KINGS!

I interrupt my regularly scheduled list of posts about my brother's wedding to mention the Kings have won the Stanley Cup, the NHL championship trophy. The Kings are the champions of the world in hockey, for the first time in their 44 year history. They marched through the playoffs as the lowest seed, beating Vancouver--the team with the best record this season; the St. Louis Blues--the No. 2 seed; the Phoenix Coyotes, the No. 3 seed; and the New Jersey Devils. They only lost 4 games in all those best-of-7 series.

While we were traveling through Europe in 2005, the idea to move to New York City not even a thought, I remember thinking that I had a goal. Some people might call it a bucket list, or, maybe, an item for a bucket list. I don't do bucket lists; I try to do things in life and not lament later.(Too bad that kind of lifestyle robs a person of stability.)

While we may not have planned on living in New York by that time, we were planning on living in some exotic and huge city, thinking likely Mexico or Central American or some island in the Pacific (we seriously thought about it). And, during the time we spent in Europe, what with the soccer being so much a part of their world, I realized that at some point in my life I wanted to live in a city where a major sports team won their respective championship. I figured it would be soccer, since where we were living.

I figured college teams would count too, if we ever lived in Chapel Hill or Austin or Lawrence, Kansas. Now that the Kings have won the Stanley Cup, I have somehow accomplished four out of the five big professional team sports, and three of the American so-called "Big Four".

I've got the NFL, MLB, NHL, three of the "Big Four", and Major League Soccer. Still no basketball championship, though, either the NBA or the NCAA tournament.

Funny how things turn out when they're completely out of your control--personnel decisions and execution. Of course, where you live is under your control, so...

The Triumph of the Fan

I realize that the last two posts were about a long day spent with Norm, and I was officially there to help out Dan with the wedding stuff (and mom), but, really, Dan and 'Pita really had quite a handle on the whole thing, and we were left to do other things.

Actually, Dan and Richard were left to do other things, and by "other things" I mean household/landlord type fix 'em up things. And, really, the only thing Dan and I did was replace the overhead fan on the living room.

Sure, just replaced the fan. That was it.

But, those words fail to adequately describe the epic battle that was waged with the ceiling, with the wiring, with the forces of electricity and gravity flogging us at every chance, with our own individual helpers of The Amber Wild Turkey and The Clear Beefeaters. Those words fail.

There we were, just the two of us, with an audience of course, so, I guess there were three of us...but...the Two of Us, Dan and I, first laid siege to the old contraption, removing it from its holster attached to the ceiling.

The original fan had lights that stopped working years before upon being hit by an errant dog toy. Actually, they "stopped working" by never dimming and staying as bright as possible constantly, such to the point Dan had them unscrewed but still present, looking like they were just turned off. That's something I couldn't understand: why not just remove the bulbs? But whatever...on this quest I was just a helper.

Now with the naked harness the only thing attached to the ceiling, the hoisted the heavy motor up to the heights, slid it in to the bracket, and started connecting the wires. Confident, we turned the juice back on and tried it out.

Nothing.

After fiddling with it some more, taking it down and putting it back up, again we got nothing.

Dammit.

So, back to the instructions, and we see that there is a switch box and receiver for the remote that was attached on the last motor but here is a separate piece. The cryptic manual says that it needs to be wired into the circuit if you want the remote to function, and in our case, a fan with no chain on/off switches means that Yes, make the damn remote work.

Then what followed was an ever escalating discussion inspired by The Amber and The Clear and egged on by the vociferous laughter of our audience, about how and where the receiver needed to be mounted, or wired into the circuit, or where it could possibly fit into the mounting once we figured out how to wire it properly.

Another three times we attached that heavy bastard to the ceiling only to have it not work.

On the edge of calling a hiatus to our quest, in the hopes that the arrival of sunlight and someone (Richard) who knows wiring better than two, eh, inspired warriors, Dan made the suggestion that we attach the rest of the wiring. There was a coupling that was to be used in the future for lights that as of now were nonexistent, and in our inspired condition we hadn't thought about connecting it.

Oh yeah, you need to complete the circuit to get an idea if it's wired properly. It appeared that my memory had been affected by some force out to thwart our mission.

I returned to the breaker box and fired up the juice...

Success!

We happily spent the next few minutes attaching the fan blades, extolling our conquest over the machinery of the Day.

In the fine breeze that was created by the fan, we celebrated our triumph by taking turns curling up inside a ridiculously oversized box that had been used to send my brother a square-yard's worth of fabric.

Long Day Hanging Out with Norm, Part 2

The day before the fishing and hiking trip, Norm had called me up as I chatted with mom and Richard and Dan and 'Pita and asked if I was interested in going to a River Cats baseball game at the downtown Raley Field.

Raley Field is actually across the River and in the city of West Sacramento, in Yolo County, but, whatever.

All things being equal, I'm usually down for a ball game, and asked Norm if going to the Triple-A venue was something he wanted to do, as I'm familiar with his feelings about the sport. He assured me that if I wanted to go, he would go and enjoy it, or try to enjoy, or keep an open mind, or whatever.

Another motivating factor in all of this was the tickets. Holly had won the tickets from somewhere, or something, but we had two ticket-shaped vouchers that were redeemable only on Monday through Wednesday and up to a certain day of the month, which happened to be that week. This was pretty much the last day anyone would be able to use the tickets.

After the hike and a nap and a shower, we met up again for a trip to the ball park.

I'd never been to this park before, but always thought that baseball in the summer evenings in Sacramento would be nothing but a beautiful way to spend an evening. even when I lived there and couldn't wait to leave, the prospect of night baseball in the summer was a sublime wish. I'm pretty sure I left before the River Cats became a thing.

The drive in had some nice views from the bridge:

One of the many Downtown Sac views my camera has in it's storage banks currently. This shows off just how beautiful the day was.

These next two pictures were taken from the parking area we stashed Norm's pickup. This is the famous I-Street Bridge, well, famous in Sacramento as one of the iconic shapes from the downtown region that through cultural osmosis everybody there recognizes as characteristic of the city. At one point I suggested just parking in Sac proper and walking over, but by then we were close enough to just park. We wouldn't have been the only people to come up with that idea.

This is the West Sac Pyramid, visible from the Sac County side of downtown in the Old Town neighborhood. This is as close to it as I'd ever been on it's own side of the River. It was empty for years and might still be, considering the times.

The seats were pretty nice for free...hell, they were nice if you were paying.

So, a little background: the Sacramento River Cats are the AAA-affiliate of the Oakland A's and their opponent on this night were the Fresno Grizzlies, the AAA-affiliate of the San Francisco Giants. Sacramento is split between A's fans and Giants fans anyway, so this game was attended rather well by both, and cheering could be heard from different quarters at almost every good play.

There was a surprising lack of booing, though. Maybe it was all the kids...

Now, the A's had signed Manny Ramirez for basically nothing and were trying to work him into shape, and the crowd had hoped to see him play...maybe to cheer, maybe to boo, we'll never know, since he didn't play. But, the crowd did get to see the young Cubano the A's shelled out good cash for, Yoenis Cespedes"

I know the picture quality isn't so good, but this kid, coming back from the Disabled List, is a star, and he killed the ball in this game. I think he went 4-4 with two doubles. He was called out on appeal for missing first base on one of those doubles, and I'm not sure how that gets scored officially. I do know he was just ripping the ball.

That toss out on appeal gave me another chance to help Norm understand all the nuance that fans take for granted. Norm know the basic rules of the game, but I took the opportunity to try and school him on why fans exist at all, and how someone gets into the game. So, obscure rules and strategy discussions came into play: how to tell when a pitcher is luckier than usual; what it means to "battle" as a pitcher; how to tell where the ball might drop in the outfield; what a pitcher's count is versus a hitter's count, and, consequently, what pitch to expect during those specific instances. Now, that last one didn't get discussed too heavily.

Much of the talk revolved around the Fresno pitcher. This guy got into and out of trouble every inning. If you didn't look at the score you'd think he was getting shelled. He gave up like two hits every inning, at least two baserunners every inning, and somehow battled his way through it, yielding only a pair of runs through 6 or 7 innings. It was incredible.  I was trying to tell Norm how this pitcher is somehow keeping the Grizzlies in the game.

Fresno tied the game late, and their starter finally exited, but at a 2-2 tie. Good for him, holding it together for that long.

The game ended on an exciting note, a Ricer Cats walk-off two run homer, for a final score of 4-2.

I have to note, on an aside, that the River Cats caps, while eschewing the old-school Sacramento Solons and Senator nicknames that they used to use, in choosing the oddly vague River Cats, are able to use "R" and "C" on their caps. This is obviously for "River Cats", right? Well, I'd like to point out that on more than a single occasion Sacramento has been called "River City", and to me, the caps the Cats where pay tribute to that as well.

After the game I went home and stayed up late watching James Cameron's Aliens all the way through for the first time, getting to bed a little after 2 am.

Long Day Hanging Out with Norm, Part 1

The day before Norm's actual birthday was the only day he had wholly to himself, and since both Dan and Lupita were working and my mom's errands were in a holding pattern for the day, we got to go do some cool stuff.

These next two posts may have funny names that sound like I was exasperated to spend the amounts of time together that we did on those two days, but when that person is like a brother mixed with a best friend and someone you haven't seen in a while, the day flies by and you're not sure how your feet ended up so sore.

The other weird thing for me about these next two posts is that they have very little to do with Dan and 'Pita's wedding. But they occurred while I was in Sac, ostensibly babysitting my mom.

The long day started when I rode Dan's bike over to Norm's, arriving after 5 am but before 5:30. We ate some eggs, had a cup of coffee, and maued through some nice Irish rolled oats. This was to be a fishing and hiking adventure outside of Auburn on the American River. We parked on the side of the road and walked into the park right as it was technically opening, 7 am.

To make sure our nicer Birkenstock sandals would be okay, we wore old flip-flops and were safe in the knowledge that we could abuse them as we needed. The decision had extra consequences for my feet, which hadn't been in flip-flops in years. But, as I maintained that day, and will continue to maintain, the raw-rubbing of the spot between my toes was absolutely worth it. It's the fatigue/stressed pain that still is present that I'm mildly concerned about, but it too is starting to cease.

So, as we left the car and headed toward the entrance, the Forresthill Bridge is visible, and maybe you an tell, but it's being worked on. It starred in the Vin Diesel film XXX (I think), as well as a post I wrote called One Time...

The early morning sun was wreaking havoc on my camera's light meter, but it did have this cool effect of making the powerlines almost invisible until they get the dark trees for a background.

You know me and shadow pictures...I think there's a line from Stairway here somewhere...

This is the "Watch Your Shit" warning. You could be fine, and then, without notice, you could be drowning. Yikes.

So, the following pictures really only kinda tell the story of the first half of our day. Right away we say this millipede cruising on our path, so we checked it out and moved along.

Like so many other of the sights along this trip, some things were just beautiful and part of our attention for moments only, beauty taken for granted. I tried my best with my camera, but you know how it gets.

Here are some cool looking old concrete anchors for the quarry excavation rigging that existed on this site in earlier times. I think they look cool.

Many of the places on the journey looked so awesome and inviting that it was hard not to just jump in. The water, pure snow runoff, is only really enticing when the surrounding air is about twenty to thirty degrees hotter than it was on this particular day.

Here we see Norm fishing. The rod and reel he had were nice and fancy, our friend Chris mentoring him on where he should spend his money.

Brief moments of nature. it looked so pretty, but there was far too much poison oak to just go traipsing around in it.

Here's another glassy reflection pool area. The water behind where I took this picture was pushed around a tiny island (that we explored one at a time since it was so tiny) and sped into a bit more of a rapid. It was the first place Norm caught any fish.

The first fish caught, one of the local rainbow trouts, put up one hell of a fight, more so, it seemed, that maybe it should have under normal circumstances. After we pulled it out, we saw what might have motivating it:

It had what looked like really fresh wound markings, markings that led us to believe that it could have been made by some bird of prey. It appeared as if this fish had survived a run in with an osprey and was a little gunshy about being hooked. We saluted it and let it go. Two rare survivals in a short time span for that trout. The odds just seemed preposterous to us.

This next picture is of a cave where they found wool mammoth carcasses, along with ancient wolves and giant sloths, and another creature I can't remember from the info-graphic. They were discovered by some German guy, forgotten about, sealed in by a forced avalanche, and rediscovered by stoner kids. Now the cave is gated off and we're not sure who's allowed in, but intrepid bloggers don't seem to be on the list.

This part of the day ended around 3 pm. We'd spent 8 hours at the Auburn Nature Park alone, and were wiped the hell out. After walking between nine and ten miles, we drug ourselves to the car and headed back to our respective places, ready to rest before phase two of Operation Long Day for Norm's Birthday commenced.

A Party, An Airport Trip, and Three Cats Dressed the Same

So, one of the first activities we had going right after I arrived was the birthday party for Norman, Norm and Holly's one-year-old. It was a pretty cool birthday party, and I remember thinking that he had more people there than I ever did for birthday parties. The cake was pretty cool, too. Maybe I'll find and post a picture of that as well.

Here's Norman enjoying a cookie or a piece of cake:

Inside somebody asked Dan and Norm and me if we all coordinated our plaid(?) shirts, and, since we matched, we should pose together. This is also the last time I had the beard in photograph, since I shaved it off later that night. Here's a self portrait from my camera.

If you're paying attention you might be able to tell that Norman is wearing a different outfit than before. That's because this picture is taken almost a week later at the "Rehearsal" Dinner, and event that my father, pictured here, was actually able to attend.

My dad was my brother's best man, and he flew in on Saturday morning. Both Dan and I went to the airport to pick him up, as I hadn't seen him since his visit to New York in 2009. This trip was only the second one I had in the "picking people up at the airport" job pile. The day before I picked up cousin Mike and his girl Kate, and on Monday I dropped my dad off at the airport for a departure, so...

With my dad best man, Norm and I served as groomsmen. Here's a look at the three of us:

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Getting to Sacramento

Exactly two weeks before my brother and his lady's wedding, our mother did some damage to her ankle. It was at first a sprain that turned into a fracture and consequently ripped her tendons in the area. There are a few gruesome pictures out there capturing the carnage, but I'm choosing to skip posting them here.

I had some time before the wedding, so my brother asked me to come up to Citrus Heights and act as a driver and babysitter of our mom. I said sure.

Having lived away for five years I now cherish my rare chances to be a part of the family, or at least feel like part of it.

Now, my mom's fella also joined her, and as it turned out, my services were not as necessary as it originally appeared.

In any case, my brother found cheap airline tickets to fly from the LBC to Sac direct, a flight that takes something like sixty-five minutes. The Long Beach Airport likes, rather, relishes it's ability to bring people back to the golden age of flight, when you walked along the tarmac and climbed stairs to get into the plane. They have plans to keep that up, to do it indefinitely, which makes flying in and out of there quite the pleasure.

Here's me looking out my window in the last row of the plane:

I'm much more of an aisle sitter, but on this plane I had the entire three-seat row to myself, so I took lots of pictures. Here's one of Long Beach that you'll probably have to magnify to see the skyline in the distance where city meets blue.

Here's the Rancho Palos Verdes peninsula with Catalina Island in the background. The beaches of Torrance, Redondo, Manhattan, and Hermosa are the visible sandy line at the bottom, and maybe even Santa Monica is visible. Getting up high enough...

This picture means more to those who've driven from LA to San Luis Obispo, or the other way. After Oxnard if you're heading "south" to LA, there's a big hill you climb to get to Calabassas and Los Angeles County. if you head the other way, out of LA and on the way to Ventura and SLO, you come down the hill and can see a straightaway stretch of highway that leads to Oxnard and then to Ventura. That's what's visible in this picture: the mountain pass, the stretch, and Ventura shrouded by haze.

After doing some research, I can say that this is Lake Piru, a reservoir caused by damming Piru River.

The patchwork look of the farmland of the California interior always looked kinda cool to me. I especially like the tiny squares of white on the corners of the lots, the farmhouses...

The rivers of the Great Central Valley are easily marked by their dark vegetation.

For some reason, there seems to be a giant hare looping through the airport. I think it looks kinda cool, but what can you do? Is the hare a symbol of Sacramento?

In the days that followed my arrival, I went to a birthday party, a hiking and fishing trip, a minor league baseball game, endless trips to and from the wedding site in Folsom, drunkenly put up a ceiling fan, explored my old elementary school, went on a pre-wedding limousine ride, got some serious preliminary work done on what I'm calling my "Sacramento book" (the fourth in the pipeline), and got to be a part of my younger brother's wedding ceremony. Old friends and family members alike were present, and a grand time was had.

The hard task, for me anyway, is how to tell the story in any semblance of order and how many posts will it cover...I mean, my best man got married, my kid brother, the lad who grew up right next to me, two doors down the hall...the Man.

Dan the Man.

Starting Slowly: Differences Between Dan and Me

One of my mom's uncles was cracking a joke after the evening was mostly over. While our family was sitting in a large circle, he asked me, while I was running around and stopped by to visit for a moment, that since I had been married for almost four years now how come I didn't talk Dan out of getting married. This uncle never struck me as someone who regretted marriage, and maybe he thought the joke was a form of playing it safe with the youth.

In general I'm not so cynical that I hate marriage and being married, but that wasn't what I focused on when I answered him. I said something like, "Well, if you want to talk Dan out of something, you better not have me involved. He's done pretty well for himself seeing how I do things, and then doing the opposite."

They laughed and agreed that once Dan had decided on something, he was pretty set on it. In many ways he and I are very similar. Someone who knows me well but is non-family was at the wedding and told me that she'd just seen Dan making a gesture that was exactly the same as one she'd only seen from me on the past.

In other ways, we're pretty different. I won't bore my few readers with some of the details; I'll only leave you with two pictures. The first is the floor on my side of the bed.

Since you can't see how messy this side gets when you walk into the room, Corrie doesn't mind how I leave it and never gets after me for being a messy-marvin. Somedays it's fine, other days it gets bad. This is after a nice haul of not-caring.

Now the next picture gives a little insight of my brother:

In case you're curious, that's my brother's junk drawer. It looks more organized than my library, so much so that I hazarded a claim that "junk drawer" may not be an appropriate name for the site.

He apologized for its disheveled nature and said that he was meaning to get it back into shape.