It's been a long time stranger....

Life has been full, full, full.

Hence I haven't posted in a while and this post will be a jumble of news items.

Well, another life long dream has come true. I went to In and Out Burger! I got a cheeseburger animal-style which means that is has sauteed onions and a special sauce. Delicious.





Why yes that is an In and Out hat. Thank you for noticing.

Shannon was the one who made that dream come true and we had a magical day driving through beautiful Sonoma.



Sonoma is equal parts farms, mountains, arid landscapes, and towns and it is amazingly lovely. It still has this unexplored feeling to the open spaces and reminds me of the awe and promise a lot of people felt when they arrived here and saw the rolling hills of gold.

Along the road there are quite a few food stands and Shannon wanted some local Beef Jerky. We bought some decadent garlic jerky and it subsequently stunk up her car with an odor that would be quite hard to justify to other people who hadn't eaten the delicious albeit odorous treat.









A windswept white picket fence curved around the border of a local winery.

Another amazing occurrence was that we got to go to the Donnell Gardens by Thomas Church which is one of the most famous works of modernist landscape architecture in the world and is at a private residence so it is very hard to gain admittance. We were in the company of another internship program who invited us along and they had the permission to enter. The pool and sculpture are the most well known pieces and the sculpture is like a coral reef under the water allowing the owners to swim through its holes. A drag race was raging just below our bluff which was a funny juxtaposition to the serene garden kind of reminding us that even though the garden hadn't changed everything else had.



The owners are trying to support the legacy of the garden so they've kept everything the way it was in 1949, even the wall paper and magazines in the pool house.




This is John who is the Peter Walker Intern coordinator for the other firm and who has become a fast friend. He is lounging on the original 1940s furniture in the pool bar. All that was missing were a couple of martinis and Bing Crosby.



After the Donnell we all took a nap in the Sonoma town square.

Later, Shannon and I went back to the city because we had tickets to a dance party. All dolled up we took the town by storm.



That's a weird face I like to make before we go out...really sets the mood for the evening. No i don;t know what was happening but I think I kind of look like I'm having outpatient foot surgery, errrr.

On Sunday I went on a solo expedition to Dolores Park and saw the San Francisco symphony perform traditional waltzes and other pieces of music from Mexico. Life stilled to a pleasant lull that day while I lay under the warm sun listening to strings and trumpets and people laughing.

Then...back to work, this week I decided to make jelly and biscuits for my co-workers. On a whim I decided to make apricot jelly, which I did, but when I was at the store the strawberries were so red and plump that they suddenly appeared in my cart as well. I wanted to do something more savory though than sugary strawberry jelly so I added basil. Oh my word. Best jelly I've ever had hopefully that you or any one you know has ever had. It is sweet with this very clean herbacious note from the basil as well as a very subtle grassy flavor from the basil and lemon mixing. It is a keeper and I made up the recipe used so I was doubly pleased. Also the apricot/peach/crushed red pepper jelly is amazingly tart and spicy. Just call me Damn Jam Larsson. Actually please don't as that is a ridiculous title.






Today I went to a Pixar art exhibit which blew my mind, you wouldn't believe the amount of beautiful drawings and paintings that go into to creating just one character or even one scene. It was a very reassuring reminder to me as a designer that iteration and process is the key, nothing is ever perfect the first go-around. Also, I went to a BBQ with my coworker Roman and his Fiancé Abby, I made my black bean and beer salsa and lots of people were raving! Tomorrow is Golden Gate Park.

Love you all! I hope you are well and enjoying your time in the sun.

A week in the life....

Life in the the East Bay has been a real scurry lately and I am starting to really feel like I live here.

Mental scrapes and scars from the school year are all healed up, took a while hmm? That reminds me of a Mark Twain quote, 'It used to take me all vacation to grow a new hide in place of the one they flogged off me during school term, ' although I'm guessing in his day the scrapes and scars were of a more tangible kind like from a hand made switch.

Regardless, life is running along a new track. So here is a showcase of a week in the life of Chelsea Larsson, Dashing Young Intern, 2010:

Well..Every morning I walk to work, here is the office:

Wait! First I pack my lunch every morning, this week I made a seaweed/rice/garbanzo bean salad and paired it with shrimp dumplings:



Now here is the office, my desk is right between these two:



Yes that is a row of gabions full of plastic fruit and yes people do come in all the time thinking we are an organic grocery. As you can see, the office is quite small and resembles STUDIO in the way that drawings are pinned to the wall and everyone's desks are close to one another. It's very intimate and we joke around a lot. One guy who draws cartoons for Landscape Architecture magazine loves to read the headlines off the covers of trashy celeb magazines and is otherwise very adept at diverting the entire office's attention.

But it is a very serious firm as well and we stay late to finish deadlines as much as any other firm.



After work I really need to relax before going home and working on other projects so every day I visit the local pananderia. If my plane can't take off from the SF airport because I am weighing it down this place will be to blame.



I love it at Casa Latina. Behind the counter the ladies talk swiftly in Spanish and now that they recognize me they yell "Hola Como Estas?" when I walk in. In the front of the bakery are all the pastries and tamales but in the back is cozy dark room for eating. This is where I hide away for a half hour after work and meditate on the momentous pastry of the day. This triangle kind is my favorite, it tastes like gingerbread cookies and pumpkin bread mixed together:



On occasion something fun happens after work and this week my coworkers decided to play darts at a local bar:





Instead of writing our names, Laryssa my coworker drew little cartoons of each person to keep score under and I am the one with the top hat.



Also during the week we sometimes visit other offices, today we went to Swerve Co. which is a product design/architecture firm that has the coolest machines I've ever seen. They have a 5 way rotational CNC router, a 7 way rotational drill, a machine called Ziggy that is automated to pick out the correct metal pieces from random piles and deliver them to the drill station and more... Oh these people make furniture by the way and were the firm who did the prototyping for the Pentagon Memorial Benches.

The machines are either from Japan and the or from Germany (?) and the owner told us that the Germans use the Japanese machines ( which are like robots with arms that move around the shop) to build the big German machines ( which are the routers) but that the Japanese use the big German machines to route the pieces for their robots. So the machine/robot world is very well acquainted and interdependent.

Dad you would have loved all these machines, it was like your basement work shop plus a couple of Swiss bank accounts!









When the metal pieces are first routed they are still rough so the workers place them in this machine to smooth their edges. This tub is full of ceramic pellets. When turned on it is pressurized and shoots the pellets around inside and also sprays water inside. The metal pieces get jostled around with the water and pellets and the process smooths their rough edges, much like rock is ground into sand by the ocean and ocean floor.







The guy who started the firm has been doing this since 1993 and is really happy with his life and work, needless to say we were all inspired.

SO, on the weekends I go on other field trips and hang out with the interns, my room mate, or Shannon.

The PWP interns took me on a field trip to gorgeous Marin County



Lin and I went to the bakery and she loved it as you can see from her plate



Lisa got us all out to watch Spain win the world cup



and I played games with the Berkeley Architecture students in Dolores Park



Of course, Monday always rolls around and the lunch packing and landscape architecture begin again. That's a week for me.

I hope everyone is enjoying their Summer and relaxing with a big glass of lemonade or beer or what have you to relax! Kisses.

The Long Weekend and the longer Long Post

This was a holiday weekend and somehow I managed to pack every day with unprecedented amounts of fun. On Friday night there was a gallery walk in Oakland, California which I attended alone and fell in love....with the East Bay! Oakland is this amazing amalgam of the post-industrial + Victorian architecture that I miss from Cincinnati AND palm trees! Couple that with a representative group from every ethnicity and social group I've ever known and you have thriving, rithing, awesome Oakland. Too bad I forgot my camera!

So I'll move on to Saturday:

Well again all by myself, I decided to go back to Oakland to watch the Spain game but the bar there was empty. During a mad dash back to Berkeley Lisa Daye called, who is an intern at another firm, and invited me to watch the game with her and her friends. Lucky for me Lisa was at a favorite place, that old Irish cafeteria that was featured in last week's post. So over a heaping plate of turkey ala king we watched the game Brennan's cafeteria style.

Lisa worked in Spain for two years and is obsessed with soccer, she was a national player to watch while in high school and then blew her knee out. She doesn't lament her short-lived soccer fame because if she had kept playing soccer she would never have found landscape architecture and hence never have gone to Spain.

I was also accompanied by a newly engaged couple, the woman was American but born in Spain and the man was from Chile, so they were rooting for opposite teams and oscillated between taunting each other and checking on each other. Cute.



Spain won. Much to our Chilean friend's ire! After that Lisa invited me to a wild dance party in the Mission in SF, of course I said "Let's go!" but first I had an important mission to accomplish.



This tiny kitten is my co-worker's and I was charged with giving him eye medicine while she was in Tahoe. It was a pleasure as he and his brother are adorable and very well-read.



See you later kitties, hello San Francisco!









It was indeed a wild dance party at another gay bar and my new friend Lin Feng was in attendance. Lin is at Cornell and we've just hit it off famously probably because we are both quiet nerds at heart.



There were some other landscape architects but I really hit it off with this guy Brian Green who I must have been vaudeville partners with in a past life:



All the guys were going to some other parties and Lisa and I were hungry so she took me to her favorite burrito place. Which by the way would be anyone's favorite burrito place because each bite of these succulent, soft, spicy burritos is like a little piece of heaven.





My idea of what a burrito 'is' was shattered and a new pure defintiion was born and I will never be the same. Wish I could send you all one express mail.

Sleep.

The next day was the 4th of July and Shannon suggested that I come down to Sausalito to see the fireworks on her intern house boat. Houseboat?! Yes. Not only that but in order to reach the houseboat one is required to take a ferry that passes by all the notable San Fransisco landmarks like Coit Tower, Alcatraz, and the Golden Gate Bridge. Ferries have always been one of my preferred modes of transportation so this was a delight.





Here is the Golden Gate bridge peaking out of the typical San Fransisco fog.



As we approached Sausalito the landscape and houses became very European looking with ornately decorated houses, lots of stone work, and houses built into the cliff face.






According to Wikipidea the origin of the city name is..."Sausalito (from Spanish: sauzalito "small willow grove", from sauce "willow" + collective derivative -al meaning "place of abundance. In 2000 it had a population of 7,000" It is a very small, beautiful place to live that seems to be a mix of old hippies whose family had property there before the Golden Gate Bridge was built and really affluent people. The house boats looked like they belonged to the former group but we saw a For Sale sign on one and it was $325,000. So...

Here is the gangway to Shannon's boat and other house boats along the route.









The colorful houseboats were only surpassed by the gorgeous plants and oddities on site.










It was a sunny day so we decided to go for a quick hike, the landscape here is really different it's called a Chaparral landscape which consists of drought resistant scrubby evergreens. Then by the areas with more water are Eucalyptus groves whose scent makes everything smell fresh and clean.





The hike culminated in a dream come true, I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time. Compared to the glassy green and sandy yellow beaches from the Gulf in Floridia, which are the beaches I'm most familiar with, these beaches are much darker. Browns and navy blues are the dominant colors which gives the beach a cool, moody feel. It was beautiful.







Back at the houseboat I went kayaking with Shannon's friend Jeff who just moved here from Hawaii and then the rest of the night was spent cooking and celebrating with the South Korean interns on the boat. South Korea has similar drinking culture to the United States and the interns taught us a friendly game called 'Korean Game of Death.'







Amidst cries of confusion from all of the Americans, "Wait the Americans do not understand the rules!" the Koreans tried to teach us the game. We played and lost repeatedly which had Shannon and I begging for mercy a few rounds in. ( I finally understand it a day later and you all will soon be subjected to the 'Korean Game of Death' at our next family BBQ)

Thankfully, we were quickly saved by the fireworks which we all watched from the boat's veranda. As the fireworks were going off I looked around and was struck by all the smiling faces, we were all mostly strangers to each other, half of us were from different countries and we were all having a wonderful time together. A hodgepodge group of new friends from different cultures is about the best I could ask for to celebrate the 4th of July and my cultural ideals of the US. Of course I missed everybody in Ohio, Texas, and Minnesota and I hope you all had a great 4th of July.

Today was all about a solo tour of San Fransico which included Lombardi Street, Coit Tower, Little Italy (North Beach) and China Town. A bakery in Chinatown provided another life altering food experience with the most flaky and eggy egg custard ever made!


At Coit Tower one of the water fountains struck me as very nostalgic and familiar. That's because it was made in Cincinnati and is the same type of water fountain used in Eden Park. These fountains are one of my favorite things about Cincinnati so if they are here, I guess I can just stay forever.




Wishing everyone a week full of laughter and great food. Love you all.