Christmas 2006

This is us last year (2006).









This is us this year (2007). We look approximately one year older.

Merry Christmas

Susie finished this silhouette today. She cut it out of balsa wood with and exacto knife from a pattern she got off the internet.

persimmon on a grand

Today, December15, 2007 we received a grand piano from my great-aunt Alberta (Hunt) Nicholson. A sort of gift from the grave. She passed away 6 years ago. It sits in our dining room. That's right, we will no longer dine but be 'kitchen-eaters'. Is that akin to bottom-feeders? Oh well, it's totally worth it!

The persimmon is from our dear friends Andy and Ana Preto-Bay. I hadn't eaten one since we lived in the Bay Area in the late 80's. I was delighted the first time I tasted a persimmon at our friend Karen Rosenbaum's house in Kensington. Soon after I wanted to recreate that delicious experience and purchased some from Safeway on Solano. Once home, I quartered the orange-red fruit and took a bite with much anticipation and salivation. To my instantaneous and most unpleasant surprise all the saliva in my mouth vanished. There was not a slippery surface left. I was shocked. I later called Karen and asked her what had gone amiss. She laughed and said that I had purchased an unripe persimmon which is very astringent. No kidding!

Now I tell the story to my 2nd grade music students when I teach the song 'Shake that Tree do-o, do-o.....shake them 'simmons down'.

Snowy Trees in OUr Back Yard

One of the reasons Susie loves this house.

My Paradoxical Hands

These are my hands. They are paradoxical because two of my biggest passions in life are playing keyboards (piano, organ) and playing basketball. While playing keyboards doesn't interfere with basketball, the reverse is not true. In the course of my BB career I have broken both little fingers (which I never had treated, hence their gnarled shape), and have sprained and/or dislocated all the others multiple times. I can't remove my wedding ring because my left finger is permanently swollen at the knuckle from repeated sprains. Once a guy swiped at a lose ball in my vicinity, dislocating my right index finger; it stuck out at a 90 degree angle towards my thumb at the second joint. I had to spend the rest of the day traveling around Utah to find someone to fix it. (Susie drove me, so it took the rest of her day, too.)

Last month the same thing happened to my right middle finger. A guy on the court said it would be better to get it re-set immediately before swelling set it, and that he had been studying physical therapy and was semi-qualified. So I let him do it. He did a great job. I was back swishing 25 foot jumpers within 5 minutes (kind of).

Thanksgiving with Bryon and Chris

Thanksgiving was great with Bryon and Chris. The high point for me was probably the go-carts at Trafalga, though our culturally diverse Thanksgiving was pretty great, too. It was more like Giorno del Ringraziamento: we had calzones with caesar salad, though Susie caved just before dinner and made some stovetop stuffing.

Our New Blog

Welcome to Jeff and Susie's blog. We're still not exactly sure who our intended audience is. Hopefully not too many people. The idea to do it was spawned by our daughter Rachel's blog, which is entertaining and endearing, and also by this picture of me, taken yesterday morning by Susie. I actually ran outside looking like this to chase down the garbage truck because I had forgotten to take the can out to the street on pickup day (anyone else do this on a regular basis after having the same garbage day for like a hundred years?). I could barely put three coherent words together to beg the nice garbage man to come back up my street to pick up my waste.