Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Welcome back to us! It feels to me like it has taken us a week to get back into continuing with our lives after a long and fun weekend in St. Louis. For those of you who were there with us, we apologize for the reiteration of everything you were there for. If you'd like, you can jump down to the marker identified as This Week and continue reading. The same thing goes for all you who don't want to read over my family's adventures in St. Louis. In fact, you could take the photo tour and experience it better than I could write about it. However, since this email doubles as our journal - I'm going to write about it and there's nuttin' you turkeys can do about it. [/Mulan]

Last Week

Monday was our last dinner with the Rocks before they started their trip to Utah for the next three weeks. They are going to do their baby blessing in Alyssa's family ward and since she is still on leave from work, they made a nice trip out of it. The rest of our week, we mostly got ready for our trip and relaxed from the semester being over. The studio and campus have been completely vacant and, while it isn't a bother to have the buildings be empty, the empty graduate studio is a bit disconcerting. But I believe I remember my studio mates saying they were taking different trips for a few weeks at the beginning of summer, so they should be back. Maybe.

Tuesday evening, I had a meeting with CADRE people about the projects we are going to be working on this summer. However, due to a painful migraine, I didn't stick around very long. I think it had something to do with lack of food, water, and appropriate "standing up and walking around" breaks. We made a quick trip to Sonoma Chicken Coop to grab some dinner (we were planning on an in-and-out trip, when who should walk up to our table but Kate and Robi. So they invited us to stick around and eat with them, which we did, and invited us over for games the next night, which we did as well. San Jose is an odd town. It is supposedly the 10th largest city in the nation, yet it doesn't feel large at all. That is mostly due to the overwhelming urban sprawl which extends the whole of the valley, making the town the most unoriginal and boring place to live. Yet, I wish we lived closer to downtown so at the very least we could feel more connected to what is happening.

Unfortunately, we couldn't stay long at Kate and Robi's Wednesday night because we still had to pack - we had already done the obligatory cleaning for those kind people who were going to stop in and check on the cat. Actually, I think the cleaning is more for me than anyone: I like to come home from a trip to a clean house. It fits with the feeling of being in a hotel and having your room cleaned for you every day [easier transition home again? :) ]. So we got home early Wednesday night and stuffed everything we needed into the largest suitcase. This was for two reasons. First, we thought we needed to bring my tripod for family pictures. Second, because we were hoping that my family would [read our minds and...] bring the hand-me-down girl's clothes we could take home with us on the plane. Funny enough, the first reason became invalid and we took the tripod out of the suitcase before we left. [but seriously, once everything fits, why repack!? -beck]

Rebecca's friend Cindy and her husband had decided to take a train ride from Seattle (where they live) to Southern California (where his family lives) and made a pit stop in San Francisco Thursday evening. Traffic was terrible and to add to those problems we kept making wrong decisions making it a 2 hour drive which should normally take 45 minutes. But we made it there late and sadly only had time to spend an hour in the SFMoMA with them. And while we wanted to spend more time, our plan was to wake up at 3:50 am the next morning, so we left after the museum closed and literally dropped them off at the corner on our way to the freeway. We got to bed at 11:30 pm, and probably didn't fall asleep until later. Who knows? The next 24 hours were such a blur.

Up by 3:50. Drove to Rebecca's work parking lot which happens to be across the freeway from the airport. Then, we walked to the airport. You heard me correctly - walked. It's something we don't often think about, but airports apparently aren't meant to be walked to. You can walk around inside them, you can walk from terminal to terminal and parking lot to terminal. But to leave that airport, you need to use something that has wheels and is road approved. But we decided to break the rules at 4 in the morning and walked. It took us about 20 minutes and we only had to hop a couple of street medians with our luggage. No fences, thankfully. Tired, not thinking coherently, we checked in for our flight and tried to sleep. Many hours and one layover later, we got into St. Louis and my brother and his family picked us up and took us to the hotel. Nieces and nephew were excited and bustling. There was running and yelling and fun fun fun. Of course: the first thing they want to do is to go swimming. And, that woke me up. After dinner, some of the adults left to go to the temple and we were supposed to keep the kids entertained. They were so rowdy that we did the only thing we knew how: we took them for more swimming [hoping to "wear them out"!]. Until past their bedtimes. What good babysitters we are.

Early Saturday morning, we arose to make sure we got to the St. Louis Arch memorial long before lines started. And here is where I put in an aside. I liked the Drury Inn where we stayed. It was a really nice place. Lots of free breakfast, free popcorn and drinks, nice rooms, I was impressed. The Western Expansion Monument is a bit creepy. Maybe that's because ultimately what it stands for is white power. Which is a bit strange and politically incorrect. But, I guess I can say I went there. We rode the tiny elevators (one of the kids called them "port-a-potty" elevators) to the top and as Grandpa Madsen told me about his experience: "I can say I went to the top and that's about it." So, we went there. Lucky for us, by the time we got down, the lines were around the arch and we were glad we got there so early on Memorial weekend.

Saturday was our busiest day. We saw the Mississippi river on a boat tour. After the tour, the girls and Tanner saw some people rolling down the hills and so Rebecca and I took them. Rebecca was pleased because this was the first time Alison held her hand instead of running to someone else whenever she was close. So that made her day. We decided to support our local brewer and drove from the boat tour to the Budweiser park/zoo for the rest of the afternoon. There were baby goats to feed and pet and water sprinklers to run through. As the day got on, it was hot and humid. Naturally, this meant that when we got back to the hotel, we all went swimming again. It is a good thing too, because I was so exhausted from the heat that the water woke me right up.

Sunday was much more relaxed. Church in the morning with nieces and nephew is always fun. I drew Alison and Kristen some pictures. We had a nice picnic for lunch along with family bingo. Everyone won something and Tanner got his cars, Caitlyn got her funny nose, Alia got some light-up pens, Alison got a bag of lizards, there were bouncing balloons and so on. The afternoon was spent at Forest Park which claims to be the largest city park in the nation. I don't buy it. While its total square footage might be larger than Central Park, it is full of buildings and museums and the like: Central Park is mostly just park. It rained and rained after we got out of the art museum; we both miss rain like that.

And finally, it was time to go home. Our memorial day was slow, but I'm not sure it was relaxing. The morning was spent playing games with Martin and Jessica's family, but the rest of the day was spent traveling. the nicest part: when we got to San Jose we were walking back to our car, wondering how to cross traffic in the middle of the evening, when a ward member pulled up and offered us a ride. What a great rescue! Then, at home. we crashed and slept.

This Week

And that is why we spent Tuesday and Wednesday detoxing [grocery shopping, etc.] from the previous week. It was so much fun that it has taken us most of this week to get back to normal life. I know there were doctor's appointments in there and veterinarian appointments too. Who really keeps track of those things?

Thursday evening, Rebecca skipped work early to come with me to a potentially good discussion at the Montalvo Arts Center about how arts and technology affect the R&D sectors of the high tech industry. Instead, it turned out to be a very uninspiring discussion about very uninteresting and redundant issues. At no direct fault of the very well selected panelists. In fact, I'm not sure who to blame on that one. Afterwards, we (the CADRE graduates) all went to an Irish pub and discussed what makes True English fish and chips. I still claim that Scottish food is the best of the available British options.

For our date night Friday evening, we cleaned our car! I know that doesn't sound terribly romantic or even fun, but for us, it is a simple joy to have a clean vehicle. This is probably because we don't often have a truly clean vehicle [this is maybe a twice a year occasion! -beck]. However, this time the self-clean power washers weren't doing the job well enough so maybe next time we'll go to one of the many car wash places around here who do the works on your car. I used to do that when I was single out here and it's such a luxury.

Which brings us to yesterday: the gardening day. It was high time we adjusted our trees in their pots and re-attempted to grow our own herbs. While we were out shoveling dirt on our balcony, we tossed in a couple of tomato plants as well. We started at a small gardening shop down the street from us and found their service to be unbelievably good. They approached us, they helped us, they showed us and talked to us about every detail we wanted to know. We walked away with our herbs and some really cheap good soil, but they were all sold out of tomatoes which we had to get from the bigger gardening store. So here is the real question for everyone: how does gardening work in California with plants like tomatoes and herbs like cilantro? Does the warmer weather mean the plants won't die come winter and we can continually get fruit? Or are we going to have to do this all over again next spring? We'd like to know what to expect of our future garden. Yay for fresh parsley and thyme!

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"Knock knock"
"Who's there?"
"Cow"
"Cow who?"
"Cow Alison!"

-Alison's knock-knock joke

Let's play pretend and say this book was mixed up in the multiverse and was actually authored by Robin McKinley, not Terry Pratchett. Or at least, let's just do that for Comparison's sake. Although, I don't know anyone named Comparison nor why we should care for his sake.

Wizards, as we all know, have a few ways of becoming wizards. Most importantly, they are the eighth son of an eighth son. Because eight is the magical number. Not to mention the eighth color is the color of magic. But at the end of their lives and the beginning of a new wizard's life, the old wizard will pass on their magical staff to the new wizard being born. The eighth son of the eighth son; son being the key word. One wizard didn't check and passed it on to Esk.

Here's where Robin McKinley takes over. Esk is a McKinley character: she's spunky and in awe of magic and frankly has no clue as to the ways in which she will change the world. Especially because she grows up in a tiny town. And Bad Ass is the town's unfortunate name.

No other Pratchett tale in Discworld quite captures the spirit of youth like this one. I'm amazed at Pratchett's breadth, albeit terribly schizophrenic. But this was definitely an enjoyable tale because, unlike McKinley's tales, this presents the consequences of doing magic. In fact, I really appreciate that about the Discworld adventures: they all balance the wonders of fantasy with the realities of the disasters it would cause. Don't know what I'm talking about? This would be a good book to start on. Although The Light Fantastic is the ideal introduction to Discworld, Equal Rites is a fantastic secondary introduction, built especially well for younger readers.

I really liked this book for completely different reasons than why I like other Pratchett novels.

We learned this week that the "competition" is nothing to be afraid of. Hehehe. We went down to Santa Cruz Friday night to see an exhibit by the graduating MFA students in UCSC's digital and new media area, to see how they compare with SJSU's. The first observation I had was that poorly lit galleries make it hard to figure out what's going on. They had turned out all the lights so the only illumination came from the exhibits themselves. But it made it hard to determine visually what computer monitor belonged to what exhibit and I couldn't stray too far from Wayne or we would have lost each other. The other observation we had was that UCSC obviously has more funding than SJSU. UC schools in general have more funding than CSU (e.g. SJSU) schools, though both are state schools. However, even I could tell that, though expensive looking projects, they just weren't that...interesting. We didn't stay long.

I also spent a good chunk of the week thinking about the talk I was supposed to prepare for a baptism on Saturday, and coming up with other things to do in the meantime. It made me nervous to even think about writing the talk, more so than actually giving it. Usually it's the other way around. But Wayne helped me brainstorm on the way to Santa Cruz Friday and on the way to Oakland Saturday morning (to go to the temple), and between us a talk was written. The baptism went well too; it was the baptism of one of the kids in my CTR-8 class. Lots of people showed up, both from visiting family and people in the ward and other people I wasn't sure where they came from.

We didn't quite have enough hours in the day Saturday, so we missed the Wii (the latest gaming system from Nintendo) party one of Wayne's friends threw, but we did make it to the World of Warcraft "party" in the evening after the baptism. I wasn't the only wife that brought other entertainment along. :) I read some of a Terry Pratchett book while Wayne learned this game. I enjoyed my book, and I think Wayne determined the game isn't for him. But since they are doing a "project" in this game...he'll play it for a week or two anyway.

Most of the evenings I just enjoyed having Wayne home in the evenings so we could eat dinner at fairly normal times. We read books (together and independently) and I played the piano some and we went for nice walks. We explored Santa Clara's Central Park. The park is pretty large and has nice facilities for picnics and bbq's and a duck pond and a pavilion with vines climbing up poles. I think the vines are meant eventually to completely encase the pavilion! That would be cool. Probably years from now, but cool nonetheless. Summer evenings are nice, whether we're exploring or taking it easy. :)

"You're due in October? You're showing more than I am and I'm due in November."

-The brilliant clerk at the bookstore.

Two books from the Discworld's City Watch series. While Guards Guards wasn't my favorite book, I rank Men at Arms as being at the top of the Pratchett books I've read so far. I'm not sure if it could be considered better than Color, mostly because that would be comparing apples to oranges, or police to wizards. Or whatever. Fifth Elephant was also good, but good in a who-dun-it sort of way. Men at Arms was a brilliant novel.

Well, the Night Watch team is back. In both books. And like good coppers, they're solving mysteries. In Ankh-Morpork. Where it's better for you to run to another street if "all isn't well." But that's the joy of watching Sam Vimes and Carrot Ironfoundersson struggle with being good guys trying to do the right thing in a town which by all means is run by thieves, crooks and killers. Of course, they happen to have licenses to do said crookery, but nonetheless. Satire at its finest and wonderful characters that I have fallen in love with. However, I'm a bit bothered by the difference in Detritus' character from one book to the next. I imagine Pratchett has a very difficult time juggling his plethora of unique individuals from one book to the next.

I have also begun to understand how to better approach the Discworld universe. Some kind wikipedia editor has put up a list of proper reading order for the different Discworld series books.

I want to make it clear that Angua doesn't look like this and Carrot looks like an Olympic swimming medalist, not like this fan image of him. People like those depicted in this fan's renditions would get eaten alive, possibly with a side of sardines in the Ankh-Morpork I envision. However, Sam Vines does look like Pete Postlethwaite.

Go read Men at Arms. It's a good book. And that's all I have to say about that.

Summers are full of lazy days without much to do. Maybe we should be planning more interesting events in our lives, I'm sure there is a lot more to do. But frankly, it is the summertime and I don't know if I ever grew out of the summer time laziness that school bred into me. We do have other big events for later in the summer months, but we can enjoy this lull while we have it. [and read lots! :)]

Last week, our local grocer was selling 2 pounds of strawberries for $2.69. While that might not be the best price in the world (we casually picked up six pounds and froze them), after asking around at all the u-pick places in the area, we come to find out this is the best deal ever offered in the bay area. With that knowledge in our pocket, it was time to act and act fast. We purchased several more 2 lb. boxes and decided to make the plunge into the home canning industry. Of course this means picking up canning supplies and cans, which we thought we could get locally. We were wrong. Apparently, the idea of "canning your own food" is a really foreign concept to the bay area citizens. No surprise there. But also we learned that my parents' method of steam canning as opposed to pressure canning is out of mode. Which meant looking at pressure canners. And then serendipitously deciding last moment that we would much rather like the convenience of steam canners and my family never died from eating steam canned food.

That said, we now have on the way to our house: lots of pint jars and everything we need to get this strawberry season underway. Really what I want now is to stop off in Oregon on our way north in a few weeks to pick up a ton of huckleberries and blackberries to make wonderful Oregon jam.

While Rebecca has been at work, I have started into a few of the collaborative projects my fellow colleagues and I are working on. It seems rather cushy to be spending hours everyday playing an online video game, but when you're trying to figure out how to "do" something with it because it is such a prevalent corner in our contemporary society, MMORPGs become a behemoth which is hard to wrap your mind around. Several conversations later, we still don't have a clear direction -- there's something there which we need to grasp; but for the time being it is out of our reach.

Back down from la-la land, Saturday was heavy cleaning day. Rebecca spent several hours "dusting," which consists of her starting dusting, then getting distracted by the dirty floorboards, then getting distracted by the dirty fridge, then getting distracted by the dirty walls, etc. You get the idea. In the meantime, I was at campus learning how to silkscreen shirts and tackling one of the projects we had planned for this summer. The shirts turned out nice and I have one for Rebecca and myself, definitely a good experience for teamwork and collaboration of all involved. [and Wayne helped finish the cleaning when he came home and saved me from adding yet more things to the list to clean! -beck]

To take a break, we dipped our feet (and some other parts of us) in the swimming pool for a while and got good and tired racing from one end to the other. And then read books the rest of the evening. It was a good Saturday, but probably not one to write home about. [and yet we wrote about it...] Thus, a good end to this week. And this entry.

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"The thing about bear attacks is you never know when they're going to happen."

-Rebecca, after the jam burned her finger, which at the time she shrieked thinking it was an animal bite.

There are artists in the world. And have been for a long time. Most people create something, some create some really good things and those are the people we call "masters."

Then, sometimes, someone comes along and does something which doesn't fit into the "hey-look-what-i-can-do" category, nor into the "i-believe-this-is-what-you-call-art" arena of creativity. On the rarest of occasions in history do you get someone like James Turrell.

I have been thinking often of James Turrell's work, at least since I first went to a skyspace in Seattle at the Henry. A skyspace is a room, often only able to hold about 15 people, which has a large hole in the ceiling, opening to the sky. As you sit in the room, there is only one place to look: up. Heavenwards. Towards the vibrant colors of the dome which sits above and around us.

There isn't anything quite like the atmosphere and the interaction between it and light. The terrestrial field shows us beauty in its complexity, but the sky - it shows its beauty in a serenity of the purest spirituality. The only connection I can make between viewing James Turrell's skyspaces and my experience is that of spirituality. Sadly, there aren't enough James Turrell pieces in the world. Maybe that's for the better: would we take lightly the sanctity of space if that space became a Benjaminian Spectacle? Probably not. But I think more of them need to come, and possibly from other hands than just Turrell's.

We had quite a full week, mostly full of play time and celebration. :) Summers are nice. We made it over to play games with our friend's Chris and Alyssa Sunday evening, and Wayne played some World of Warcraft with artist friends Monday evening while I read. We played games with Karl and Angela both Friday and Saturday (and probably tonight) since they were in town this week. It was fun, especially all the bunny mayhem that happened when we played Killer Bunnies. Some bunnies tragically died in horrific ways (in the game, of course), and we all had a good time.

Before Karl and Angela arrived Wednesday, we did a little canning of some homemade strawberry jam on Tuesday evening. It was fun! And tasty! It was my first experience that I can remember making and canning jam. I'd done a little freezer jam before with a roommate once, but this was a different experience entirely. We're hoping to find some good berries to make other varieties of jam this summer too (maybe in Oregon or Washington when we make our 4th of July trip?), so this is just the beginning!

Thursday we celebrated the summer solstice with a picnic and some kite flying at a park. A little bit of frisbee tossing probably happened somewhere in there too. And then later that evening Chris and Alyssa shared a really funny Japanese movie with us (University of Laughs) and Karl and Angela. Friday we celebrated the day after the summer solstice by visiting Wayne and Karl's favorite "toy store" (aka Fry's electronics) and an ice cream shop. And Saturday we celebrated...Saturday...by heading down to a couple of Santa Cruz beaches. It was lovely, and only a few spots were missed by sunscreen; we know this, of course, by where exactly the small sunburns are located today -- but at least they are in isolated spots. :)

Teaching in primary went well today...better than most days. Of course only three kids came to class, but I also had done quite a lot of thought and preparation to try and keep the class in control. We'll have to see if some of these new strategies hold up when more people are in town...though we're preparing to be out of town for the next couple of Sundays, so it will be a little while. We will be leaving for our big camping trip to the Olympic peninsula this Friday evening or Saturday morning. That means this week we're looking for camping supplies (maybe a cooler and stove?) so we can eat something other than pb&j during the week we're gone (any suggestions for good camping food, anyone?), and planning out what we want to see while we're there. More fun times ahead!

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Here's a short video we did last Sunday of Star cat doing some of her more recent stunts and tricks. It's silly to watch, but we just wanted to make sure we had a video of the cat at this age. Plus, it gets us into good practice for when the kid gets here and we'll have tons of video footage to edit then!

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