Full Moon in Scorpio

Santa Barbara, California

Billy and I left LA early Sunday morning so that we could arrive here in Santa Barbara in time to attend Mass at Mission Santa Barbara. This mission, called The Queen of the Missions, was built about a decade after Carmel Mission. It's parrish is under the Franciscan order. I had heard that it has a wondrous Parrish Choir.

Billy just plain loves Santa Barbara. I am less enamorado, though I think it is very pretty. And you can't beat the weather which seems to always be seventy-five degrees and sunny. And there is lots to do here. But still . . .

Since 1998 we have gone to Kona, to the Kona Village, for every and all of my birthdays except 1999 when I made an ill-fated decision that we should go to Santa Fe. Don't get me wrong. Santa Fe was lovely, and we both fell in love with it. The food was spectacular, and there was a lot to do there. But it was freaking COLD -- 29 degrees the night that we celebrated my birthday. On that walk home from Santacafe to Inn of the Anasazi, which was just a few short blocks, I could feel the stone cold of the pavement through my shoes. Something I remember from being in Rome once in late November when I was a teenager. Something I do not like at all.

After that Santa Fe foot freeze, I vowed to spend all the rest of my birthdays at The Kona Village. And, I believe that it was the very next trip, in 2000, when we met Sandra and John. That was when the trouble started. The trouble we caused, that is. Somewhere along the line I had picked up a fateful sentence spoken to me earlier by a waiter on a cruise ship. I had hesitated to take a glass of champagne with me as I was leaving a dining room. Go ahead, Ishmael (really -- an unbearably attractive Turkish man named Ishmael) said, It's your ship! Sandra and I used this over and over again at The Village -- enough so that we quickly came to believe it. It was our Village -- at least for the 7-8 days that we were there together. And I suppose we did sometimes stretch the outer limits of vacation entitlement. I so miss that!

But, currently, there is no Kona Village. And, Santa Barbara is not a bad place to celebrate. We spent our twentieth wedding anniversary here; a rainy weekend staying at the San Ysidro Ranch in a cottage with two fireplaces. We must have burnt through a cord of wood. I'm certain they lost money on us. This time we are at The Canary Hotel -- right in town within walking distance to just about everything. 

I have celebrated thirteen birthdays at the Kona Village Resort. Last year, after the tsunami had washed away all traces of those celebrations and knocked our hale off its foundation and the resort off the map, we took off for John and Sandra's house on the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe and celebrated my birthday there. It was a perfect and lovely celebration in their beautiful home with the lake right outside their windows and a table set in harvest theme. Home, in a different place and different way, but good.

This year, on Sunday night, we watched the Giants clinch the World Series in a four-game sweep. There we were, once again, sitting in an out of town bar (the one in our hotel), perched on barstools watching the Giants run away with another game. This one being the finish of the World Series. We drank martinis, ate shisito peppers (perfect for pre-Halloween goulishness since about one out of seven are blisteringly hot while the rest are tasty and mild), and a prosciutto and shaved asparagus flatbread. I resisted an almost overwhelming temptation to order oysters, as I have a rather ridiculous agreement with myself that I won't eat risky foods when I am on vacation. Though, frankly, neither oysters nor sushi seem that risky to me anymore. In retrospect, I should have just gone for it.

I celebrated my birthday by shopping up and down State Street. We ate lunch outdoors at a little cafe, and dinner at another one. We had cocktails in the bar at the hotel.  We now knew our bartender, Brett, by name, and had learned that he is a Dodgers fan. We're good at this getting-to-know-you thing when it comes to bartenders. Later, after dinner, we were walking back to the hotel down State Street. Most of the businesses were closed, and we saw no one else strolling. As we were crossing the street, I heard the opening refrain of one of my favorite salsa song: Yo No Se Manana by Luis Enrique. And it was loud! No other sounds on the street but this song, which just happens to be the ringtone on my phone. When we passed in front of the patio of a restaurant that was now closed, we saw the staff cleaning up. They had the music cranked -- a salsa version of whistling while you work. What are the odds of that song in that place on that night?

Meanwhile, while we were having all this fun in sunny Santa Barbara, Hurricane Sandy was brewing and blowing on the Eastern seaboard. A vast crushing mass of a storm. My friend, Max, texted from Connecticut to say that they were ok, but that it was a massive assault. He sent me a photo of a sign at his local Starbucks offering free water to the victims of the storm. The sign had a heart drawn on the bottom of it. Times like this can bring out the best in people and communities.

I've always known that I share my birthday with the infamous Black Tuesday when the stock market crashed in 1929. It's a volatile time of year, and this year, there was a full moon on my birthday. I am a Scorpio. And, there was a full moon on the first day of Scorpio on the night when I lost two close friends in a car accident in Pacheco Pass. I know that I've written this before. But that doesn't stop me from again writing that we buried Larry on a Monday, and Ray on Tuesday. The following day was my eighteenth birthday. It's been a long time, but I will never pass a birthday without thinking of them both.

The odds are that sometime, through the course of your life, something bad is going to happen in conjunction with your birthday. I feel I've had more than my share including a birthday spent at a hospital when my dad had been admitted into the intensive care unit. My dad survived that bout. And the next one. But not the final one. Still, I went on to celebrate many wildly happy birthdays in Kona; one at Glenbrook, plus the chilly one in Santa Fe, and this one in Santa Barbara. The weather was beautiful, sunny and mild, and I feel profound gratitude that we were lucky enough to enjoy it.

Meanwhile, Max's family is one of millions of households currently without power. And the devastation is still under assessment. This was big. Call me superstitious, but I believe that a full moon in Scorpio should never be underestimated. You must trust me about this. Thank you for reading my blog. And East Coasters: you will know many more mananas. Hang in there . . .

The Confession

Los Angeles, California

Ok, here it is. I am fascinated, FASCINATED by Tim Lincecum. I recently watched him pitch in relief for the Giants in game four of the NLCS playoffs. When he pitches, I cannot take my eyes off of him. It's crazy. Something about the mechanics of his pitching, the expression on his face, just rivets me to the screen -- even when he's doing badly (his doing badly against the Dodgers should be enjoyment enough, but still I can't look at anything else going on besides his pitching). I was profoundly disappointed that he wasn't pitching when we attended the game at AT&T Park last month, though I did see him pitch (badly) at Dodger Stadium once this year. What is it about baseball and baseball players that generates this much interest in me?

My salsero friend, Joel, tells me that baseball is boring, and that the Dodgers start out every season by doing well and then they finish by losing. He taunts me about my team. And, I have to admit that, lately, this is true. And this year in a BMW (big major way). They got all of our hopes way up and then took a quarter-of-a-billion dollar freefall at the end of the season. It was pathetic. Still.

Lydia invited me to the game, on October 2nd, which was when they lost the wild card race. It was an evening I will always remember. My friend, Christopher, was also there and through his connections to an event at Dodger Stadium, we got to get onto the field before the game. A novel and heady experience for us both. I took a few photos, then froze when I saw the dugout start to fill. Andre Ethier, who for many seasons we have called TCO for the cute one (seriously, even Billy has occasionally called him that in the spirit of not beating us but joining us) started out to the field. Lydia froze not. She whipped her phone around and snapped this:

which got me unbelievably excited. So that when I saw Kemp sitting in the dugout I demanded that she take his picture, take his picture! She snapped again, then snapped at me Why don't you take it? But she is better at this than me. We work well this way with she as cameraperson, and me as the director. And I will prove it:

We were, of course, disappointed that the Dodgers didn't battle back that night, but it wasn't meant to be. And even if the Dodgers had won, they wouldn't have captured the wild card. It's a magic number thing, and don't expect me to explain it. The St. Louis Cardinals went on to win the following night, and that would have knocked us out regardless. That is baseball. You can be winning through the entire game up until the last inning; even down to the last pitch and the last out, and you can still lose. That happened to the Washington Nationals this past Friday night, and it was heartbreaking -- even though I didn't have a dog in that fight. It is so hard to see those players' faces after a stunning loss like that. Shell-shocked.

Baseball has been very, very good to me this year, even though the Dodgers took that slide. It riveted my attention away from my problems. For the first time in my life, I even paid attention to stats, checking them each night before I went to bed. It was fun, and I will miss it, though I'm happy to have it to look forward to next spring.

Last year, Lyd and I went to one of the first games of the season. When she first stepped into Dodger Stadium, she took a deep breath and said to me I'm here. It was said in a tone that conveyed that she was back home. I know that feeling. I used to feel it when we arrived in Kona. I feel it when I see the first cypress trees as I am coming in to Monterey County. And I expect I will feel it when I first set foot in Dodger Stadium next season. So, on the second to the last day of the regular season, we bid farewell to Dodger Stadium until next year. And, by the way Giants --  just wait until next year . . .

Thank you for reading my blog. Go Dodgers (in 2013)!