AP Construction continues

The AP system construction was interrupted last week as Aidan and I spent his Spring Break in California visiting family and good friends.

Aidan had a blast as Master Fire Poker

and Apprentice Pasta Maker

and Flying Trampoline Man

While I got to hang with the Beautiful People (one of whom is made of wax, I'll let you guess which one)

Meanwhile back home, the AP system is coming along slowly, but surely.

All the IBC's are cut and staged in the patio.  

 

A test fit of the 3 grow bed layout looks like a perfect fit!

The support blocks are painted and glued together (for extra stability, cuz water is heavy!).  I chose a happy green color for the blocks, in part because Aidan informed me that the all white walls were "so boring".  He approves of this color :)

Next is putting it all together using the kit of "special" PVC parts from the local Aquaponics Source store in Longmont.  I should only need to purchase and cut the straight runs of PVC pipe.

I'm really looking forward to the plumbing part, I think it's going to be like adult level Tinker Toys :)

Happy Spring!

Conservation Carousel

On a recent trip to San Diego we had much fun at the Wild Animal Park. We got a little lost on the "9 minute" trip from the Motel Mediteran, a lovely, independent hotel near the park. After the 3rd miscue from my Blackberry (which was likely directing us to the keeper's house :), Mary ratted us out and called Jack for directions, so now we had me shouting directions from the backseat, Diane calling out directions based on her good sense of direction and Jack trying to direct us from afar over the phone, can you say cacophony?

In spite of our initial difficulties, the rest of the day went beautifully. We stayed from 9am until just after 7pm.

Not to be missed was the Conservation Carousel, we liked it so much we did it twice!

Diane finally gets her Cheetah ride

The park is very family friendly, and we got the pleasure of observing this friendly family in action. Check out the video

Wicked Weekend in the City

This was definitely my best birthday weekend EVER! Craig and I went to San Francisco for a weekend getaway. We parked the car in Concord and took BART into San Francisco, which is a great way to beat the traffic and especially the parking nightmares in the City.



I spent too much time at home messing around, so we didn't get there until 1pm which didn't leave time to do much as we had dinner reservations at 5:45. Craig claimed he would faint from hunger if we didn't eat before then, so we found this fun diner, Lori's, to catch a quick bite. They had an actual 1959 Edsel automobile inside the diner, a placard indicated that it had been moved in prior to the actual diner construction, which was build around it, kind of cheesy, but also cool.





I only had a little snack as I was eagerly anticipating our dinner at Fleur De Lys, a well known and loved french restaurant. The dinner was spectacular! The inside of the restaurant is lush and romantic with warm, rich fabrics and flowers everywhere. The food was sublime and lived up to our expectations in both the richness as well as the artistically small portion sizes. Craig experienced a Gulliver's Travel moment enjoying his "soup and muffin"

Below are our menu choices

Appetizers:

Roasted foie gras with truffles

White and green asparagus salad with truffles

Main:

Roasted sea scallops with a hazelnut crust

Pan seared buffalo strip steak with rustic vegetables

Dessert:

Butternut squash pie (tasted somewhat like pumpkin pie)

Vanilla cheesecake

Keep in mind that this is my recital from memory of the items, they actually all had fancy french names and the exquisite tastes and presentations one would expect from such a world renown chef.

Well sated and happy we trekked the 4 blocks back to the hotel to admire this spectacular view.

You can see Coit tower directly in front and off the right is the Transamerica building, wow!

Breakfast on Saturday was at the famous Sears Fine Foods just around the corner from the hotel.

where I ate 18 pancakes!

Our next day's adventure involved trying to find a yarn store. I have been to Imagiknits already several times and wanted to visit a different store this time. You would think in a city this big, that finding another yarn store would be pretty easy, well, you would be wrong.

This is our tale of yarn store woe.

11:00 am - walk 1 block from hotel to Britex Fabrics, a 4 story fabric and "yarn" store, find a wimpy selection of yucky novelty yarns, uhgg what a disappointment.

11:30 - am walk 3 blocks in other direction to Art Fibers only to find a couple of handymen painting an empty space, this store has closed, boo hoo.

12:00 - walk 6-7 blocks down to Market street to JB Yarns, where the very friendly, but English illiterate doorman informs us that "Yarn not......Tuesday, Tuesday", which we interpret to mean the business is closed today and will not open again until Tuesday.

OK, by now you would think I would be deterred, but noooo way, now I'm more determined than ever to FIND SOME *&%*$@YARN IN THIS CITY TODAY, DAMMIT!

1:30pm - take the bus uptown to Atelier on Divisidero, which sounded pretty promising, but, arghh, no go, THIS one was closed due to the owner's illness. Can you picture me screaming by now, yeah, that's right, screaming!

2:30pm - my ever patient husband agrees to accompany to one last store, so onward we go. We stop at a little deli for a beverage where I foolishly inquire if it's a reasonable walk to Lombard from here, where the snarky little store clerk says "Sure, it's only a couple of blocks, shouldn't take more that 2 minutes". BULLS**T.

that 2 minutes turned into a 20 minute uphill slog, literally crawling up the steep hills of SF. Our efforts were richly rewarded at the crest of the hill with spectacular views of the Bay and Golden Gate bridge as well as making us feel a little better about eating such a rich dinner the night before and all those pancakes for breakfast.


Hallelujah, finally, finally on the 5th try I found my yarn at this nice little shop, Greenwich Yarns. Craig got to sit down and practice his Spanish with another friendly patron while I perused the large selection of fine yarns to my hearts content. I ended up with some Kidsilk Haze to make a lacy scarf later and some beautiful hand-dyed merino to make some socks now.

Next stop, lunch in Chinatown as we had worked up quite an appetite with our cross-town yarn trek. Dim Sum, baby, Dim Sum, yum, yum.

In the gigantic, cafeteria looking place the dim sum carts come to your table to thrust unintelligibly named, but oh so delicious plates of yummies on you. They were quite emphatic about which plates we should sample, and who were we to gainsay them on their own cuisine, so sample we did.
bellies full, hands itching to knit, we wobbled back to the hotel for a rest before venturing forth for our evenings fun.

After rest and several rows of sock knitting we headed out for a quick bite of pizza and then off to the Orpheum to see Wicked. The play was spectacular and we had 8th row seats. This was by far the best musical/play we've ever attended. The singing was good, but what I really liked was the acting, the fantastic costumes, the many, many little witticisms and the way it linked the story back to the original but told from a completely different point of view.



Sunday was an altogether much quieter day. It was really pouring down rain by then, but we decided to brave the elements to go to Golden Gate park in hopes of getting into the newly remodeled Steinhart Aquarium, but the lines were just ridiculous, so we went across the plaza to the DeYoung instead and enjoyed a nice cup of coffee as well as some fine art.


Tired, but very, very happy we made our way back home to our overjoyed doggies.


Amusing side note, I noticed this elegant and refined bamboo decoration in the high class hotel lobby
which upon closer inspection was harboring this happy little, green alien. I hope he's still there many years from now.

Safari West

Went with a couple of friends early this week for a "girl's getaway" to Safari West in Santa Rosa. M and I went to Tanzania last year, so D thought we wouldn't be interested, but heck we always like hanging out with wildlife so off we went. My favorite part was the newborn zebra.

We stayed at the Calistoga Inn and Spa for the most likely the last time as they are closing soon for renovation and probably will become all "chi chi" and too expensive like the rest of the places in Calistoga.
We had a fantastic lunch at the Greystone Restaurant, which is part of the California Culinary Academy in Napa. The place looks like some kind of fancy french chateau or castle. We dined on the outdoor terrace with a superb view of the vineyards. The meal was good, not really knock your socks off good, but the atmosphere was really incredible, it felt like we were in an episode of the lifestyles of the rich and famous. The young waiters were actually students and amusing in their naivete, I asked one where the Sterling Vineyard was and he didn't know, which really surprised my as 1) Sterling is quite possibly the best known tourist winery for the tram ride and 2) I would have thought one of the benefits of attending a culinary academy in Napa would be a required course in wine appreciation and the local wineries.

We wanted to visit a sparkling winery and made our way to Schramsburg only to learn to our dismay that they wanted $35 for the tour and priviledge of possibly purchasing their precious wine, yowza, NO WAY. So we admired their lovely grounds for about 2 minutes then promptly made our way to the more tourist friendly Mumm Napa winery where we thoroughly enjoyed our hour long FREE tour and then tried some very good champagne, whoops, make the "sparkling wine" as we learned that the term champagne is really reserved for wine originating in the Champagne region of France and made by a very particular method. Now since this agreement among the world's wineries was actually made while America was enjoying Prohibition, we didn't sign it, but out of respect for Mumm's parent winery in France they only use the term sparkling wine to refer to Napa's appellations. No matter what it's called, it's goooood!
We also had a unique opportunity to hear a dinner talk by Dr. Laurie Marker who is the founder and executive director of the Cheetah Conservation Fund. It is quite appalling to hear yet another version of how ALL THESE DAMN PEOPLE are ruining the earth. It is very rarely spoken directly but it seems to me the root cause of all our environmental issues is the sheer number of humans on the earth! I certainly do not have the answers, but we really do need to breed less and find ways to tread lighter on this earth.