One Year

A lot has happened in the last year.

But not really that much if I just say "We moved to the USA."

Doesn't seem like much at all, really.

But it is a big deal and we've had a lot to deal with in this last year.

Moving countries. Setting up a new home - not as easy as you might think! Trying to find/make new friends. Going carless (a biggie for me - I *love* driving!). Finding ways to fill days of not-much-to-do with cheap hobbies. Losing one job. Being homeless for a month (whilst still paying a mortgage) and travelling across Canada in winter. Getting another job. Moving from one state to another.

It is a year since we landed in the US. Do we ever stop missing

friends

family

house

garden


?

We've seen so much















And experienced the highs



and lows (or at least sea levels)



of life.

It has been an interesting year....

On cars in the USA

Where I come from in Australia, about one in four cars is a Ricer.

What's a ricer?

A little Japanese four cylinder car (eg Honda Civic, Mitsubishi Lancer) or occasionally a 4 cylinder Korean car that has been hotted up - y'know noisy exhaust, lowered, spoiler, body skirts and wing on the boot (trunk), sometimes even engine mods. It doesn't make them fast necessarily - I dragged quite a lot of ricers off at the lights in my little bog stock standard 1.3L Starlet, even with 110kg deadweight (DH) in it - but they *look* fast, and that is their aim - style over substance. I don't include Subaru WRXs in this as they come out of the factory looking OTT - to me a ricer is an aftermarket job and individual labour of love (Aussies can now howl me down).

In the USA, after my nephew pointed it out, I realised that I have seen very few ricers. I've been counting how many I've seen in the last what two or three weeks?

Three.

That is if you include small cars with noisy exhausts. Two if you require the full on body work.

Americans like to show off in honking great big trucks. They don't show off in little cars - no, you show your status in a Ford 150 or a Chev Tahoe/whatever with double wheels on the back ("dualies") and a roaring engine that would wake the dead. Big is beautiful in the US. Small means you are po.

Wonder how long it will take for that to change? Last I looked, petrol was costing $4.17 a gallon. Diesel costs more. Small might start meaning you can still drive whilst those big expensive-to-feed things get to sit in the driveways of America (not in the garage - the enormous triple garage is full of crud).

On another matter, what is with all these American cars with flip-flop fuel filler flaps? They have a little finger flip open thing. It is not locked. Anyone could come along and help themselves to that precious petrol. The number of times I've looked for the little lifter button in a hire car and then found I have to GET OUT OF THE CAR! to open the fuel filler door on whatever side of the car it is (yes yes, of course I have to get out to fill the car up but I want service!).... plus it means I inevitably pull up on the wrong side of the bowser...

More Maker Faire

Just cos the Maker Faire was over a week ago doesn't mean I am not going to post more pics!

People ask me what the Maker Faire was like and well imagine a whole heap of crafting and electronics and making geeks all getting together. There was all sorts of stuff - Tesla generators (gods they were noisy but now I have a better idea of the Tesla trees in Dan Simmon's book "Hyperion"), Wikipedia, softees, yarn/fibre, paintings, textiles, prints, steam punk...

Here are some more pics from the day:


A flowersaw for the powertools races.


Mobile cupcakes. I love the hats the people were wearing.


What the? This thing was scary - it was on treads and had forklift propane tanks.


A steampunk mobile home.

I have a heap of weird bikes to show off too, and more pics once I manage to get the other computer running - it is being naughty and I only have them on it.

Maker Faire - Offally Good

I wonder if they really are?



This mob must be good -

look how many people were willing to queue in the hot sun! Reminds me of getting in when they were dropping people off from the free shuttles at the gate where only two windows were open! 20 minutes just to pay cash and I reckon about 2 hours of waiting for the credit/debit queue. They didn't say that there were other gates....

A close look at my pea*

I've been waiting and waiting for this: *The naughty life of peas

First the flower:


Then the baby pealet - you can see the stigma and the anthers still attached to the pealet in one shot:




The peapod grows long and then starts growing outwards (indeed like most of us - we grow up and then grow out). When it is nice and stout, it can be picked! More and more peas grow - yummo!


Hope you enjoyed a close look at my pea(s)!

(Apologies to those who are still getting over winter - we are on a dead run for summer here.)

Celebrating SJ's spring (part 1 of some)

Spring in San Jose is a looooong, drawn out affair. I've read that spring here really starts with the autumn rains. Sounds much like where I come from, assuming we get the autumn break (aka rains).

We arrived here in the depths of winter, such as they are in the Bay area. The hills around us occasionally were sprinkled with snow but the snow melted pretty quickly. We never had snow, though we did have a few really rainy spells.

In late Feb, the first real hints of spring began to show. The buds swelled on the trees and shrubs and a few early flowers bloomed.

Since then, it has been on for young and old.

I love poppies and there are plenty around here - mostly icelandic and the native Californian poppy.








The plums have come and gone, and some of them turned out to be flowering almonds or similar (different shaped leaves). Ahem. And I think I am a botanist (ok, a biologist).



Some I knew were flowering crab apples.


The wattles also have come and gone - Oz wattles have been naughty here it seems and have gone a bit wild.


The ranuncs (seen here at the front of our apartment buildings, now alas also gone, cruelly pulled out to be replaced by white petunias, magenta petunias and yellow marigolds - who thought up that colour-scheme?)


This magnolia out the front of a local Catholic school was totally amazing in full bloom, but my pic shows it about a week after its prime.

Even the local nursery was a good source of pics - a port wine magnolia


and a grevillea (oz native) - love those snail flowers!


There's plenty more spring pictures where these came from, so don't despair that for the moment, that's yer bloomin' lot!

It's Good Friday people, go HOME!

It is always interesting seeing how different places work.

At the moment I am sitting in the study with the window open, and a gazillion cars are flogging down the freeway that runs on the other side of a masonry fence about 20m away.

It is late peak hour on Friday arvo.

Only this is Good Friday. In Australia it is a public holiday. It is a sacred day for Christians and for the rest of us, it is a good day to bludge around or try to get to someplace for the last gasp of summer.

In Australia, the traffic would not be as heavy as a normal Friday. Noone works if they can possibly avoid it on Good Friday (and if they do work, they try to make sure that they get at least double time).

Australia is not nominally or constitutionally a Christian nation. If our prime minister said "God Bless Australia" at the end of a speech or what have you, everyone would be very very surprised. We have separation of the church from the state and it is not considered appropriate to ask for god's blessing on the country. (Mebbe cos Aussies consider that we already have that? Even with the drought and all?)

The US does seem to be a Christian nation, no matter what its founding fathers intended: '"The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion," states the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli. This document was ratified by Congress without much debate or contention and stands today as a reminder of the founding fathers' intentions.' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_Fathers_of_the_United_States, accessed 21 March 2008). The president says "God Bless America" at the end of speeches. It seems very odd then that Good Friday, being a Very Important Day in Christianity, is Just Another Day To Go Shopping.

I admit to going shopping but then again, I'm not a Christian 8-)