It's official; we’ve moved. There are two posts up at www.rubydawn.com which aren’t here, so I think that this space is done. Blogger Rules! I would have kept on using this free space indefinitely had I not wanted to learn to code things myself. I will gradually move the archives over to rubydawn, but everything else is already there. I hope that this doesn’t screw too much with anyone’s favorites settings and whatnot. Please post a comment here if you have trouble with the new space.

Check out the construction at rubydawn.com!!!

A CALL TO ARMS:

I had two telephone conversations today regarding my recent blog negligence. My friend Charis called late this morning, and I spoke with my mom tonight after work. They both expressed disappointment with the recent increase in time between rubydawn posts. I looked back, and although it has only been three days since the post about camping, and less than a week since the previous one (demanding aren’t they?), I understand their frustration. Every morning and every evening after work I sit in front of this rickety beast of a computer to get my daily fix of media. I start with the blogs. My first stop is rubydawn to check the comments. Then I wander over to Justin’s place to see if he’s got anything new. From his blog, I hop onto Erin’s, Molly’s and No Sword's. It will come as no surprise to those of you who knew him when he lived here, that Justin has befriended some very interesting people in Japan, and I enjoy reading their blogs a great deal. Then I might hop over to see if my favorite linguist has written anything overtly political lately. Next comes the news. If it is the beginning of the week, I start with the Onion. Then I check the gaming news on Gamespot. They help center me before I depress myself with the NY Times or the BBC. I always look at apple trailers to see if there’s a new preview. Finally, I hit the webcomics. I start at diesel sweeties and move right through questionable content into megatokyo and penny arcade.
You’d think that would take up a significant amount of time, right? If someone who wasn’t already on that circuit tried to jump in, it might take a good chunk out of their morning. However, most of the times I’m online, at least eighty percent of my favorite material is the same as it was the day before. I usually wind up getting one new comic, two comments, a headline or two, and a blog entry. THAT’S NOT ENOUGH. My first thought was that Justin, Molly, and Erin are frickin lazy, and they need to write more dammit! (Actually, Molly is pretty prolific; she’ll often do two or three posts in a day. Don’t tell my mom though; she’ll want hourly baby photo updates. Here’s a rock and roll picture to tide you over Mom.)

Then the real problem hit me. Of course they aren't lazy. The rest of my friends and family need to start their own blogs; if not for their enjoyment, then for the sake of enabling my computer dependency. Didn’t I tell you people that I gave up TV before Ruby was born? I need help! Please, just a little bit. I can handle it. I've got it all under control. There are lawyers and doctors who have regulated and controlled heroin habits. I can certainly handle a little blog addiction.

Charis, you should get Derby involved and write a mother and son blog. Everyone would love it. Cornelius, please do an online version of INTRUDER ALERT. I miss it. Charlene, you are a hilarious writer, and you live far away from your hometown. What better way to keep in touch? Jordan, geez little brother, aren’t you the only college kid in the world without a blog? Dan is another brilliantly funny writer, and who wouldn’t want to read a blog about being in a pop band? My mom is also a great writer, and I’d love to read about her challenges as an ESL teacher, but she could at least start by posting a comment or two here! I would give Ani a hard time, but she’s excited about the new rubydawn, and she’s working hard with Photoshop and dreamweaver to get some fun stuff over there.
Blogging. It’s free. It’s fun. It’s easy. I’m jonesing for a little online love. Gimme somma dat blog!

Oh yeah… Here’s another baby picture for Nonna:

Here’s a dog picture for dog lovers everywhere:

www.blogger.com

The construction has begun. Ani and I have decided to try our hands at designing a website sans Blogger. There is a place holder site here.
That's www.rubydawn.com. No more blogspot.

I think we finally have all the buttons working, and we'll start to move some of the content from this space later this week. Since we don't have the comments up and running over there yet, let us know what you think about the layout here!

Last night was Ruby’s first camping trip. I have always been a fan of backcountry camping. As a matter of fact, Ruby is named after the Ruby Mountains in eastern Nevada. Lamoille Canyon is full of beautiful trails on which Ani and I love to hike. We are used to trekking several miles to find a camping site, and we love arduous excursions into the Nevada rangelands.

For now, at least until Ruby is a bit older, our outdoor overnight adventures will need to be at sites where we can park the truck and pitch our tent nearby. Since we usually avoid this kind of car camping, it was quite an effort to pull any useful locations out of my memory. Pyramid Lake is always at the top of the list; we will probably be back there tomorrow, but yesterday we wanted to try something new. I thought I had come up with a winner near my work. At the top of Thomas Creek there is a meadow. It is only a half an hour from home, and yet it feels fairly secluded. My old roommate Shane and I used to go up there to watch meteor showers. As I have written before, Ruby will see plenty of desert, and I wanted to take her up above the tree line for something different.

There are some “primitive” sites along the bottom of the creek, which are always crowded. Since it is so close to town, I think that it is on a circuit of places for Reno’s fringe society to live during the summer. However, if you keep going up the fire road, you can get miles away from other campers. It is possible to drive right up to the base of the Mt. Rose Wilderness Area. It used to be a short hike from there to the sought-after meadow of seclusion, but yesterday, as we reached the top of the jeep trail, we were followed by a truck with two construction workers who unlocked a gate with a POSTED sign. They were part of a crew building a house smack dab in the middle of that beautiful meadow! Living in the West, I am used to the painful loss of sacred space to wealthy property consumers, so we made the best of it and found another creek side spot to set up camp.

During the first two hours in the wilderness, Ruby experienced the gamut of camping emotions: giggling bliss, squirmy discomfort, intense pain (after a bump on the head from a wayward truck door), and true existential angst that she expressed with an inconsolable scream. It was after a particularly long such session that Ani and I decided to pack up for home. We did so with no regrets; we had enjoyed the drive out, and picnicking at the base of Mt. Rose had provided a much-needed dose of outdoor living. As Momma Charis has often told me, sometimes we have to roll with a baby's punches and let our parental instincts be our guides. For now, Ruby makes the important calls. It's ok, she is a fairly benevolent dictator.


I just want to make one thing clear. The fact that we decided to leave had nothing to do with the camp-side discovery of a large pile of rocks supporting a creepy makeshift cross tied together with "dirty" gauze. Ani thanked me for waiting until we had already started to leave before I told her my theory. I’m pretty sure that the serial killer who made that pile was camped at the base of the creek so that he could be near the repository of his vile deeds.

Before I quit watching TV, I watched way too many episodes of the Forensic Files.

Reno is just minutes away from some of the most beautiful forestland in the country, and Lake Tahoe is a natural treasure. Summer is here, and my peers are arriving at work tan from time spent at the lake. Galena Forest Restaurant is at the base of the mountains, just above the tree line and only twenty minutes from the Tahoe shores. I want to make it abundantly clear that I love the crystal blue water, the winter snow, the many beautiful summit hikes, the mountain trout streams, and the vanilla smell from the bark of a Douglass fir tree. I smile when I see that fertile earth covered with decaying pine needles, black beetles, and manzanita.

That said, I prefer the desert. I love alkalai flats and dust storms more than evergreens and chipmunks. I love huge expanses with varying shades of gray and brown. When I have a day off and I’m looking for something to do, without hesitation, I’ll take scrub, sage, lizards, Mormon tea, and snakes over the flora and fauna of the Sierras. I am a child of the Great Basin. Hanging out in the Sierras is like watching a beautiful movie. Spending time in the middle of nowhere Nevada is being at home. I love being outside, and the best outside is under the big sky in the high desert.

When Ani and I lived in New Orleans, we took advantage of the Louisiana outdoors whenever we could. We rented canoes from a guy named Earl and paddled through the Jean Lafitte State Park: a deep and dark series of bayous, complete with nutria, gators, cottonmouths, cypress knees, huge spiders, and unimaginable overgrowth. Everything was alive out there, and its bounty assaulted me with strange alien life forms. Even though it was within twenty minutes of our house, I felt as far away from home as if I were on the third moon of Jupiter. I loved living down there, and I did come to feel at home in the city of New Orleans, maybe even more at home than I do in the town of Reno. I miss the nightclubs, coffee houses, bookstores, city parks, and restaurants, but I never felt like I belonged to the wilderness outside of the city. In the end, I've decided that the surrounding countryside defines my home much more than the city in which I live. Even if I’m not taking advantage of the desert, I need to know that it is there at my disposal.

The other day, we took Ruby to my favorite place in the world. Many people in this area dislike Pyramid Lake, especially in comparison with Lake Tahoe. I often hear people say things like, “why would you go there instead of Tahoe? It’s just a lake out in the middle of the desert. There’s nothing out there but sage and hills and sand, and then there’s a big lake.” That always amazes me. THAT’S WHAT MAKES IT THE COOLEST THING IN THE WORLD! The desert holds intense pockets of beauty in its huge expanse. The sparseness surrounding a desert bloom makes that flower more fragrant and colorful.


A lake in the middle of the desert is a miracle, not an aberration. Pyramid is no man made reservoir; it is the last remnant of a great inland sea. There are prehistoric fish there that exist nowhere else in the world! How could anyone fail to understand how cool that is?

I guess I am an intellectual descendent of Abbey. At the top of the list of things I love about Pyramid is that most people don’t find it as appealing as Tahoe, so it’s never crowded. It’s disappointing to see someone within a mile of you while at the Pyramid Lake beaches. At Tahoe, you would be lucky to find a spot with twenty yards of personal space. Ruby, Ani, and I weren’t disappointed by our day at the beach. There was some fairly intense wind, and we are still cleaning sand out of Ruby’s ears, but overall, it was just what we needed.

We can’t wait to get Ruby started with baby swimming classes. That scene in Amelie kills me.

I do have a personal history with the lake, and have always been mesmerized by it. It is the termination of the Truckee River, which fascinated me even as a young child. Some of my favorite times as a toddler were spent with my mom on the bank, looking for the tiny shells and other remnants of the great inland sea. When I was in high school, my friends and I had adventures in the rocks and waters of Pyramid that I can’t relate here. My parents and some of my friend’s parents read this blog, so there is no need to worry them so many years after the fact. Let’s just say that wild times were had by all, and everyone is still alive! Ruby, if I ever catch you doing things like that… Ahh that’s something to save for another post.

When Ani and I moved back from New Orleans, Pyramid was the first place I wanted to go, even though it was winter, I drove out alone and looked at the water.

My grandfather died at Pyramid Lake.
In my mind’s dictionary, next to the entry for “desert rat” there is a drawing of him. Every summer, he and my grandmother would take my cousin and me deep into the Nevada desolation to some ghost town or ancient mining camp dump, looking for arrowheads, cobalt glass, or petroglyphs. His skin always had the look of leather; he had spent much of his life out from under his roof. He had fished that lake for years. While talking to a friend, months before his death, he mentioned that he’d probably die out there. I’ll never know if it was coincidence, or if he had the power to stop his heart in one of the most amazing places on earth. Many of the rocks at Pyramid have names like Indian Head and Popcorn Rock. The rock near where my grandfather died is called Fisherman’s Passage in honor of him.

His ashes were spread on the other side of the lake, near the mouth of the Truckee. I was there the day my father threw them to the wind, and I remember my Aunt Val hiding M&Ms in the nearby desert for him to find at his leisure.

I may spend some time away from the desert before I’m done, but my heart won’t. I hope that Ruby shares my love of this place.

I must be generating some sort of Luddite anti-technology field. It all started last week, with the aforementioned fishing trip. I neglected to tell you that on our way to the river, I looked down at my truck's temperature gauge, and it was pegged in the red. I had just had the oil changed (poorly), and when they told me that they had checked all of the fluids, I had assumed that they had checked the coolant, since it is one of the easiest to see. You don't even need a dipstick; it's right there. Of course, that's the one fluid that they don't check. I'd been driving with little or no antifreeze for an indeterminable amount of time. I used to check all of the dipstick/fluid levels almost every time I started my old truck, because it was invariably low on something. With my new truck, I just sort of assume that everything is cool (pun intended). It has always been worry free, but now I was freaking out about it. Was there a leak in the system? Was it going to implode right there on the freeway outside of town with my screaming baby strapped in her car seat of death? Would I have trouble unbuckling my poor little one from her fiery prison as the flames curled around her cute little monkey feet? We went to a drug store, and I put a little coolant in the reservoir. Ani was being very helpful. She said things like, "Well, it's a good thing we have a reliable car now." I really love my truck, and I don't want to think of it as the shitty car that we can't rely on anymore, so my mind was circling around itself with all of the possible mechanically crippling problems that would turn my favorite vehicle of all time into a crappy exploding lemon. We drove to the river, watching the temperature gauge very carefully the whole way to see if it would repeat its earlier heat spasm. (Side note: it has been running great ever since. It just needed it's dorky owner to top off the coolant.)

I was parked at the side of the road, getting my fly gear ready to hit the river for the first time of the season, watching the patch of dirt under my truck for a river of leaked coolant, and I couldn't get the spool with my line on it to seat itself onto the reel. This is a fly reel that my Dad gave to me, the kind of reel that should be a lifelong possession: one that I could hand down to Ruby. I vaguely remember taking a rough fall at the end of last season where the reel took the full force of my body's impact on a river stone. Futzing around to see what could be wrong, I saw a strange little wire sticking out of the reel's internal mechanism, and I knew that I shouldn't pull on it. Don't pull on it Greg. Don't do it. Don't. As I said that to myself, I knew I should just go back into town and see if someone down at the flyshop had any advice, but I fiddled with it like it was a sore tooth. I twitched it back and forth, and then my frustration got the better of me. I grabbed hold of the wire and pulled what turned out to be a foot long spring out of my 4-inch reel. The reel seemed to work fine after that, which still befuddles me, so we headed down to the river. I guess I'll find out how my reel handles when I catch my first big rainbow this summer. I didn't really do any fishing to talk about that day...

I described that experience in my last post, so let me skip to the part where I was getting out of my fishing boots and again freaking out about the possibility of my truck exploding. I put my hand into the pocket of my shorts and pulled out my dripping wet cell phone and wallet. I tried the blow dryer on them both, after all it works on Ruby's butt, right? It sort of fixed my wallet, but not really. I had to replace my cell phone. Water and leather aren't the best of friends, but water and electronic devices are even worse bedfellows. It was expensive. If you have the number, call me so that I feel like I'm getting some bang for my buck.

Yesterday, we were getting ready to watch Smarty Jones win the TRIPLE CROWN!!!, and Ruby was doing a cute horseback ride on my knee. As we grabbed the camera to take a picture for this blog, the lens jammed. It wouldnt come out. It is a brand new digital camera that we spent a fair amount of money on right before Ruby was born. We justified the expense because it was something we needed to document the baby's first few years, not her first few months. After trying everything else we could think of, against Ani's wishes, I shook it. Hard. I know, I shouldn't have. Broken gadgets are really like sore teeth. I have to screw with things, even when I know it'll probably make them worse. The lens now opens fine, but it closes with a distracting vibration. We are not happy. We did take some pictures of Ruby with her betting slips: Smarty Jones to win (just as a souvenir of the first horse to win the triple crown in over twenty years, because he was a shoe-in and would only pay pennies on the dollar) and tap dancer to show (because that's Nora's nickname. it's always good to bet money on horses that have cool names. Don't let anyone tell you that it is not.)

And then we watched Smarty Jones get beat. Tap Dancer was nowhere to be seen. Sad. Four bucks down the drain.
Today, the washing machine broke. It was full of mucky water and wouldn't do anything. I siphoned the gross dirty water out of the basin while wearing a pair of loose shorts, so that Dan and Ani could see my plumber's crack. I wanted to look professional. (Happily, no pictures were taken of that.) I moved it back and forth (the washing machine, not the crack), looked at it sternly, and turned it back on. It works fine... For now. I'm kind of afraid to touch anything else. It might explode.

We spent some time on the river today. We went to a spot that my dad showed me; apparently my grandfather also used to fish there. The flow was very high, making the fishing difficult. I tried a couple nymphs and a couple surface flies, but my main accomplishment was not finding myself 100 yards downriver with the logs churning in the spring runoff. Eventually, Ani and I will take turns casting flies while the other parent hangs out on the bank with Ruby. Ani hadn’t gotten her license yet, so she was the designated bank-side baby entertainment.




I am that tiny speck in the churning water. Ruby is that huge happy baby in the foreground. Note the sun hat. We will not burn our baby again.

Justin, hurry back and fish with us.

Dan came over for breakfast today. He and Leah had just returned from an adventurous drive through the Nevada Desert. They visited ghost towns, broke down in the middle of nowhere with only a topo-map and a cell phone, and had the best Basque food ever, but my favorite part of the story was the description of bathroom graffiti in a truck stop outside Lovelock:

JOHN KERRY IS BEAKER FROM THE MUPPETS.

After thinking about it, he also sort of looks like the eagle from the Muppets. Pointy heads are funny.

Ruby sorta looks like animal when she’s wearing her sun hat.

Last night an exciting milestone was passed. (Is that like passing a kidney stone?) Ruby slept for five hours straight! I didn’t really enjoy it in the way that I have been imagining that I would, because she went to bed before I got home, and by the time I was ready to sleep, she had already been snoozing for three hours. She usually starts to stir and kick pretty intensely right about then, so I spent forty-five minutes waiting for her to cry out. I finally dozed off about an hour before she did wake up. Ah well… maybe next time I’ll be able to ride the Ruby Night Train of Zs! Please… Greg needs sleep.

*YAWNS*