Today it was Berkeley

Caroline's time here is growing short.  She will be working Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then flying back to Edinburgh on Thursday.  So this is her last weekend to get any sightseeing done.  We had planned to go to Berkeley today.  She also had yesterday off and took the opportunity to give Lizzie a bath.  Lizzie wasn't too pleased, but she is very clean now.

We lazed around the house until mid-afternoon and then went down to a place here in town that she had discovered with some of her fellow students last week.  It's called Cream and it's a place where you choose your flavor of cookie and your flavor of ice cream and they make an ice cream sandwich for you.  I had salted caramel ice cream between two snickerdoodles and my sandwich was big, but delicious.

We walked from Cream to the theater where we saw the new Beauty and the Beast, which I loved and highly recommend.

After the movie, Caroline decided she was going cook dinner for us, so we stopped at the store to get a few things--I already had most of the things she needed.

She whipped up a fantastic shrimp curry, which  was so easy I don't even need a recipe.  You thin slice whatever veggies you want (she used snow peas, asparagus and carrots) and par boil them.

You chop garlic and onions and sauté until soft, then add the drained vegetables and a jar of curry paste (that one was new to me).  Stir all together and add a can of coconut milk and cook until the liquid is reduced and the shrimp are cooked.

It was fabulous and I will definitely be making it again.

We had a quiet morning today and around noon-ish, we got in the car to drive to Berkeley.  Caroline had asked her friend, who had been here before and was excited that Caroline would be in Berkeley, what sights she recommended.  One that she suggested was the Berkeley marina, where I had not been in years (other than driving by on the way to San Francisco).  We drove around a bit and then stopped in a restaurant called Skates.

We had a window table with a gorgeous view!

And all three of us ordered the Dutch baby with Dungeness crab and sliced Granny Smith apples, which met my criteria for:  something I'd never had before, something with crab in it, and something delicious.

We don't know what this woman ordered but it arrived in a dish with billowing white coming out of it and it billowed for awhile (note that she is holding her cell phone up trying to take a photo).

From the Marina, we drove up to the campus and gave a quick driving tour before finding a place to park.  Caroline was looking for a specific shirt...

Interestingly, she seems amazed at how much crap you can put a logo on.  We were in this HUGE store filled with shirts, hats and just about anything you can think of with the UC Berkeley (or the California) logo.  But she did make a couple of purchases and then we headed over to campus, where I had Walt give her the grand tour while I sat in Sproul plaza in front of the Administration building and remembered the 1960s and the Free Speech movement that all started here.

 We came back to Davis, had a brief rest and fed the dogs and then went off to Sushi Limited for dinner.  I was going to take pictures, but didn't touch my camera.  Trust me.   It was delicious...and the Lincoln Hills sushi roll is still the best thing on the menu.

The Doppler Effect

 I am listening to Jane Lynch's autobiography in the car and am really enjoying it.  She pulls no punches and lays it all out there, the good, the bad, an the ugly.  In fact, in the early chapters the depricating may be over the top.

But one thing she talks about is what a bad student she was and how that was just accepted by her family, which seems to have been long on personal satisfaction, and short on personal achievement.  (The drinking may have played a part in that).

I have to admit that reading her less that stellar achievements in college (I have just gotten to her early years, so things may change as I read...) got me to thinking about my own not only "less than stellar" but downright failure in college.

In the late 1950s, the competition was less stiff and it was fairly easy to get into UC Berkeley.  I was a good student, always in the top 3 in my class, and had good SAT scores so when my father decreed that I was not to take a year off to work, which I wanted to do, but that I was going to go to Berkeley and become a teacher, I was a UC Berkeley student, set on a career that I knew from the get go I did not want, but there to fulfill my father's aspirations, as he had failed his college career and I was to do what he could not.

The first problem was that with that whole little "entering the convent" detour I took, I didn't enter Berkeley with most of the other incoming freshmen, but entered in January instead.  This meant there was no freshman orientation.  I was the very first person on either side of the family to attend college and I guess we all assumed that it was just like a bigger high school.   I had no guidance with choosing classes, didn't know what an "advisor" was, didn't know about pass or fail classes, didn't know anything, and being too shy to admit that, I just stumbled along and did what I thought I should do.

I didn't know I needed to have a permit to attend classes.   Someone asked me if I had one and I had to learn about that.  I also did the very stupid thing of taking my roommate's advice and taking a speech class instead of a writing class because she assured me it would be an easy A.  Well, for someone terrified of public speaking (which she certainly was not), and fairly good at writing this was a really dumb decision.

I also needed a science class and I was told that Physics 10, taught by Nobel Laureat Owen Chamberalin (for whom I would actually work later) was another easy A.

I can truly say that the only thing I learned about Physics was what the Doppler Effect was ("the change in frequency of a wave for an observer moving relative to its source")  I don't know what that means either, but every time I hear a train pass and listen to the sound get louder and softer, I know I'm listening to the Doppler effect.

The only reason I know this is that I was dating a guy whose name I can't remember.  All I remember about him is that he was very tall and somewhat blonde.  I didn't date him long.  But he decided he was going to tutor me in Physics and he drummed all the technical aspects of the Doppler effect into my head so thoroughly that I think of him  every time I become aware that I am listening to the Doppler effect.

I would go on to flunk out of UC Berkeley gloriously (once I got the first F of my life, I knew I could never make it up so never even asked about how to go about it).   But I got my revenge by getting what was my very favorite job over my life time, personal secretary to 3 professors in the Physics Departent.  Chamberlain was not one of my regular bosses, but I did do a project for him and also for another Nobel Laureate, Emilio Segre.

As I recall, neither project mentioned the Doppler effect.

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I am starting a new photo project, this one is the 100 Happy Days project.   It's been going on the internet for awhile now, but The Today Show started their own version of it and invited viewers to post their own "happy pictures" to Instagram and tag the Today Show, so I started today.  The "Photo of the Day" for the next 100 days will be my contribution to the Happy Days project.   Today's is a little blurry, but it's someting that does make me happy.

 These are the individual binders for most of my Compassion kids.  They hold their letters and communications about them.