After a year in Reno, we felt it was about time we made our house our own.
The day we were moving in — moving truck in the driveway, boxes strewn everywhere — our new neighbor came over insisting that he show me how to turn on our lawn sprinkler. He screwed it up royally and we experienced a river running down the east side of our property. My turn to insist: TURN EVERYTHING OFF.
About a week later, our mailbox key was ready and the first letter we received at our new address was a letter from Sierra Canyon Association saying that our lawn was all brown and we have 30 days to tell them what we’re going to do about it. The letter was about six weeks old.
The next week, I paid a guy from the next village $25 bucks to properly turn on our sprinkler system. Hey, we lived in a San Francisco flat with no grass the previous 20 years, do we really need grass in the desert? But we vowed to live here a year and experience our new house before ripping anything out.
Our sprinklers at work on Sunday morning.
About 10 months later, a LivingSocial Deal offered $1000 worth of landscape work for $250. Carol was on that like white on rice. We really didn’t renege on our vow, because the work didn’t get started until late June.
This is what we did…
The front yard landscape plan.
Out with the grass. On my morning walks, I have admired and photographed many xeriscaped front yards. As it turns out, the yard directly across the street from us is one we like a lot. When we talked to Frank, our landscape guy, we went and looked at that.
our front lawnOur front xeriscape. The plants will grow and cover that area.
The calendar says we’re in the midst of the 56th San Francisco International Film Festival. We’re not there.
dirty laundry
A few weeks ago I was sending my income tax package to my San Francisco accountant and the UPS Lady asked; “What do you miss most about SF?”
I said, “I can no longer walk down to Real Food for a half-pound of mushrooms and be back in five minutes.”
That was a spur of the moment reaction, and certainly true as it is “five miles to a loaf of bread” where we now live.
The reflective answer is that we most miss the San Francisco Film Society. We’re reminded of that at least once a week when we get the newsletter. But we don’t need the newsletter to tell us what we’re missing… we’re missing everything that’s not playing at the CinePlex.
We have a very nice CinePlex downtown by the Truckee River — RIVERSIDE 12 — and we enjoy going there to an early show and dinner after at any number of good restaurants nearby. But seeing Lincoln in a theater with 8 to 10 other souls present ain’t like seeing Queen of Versailles in a packed house. That’s what I miss.
We moved to Reno on June 6th, last year, not long after the 55th annual San Francisco International Film Festival closed. We attended 17 films at SFIFF55. I promised myself that for SFIFF56 we would make the trip to San Francisco during the Festival and cram as many films as possible into say, three days.
When the full schedule was available on the SFIFF56 website, I started looking around. I targeted April 30, May 1, 2. The website was arranged pretty well so with about 3 groups of times a day = 3 films a day. I think I picked two or three on Friday and then I started thinking… This is not like picking one or two films a day over 20 or so days. And I know nothing about any film; there’s no buzz, no printed program to peruse, no Members Night to review the films…
Well, all those things could have been overcome. But the Elephant-in-the-Room was Eric and Alison’s trip to San Francisco and then Reno the exact day after the Festival closes. Let’s say we went to SFIFF56 on April 30, May 1, 2… came back home and turned around and drove to SF the very next Friday to meet E and A. And we’ve hardly settled down from out Giants Spring Training trip (and certainly haven’t yet paid for it).
That crushing momentum caused me to just stop planning. I didn’t decide not to go, I just didn’t continue to pick films, discuss them with Carol, coordinate with Sarah, get the tickets, arrange to stay with Paula and so on and on. I guess I didn’t acknowledge it, but it turned out to be either:
Giants and Film Festival OR
Film Festival and Eric and Alison OR
Giants and Eric and Alison.
The latter became the default.
And while we loved the Giants trip and will love seeing Eric and Alison…
Bummer. Can’t get 10 pounds of goodness inna 5 pound bag.
But there is a fall-back. One of the other festivals: Taiwan or French or Italian. I always liked the Italian best. Last year, New Italian Cinema Events (NICE) played November 11 to 18. I’m gonna mark my calendar now.
As partial season ticket holder — Thanks Eric and Alison.
Here we are waiting to park while a tow truck does his business.
We’ll go to the end of this building then ramp up to the third — of six — floors to park. Five bucks, and you can use your ticket stub for a free slice at the pizza place (right beside that Ford). Hey, this is Reno. In SF they charge $20 to $40 within 5 blocks of the ballpark. This is just across the street.
Opening Day — with all new staff — is not a good time to get quick service before the game.
We’re in one of the *Freight House District* restaurants that border the ballpark. Carol is looking out the window to the field as they bring the National Anthem singer in in a limo.
Here’s the Aces starting lineup. No digitized jim-crack-scoreboard in this ballpark.
They do have a nice, big scoreboard, but it’s the kind that shows slides and short pre-made videos (such as advertising).
Our view of the ballpark. Pretty good, sez I.
As Brian promised, when the sun went down it got pretty cold, but we’re used to that from San Francisco — Not to mention Fenway Park in April. What we’re not used to is the Aces trailing 16-3 in the top of the Fifth Inning, and it’s about 9:20. We took the opportunity to leave.
And this is what was happening the next day… April snowblobs bring May flowers, we hope.
RectorSite 