Manzanita

Manzanita is my favorite restaurant here right now. It took us forever to discover it, which is funny because it was exactly the kind of food we were expecting to find EVERYWHERE in Berkeley/Oakland, i.e. fresh, organic, vegan, Angelica Kitchen-style VEGETABLES and grains. Manzanita is a little more hard core than Angelica Kitchen but it is fabulous and I am obsessed. Tonight was rutabega & parsnip miso soup, black-eyed peas, dinosaur kale with a yellow vegetable gravy, etc. So good. Often Jake wants to go get ice cream or something really unhealthy for dessert afterwards, as though he bought healthy credits eating there - sort of like buying carbon offset credits...

Also, when dogs are happy, they wag their tails to the right!

Back to grading.

Iowa

The fat pumpkins.

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Hazel and her one blue eye.

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Chloe and her carrot.

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Yes, I'm like a middle-aged spinster who counts "photographing her cats" as her number one hobby.

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So Nero wasn't a good emperor, but one story I like is that he made his favorite horse a senator. Our Nero's name, when he showed up at the shelter, was actually "Negro" which is half horrifying and half hilarious. Apparently he lived with a Hispanic family that was really not treating him well, but at least it makes the name slightly less offensive. He knows his name, though, so Freba and Tammy changed it to Nero when he got there, so Nero it is.

a sunburn like a necklace

Today I got a sunburn on my shoulder, like a stripe from my left shoulder halfway around. I was sitting in the same spot for almost an hour in the bright sun at the post-bac lunch and I got bleested.

It was beautiful today, and it's pretty much going to be solidly beautiful the whole time until I leave in August. I feel like I've done maybe one percent of what I want to have done before I leave California. I'm applying to UCSF, UCLA, and USC but I don't think there's a big chance I'll end up at one of them. One thing I like about it out here is the way the ground is dusty, the hills are dusty and speckled with dry-looking bushes, but the plants are so succulent and lush, the cacti and the manzanita and all the plants I don't know the names of. There are two huge meyer lemon trees growing in our front yard (we actually tried to juice the ones that Laurel picked a few weeks ago and they tasted like vomit - oops), there are calla lilies and climbing honeysuckle. Two of my favorites are plants I don't know the names of - one looks like little cabbages but with pretty delicate shoots with flowers growing out the middle, and the grass-like plant with broad triangular shoots that are red striped with green and yellow. I'm still snobby and I think parts of life out here are silly, but oh.

Today was an infuriating physics lab where we were supposed to measure the earth's magnetic field but we couldn't even get the wires and things set up for more than an hour.

Some of the side trips I want to take from Stockholm: Copenhagen, Oslo, Helsinki to stay with the Danziger's friends with the girls named Tekla and Petra, my dream names, the Arctic Circle via the Inlandsbanan to eat cloudberries and see reindeer.

I hate this blog the way I hate every blog I've tried to set up over the past few years but I'm going to keep writing anyway, fuck it.

It is Jake's birthday in less than an hour. He's coming home from a tiny lights rehearsal now and is picking up slices from Lanesplitter. I am passed out on the couch feeling destroyed by my physics midterm earlier this evening, and Nero is passed out on his bed snoring. The test was hideous and I forgot most of what I knew about circuits and electric potential. I'm a little relieved that it's over but not much because I've done little to no mcat work this week, and that is the sole purpose of my existence right now.

In the meantime I've just discovered a blog called How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons! It's great. His Swedish word for the day: bön (prayer) (vs. böna (bean)).

So. I got a Fulbright to go to Sweden next year, we got a dog named Nero, Jake is turning 26 on Thursday, my sister is having a baby in August, I'm taking the MCAT in a little over five weeks, and I am having a hard time understanding electricity.

I'm starting runner-runner-hearts mostly as a place to put things. I'm not sure how it's going to shape up. Mostly I have the ten months in Sweden in mind, but these last five months in Berkeley seem sort of exotic now too.

There's a big party going on down the block but I have to work on MCAT stuff - not that it's not urgent, but I am also lagging woefully behind on my weekly study hours required for the bribe I made Jake make of an afternoon at Supple.

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Pictures: Nero at Point Isabel, and a double rainbow in the Mojave on the drive to Las Vegas a few weeks ago.