Lake Merritt

Yesterday I got up really early and continued my tour of coffee shops. This time I walked to one that's on the edge of what I would call "my neighborhood." I had the best bagel and egg and mocha there. They even double toasted the bagel for me. And the best part is that they open up at 6am. This is really great for folks like me that can't sleep so well anymore.

Yesterday afternoon I decided that I wanted to go for a walk and get some exercise. Instead of doing the loop that I normally do around here, I decided to drive to the other end of town and walk around Lake Merritt. It's a really nice walk and there are always tons of joggers there also. It's 3.2 miles and I had walked it last week with my friend with no issues.

I made it about half way around when I realized that this wasn't such a good idea. I've been really achy and sore lately, probably my body getting more and more ready for birth, and doing this walk was really taking it out of me. I had also already walked several miles earlier in the day for that coffee shop visit and an errand. Anyway, finishing the loop ended up being quite a chore and I was pretty beat up the rest of the day and night. Luckily I woke up today and I feel ok. I'm still achy and sore, but that's become "normal" lately. I guess that's the great disadvantage of walking around a lake, you can't cut and make it shorter if you need to. I'll be keeping that in mind for the next week or whatever I have left when I'm taking my walks.

Urban Exploration - University in Berkeley

It occurred to me that I rarely do here what I do in a new place when I'm traveling or exploring. Basically, I just wander along for hours looking at everything I pass.
On Saturdy, a friend and I explored University Ave from Shattuck down to 4th Ave by foot.
It was utterly fantastic! Here's what I discovered:

• Everything Spanish Tile - I found the coolest little store that was filled to the brim with hand painted spanish tile. They had a variety of sink bowls, and everything else you could image painted in that spanish tile style.
• My friend brought me to this great little store filled with a large variety of cool screen print clothes. (I bought 3 T-shirst here, it's that good.)
• I discovered that this art store has a large variety of pre-stretched screens, and lots of ink too for screen printing. Don't forget Blick Art - they have good screen printing supplies too. I hope to one day get it together and throw a screen printing exploration gathering.
• I found this cool store with an Indian textile and jewelry import angle. They have a wide variety of things - specifically a good selection of bling stuff (jewelry and such with sparkly elements), lots of colorful scarves, metal vases, and homewares (like place mats and napkins in every color). This is a good place to browse.
• I also found my new favorite Indian grocery store. Nuff said.
• I found this huge everything Indian import store. Complete with the ornate chairs used in the big traditional Indian weddings and spices I haven't seen anywhere else. The upstairs book section was the best. They had every variety of Indian cookbooks that you could imagine. It's a lot like being in a store in India.
  

In finding these new places on Yelp, I'm surprised at how few reviews there are. These were well traveled stores, yet they aren't given much attention on yelp. I take that as a good sign. They're secret gems hidden in the University coridor of Berkelely. When I was asked Karma how long the store had existed, they said two years. The owner even mentioned that a neighbor came in recently and said she hadn't noticed the shop. And this shop has almost an entire warehouse worth of space, though you can't tell that from the store front.

Kitty in a Cage

What do you think of this kitty's access to the outdoors? It's pretty strange, isn't it?

This cage seems a little wrong to me. I guess it's safe. And it was on the second floor, so they won't be interacting with any other animals through the bars. Okay, I changed my mind. It's not so bad. It's way better than not letting your cat out at all. That's just wrong. Would you be happy if you never got to see the outdoors again but could smell it on the shoes of your owners? Me neither.

My honeypot and I went on this fantastic long walk. He brought his camera along and took a bunch of interesting pictures. I saw this and requested a photograph.

We've been thinking through home improvements over this fantastic break, and we've come up with quite a few. My favorite so far is fixing the slope of the back room (formerly a porch) and putting a balcony on top of it (on the second floor). That would be nice because it would give us a great outside space where we could see amazing sunsets with some privacy.

Also, does anybody know about bamboo? The blue variety specifically. I think I'm going to fill up all the big pots I have with blue bamboo and make a live bamboo wall around our side yard. It'll make our small outside space nicer to no see the neighbor's house. What do you think about this idea?

Christmas Corpses

I went on my usual walk again this morning and started noticing the corpses of this annual holiday lying lifeless beside the road. Why is it necessary for so much of the world to annually cut down trees, torture them by bringing them inside, and then throw them out? It's really insane (and very weird too.)

My honeypot and I will have to think of some other equally weird, but less harmful tradition, for future years. I'm quite confident that we won't ever be having a formerly live tree in our house. And the survival rate of using live trees isn't very good because they come out of hibernation whilst in a warm house during the winter holiday.

Do you have any ideas of a tradition to start for this holiday? Let me know.

Happy New Year!