OCO

I had my second concert with the Oakland Civic Orchestra yesterday.. it was fun! I was honored to have three friends I knew in the audience, which made me really happy. We played 4 pieces, including Prokofiev Symphony #7. You need 4 percussionists to play it, but we only had 3, so there were times when I was playing, for example, bass drum with my right hand and woodblock in my left. It was such a thrill... I love being in an orchestra. You really get to know the pieces intimately - which means that you have them in your head for the next few days after a concert. da da da.....da da da da..... da da da da... da da da da....(imagine me singing)

Why do we have so much stuff?

There's a great 20 minute documentary about the consumer-supply chain at storyofstuff.com. It talks about how Americans are 5% of the world's population but use 30% of the resources, and how for every pound of garbage that we produce at our house,there are more than 70 pounds of waste generated by industries like mining, manufacturing, agriculture, and petrochemicals. There's 10 things to do to help, like using less energy by hangdrying your clothes or putting on a sweater instead of turning up the heat. I was feeling pretty good about myself, since we do most of the things listed.. until I realized that I was multitasking while watching the movie - spending the other half my brain shopping online! There's an article on the International Socialist Review that appears to be based on the same information, but with more detail.

Snowcamping = surprisingly enjoyable

Bryce has wanted me to come with him snowcamping for years now. I've always been too scared to do it. Not really scared, I guess it just didn't appeal to me. I mean, who wants to sleep outside on snow when it's 20 degrees out? But, our housemate Jen was organizing a trip with a bunch of our friends, so I decided to try it out. It was great! We skied in about 2.5 miles along an unpaved forest service road to where we set up camp. The actual construction of the tent left me pretty dubious. We had a floorless tent, so we dug a little trench to put the sides of the tent in, then built walls around the bottom so that the wind didn't get through. Bryce also humored me and brought a tarp for the bottom so that we could put our sleeping pads on the tarp instead of directly on snow. I have to say, it wasn't that bad. I'd even do it again! The group built a little snow kitchen, with benches and a table. And, the highlight of each day was going down to the hotsprings and soaking for half an hour or so quite comfortably, despite the snow that was coming down on us! Here are some photos.

New Photos posted

I posted a bunch of photos to our web albums, www.beetea.smugmug.com. There are photos from Hawaii, our June trip to Point Reyes, and some more photos of the house across the street that was destroyed in a fire. (Sadly, Evan wasn't able to recover from his smoke inhalation and he passed away the next day. ) I'll be posting some more photos in the next week or so.