I kind of saw a dead body this morning...

The helicopters were the first clue.

We went biking on the path this morning and there was the usual unusual.

A bronzed couple with platinum hair and awkward gait that made us both think of Star Trek: The Next Generation passed us.

There was the muscular Rasta man on his roller blades and the other muscular, shirtless, non-Rasta as well.

Two film shoots were going on, a hotel was draped in funeral black and down the road quite a ways was a half a dozen trailers.

A man wearing only his bathing suit jumped from rock to rock by the ocean in his bare feet.

And then there were the helicopters. A lot of them. Right above us. A moment later Tech Support noticed the police cars in the distance, and I noticed that PCH was empty. Totally empty. PCH is never totally empty.



As we got closer to the police cars we saw they were all regarding a pile of something on the ground and taking measurements around it. A nondescript sedan drove up.

"The detective just arrived." Tech Support commented. I looked over, hoping to see Brenda Johnson, Lenny Brisco or even Goren. But there was just a bunch of men.

We road on, because we didn't want to be gawkers, but we were slower than usual.

"Did you see anything?" I asked.

"Looked like a pile of clothing." Tech Support said.

"They don't close down PCH for a pile of clothes."

At the end of the path we watched the police divert traffic from PCH onto Temescal. The cars were backed up as far as I could see, all along point Dume. I was too distracted to sit and stretch. I'm weak and prone to morbid curiosity, I wanted to bike by and see the scene again. I wanted to be a bystander in an episode of the crime shows I watch far too much.

So we rode by again, heading back to the car.

"I think I saw a shin." Tech Support said.

"Was it a man or a woman?" I asked.

"It was a sexless shin."

At the distance we went by, keeping up the pretense that we weren't atrocity tourists and not stopping, we couldn't make out much. Tech Support thought it looked like a pile of clothes with a body in it. Maybe someone had been murdered and dumped on PCH. Maybe a kidnapping had gone wrong. There had to be a twist of some kind.

Past the accident everything was back to normal. No one knew what was just a mile up the road.

A British man walked on the path speaking into his phone. "Sheila has to be notified."

A couple hugged, and when they parted I could see the girl had been crying. She wiped at her eyes.

A midget homeless man walked along the edge of the sand.

We passed the Star Trek alien people again.

Back at the car and I called a family friend who is known for being awake and watching TV early in the morning.

"PCH? I can tell you about that," she said.

She told me it was a pedestrian vs. car situation. As usual, the pedestrian lost. A hit and run around 6am, two hours before we even pulled into the parking lot. The victim was a young transient who may have been hit multiple times. PCH was closed for a bit and all the other freeways in the area were congested as a result.

So no murder or kidnapping. Not even a twist.

Cupcakes and Dolphins

I spent Valentine's Day with my boss and one of our clients discussing divorce at length (with good reason that I won't go into) until they both declared:

"You should never get married."

Now, I'm definitely not one for the consumerist-hallmark-card version of Valentines Day, but this was going too far in the other direction.

Which has nothing to do with the rest of the post.



These are my two new wonderful things to enter my life. The first appeared magically from Ikea last Saturday and little more needs to be said about storage space and apartment kitchens.



I haven't been keeping track of whether I make a new recipe a week or not, but I have been cooking a lot of new things. These are The Big Hit. I made a batch and brought them to my parents just to prove what a Big Girl I am.

Let's just say they are like coconut flavored clouds with light pineapple frosting. To make matters worse, they are easy to make.

The recipe is the Fluffy White Cupcakes from the woman who does Vegan Lunch Box, the frosting is only to be found in the book. Following the direction of some of the commenters I replaced soy milk with coconut milk.

Don't worry, I plan on making these at the weakest excuses.

Finally, I finished these socks a few weeks ago but wanted to wait until the stars aligned properly to photograph them.





Can you see the dolphins?

Details to be found at Romancing the Skein.

A Weekend In Marin

In Marin/San Francisco...


It rains everyday.


Your neighbors may be Elves...


... or banana slugs large enough to own a house...


... or wild turkeys who occasionally go into trees and make Very Silly Noises.


The grates carry the wet away, which you can't see but you can hear.


The view is pretty...


but the sky is prettier, even if it brings more rain.


Tiburon exists for the view.


But Novato is nothing to write home about.


Sausalito is spelled most impractically.


And the Boy is adorable.

(As a final note, the camera on my phone is Awesome.)

Living on the Edge

I spent one summer at the beach. Everyday my father would herd me and my younger brother the five blocks down to the ocean where we'd pass most of the afternoon. The days were sweet and blissful and absent of sunscreen and I'm not sure how I got away without ever getting sunburned.

The summer ended, and I went back to school, and at some point I became a young curmudgeon who decided that she didn't like the beach or the sand or the sun. That was around the era that "Your Favorite Band Sucks" started really getting to me and it was far easier to dislike everything than like anything.

But that's okay, because when I changed my mind the beach was still there.



I can imagine living in a different state (maybe) or a different city (perhaps) but I don't think I could ever get too far away from the coast. I'd miss the salt in the air and the sound of the waves in the morning when the streets are quiet.

This morning a Renewed (but still Recovering) Tech Support took me to a Caribbean restaurant not too far from the ocean. Afterwards we walked down and across the sand and stuck our fingers in the water.



When I got back into the car I had sand in my shoes. I had to get to the job. The job is about twenty minutes inland, so far away that even in the quiet mornings you can't smell salt and hear waves. And there are good things about this place, but rather than taking my sneakers off and shaking them out, I let a little bit of beach come with me.