 5. Not all that crowded. We sat down in the food court and had dinner. Seating was a bit crowded, but then again, it was more or less dinnertime. Then we decided to walk around the mall a bit, and finally around 10 to 7 we decided to make our way back to the food court. I had to go to the bathroom, after having about a quart of coke with my dinner. It was really crowded around the escalator and by the time we started pushing through the crowd we got separated, but they told John they'd meet us downstairs.

Well it was so crowded by the time I came out of the bathroom that it took about 15 minutes to go about 50 feet, and we couldn't see Carol, Cliff & Michael anywhere. We finally got to the lower floor, and were trying to look for them, when there was an announcement on the PA system that the fire marshall was saying they had to evacuate the mall. According to news reports, some people heard a loud crack-like sound and other people thought they felt the floor move.

We had given up finding them so we just left the mall and went back out to the car.


We waited about 10 minutes before they came out, and then sat in the car for about an hour with a slight pause for our ACTUAL PERFORMANCE.
The actual performance -- at least ours. Later we heard that some of the people had gone out into the courtyard and were singing. There was a helicopter overhead while we were waiting, making an announcement we couldn't quite understand. I could only understand the word courtyard and assumed people were being told to leave the courtyard. As I read the news reports, it seems that some of the singers went out to the courtyard and sang the Hallelujah chorus. We just did as we were told and left by the nearest exit. We had actually thought about the fact that it didn't seem like all that good an idea to have all those people up there on the second floor, but more because the crowd was so big and it was difficult to move around than because of thinking of any possible structural problems.




We spent a lot of time in the parking lot waiting for the traffic to clear up a bit, and we decided to have our own little performance. Two altos, a kazoo, and at one time a man from another car that came by and sang with us. We had brought a CD with us so you could actually hear the music over the car stereo.

So it was an event. Not the one we thought we were going to, but an event.

There was also another event tonight. There was a total lunar eclipse, the first one since sometime in the 1600s that took place on the winter solstice -- which also happens to be MY BIRTHDAY. So this was a really big celestial event celebrating me.

BABYSITTERS FROM HELL

Okay, here's the point of being a grandparent, sort of.
John and I went to babysit Rina tonight because Mike and Heather's band, Knock Knock, was playing a gig at the Press Club.
When we got there they were close to getting ready to go. Mike said Rina hadn't had a nap today, so he expected her to be a little bit fussy. He also told us there was a bottle of beer in the fridge.
So, of course, as soon as they left, we got into the beer. One bottle, yeah, but it was about a quart or so -- maybe a liter. Of course, pretty soon the babysitters are pretty tipsy, but no problem, because Rina is happy playing with the books John bought over -- in a plastic bag. Yeah, I know, don't let kids play with plastic bags. But we didn't let her put it over her head.
After awhile, she wa pretty bored with playing with the plastic bag, so I figured I might as well give her some dinner. Mike had made some pasta for her, and all I had to do was warm up some frozen peas. John was watching her while I did that, and the next thing I knew he said she tipped over and spilled the rest of the beer. Oh, no!! no more beer for the babysitters.
While he's cleaning up the beer, she climbs up on a stool and manages to fall off, but also gets a pen as a reward to make her stop crying. With the pen while the incompetent/tipsy babysitters are otherwise distracted, she draws on the wall with the pen.
Dinner goes pretty well, except I'm having a bit of trouble getting her to eat with the spoon, as she'd rather shove the food in her mouth a fistful at a time. But I'm the grandmother, so what do I care if she wants to be a barbarian?
While she's eating dinner, I'm noticing that she looks like she's about to fall asleep. As soon as I got her down from her chair and literally before I had finished wiping the pieces of pasta off the chair, she was down on the floor in the doorway, sound asleep.
Mike had said their performance was at 5 p.m. and it was now about 6:40, so I figured she could just lie there on the floor and sleep. After all, I'm just the grandma. About 7 or so, he called and said they hadn't gone on yet, but they were about to go on and they'd be home in about 45 minutes. Okay with me. About 15 minutes after that, though, she woke up and all hell broke loose because she had no idea where she was, and I didn't see her awake til she started crying, and then it was some pretty serious crying while I was holding her and trying to comfort her, until John came out with this toy guitar of the Fischer Price variety and danced around which seemed to calm her down.
She started to fall asleep in my arms, but I decided that in 20 minutes I was going to be real unhappy about that and we would both be a sweaty mess, so I took her and put her into her bed. That started the crying again, but Rocker John came back in and she kind of calmed down and went back to sleep. Mama and Papa came back pretty soon after that, and the babysitters from hell slunk back into their depths.
There are no pictures from this debacle.

The Fall Begins

I finally ordered my new harp. It's a totally new kind of harp, made to be an acoustic harp, but made of carbon fiber, so it only weighs 5 pounds! It's definitely not a wood harp and the sound is not as rich, but it also has flourocarbon strings, so it's quite boomy and the sound is pretty good across the whole range. I ordered it with a pickup, though I've never used any kind of an amplifier, and if I had to drag that around too, it would eliminate the benefit of the lighter harp. I'm very excited, but I won't get it until January 15, so I won't be able to use it for any Christmas gigs. Kinda cool-looking, isn't it?

In other news from the home front, we finally got the bathroom light fixed, but it's a really half-assed job and looks like it. After working for two hours, the handyman John hired stuck a part of a paint-stirring stick up there to make it fit. This is a true example of how some people in this family cannot deal with how much it costs to have a professional do something. The last time we had to have this job done (the switch on this light fixture is an after-market item, which is why it had to be replaced) I hired an electrician who did it in 20 minutes. And he didn't even get shocked (which the handyman did). I could have done it this well!!

I'm now working on getting an architect to draw a design for us for the windows in the back sunporch -- to get rid of the awful aluminum windows. Here's how they look now. We still have to rip out the crappy paneling, which is put on top of plywood.

LABOR DAY WEEKEND

Labor Day, and the end of the summer. An opportunity to just kind of hang out, for us. We usually don't leave town, because we usually go to Chalk it Up. This weekend there was also some kind of a religious fanatic meeting at the Capitol. I saw at least 200 porta-potties there on Friday so I came down on Saturday to see what was going on. Certainly not my type of religion -- well, though, what is? But this seems to be a lot more political than religious. I don't think they had the 50,000 turnout they expected, probably more like 5,000, if that -- at least at the Capitol. I think they had more people elsewhere. It's funny, because we saw a few of the presenters at a coffee shop, and they were talking about "whose butt they had to kiss" to get something or other. So in fact, they are as cynical as I am.

After that, though it was on to Chalk it Up, much more my style of an event -- artists, low lifes, and people who just seem more, normal.


The quality was really good this year, and it looked like there was a lot more interest in the festival than last year. Seemed like there were more vendors and just more buzz. Also I liked the music this year better than some in the past. It wasn't so loud that your ears hurt. This was the 25th annual Chalk it Up which is a fundraiser for arts in the schools. John and Linda have had squares in the past, but I think John finds it too frustrating and Linda and Tim were doing a show somewhere else, so we were only spectators.


And best of all, John got to do his annual wardrobe shopping

John and I have decided to eat healthier. He dodged a bullet about prostate cancer -- his doctor had told him to expect to start radiation therapy, but turns out he is apparently cancer free after the biopsy. His doctor now thinks that the problem is chronic inflammation of the prostate, so we have started on an anti-inflammation diet. It's a pretty okay diet if you don't get too obsessive about it. It's got a lot of vegetables, and few carbs, but it's a lot of new stuff to figure out. I've had a UTI and finally went to the doctor today and got started on antibiotics, yuk. I've tried to wait it out but after a week and drinking a whole bogful of cranberry juice with little relief, I gave in.

LAST DAY

everything is on a really grand scale. The “People’s Palace” aka Coucescu’s palace is the second largest building in the world. Only the Pentagon is bigger. But all the buildings around it are huge as well.
Ceaucescu took advantage of an earthquake in 1977, or at least in the 70’s, to demolish a lot of area around his palace on the premise that it was dangerously damaged, and replace it with luxury apartments for high level flunkies. Most of those people managed to grab a lot of money at the end of the regime and now have places in the countryside.
These apartments now rent for $1000 a month, mostly to foreigners who can afford such outrageous rent. The average salary in Romania is about $700 a month. Of this, about $200 is what the employer claims he pays and the other $500 is under the table. This is because employers have to pay a huge percentage of tax for medical insurance, social services, etc., on an employee’s salary, so they claim to pay them next to nothing to avoid the taxes. But even in Romania, nobody would work for that, hence the under the table payments. On the other hand there are no such taxes on the government, so a person who works for the government is more likely to get the actual salary they say they are paying. Talk about a system dootmed to failure. You can never build any infrastructure, because the whole system is based on a lie. If the picture with the wires comes out anywhere near this, you can sort of see what I mean. Westerners are apparently allowed to ride roughshod over any kind of rules and regulations -- in fact, everybody bribes everybody here. The wires are because anybody can put up any wires anywhere they can find a place, so the whole area is ugly with all these wires.



They also took us to a nice beer hall restaurant today. Our food was chicken soup, fried cheese !!! with mashed potatoes and custard. Basically a gold-colored meal. Thee fried cheese was really good, but perhaps just a bit too heavy. Even I didn’t eat all my food. However, the restaurant itself was really fabulous in a kind of a Jungenstile way.

***We had a city tour on the bus which was just awful. Usually a bus tour is not great, but all right, but on this one we went past the same things multiple times and by and large they weren’t that interesting the first time. When they finally dropped us off at our hotel, they told us that the outdoor museum was a ten-minute walk.
If I had gone by myself, it might have been a 20 minute walk, but four of us went together and it was more of a 40 minute walk. This is because everybody else thought it was hot. I thought it was nice. The museum was really interesting with traditional houses that had been brought from all over Romania and gave you an idea of the different types of houses people had built over the years – thatched roofs, cellar construction, various things.
Plus it was quite and peaceful and just a nice place to be. It seems like it might be the kind of museum they take kids to during the school year. Because everybody but me was dying of the heat, and because we had to be back to the hotel by 6 p.m., we took a taxi back. Five of us went in the taxi and the ride was 10 leu, which is about $3. The guy who paid it apparently gave him as much again for a tip, mostly because once you leave there, you can’t use the leu anywhere. I’m not sure why they don’t use the euro there anyway, because it is a member of the EU. Anyway, you can see from the pictures what a nice place the museum was, and even Zoe thought it was worth the walk, after she got cooled off.

ANOTHER DAY IN TRANSYLVANIA

On the hill above Sinaia – you don’t actually go out of the town, are two real treasures. The biggest is Peles Castle (pronounced Pelesh) and it was the home of the last king of Romania, who at 91 is still alive and apparently looked on favorably by Romanians, even though he is no longer king. He donated this palace to the state, probably because he couldn’t afford the upkeep. It’s made in the German style, with lots of ornately carved wood and lots of really over the top décor. There was an Italian room, a Moorish room, a music room with a piano, an Erard harp, and a 1771 French harpsichord, though no maker was named. Most of the harpsichord was covered with a cloth and it was closed up, so we couldn’t see the case decoration or soundboard. This was the best picture-taking indoor place on the whole trip, but they wouldn’t let us take pictures. The grounds were gorgeous, and we got a lot of pictures of the grounds. Although the grounds were lovely, I have chosen to show you silly pictures of us on the grounds.

We also went to Brasov which is a relativly large city near Sinaia and a very lovely old city center. We had a very short city tour -- basically driving us around enough that we could be trusted to walk around and show up at the bus again in time to go home. We went to the old city square and were given a whole two hours of free time to walk around. This is the most unsupervised time we've had on the whole trip, I think.
. We also went to the synagogue in Brasov, which was an orthodox synagogue in the moorish style with a very light interior. I think I now know that the difference between an orthodox and a reform or something synagogue is that the “altar” is in the middle of the room in the orthodox. This was also a town that had a gate to keep the Jews in the ghetto, I guess. Though of course they don’t say that now. This city had a thriving Jewish population before the war, now it’s only a hundred or so.
. The city square in Brasov is very charming in the way all European squares are. It is probably no longer the center of the city, which is quite large and modern, but simply the “Old town”. Near the square is the old Black Church, which is very large and only modestly interesting. They seemed to be having a display of turkish rugs there, but the signs only said “do not touch” and unless you’re an aficionado of Turkish rugs, they all looked more or less alike. The church is called the Black Church because it’s black outside and kind of dominates the area. It’s a Roman Catholic church. It has a single manual organ built in the early 1770s refurbished in 1777 and probably again later. I couldn’t see much of it, but I saw a list of stops and there were only about 15 and it said it was a single manual organ. I wonder if it was a poor church at the time, or if they just didn’t want to spend a lot of money on the organ?

More Romania, and Transylvania

Sinaia is a little town in the mountains about 100 K out of Bucharest. It's a charming resort town, and just has that feeling that resort towns have -- lots of people strolling along in the evenings, lots of tourist shops, all selling the same thing, and this bread that is to die for.So we’ll start with the food. First of all, we’ve been on the boat for almost 2 weeks and while the food is wonderful – no, exquisite – there was always a bunch of it, and it made me want to eat constantly. Once we got off the boat , though, everything changed. Now we actually have a few meals on our own, and a little time on our own. Our hotel in Sinaia, (the town is named after a visit someone in history, don’t you love the specificity here,) visited the holy land and came back and founded this town named after Sinai and founded a monastery here.


But I digress. I’m talking about food now. First of all, Romania is a wonderfully rich agricultural country and the food is fresh and organic.
I wouldn’t count too much on the water because people really throw their trash around. We had a wonderful local cabbage dish, minced meat wrapped in cabbage, another local specialty that’s a lot like dolmas, rice balls, Greek salad and tomato salad. But as far as I’m concerned, there’s this wonderful tourist specialty which is basically bread. It's called Kurtos Kalacs and they make it a loaf at a time so that whenever you buy it, it's fresh and hot. I think it’s about like pizza dough. The dough is rolled out flat and then wrapped around a thing like a rolling pin in strips, and then baked, or rather barbequed, over hot coals. When it comes out, it slides off the roller so it looks like a loaf of bread but it’s hollow inside. It’s rolled in sugar, and you pull off pieces and eat it.



The tomatoes are wonderful, and this is berry season, so you see people beside the road and walking around town selling baskets of berries packaged like someone who knows what they are doing. The berries are in a little basket lined with leaves, and the kids (gypsies) walk around selling them. Zoe bought a basket and I took a picture of her buying it with her camera and by the time I had the camera open the kid was telling me I had to pay him for the picture. (I can't find that picture right now, but now I realize it's because it's on Zoe's camera, not mine.)


We’re in the area of Romania called Transylvania, which is sort of in and around the Carpathian mountains. If you look closely at the mountain picture, you’ll see a cross at the top of one of the mountains. We had to go by this about 5 times before we got a day when the clouds weren’t hovering around the top of the mountain and you could see the cross.



Bran castle is the supposed Dracula castle, except of course that Dracula is a myth. Vlad the Impaler is a real person, but he had no connection to this castle. The castle is real, and apparently Bram Stoker visited it once and was entranced by the castle, so when he wrote his book, he made the Count Dracula castle this one. There are secret passages, which apparently figure in the book (which I've never read) and other features of the castle make people realize it's the one he used. In reality, this castle was once a residence of King Ferdinand(?) and Queen Mary. It was used as a summer palace because Queen Mary not only loved Romania, she loved this part of it.