The Strange Summer

After I broke up with Sarah, you may have noticed that I made a string of increasingly distraught posts followed by a spat of furiously ragged polemics. This, of course, was no coincidence. I have been unhappy. Those uncompromising barbs came from a place of pain. While this is an explanation for those posts (as well as other correspondence from that time of similar tone), it is neither an excuse nor an apology. I won't retract them, because they are true and much of their value and truthfulness lies in their intensity of emotion. They are things I thought of saying much earlier, but they were catalyzed by that (unrelated) discontent, and I'm glad that they were.

I'm still unhappy, even miserable, and the nice or fun things I do now aren't fulfilling the way they should be. One friend suggested I consider a therapist. Another friend pointed out that being depressed is perfectly normal and that depression isn't clinical until it has persisted for over six months, something I have no expectation that it will do.

I am, as people go, an unusually happy, balanced person, but for now I am subject to that seed of doubt: "What if it was an illusion, a facade, a temporary cheat? What if I'm just a miserable person on the inside, and that's why I couldn't make it work with Sarah and that's why I won't be happy until I give up the hubris of my own way of thinking?" I've certainly had people insinuate as much at various (earlier) times in my life, people incensed by my glib, entitled, I-have-all-the-answers posture. I've brought such scrutiny upon myself. Further, I have no real proof that they were ever wrong. Part of that break-up was fueled by an underlying neediness in myself that I could never trace the source of, and that insecurity was definitely among the strains underlying my furiously ragged polemics.

There have been a number of other events this summer that, taken as a whole, have made for a very strange, muted, almost dreamlike summer.

My maternal grandfather died. My childhood dog died. My 63-year-old aunt, who has beaten breast cancer twice, had something cancer-like identified in her for the third time. Fortunately, I have since learned that it turned out to be a rare bone disease. I'm not sure how bad the bone disease is, but it's certainly better news than the likely death sentence that metastasized cancer would have been. One of my closest friends's boyfriend, who I knew and liked and who made my friend happy, killed himself. My friend was the one who found him. My mom and sister were in a violent car accident, in which their car rolled four times. The car, that we were once driven to middle school in, did not survive. Fortunately my mom and sister are okay.

None of these things have been my pain alone. My sister was good friends with the guy who killed himself, our childhood dog was officially her dog, and she's started a PhD program in the middle of Iowa far from everyone, including her own still-new boyfriend. My mom, who was the driver in that car crash, will worry about the recurring headaches that Bri got after the crash and losing your dad is a heck of a lot harder than losing your grandfather. Even with Sarah, the pain I bear is mirrored in her, and she has less of a support system. So, I can't feel isolated, but I do feel emotionally withdrawn and extraordinarily fragile. This summer has imbued in me a sense of mortality which I have only previously experienced in a few sober moments of childhood.

I said earlier that I seem to be an intrinsically happy, balanced person. I think most of the Vidrines are, come to think of it. I feel enormously lucky to be blessed with a sturdy, clever mind, good culture, and a rich array of people who care about me and who I care about in return. This summer has made me feel lucky, and for that I am thankful. I won't forget that this summer has also made me feel terrible. Both feelings will pass.

Brewing: California Sunshine Ale #1 and #2

The results are in. Howard and I's first outing with brewing was a modest success. We cracked open our first beers with Matt Smith and Cory Logan, whose considerable brewing expertise informed a lot of my beer-making decisions.

California Sunshine Ale recipe #2 was the Amarillo-only version of the recipe. The fermentation had stalled according to the gravity when we were preparing to bottle it. Since we'd already added the priming sugar, we added boiled water to keep the gravity from blowing up the bottles (though a few blew up anyways). The final product didn't end up tasting as watered-down as I'd worried it would, but there was a slight odor of foot instead that I suspect came from brettanomyces contamination. Matt and Cory kind of liked the foot thing. The Amarillo hops imparted a open, bittersweet flavor that I have come to identify as the taste of the color blue. While they didn't taste exactly like grapefruit as they are reputed to, there was enough resemblance to make it the obvious descriptor.

California Sunshine Ale recipe #1 was the basic scale down of the posted recipe. We accidentally doubled the priming sugar for this one, but otherwise things went without a hitch. The Cascade-Amarillo blend came out fruity. Fruity enough to compete with the sober end of the hefeweizen scale. Matt and Cory, who are obsessed with the impact of yeast strain on beer flavor, thought a lot of the fruitiness had to do with the less-than-clean yeast we used, Dan Star's Windsor Brewing Yeast. The beer also came around the darkness of a brown ale, which was a little darker than we were shooting for. The body was a tad too light, but I'd expected body to be tricky. The recipe is supposed to push the edge of acceptable body for a pale ale.

All told, I think recipe #3 of California Sunshine Ale should have half the chocolate malt and an additional part biscuit malt equal to the crystal malt. I'll definitely keep the Cascade-Amarillo pairing, but I think I'll scale back the finishing and bittering hops overall and push the Perle hops forward in the mix and later in the hop schedule. I think we'll also add a secondary fermentation to clarify the beer before bottling.

End of the Davis Era

There's suddenly a chill to the dawn air again. To be sure, there are still hundred degree days ahead of us in Davis, but the worst of the summer is over. As with every year, I face summer's end with the melancholy of anticipated change.

This year I have particular cause for melancholy. Jill starts a PhD program at UC Santa Cruz this September. Brandon left for Washington DC in June and Howard will be leaving for home when his lease finishes at the end of the month. My job with Monsanto finishes this Friday the 13th and after that I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not going to Santa Cruz. I'm not staying at my house in Davis either. My lease finishes the same time as Howard's. I plan to help move Jill into Santa Cruz and then take the month of September off, backpacking with my sister and maybe surfing a little back home.

After that is anybody's guess. I've started applying to Monsanto full time positions, microbreweries and tech jobs. I'm at a stage at my life where I can take a job anywhere in the country. We'll see what comes of it. Cross your fingers. Whatever happens, even if I get a Monsanto job in Davis for the year, the end of this summer marks the end of an era. There's no longer anything left for me in Davis in terms of people.

Jill and I are parting ways when she moves to Santa Cruz. It was something we'd known was coming since we started going out, but it's been a year longer than originally envisioned. As you can imagine, too, it's something we've made an effort to blot out. It's coming quickly and soon enough denial won't be sufficient to insulate us.

My sister wisely pointed out that mutual breakups are hardly ever mutual. I think Jill would very happily do the long distance thing. I however, besides hating the idea of a long distance relationship, need more diversity of experience before I can contentedly commit. The idea of marrying my first girlfriend is many times more terrifying to me than a return to loneliness. Between you and me, that is saying something.

So I can look forward to either moving back in with my parents to a town I love but with only a handful of friends remaining or a year of gainful employment in a place completely without friends. Gosh, guys, post-college is a blast from start to finish. Tell me when it's over.

Brewing and Retroactive Idea Theft

Howard and I finally did it. We finally brewed some beer. We bottled it yesterday, so we've just got a few weeks until it's carbonated and ready to drink.

We made two one-gallon batches of my California Sunshine Ale. The first was a simple scale-down of the recipe I posted earlier. The second was a variant that completely dropped Cascade hops for Amarillo.

It's pretty uncommon to brew in one-gallon batches. Practically every recipe online is written for five gallons. Brewing at all is a lot of work, so people try and make it worth their while. Larger batches are also more stable and, according to the owner of our local brew store, a difference of scale changes extraction rates and thereby the recipe requirements.

I decided to brew in small batches knowing full well the reasons it was uncommon. I didn't get into homebrewing to save money. The ingredients for making beer cost roughly half the retail price for buying craft beer from the store. That may sound pretty good, but when I take into account the work and risk involved in the process and the superior quality and variety of beer available at the store, it's barely breaking even. Five gallons makes fifty beers and that is a heck of a lot of any single kind of beer for a person who's accustomed to buying single bottles. The fuzzy feeling that comes from knowing my beer was made with my own hands only gets me so far. I decided to start homebrewing to learn more about beer and to kick around my own recipe ideas. We may have had to borrow Howard's lab scale to measure hops in hundreths of an ounce, but I'm a scientist, after all.


So after one and a half hours of driving and one and a half days' work, Howard and I have twenty-three bottles of beer to show for it and that's fine by me.

Above: Our cooling system to keep the beer around 70 degrees in the middle of the Davis summer (my idea)
Below: Our chicken wire drying rack (Howard's idea)

On a separate note, it has come to my attention that American brewers have been time traveling from years past into our present future and viciously stealing my beer ideas from this blog. It turns out that Cascadian Dark Ale aka Black IPA is an established northwestern variant on the IPA style that uses dark malts to conjure an intimidating color. While it sounds like a lot of breweries are using debittered black malt to give the maximum color without affecting flavor that much, some have actually embraced the pairing of hop bitterness and roasted maltiness.

Also, on the day before we bottled our California Sunshine Ale, I happened across the spitting image of my concept for the beer. Deschutes Brewery's Twilight Summer Ale is an APA that lightens up on the crystal malt, adds something toasty to pair with grilled food and relies on a combination of four hops with emphasis on Amarillo.

To counterbalance said losses from my creative stable, I'd like to present a new beer concept. I was idly reading the ingredient list on Barq's Root Beer and noticed that the last ingredient was acacia. For those of you who don't know, acacia is planted as a shrub all over orange county hillsides for erosion control. It has oval grey leaves and little fuzzy yellow flowers that get pollen all over the place. It has a very distinctive smell, like a dirty, grainy version of some platonic true herb. As soon as I'd read it I started to either imagine or taste it in the Barq's (to my satisfaction).

Acacia would be great in a light summer porter. You heard it from me first, somebody should brew a summer porter with acacia leaves.

Waiting for the Bus

It's getting hot around here. Like approaching the 100's hot. I wait for the bus in the afternoon after work. When I can't find space on the only bench with shade, I sit on the sidewalk behind the structure in the shade. I'm the only person I've seen doing this, so far. It strikes me as a "me" thing to do, though it's even more characteristic of my sister Bri than me.

In contrast to Davis, Woodland has a lot of Mexicans. I've been listening to the world cup in Spanish on the radio while at work. Boy I've missed hearing Mexican-Spanish.

The Basil Borbeto

I was making mojitos after harvesting Jill's garden with her. I'd used up all my white sugar making a blackberry pie and I was taking advantage of the basil we'd just harvested for the mojitos. I decided to kill the last drops in a handle of bourbon by making a whiskey version for myself. Jack tasted it, exclaimed his love of it "and I don't even like alcohol". He came up with the name you see as the title. So there you go, the Basil Borbeto:

1 Slice of Lime
1 Tbsp Brown Sugar
A few leaves Basil
Ice Cubes
1 Shot Bourbon

Muddle the lime, sugar and basil, then throw the ice and bourbon in and mix. It's kind of like a Mint Julep.

The Summer of Tomatoes Inaugerates

After months of unemployment, I finally have a job. I started a paid internship for the summer with Monsanto this week. Yes, that Monsanto. No, I don't care. I'm too in love with the idea of improving crops.

What am I doing? Well, if I told you I'd have to kill you. Seriously, I don't want to get dooced, so don't expect me to write any essays about my job any time soon. That said, here's what I can tell you:

I was hired to breed pathogen-resistant tomatoes this summer. Btw, long term projects are a longtime nemesis of mine and I'm looking forward to the face-off.

I've decided I'm going to pour my heart and soul into this job. I've got the capacity to do not just a good job, but an outstanding one, and now's the time to show it.

The job is in the neighboring town of Woodland, so I'm taking the Yolobus from Davis to Woodland and then biking the remaining four miles. I just got back from my first round trip that way. The good news is that it's definitely doable and I'll be getting good exercise this summer. The bad news is that it was raining on my way back, so I'm drying off as I write this.

The "site", as it's called, is the size of a small college campus. People actually use communal, floating bikes to get from place to place. I do too, because while riding a cruiser on loose gravel may be like walking on ice, riding a road bike on loose gravel is like walking on ice with stilts.

For the first time in my life I'm being paid by salary rather than by the hour and I am rather stoked. Not only am I being paid rather well, but if, including transit time, I happen to work two eleven-hour days in a row, nobody minds (except maybe Jill). Speaking in hypotheticals, of course...

End of Summer Melancholy

There's always a certain melancholy associated with the break between school and summer. Part of it was mixed feelings about school, but more of it, I'm now realizing, was the loneliness from most friends being on vacation. At the same time, it's also a time for unprecedented partying if you're still in Davis. There's nothing like a half-blacked-out night followed by a long day with nothing to do and no personal contact for some sobering self-reflection. Also, a lot of emotion comes from the hunger from forgetting to eat, which happens when you spend an entire day doing nothing.

It's the kind of melancholy that makes you squirm. Like you want/need something so desperately but you don't even know what it is that you want. That makes you want to do anything to slow the flood of thought. It's the kind of melancholy that makes you feel physically sick, and by the way I might be coming down with something. Sleep is always the most obvious solution, but part of having nothing to do is being irritatingly well-rested. Other solutions are television, talking with friends in person or via telecommunication, and drinking yourself silly.

Sometimes I want to lash out and hurt people around me. It's not an emotional desire so much as a cognitive one. I feel like people take my self-possession for granted and that their lack of control is attributable to laziness on their parts. And maybe, maybe, if you took the same liberties as they do they would respond and treat you with all the attention that you don't get but feel you deserve. But I've found that you cannot get away with the actions of others if you aren't in the same headspace as they are. If you do something malicious on intellectual whim that other people do in passion, you will be held accountable in ways that the passionate person won't be. In short, the world expects of us what we can give. Furthermore, and this should be obvious to everyone: everyone sometimes thinks they deserve more attention than they do, and to base short term actions with long-term consequences on angst and whim is rarely a sound course of action.

Summer's Nights

There's no common time so romantic as a summer's night. This is even more true in Davis, where night is the only comfortable time of the day. You may think I'm being dramatic, you may think I'm not being fair, but it's been true to me for years. Ignoring human-made holidays and momentary variances in weather, when you're really talking about the time and not anything else, there is nothing so persistently magical as when the land is cool and dark. The possibilities for mischief and holy moments stretch out like fingers across a wide, rounded back.

My obsession with music has passed. It came to me in the morning, ravaged me all day, and went along its way in the evening. Now that it's night, I'm not sure I'm sad it has gone nor am I convinced that it won't return, but I'm glad it came and left me full of color and taste. I'm haunted by its echos. Not the myriad minor bands that I strove to categorize and appreciate, but by the great bands, the bands that formed the only recognizable soundtrack to my college experience.

I'm finally riding my new bike Smoky again. He's inky black like night and dirty like me in summer. Road bikes are such a pleasure to ride. The other bikes get you from place to place, but without the exhilaration of Mercury's speed.

There's something creepy about the progression of summer nights from late spring to early fall. It likely has to do with the apprehension I've viewed the end of all things with, particularly things so open and beautiful as summer. Even now, I'm sensing the approach of September in the dark air. A sweeter smell, maybe? Not like spring's heady pollen, but a deeper, melancholy, more earnest kind of sweetness that has replaced high summer's smell of baking dry tan grass.

Birthday Time!

It's been a year now since I started the Dilettante. A lot has changed. I kinda expected my Senior year to be the best year of college the way it was the best year of high school. I mean, my last year of high school was really awesome, like if there were four beans and three were dark and one was shiny white, that would be my senior year of high school. So I went into this year with an expectation for it to be the best of college, but conscientious of the probability that this senior year wouldn't shine on the same order of magnitude as the last one.

And of course, that's exactly what happened. It was a good year, and this blog certainly played a role in making it good. What do you call it when the act of detection alters what you're trying to detect? Last summer I had every reason to be relaxed, happy, and optimistic. I had a research job that was pleasant and engaging, I'd just turned twenty-one and was exploring the world of alcoholic beverages with Brandon and I had plenty of free time to write blogs and do stuff to write blogs about.

This summer is different. In some ways it is better, but it certainly isn't as unremittingly pleasant as the last. I've got more free time, but it feels like less. I've got a girlfriend that I adore, but she spent the first month of summer in Spain and I missed her like crazy. And of course, there's the whole no-longer-being-a-student thing. I'm looking for a job this summer. I need something to support myself with and something to fill out my research experience for grad apps. That need has cast something of a pall on the rest of this summer.

Obviously my post rate hasn't returned to last summer's steady clip, but you're reading this, so obviously I've managed to keep this blog alive and limping along. Coincidentally, the Dilettante reached two thousand unique hits almost simultaneous with its birthday, so I think all in all I have something to be proud of here. I hope you're still enjoying my writing. I certainly am, when I get around to it. Remember to comment when you feel inspired. Feedback is essential to improvement, and it doesn't hurt my ego either.

The Beginning of Summer, The End of Spring

I caught a couple of deals on fruit this weekend at the grocery store that had the distinct whiff of summer.

Ever since my time at Albertsons, I've eagerly awaited the few weeks of early summer that raspberries are sold for under three dollars a pint. This was the first of those weeks and once more I reveled in the delicacy of my favorite of all fruits. I also bought some mangos on the cheap and made a mental note that strawberries have hit their bottom-out price of a dollar per pound.

Lastly and perhaps most significantly, cherries all over Davis have acquired the red hue that signals the conclusion of Spring Quarter. I took as many cherries as I could carry back from my Gardening, Orchards and Land field trip today, stuffing my belly, my pockets, my camera case, and my pant cuffs with the rosy jewels.

I associate this time with my homeland's May Gray/June Gloom, about a month of overcast weather that once signaled the end of school and the coming of summer. The end of school season has always had a grim psychological potency to it, but that's true now more than ever.

I graduate June 12th and a million pop culture sentiments about the mixed emotions that come with graduation swirl around in my mind (The Graduate cheif among them). I missed the application deadline for graduate school, so I've decided to find a lab tech job in Davis to support myself for the year and apply to grad schools this fall. I just resigned my lease on Saturday with my roommates. I picked up tickets for my family to attend commencement last Wednesday. I make a final presentation of my lab research next Friday. I wrote up my Curriculum Vitae on Tuesday.

Damn, graduation's scary. I need some cherries.

The Central Coast

Before the start of school I visited Southern California for a few days before embarking on a road trip with my mom and sister up the central coast to drop Bri off at UC Santa Cruz for her freshman year. As you can imagine, the trip necessitated some serious photography. Not one to shirk duty, I nearly filled up both memory sticks and ran through three sets of batteries.



We camped in San Simeon State Beach on our first night and the next morning we went for a walk.



Later that day, we stopped to see an elephant seal colony.


After camping in Big Sur, we arrived in Santa Cruz. Waiting in a line for unloading directions I noticed Brandon's distinctive political bumper stickers on the red minivan in front of us. His brother happened to be moving into the building next to my sister's.

Though Bri had been freaking out about the move the entire trip and we bailed on her that evening, when we brought her her mini fridge the next morning she already seemed to be flourishing.

Mom and I left up Pacific Coast Highway on a pilgrimage to Mavericks. We found the surf shop that held exclusive rights to the name in the middle of an industrial section of Princeton-by-the-Sea, a fishing village just north of Half Moon Bay.


In all of my travels through California that week I didn't find a town nearly so charming as this harbor hamlet. I resolved to spend a summer there if I get the chance.



Those rocks are a half mile out to sea and are threaded by the brave surfers of Mavericks. The biggest rock is almost two stories high. That day I was repeatedly informed that it was too flat to surf. Everybody there seemed to have a distorted understanding of the term "flat".

Odds and Ends of Summer's End

There's been a noticeable cooling recently. The days are getting shorter and the air is getting gusty. Peaches are finishing up and apples went on sale at Safeway this week. It's become painfully obvious that summer is coming to a close and, as much as I have enjoyed the season, I feel ready to embrace the hustle that characterizes fall quarter.

I'm retiring my radio show for the next quarter. I don't have any new bands to play and I won't have the time to find them. I will make a point, however, of cohosting a Halloween show and a Christmas show. After all, it's my last opportunity to do so and I've been dying to do a holiday broadcast. Last year the Christmas music started in October at our house.

I've been getting some extra exercise lately. I keep finding myself on course towards our old apartment. Two weeks in and my subconscious still hasn't managed to internalize that I don't live in the ghetto anymore.

Similarly tardy is our DSL. When Howard called AT&T on the thirtieth, they said it would take them a week and a half to process our request and turn on the internet. So when the internet didn't start working last Tuesday, I called them to find what was up. I was met with a labyrinth of automated questions and confusion on the part of the tech personnel. This process repeated itself the next night and on Thursday they said there's a technical problem and they'll send out someone to fix it on the twenty-fourth. With luck, we'll have internet inside of a month since requesting the switch...

This misadventure has highlighted the fact that the internet permeates every aspect of my life besides sleeping, showering and pooing. It isn't just me though. The world expects you to have use of the web. AT&T referred us to a website that explains how to get your internet working. Think about that for a second.

Without internet an astonishing array of things have gone by the wayside, not the least of which is this blog. I played catch up on the train home and I have a bunch of posts in the works, but I don't think I'll be able to sustain the rate of posting that I kept once classes kick in.

A Summer of Alcoholism

At the beginning of the summer I turned twenty one. I celebrated Howard and I's birthday by throwing a cocktail party, and this necessitated stocking a bar. Over the course of the summer I have read a lot about liquors, and I have passed from one fascination to another. The most recent has been rye whiskey.

Rye was the liquor of choice among our nation's founding fathers. It was popular in the States until Prohibition, when it went inexplicably out of style. The oldest, most available and cheapest brand is called Old Overholt, and the picture on the bottle resembles the portraits found on our currency. It's a light and flowery whiskey, in sharp contrast to Maker's Mark Bourbon. I drink it shaken with ice.

Last year Brandon and I discovered Martinis. We make them with cheap gin and not too dry despite present fashion. Even with our cheap ingredients the Martini is a world class drink of elegance and poise.

The Manhattan is a similarly refined drink that I have reveled in this summer. I owe it my introduction to bitters. Whiskey sold in glass bottles doesn't come so cheaply as gin, and thus it has remained a guilty pleasure.

Immediately preceding our cocktail party was my obsession with Brazilian Caipirinhas. They are made from a rum analog called Cachaca that is distilled from fermented cane juice. To make, you muddle two tablespoons of raw sugar with a fat slice of lime. Fill the glass with ice, then pour a tall shot of Cachaca over it. The drink smells of sugar cane and is great on hot days. I'm a proponent of substituting brown sugar and halving the sugar makes a better fit to the American palette.

The Caipirinha provided the inspiration for the Bitter Max and this too I have been meditating on. Rum vanishes seemingly overnight in the face of the new drink as well as, it turns out, Tequila.

Apparently I've inspired an appreciation for liquor in Caius. He reported that though once he had an aversion towards it, he is now in love with his native Romania's Tzuica. He promises to give me a taste the next time we meet. I hope you'll take example from my good friend Caius.

The Gang Makes A Move

I am writing this amidst a mountain of boxes. I had no idea that poor college students could accumulate so much crap, albeit overwhelmingly cheap crap. I apparently need twenty-four boxes and ten bags worth of stuff, plus furniture. That's right I counted. And that was only my room.


On Moving Day the streets are choked with trucks and the dumpsters with abandoned furniture. All the hippie-hobos of Davis come out to scrounge college-kid refuse. I myself acquired a broken dresser and a couple of chairs.

We began packing boxes Friday night so that we could empty and fill them again that night. Saturday, the Uhaul truck was so big it took us most of the day to pack and unload and by nightfall the toll of the day's labors weighed heavily upon us. I responded by drinking heavily.



On Sunday, Brandon's family came to help us. After evacuating our apartment, we set to work cleaning. Our muscles screamed as noxious fumes savaged our lungs. It won't surprise you to hear that that night also ended with heavy drinking.

On Monday we again plunged our lungs into the fumes. We closed our now-empty apartment and said farewell to our neighbors. Then we began unpacking.

Our former apartment was incredibly cheap, incredibly located and incredibly ghetto. Residents were mostly working class and our favorite neighbors were friendly drunks. During the two years we lived there, the complex kept changing hands, and each management demonstrated a complete apathy toward our myriad repair problems. The most recent company decided to flush everyone out with rent hikes and recast the complex to be student friendly. This guy's moving to Woodland.


Each of my roommates left their mark on the truck. Brandon hit a protector at the gas station and Howard took a chunk out of our complex's "pool house". It was a fitting farewell to make the complex look that much more like a war-torn former Soviet republic.


We will be joined this year by Greg Webb, a friend of Brandon's from DCD who's going to share his room. With Greg's contribution, the average rent is as cheap as our previous locale. Our new place is a duplex with the exact floor plan of almost every duplex in Davis and our landlord is a cute little Indian woman. We now benefit from such luxuries as central air, unbroken windows, and a dishwasher.

We are still without internet or phone service and my room's still mostly in boxes, but the TV is set up and we cooked our first meal in the kitchen tonight. This year we're living in style.

Pushing Pedal Pushers

Those of you who spend time with me are aware of my fondness for rolled up slacks. I get the occasional confused look and I thought I'd set the world straight. Like Morty Seinfeld's beltless trenchcoat, I consider rolling up pants to calf length something of an invention and certainly a fashion statement. After all, who doesn't want to look like a pirate or a beachcomber?

For a fashion statement, pedal pushers are abysmally practical. I arrived upon the idea while working at Albertsons. I had amassed a collection of khaki pants for the job and with summer's onset I found my acquisitions unsuited to cart duty on hot summer days (in Dana Point this means the low eighties). When I returned to air conditioning's frigid embrace, my slacks easily reverted to their intended conformation. The following summer I did a fair amount of yard/handiwork and found that unlike shorts, pedal pushers provide serviceable knee protection.

While accumulating slacks I had let my shorts dwindle, so roll-ups filled a role soon necessitated by the Davis heat. Perhaps more importantly, the switch to bicycle transport made "pedal pushers" a foregone conclusion. Even in winter the threat of a gear snag mandates at least one leg be rolled up.


So in Davis I am not the only one with rolled up pants. The style has come to distinguish the ever-widening fixie circle. However, fixed-gear bike riders have an unnatural relationship with shoes and so my gears, backpack and especially my sandals mark me an outsider to the trend. Personally, I think sandals lend pedal pushers an elegant visual effect.

Allons-y! The Vidrine Travel Plan

My dad has told me that, provided I get a fellowship or the like for grad school, he will buy me tickets to Europe as a graduation present. We Vidrines are a traveling kind of family. We are in fact travel savvy. I guess it comes from practice or more likely, from my late grandfather. Nine years ago my dad, sister, grandfather, aunt, uncle and I went to France. It was the greatest trip of my life.


There are many ways to travel. You can get a package deal where planes, buses and hotels are managed by an agency. These tend to be built around seeing as many famous sites in as little time as possible, like the telling "seven countries in twenty days" European travel package. As somebody related to me once said, "You don't get the feel of any of the countries." Many people plan trips along similar lines to travel packages, staying in American-style hotels and spending their time hitting major tourist draws. This too, robs the traveler of the cultural experience that is so central to great international travel. College students travel through hostels and trains. I will agree that that is a better way, but besides the main attractions for which Europe is famed, college students like to hit London for the pubs, Germany for the pubs, and Amsterdam for the legal pot. Like you can't smoke and drink underage to your heart's content stateside.

Though Vidrine travel plans vary depending on finance, we have a definite aesthetic. We make a point of spending more time in less places. We stay away from Americans and Americanized things. We thoughtfully make our own travel plans, except when in the interest of keeping our twenty-plus family members together at once. Ideally and frequently, we use local friends as tour guides. That said, we definitely hit the major attractions in Paris and enjoyed McDonald's after starting to miss familiar food.

On our first full day in France nine years ago, it was my birthday. We spent that day on a marathon tour of Paris. The elevator in the Eiffel Tower was broken, so we only got to the second level. I had one of the worst steaks I have ever tasted (I was learning the Vidrine method by trial and error too). For my birthday dinner, we had a snotty waiter. This merits a digression concerning the reputation of the French.

First of all, when people say the French are rude, they mean Parisians. Most Americans reporting have only spent significant time in Paris anyways. Secondly, most of this rudeness has to do with that thing most precious to all Frenchmen, their language. Americans know that most Europeans speak English, so the first question is usually, "Do you speak English?" Innocent sounding enough, but because English is the worldwide lingua franca, it hits a nerve with the French. The phrase itself originally meant the french language, because French was the international language when France dominated Europe culturally and militarily. So by expecting them to speak English, we are rubbing their noses in the fact that we have replaced them. Americans consequently come off as rude towards the French because we take such little interest in other languages. The English don't have this problem because they do take interest and they neither feel nor seem privileged. The third reason the French have a reputation for being rude is that, well, they are a little. But not too much. We met intensely nice French people everywhere we went and especially in the countryside. It helped on my trip that my dad and grandfather were native speakers. So don't judge France by Paris, try to speak French (believe me, it will be appreciated) and roll with the punches. France is a very traveled place in spite of their reputation for a reason, after all.


So ever since my dad told me about my graduation present I've been thinking about what I want to do. First on the list is going to the very top of the Eiffel Tower and to the Louvre, two things I missed on my eleventh birthday. Also, I think I've convinced Caius to come with me. He's got family contacts throughout Europe and hopefully we can stay with his grandmother in Romania for a while. I can't wait to see German villages and Vienna on the way. I'll be busting out my own family contacts, so between the two of us I think we'll have most of our sleeping accommodations covered. Obviously I want to stay in a hostel once, but I think I'll try to fill in the rest of the gaps by couch surfing. In addition to the significant money concerns (the cheaper I live the longer I can afford to stay), couch surfing's philosophy fits perfectly with the Vidrine aesthetic. As my grandfather always said, and particularly so in France, allons-y!

Max, God of Worms

For the last week and a half, I have been working in Dr. Lesilee Rose's lab. I'm being trained by a guy named Adam. Adam is very nice and laughs through his nose. He's taught me how to do a lot of the basic stuff around the lab. He's getting married this week.

I have a desk with a window. With a view! That's my desk lit by my window. I recently arrived on the perfect lunch: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a mason jar of tea.

The Rose lab studies developmental biology. Specifically, we study biological control of polarity during cell division. It ultimately plays an important role in body development, but we're concerned with things like mitotic spindles and protein gradients. Our lab is a "worm lab", which means that our studies focus on a worm called C. elegans. It is a tiny, near-microscopic worm that is grown on petri dishes.

C. elegans is a model organism like mice, fruit flies, and E. coli. Biologists extrapolate principles discovered in these organisms to understand more complex organisms. Much of the work in the lab revolves around the worms. I have learned to make plates and to handle the worms. I've also been making gels and running proteins. Adam pointed out that you could drink 90% of the chemicals in our lab and be fine. Biology: 1. OChem: 0.

Our lab uses hundreds of plates every week, so we have to make up new ones almost every day. First I measure some digested protein powder and agar into a large flask, pour in water, mix it up and put the flask into the autoclave for an hour and a half. We let it cool for another hour. As soon as it's not scalding I thread a sterile tube into the flask, through a dispenser machine, and back out onto the counter. I take stacks of empty plastic petri dishes and position the nozzle while the dispenser squirts the media into each. The machine measures with rhythmic pumping, so imagine holding a nozzle that is rhythmically squirting hot gooey liquid over and over and over again.

We handle the worms under microscopes with platinum wire picks using sterile technique. We can use the scooping method or the sticking method. I use the latter. I get some bacterial goo on the spatula and then dab the worms. With luck and a little practice they stick on. I can even get a bunch of worms on the pick at a time, writhing in a sticky ball. When it has too many, the worms keep falling off every time it's dabbed. My record so far is 19.

Thus, I am God of the worms, reigning doom with impunity on their little jelly world. Just like "the claw", I choose who will go and who will stay. Sometimes they go to a better place with a virgin bacteria colony and lots of space to lay eggs. Sometimes they get flamed till my platinum wire glows white hot.

The Dream Where I Chat Up George Bush

I guess it's the warm weather and my screwy summer sleep schedule, but it seems like every morning I wake up remembering some wild dream. The other day I had the craziest of them all.

The first thing I remember is that there were thousands of people piled on a couple of huge yellow plastic sheets, floating in the ocean. They were refugees, I think from Katrina or something, and I don't know why the plastic sheets supported them, but they did. Now the bigger one started sliding over the smaller one like two icebergs or two continental plates. I knew the people covered over would drown, so having somehow moved from an observing position to being among the refugees I got someone I knew to hop into the water with me to help pull the larger plastic sheet towards shore and off of the smaller one. We swam hard and pulled and soon we had freed the other raft. Don't ask me where I got the strength because I haven't done anything remotely grueling all summer.

Our work done, we started swimming for shore. What I had taken to be New Orleans levees now appeared akin to the breakwaters of Dana Point harbor. We had a quarter mile to go. By the time we swam into the harbor the person with me was this girl I was interested in. Not one with any correspondence in real life, before you ask. When we were only a hundred yards from the docks, John Lazur and an unidentified buddy of his swam out to meet us and John offered to swim me to shore. I may not be the fastest swimmer, but I can certainly hold my own, so naturally I felt a little patronized. I said we didn't need the help, but John replied that it would be silly to refuse when it was no trouble for him. Before I could respond, he grabbed me tightly and swam fast as a rocket to the main dock.

While we were getting out of the water, I thanked John for a bottle of wine he had given me for my birthday. It was a really good bottle of wine, I said, like probably a twenty dollar one. He said it was just something he'd had laying around. I insisted, but he repeated that it was just something he had lying around and refused to admit it was an expensive bottle. He explained that he had been thinking about giving me one of his one-third-full bottles of good gin (apparently he owned an array of brands), but had rather give away the bottle of wine.

On our way home I was still trying to catch the interest of that girl. We were in a bus with a bunch of people. The girl spoke up and proposed a group party with pizza and cake and offered to host. I sat there trying to figure out if it was a good sign, fully aware that I was completely over-analyzing the situation.

I found myself visiting Washington DC in the late afternoon. There was some sort of convention that evening that I was attending. I presume it was Democratic, because the proximity of the DNC and of all the time I've been spending with politically-obsessed Democrats. Looking for a way to kill time I noticed the White House was nearby and walked over to check it out (it looked suspiciously like a super-sized version of my great-grandmother's old house). I noticed none other than George Bush chilling in the back yard. A little star-stricken, I struck up a conversation. He turned out to be friendly and easy to talk to. I mentally confirmed that poll about Bush being a good guy to have a beer with. While we were talking the White House collapsed. George Bush didn't seem concerned and we continued chatting. I started asking him about his Presidency. Being mindful of my historic hatred of the man, I was careful not to say anything that might offend him. I asked him about how his administration worked internally. Perhaps he perceived it a loaded question or maybe it was too journalistic, but at that George paused and before he had a chance to say anything he began to fade away. He faded away until he was gone completely and with it, my dream.

The Bitter Max

I invented a drink and I call it the Bitter Max. It is essentially a glorified rum and coke, designed as a way to drink cheap Bacardi rum with utmost style and alarming speed.

To make, take a slice of lime and squeeze it into a small glass with enough aggression to bruise the rind (muddling works well). Drop in the slice, then add two dashes angostura bitters. Fill the glass completely with ice, then pour a shot of white rum over it. Add two equivalents of Coca-Cola and drink once it cools to ice temperature.

The bitterness of the lime rind combines with the bitters and the high alcohol content to make for a strong first sip. Successive sips reveal the drink to be rather quaffable.


I am very proud of my jam jar cocktail glasses and 50mL beaker.