Last year I spent New Year’s Eve in Amsterdam and wrote about it for Cannabis Now.
What side are you on?
peace & love & liberty & justice
(for all?)
Are you a Democrat
or Republican
or capitalist
or communist?
Christian or Muslim
black or white
rich or poor
smart or stupid
good or bad
?
What the world needs now is
Clarity.
Maybe you voted for the wrong person
maybe Russia hacked our election
maybe Bernie would have could have should have won
maybe someone young & hot should run
maybe liberals are too smug
maybe maybe maybe
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You can vote for Obama and still be racist
but can you vote for Trump without enabling rapists?
Conservatives cry, “They censor our views!”
But Facebook is afraid to delete their fake news
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
All the money
and all the power
in all the land
can’t save you from yourself
I’m a pagan agnostic zen daoist witch
but I do believe
that the meek shall inherit the earth
(everyone else will be dead.)
My sister Amanda moved to London in April 2014, and Ed and I finally visited her and her husband Billy for the first time this past Christmas. (Now she has a pseudo-English accent and says things like “brilliant” and “brolly” and “rubbish” and “rucksack,” and she’s obsessed with tea.)
After spending our first day exploring London with my sister and parents, the five of us drove to a rented cottage in the Cotswolds.
We went to Stratford-upon-Avon to see Shakespeare’s house and grave, and I drank a “Shakesbeer” in a pub that was built in the 1500s. I loved the ambiance of the town and the feeling of walking the same streets where Shakespeare once lived, and was entertained by the antics of the swans in the River Avon.
On Christmas Eve we went to Oxford, where Amanda spent her semester abroad, but Christ Church Cathedral was closed and I did not find the city especially charming. We met my sister’s husband’s family for drinks at a pub and then we all drove back to the Cotswolds for a quirky mass in a very small church. After church we went back to the cottage and ate cheese and drank wine and played the UK edition of Cards Against Humanity. (I don’t like Cards Against Humanity but we had fun and I won even though the UK version has lots of unfamiliar references.)
We spent Christmas morning watching Billy’s teenage sister open presents and then went to yet another pub before dinner and lots more drinking. Billy’s dad brought two bottles of 1984 vintage port but preferred to drink marshmallow vodka, so I had the rare experience of drinking excellent port to excess.
On Boxing Day Billy’s parents and siblings drove home to Essex and my parents and Amanda and Billy and Ed and I went on a hike through the countryside. The trail was muddy and the wind was fierce and the sky was gray but it was invigorating and picturesque.
The next day we left the Cotswolds cottage and stopped to visit and have dinner at Billy’s parents’ house (and play with numerous dogs and ponies!) before going back to London for the night.
We spent a couple days hanging out in Amanda and Billy’s flat and wandering around London, but everything was so expensive (so much more expensive than San Francisco) and either very crowded or closed.
It was a lovely holiday, but next time we’ll go during spring or summer, and Amanda and Billy can come meet us in Scotland or Ireland or Wales.
SF Evergreen is a free monthly newspaper covering cannabis in the Bay Area. It was launched this past January by the publisher of the San Francisco Examiner and SF Weekly, and you can find it in newspaper boxes on street corners around San Francisco.
My friend Erica and I contributed some strain reviews (Raspberry Cookies, Red Dragon, Lavender Goo, Platinum Jack, Blue Dream Pink Pineapple, Shakti Pot, Pineapple Smoothie, DH Fire, and Strawberry Cough) as well as a review of the Hepburns (pre-rolled joints with ice water hash) and articles about how to appreciate cannabis like a connoisseur, sneaky flower alternatives for traveling, and cannabis tasting parties.
Then Erica got evicted from her rent-controlled apartment in the Haight and couldn’t afford to stay in San Francisco, so she moved up to Mendocino to work at Healing Harvest Farms, and since then she’s been too busy to collaborate with me on anything. I can write about cannabis without her, of course, but I really miss her ingenious tasting notes.
A friend from college proposed to his girlfriend the morning after our wedding in Sea Ranch, and last weekend we went to their wedding in Colorado. We stayed a few extra days in Denver to spend some time with Ed’s brother and his wife. It was a nice visit and a nice wedding but I can never get comfortable in Colorado. Ed and I are always eager to get back to sea level.
United was offering 25% off flights to Hawaii when booking with rewards miles, and with the discount, we had enough miles to fly to Maui for a long Labor Day weekend. I visited Maui once as a kid, but Ed had only ever been to Kauai before, so I was excited to show him all the places I remembered from my childhood vacation.
We rented a condo in West Maui, north of Lahaina, where we could watch the sunset over the ocean between Lanai and Molokai. I had fond memories of Lahaina and it is still one of my favorite beach towns. I like the chill vibes on Front Street, visiting the art galleries and the banyan tree in the town square, drinking lava flows at Kimo’s, and eating cheeseburgers at Cool Cat Cafe.
We had a pretty nice dinner despite a distractingly terrible table at Merriman’s, and then set the alarm for 2:00 am to drive to the top of Mount Haleakala to watch the sunrise over the volcanic crater. On the way back down the mountain we stopped at a lavender farm, which was an intense experience for me because I love lavender and I was peaking on acid at the time. Then we picked up stick doughnuts and guava malasadas at Komoda Store and Bakery and ate them at Baldwin Beach Park, where I sat for a while contemplating grains of sand and the universe. After that we went to the Maui Dharma Center and took a few turns each walking around the giant prayer wheel in the Peace Stupa before heading back to our condo to play in the waves, drink Bikini Blonde Lagers, and watch another sunset.
The next day we went back to Paia for a late lunch at Mama’s Fish House, which was amazingly delicious but way too filling for a 2:00 pm meal in the tropical heat. (That was the only reservation we could get.) We tried to shop for sundresses in Paia but the boutiques were full of California brands so I didn’t buy anything. That night we had dinner at Maui Brewing Company, which has a neat strip of frosty ice along the bar to keep your beer cold. Back at the condo, we found our own little private beach where we gazed up at the most perfectly clear, bright Milky Way arching directly overhead, while simultaneously seeing lightning flashes from a thunderstorm on the other side of the island.
Lastly, we had to drive the road to Hana. We hiked the Pipiwai Trail to Waimoku Falls, passing several other waterfalls, a sweet banyan tree, and through a bamboo forest on the way. Unfortunately both the pools at Oheo Gulch and the Waianapanapa black sand beach were closed due to exceptionally high surf, so we could only glimpse them from a distance.
Compared to French Polynesia, Maui felt so accessible and affordable and comfortable and familiar, almost like an extension of California. If it weren’t for the flying cockroaches we might consider moving there.
I spent my 30th birthday on the Mendocino Coast, where we paddled up Big River in a four-person redwood outrigger canoe, played in the sand at Big River Beach, wandered through the bluffs and the town of Mendocino, relaxed in a hot tub and around a fire pit, and enjoyed lots of wine, beer, cheese, cannabis, and cake.
Having a friend in the Bay Area who sells boats for a living is pretty sweet.
Ed wanted to go to a tropical island for our honeymoon, and I had already been reading books about the South Pacific as background research for a fantasy novel, so I planned a trip to three islands in French Polynesia.
We flew from San Francisco to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Tahiti, then took a small plane from Tahiti to our first destination, Huahine. Huahine is a lush jungle island with only a few small villages and numerous Polynesian archaeological sites. It is wild and stunning and pristine and felt smaller and more remote than we could have possibly anticipated, but we were disappointed to find that our inability to speak fluent French (or Tahitian) made us feel like obnoxious interlopers. Ed remembered some serviceable French from high school, and most people we spoke to were able to communicate in English, but they often seemed annoyed and unwilling. (I was surprised because although I don’t speak French at all, that wasn’t such a problem for me in France.)
We kayaked in the lagoon, drove around the island looking at ceremonial stone platforms called marae and ancient fish traps and empty beaches, took a short boat ride to a pearl farm, visited a vanilla plantation, and saw lots of large and strangely compelling “sacred” blue-eyed eels in a freshwater canal. I tried very hard to arrange a sunset horseback ride but was repeatedly rebuffed by an unfriendly concierge.
Next we went to Bora Bora, where we stayed in an overwater bungalow at a resort located on its own islet, or motu, off the main island. The lagoon itself is spectacularly blue and shimmering and warm and clear, and I loved floating in the water and stand-up paddleboarding and watching schools of colorful fish flitting around. It is such a small island and a small lagoon, though, that it does feel a bit crowded with resorts and overwater bungalows, verging on overdeveloped. I was underwhelmed by the InterContinental’s overhyped spa and exasperated by the consistently terrible service, but enchanted by the view of Mount Otemanu and tantalized by the ahi sashimi.
Technically I married Ed in 2013, at the Alameda County Clerk-Recorder’s office in Oakland. But our wedding took place on March 20, 2015 in Sea Ranch, on the Sonoma Coast. I resisted an expensive destination wedding, correctly anticipating that my obsessive perfectionism, extravagant imagination, and guilty conscience would torment me throughout the process. I wanted a small ceremony in an old-growth redwood grove with immediate family only, but I was overruled.
I tried not to fixate on the things that went wrong. I tore a stitch in my dress moments after putting it on, and it was somehow slightly too long, although it had been the right length a week ago at my last fitting, so the hem dragged on the ground with twigs and mulch snagged in the tulle. The cake fell over and was partially destroyed as it was being delivered. What was supposed to be a small altar turned out to be a massive cocktail table that made me feel a million miles away from Ed during the ceremony. Our photographer insisted on pulling us outside to shoot a second round of portraits in the middle of dinner, despite my repeated protests. He was right about the light being better at that particular moment, but I failed to hide my scowling irritation in the photos. When we returned to the reception everyone else had finished their entrees, so I wolfed down a huge chunk of salmon and guzzled some champagne just in time for the first dance. After a few songs, I dashed off the dance floor and threw up all over the ground outside the tent, then retreated to our hotel room and stripped to the waist to catch my breath before Jess forced me back into my dress so we could rejoin the party. And I was irked by countless other details. The tablescapes were all wrong because there was no time for me to arrange them myself. I hated the tent we were required to use for the reception. Worst of all, it was completely overcast and the Pacific was pure gray, so my ethereal blue sea/sky/stars motif was a flop.
But everything that actually mattered was perfect, and our friends and family are lovely, and everyone said it was a beautiful wedding. And there were almost constant whale sightings throughout the weekend, including a pair of orcas directly behind the ceremony site just as the wedding party began processing down the aisle.
(Also, I love Ed and I’m happy that he’s my husband, obviously.)
Gualala Point Regional Park might be my favorite place we have camped so far, in spite of the extremely aggressive raccoons. The walk-in sites are accessible enough to bring in all the comforts of car camping, but with the sense of being nestled into a potentially enchanted forest rather than a big parking lot with a few trees. And the town of Gualala is close enough to go out to dinner instead of contending with the raccoons while you cook and eat at the campsite.
The next day we explored Fisk Mill Cove in Salt Point State Park, which was starkly beautiful and, on a pleasantly mild November Sunday, almost entirely deserted.
After a dusty hike through giant sequoias in the South Grove and a refreshing stop at a stream to rinse the dirt off our feet, we arrived at our campsite at Calaveras Big Trees State Park as ominous clouds gathered overhead.
Drought or no drought, we almost always manage to get rained on whenever we camp, but this time we were caught unprepared. Our friends Oona and Greg had rain jackets, but Ed and I did not, so we hurried to set up our tent. As the first drops began to fall, the ash in our campsite’s fire ring was still so hot and dry that our kindling caught fire without being lit, which was disconcerting. Soon it was pouring, so we retreated to the car with plenty of wine and cheese to tide us over while we marveled at the dramatic thunder and lightning.
When the rain finally stopped, our self-igniting fire was somehow still roaring, so we gathered around to roast marshmallows. But by that point, I’d had too much wine to competently roast my marshmallow, and ended up making a sufficiently sticky mess to diminish my enthusiasm for marshmallow roasting for the foreseeable future.
The next day we did a short hike through the North Grove, which was lovely and lush after the rain, and then stopped for lunch at Snowshoe Brewing Company on our way back home.