Fun with Fall Foliage

I took Anthon and Ella to the park for a few hours on Saturday and they promptly began to bombard me with leaves. Anthon led and Ella followed. Fall is such a wonderful time of year.

It would have been perfect had Shelley and Quinn joined us. Shelley was fighting with the roll dough she had made, but had turned into "the blob" in our refrigerator. The yeast was acting so powerfully, that it had expanded far beyond the mixing bowl it was placed in. It had spilled out and had enveloped the salsa, the container of leftover peas and was moving towards the condiments. It had to be stopped.

A hodge podge of updates

Yokohama Triennial 2008

The family spent the day in Yokohama a while back, and I reaffirmed my belief that me and modern art aren't really that good friends. Every three years the city hosts the Yokohama Triennial, where modern artists from around the world show off their creations. My personal "favorites" include a wall of print outs of emails and newspaper articles talking about "NoMo phobia" or the fear of having no mobile phone. Another had a saddle ridden by a Vietnamese Catholic bishop just lying in the corner with the rental agreement tacked to the wall. Are these artists really trying? Where's the art in all of that? I really don't get it, and at this point don't care if I do. And don't get me started on the short videos. What happened to the whimsical and fantastical side of modern art? Why does everything have to be so dark and cynical? Well, at least I took a cute shot of Ella.

Fall Colors at Shinjuku Gyoen Park

Growing up in Southern California, it's well understood that there are really only two seasons, spring and summer. Winter is really two weeks of Autumn, and anything cold or wet would be treated as massive newsworthy events, not seasons - like when it rains the news is always on "Weather Watch!" for hours. So while I'm not complaining, I am stating as fact that I never knew the simple joy of making a pile of fall leaves and jumping into them. We had a large liquid amber that dropped a lot of pretty leaves, but twice as many of those really prickly balls. If you jumped into a pile of that, you'd come out looking like you'd been a victim of really poorly done acupuncture. So, at a local park Anthon and I gathered up as many leaves as we could, and he had fun jumping into them, as well as picking up arm fulls and throwing them at me.

Setting up the Christmas Tree

And finally, here is the video of our setting up the Christmas tree in mid November. It's a bit long and the video size is a bit big. So have some patience with it while it downloads.