The March of March Continues

Spring continues to string together pearl after blue pearl of beautiful days. I'm already watering; I hope we'll get at least one more good storm before summer kicks in. The ice cream truck made its first round of the year today, blaring its merry tune as the neighbor's pit bull howls. The Rio Oso is now blooming profusely, the Suncrest not so much, but I hope it will have a vigorous growth year.

 

The time change still feels a bit strange, but more so I think this year because M has made a concerted effort to change his schedule in order to be more productive. He's usually up at 6:30 a.m. every day, which means that some mornings he's up before me. Crazy! When he announced this plan I secretly worried that I'd miss my quiet weekend mornings, but it's been great. I think we both get more done. I've also changed my schedule a bit, moving a gym day from Friday to Saturday. It certainly feels better for my body to space the classes out a bit more and is a constructive start to the weekend. In another nice change of pace, M pulled the bikes down from the rafters today and made them rideable. Our nearby streets are another matter in the rideability department, but there's one close by that's been repainted to make a bike lane. Taking rides around the 'hood would be a fun way to change things up, get a new perspective.

Speaking of perspectives, there's a great little program on our local NPR station, Perspectives, and I've been thinking a lot about this Perspective on good habits that I heard recently. The ritual of learning something new, creating something, and saying "I love you" definitely makes for a satisfying, productive, and positive day. Kalyani came out for a visit last week. It was lovely to see her. I took a couple of days off and went up to the coast after work on Wednesday where she was staying with Mom and Don. On Thursday after a leisurely morning, we had a nice walk in the woods up on Don's hill property, lunch at the Wharf, then drove down the coast and up Westside Drive to Healdsburg where we met Mom and Felicia for another lovely dinner at Barndiva. The food was once again delicious, a splendid accompaniment the company.

    

After dropping Kalyani at SFO on Friday, I stopped in the City on the way home to see the Girl with the Pearl Earring exhibit of Dutch masters at the de Young museum. It's blasphemous, but the landscapes were so excruciatingly luminous that all I could think of was Thomas Kinkade. I really loved the still lifes--the watches with their keys on blue ribbons, glasses tipped over, the fruit and flesh and vessels in the process of being consumed, winding down, finished. One in particular I returned to several times to examine the reflection of the candle and spectacles in the glass of water. How do you paint transparency? asked someone behind me of his companion. An excellent question. Apparently still lifes with exotic flowers were so in demand that they were partly responsible for driving the tulip mania. I did enjoy "the girl" portrait as well as some others.

 It's been a nice quiet weekend. I finished knitting a neckwarmer for M that he actually requested! We went to the local Home and Garden show at the fairgrounds and are thinking of focusing on insulation rather than landscaping this year. We've been watching "House of Cards" on Netflix and enjoying it. We just saw a matinee of "Django Unchained" at our local second-run theater. I'm growing fonder of Tarantino's films that reimagine history so that the wronged can have some modicum of revenge while reminding the rest of us of our bigotry and hatred that I wish could fade faster. Nothing like blood-soaked shoot 'em ups to bring in the masses for a message!

 

And with that, it's time for a dog walk.