Rebuilding San Diego - AGAIN

San Diego keeps burning down and the Moser clan keeps building it back up.

Some background:

The 2003 Cedar Fire wiped out several communities in San Diego, the most important of which, at least in terms of Moser involvement, was Scripps Ranch. My parents got involved to help organize a community of tract-home owners to jointly hire a builder to rebuild the houses at much lower cost than a custom builder. Enter Stonefield Development. Stonefield is actually a custom and one-of-a-kind builder who took on the project and rebuilt 81 homes in Scripps Ranch. The project completed a year or two ago. There were block parties to celebrate the return of everyone home.

After the Last Rebuild

Fast forward to the October fires of 2007. That 100 year fire that happened in 2003? Turns out it was more of a 4 year fire. This current one knocked out a lot of homes in the Rancho Bernardo / Escondido areas of San Diego. My parents and Stonefield are out there again, trying to organize a group rebuild project.

To that end, I've spent the last couple of weekends in San Diego helping photograph and film the completed houses from last time around and the Stonefield informational meetings.

Currently, I'm keeping myself busy typing this because I'm waiting for my turn on the new fancy mac. I'm trying to cut down the 2+ hour meeting from last weekend into a couple of 5 min highlight clips that we can post on the Stonefield website. Bryan has the day off so he's busy cutting our movie.

We Kramers are as busy trying to save the world through existential entertainment as we Mosers are trying to rebuild what has been destroyed. I think the Mosers may win in the greater doing of good, but that's just because our final cut isn't finished yet.

What's Up?

When my great aunt passed away last year, she left behind photo albums filled with snapshots of her life throughout the past almost century. We spent time after her service going through the photos and trying to figure out whose dad was which little kid in each shot. People claimed their favorite pictures of themselves as little kids, or of their parents when they were little. What was left, however, says a lot about who my aunt was as a person and as a photographer. The remaining photos are often bizarre either in subject matter or framing. I don't know who most of the people are who inhabit this other prior world, but I've placed many of them on my wall. My plan is to post some of my favorites on days when I don't have anything better to blog about.

This one is one of my absolute favorites:



I think we decided that these are guys she worked with in an office in the SF Valley when she lived here until the mid-80s. Can you get any better than them? From their postures to their clothes, to the weird smirk on their faces... It's like a decade in a photo. You can hear them asking 'what's up?' in that tone that suggests they know what's up and if you're lucky, they'll share their secret knowledge with you.

Thanksgiving at the Buckley's

Here are my promised photos of Thanksgiving at the Buckley's home up in Mill Valley. First of all, to say that they live in Mill Valley is a little bit of an untruthitude, it's more like they live on top of Mill Valley. Once you drive through the cute little town, you drive up, and up until you arrive at this:

A view from the house.

which is not a bad backdrop for a Thanksgiving feast. Those roofs at the bottom of the frame are their house. That blip that's really light in the distance, is San Francisco. It's much prettier in person. I attended this Thanksgiving about four years ago and afterwards someone asked me if their house had a view. I said I wasn't sure. I'm assuming either I was overwhelmed by Thanksgiving at a (then) new boyfriend's family home, or the city was fogged in. Either way, I missed something really spectacular.

Throughout the day people arrive and gather on the upper lawn terrace outside the house.

FOLLOW THAT TOY!

In this photo above, everyone is looking at a remote control UFO spinning thing that Susan brought and which required a great deal of concentration to keep out of trees.

It works like this...

I recall one Christmas a similar device arrived at our house and I think lasted a full 10 minutes before it came to find its home on the roof.

Bryan as pre-feast athlete.

Much silliness and eating ensued.

A more realistic action shot - M'lu and Grand B diving in to Peter's tasty Abalone

And the next morning we climbed up that big hill behind the pool that winds up and up...

If only it weren't WAY TOO COLD for a nice dip.

and took in the view. This is what Bryan thought of it:

We're thinking of making this Bryan's directing headshot.

Is it just me or does he make this same face in every photo I take of him?

Happy Birthday Bryan

Today is Bryan's 27th birthday. Happy Birthday.

Bryan is not a big fan of having his picture taken at the computer - I have a ton of pictures exactly like this one

We ate sushi and saw LITTLE CHILDREN, which turns out to be a really excellent movie. It's not really about pedophilia the way it has been described, it's really about suburban desperation. It manages this perfect tonal balancing act between really funny and really tense. The narration is fantastic. I highly recommend you go see this movie in the theaters because my money is on it for best adapted screenplay at least. Plus, I don't know how anyone could market this movie correctly, so there's been little press and little attention. Go see it anyway. Seriously. It's really good.

A Kramer Birthday

Bryan and his dad David share the same birthday. David says that Susan was frosting his birthday cake when Bryan decided to come along.

Bryan and David ready to blow out their candles

In celebration my parents and brother came up for dinner with the Kramers.

The Ladies Ready Their Cameras

Technically their birthday is on the 20th but they'll be out of town so we did Sushi on the 15th instead.

Bryan mid-blow

Dad and Greg particularly appreaciated a break from the deck, though they have now finished the framing.

Greg dodges a popper

Happy Birthday Bryan and David!

A Year Ago Today

These are in no particular order and I didn't choose them for any particular reason. Just thought some images would be a nice trip down anniversary lane.











There were more but Blogger isn't letting me post them right now.

Kevin Cooks Lasagna

Last night Bryan and I headed back down to Long Beach to have dinner with Bryan's brother Kevin in his new bachelor pad. I've eaten a Kevin-prepared meal once or twice before and let me tell you, the man does not disappoint. Apparently he got those genes, but Bryan definitely got the Bar-B-Queing ones.

Anyway, he made a fabulous veggie lasagna.

Here he is cooking...


and what he's cooking...


Now it's not terribly surprising that Kevin has taken up cooking elaborate Italian meals given that the cookbook author looks like this...


And her picture graces just about every page of the cookbook.

I can't tell you the recipe for the final lasagna, not because it's a secret, but because I was thoroughly enjoying not being the one in the kitchen, so I paid no attention. The result was divine.

Thanks Kevin!

A Man and his Dog

Bryan and Mel on a hot summer afternoon. Both in their favorite spot: Mel on the front porch on the welcome mat, chewing a bone; and Bryan napping on the couch with the doors open.

Life is good.

Cake on FIRE!!!

As you can probably tell from this video, it's Kinzie's birthday (Bryan's sister), well, technically it was Saturday but we celebrated it on Sunday. After a lovely beach picnic, we returned back to the house for a BAKED ALASKA (or baked Alaskan, I'm not sure, though I like the additional connotations of the latter). Now, before I became a Kramer I was not familiar with this dessert. I'm not sure how I made it into my 20s without knowing about a desert where your pour FLAMING BRANDY on top of a cake, but my life is much more complete now that I've witnessed it.

I don't have a recipe for it per se, (Susan want to hook us up?) but I do understand the basic construction which I will explain here.

Basically you bake some angel food cake and layer 1/2 into the bottom of a glass baking dish. You then mound ice cream on top of the cake (the one above had chocolate chip, mint chocolate chip and chocolate). This is then topped with the remaining angel food cake so that it creates a mountain. You then whip up some meringue and spread it on top of the cake layer. This is to seal in the ice cream for the next step and because it's very tasty. The next step involves placing the mountain under a broiler for like maybe 10 minutes (I wasn't really paying attention) while you heat the brandy in a small pot). Now the final and best step is to light a match and set the brandy on fire. This fire is then poured over the cake so that in the case of a birthday, you don't blow out candles but the whole cake.

There is no more entertaining dessert on the planet. Seriously, I dare you to come up with something more fun than pouring flaming brandy on an ice cream cake.

Graduation

Yesterday, Bryan and I, along with Bryan's family, attended his cousin Amanda's graduation at Harbor High School in Newport Beach. Since it's that time of year, I thought I'd share a video of the song that was sung as part of the ceremony. Now, though I am a mean shot with a video camera, this is the first time I've ever shot a video with my little digital still camera, so bear with me. And doesn't Bryan look somber at the end (that's his thinking look).

Also, here's a picture of Bryan and his sister Kinzie.


And here are a couple of pictures of who we believe to be Amanda, although with hundreds of kids all in the same robe, it's hard to know for certain.





After the graduation march they released a flock of white doves. Susan's concern, which I shared, was that it was cruel to release doves to the wild if they've only ever known captivity. Fortunately Kinzie reassured us that the doves are trained to return to their cages after about an hour. Which leaves me with the question: What do they do in that hour? and do they ever pick up other wild doves along the way? Do they just find the nearest telephone line and hang out until someone tells them breaks over? Do they eat, drink, make dove love? I watched them fly away and they were out of my sight within about a minute, so they must have gone somewhere. What would I do with an hour or two of pure freedom before returning to the safety of captivity?

I think the doves are really the best metaphor for graduation, not because doves mean peace and love, but because they are released from the comfort of their known world, to fly to what they believe is freedom, only to quickly realize how much they miss that security. Happy graduation day? Happy welcome to the real world, it's time you start paying your own bills day. So good luck class of '05. I hope you don't miss your old cage too much before you create a new one for yourself.

I wonder if every time they are released, maybe one or two doves go awol. I feel that way about most graduating classes.