nawl

Christmas with family. To be precise, something like four celebrations over three days, involving four parents, one sibling, three grandparents, four aunts and uncles, and four cousins. (That summary makes it seem almost like you could choose one from each category per day, but strangely that's not actually how it works.)

The last week or so was spent with my step-grandparents who have a beautiful house on a dammed lake in the Sierra foothills, gold country, away from internet and therefore rather unexpectedly from my ability to do the work I brought along. (Tomorrow I will regret this when I begin real work on the three take-home finals, two projects, and one problem set that are all due within the first couple weeks of January.)

It rained pretty much the whole time.

I read, slept twelve hours a day, watched old movies, weighed myself constantly. Bathroom scales are so interesting when one doesn't normally live near one. My weight fluctuates something like five pounds in the course of a day. I'm somewhat at a loss why people often appear to consider losing or gaining a pound to be significant.

On Thursday it was clear enough to go for a walk down the Yuba river. Everything is green because it is winter and raining.

The river was high and muddy and churning. But not, apparently, as high as a few years ago when it had snowed and a warm storm melted off the snow.

Yet another storm came through on Friday, and on Saturday morning the lake level had risen above the dock.

We checked out how the dam was coping.

And then we drove home, past golden waves of grain, cows, minor flooding.

This kind of sums up how I feel about Sacramento, although I really shouldn't be so mean because I've really only been there once and I mostly remember looking at trains. Besides, it's probably a good idea to isolate politicians among cows. And freeways. In a flood plain.

Around Vacaville, traffic came to a complete halt. We backed up along the shoulder to get off the highway, bought a map from a gas station, and detoured along side roads past Fairfield.

When we got back on 80, it was clear that it was flooded completely across, and contrary to what the gas station attendant had said, no lanes were getting through at all, in either direction. 680 was also closed for flooding.

I haven't looked at the news, but I suspect the last day of yet more rain hasn't helped.

Around Emeryville the sun was setting beautifully across the bay over the San Francisco skyline, providing one of the saddest missed-picture-opportunities in a long time. Here it is, un-photoshopped but cropped in a way to suggest the long-sky effect that Ryan sometimes goes for.

In honor of my new camera, I've linked to the originals of every picture, so you can debate that cropping decision.

And later, over Oakland, the city skyline still visible through the shipping crane animals, and off to the right the slender row of cranes for the construction of the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge.

For New Year's Eve I went dancing at the ball in Berkeley, had vegetarian chili at Au Coquelet at 1 am before taking bart to San Francisco to spend the rest of the evening and a good portion of the next day cuddled up with good friends, a wonderful day in nearly every respect.