Capuccino with Olivia

I'm just perfectly happy right now.

I'm at one of my favorite Sacramento establishments--O'BO--on a sunny Friday afternoon with Olivia. I have a cappuccino in front of me (seriously, I have been hinting to my family that I'd like a nice Italian espresso machine for at least a year now but no one seems to want to shell out the three grand for the one I want...), Bella Note is playing over the sound system, and Olivia and I are sitting at a table for two looking out on downtown Sacramento while we both type away at our laptops.

Just two girls who love to write hanging out together writing.

This is a little bit of a dream for me. This is, literally, one of the things I think about when I picture how I would ideally spend my time. Sitting in a cafe, whiling away the afternoon with my daughter, creating what could potentially turn into the next Hamilton (just go with it...).

Damn it. We've only been here ten minutes and I've finished my cappuccino already (thank god for spell check because I've spelled cappuccino three different ways but you don't know that, do you, because--yay! spell check).  Hard decision... another drink now, or wait half an hour and get a cookie with it? Actually that's not a hard decision. If you could see the pastries here, you'd already know that I'm waiting half an hour so I can order the giant chocolate crinkle cookie to go with my second cappuccino.

Damn it again. Turns out I drank all of the cappuccino but left a fair amount of the foam, so now I'm just eating giant spoonfuls of foam. It's good. But not as good as when it's balanced out by the coffee. I'll have to correct my drinking strategy on the next round. Goal: to finish the coffee and the foam at the same time. Setting achievable goals is one of my strengths.

The music playing in the background is that sort of old-style Italian music you'd hear being played if you were sitting at a street-side cafe in Sorrento. It's got my toes tapping and my shoulders slightly moving to the rhythm. It's fun but distracting. Although it does not appear to be disrupting Olivia's concentration. She looks utterly immersed in her task.

The music is still the same old Italian style, but now it's got a very heavy concertina sound. Do you know my dad? All I can picture right now is my dad wandering the tables at a little Italian cafe, stopping at random to play for people who are singing along. Mind you, this has NEVER happened. Though he does play the concertina. So it COULD happen.

Retorna me, cara mia te amo... Dean Martin is serenading us. What a great song. I love listening to him sing the Italian verses. Makes me want to return to my Italian classes. Or to Italy. Or both.

Is it wrong that I keep glancing at the time to see if a half hour has passed? That cookie is calling to me.

Don't know what that last song was, but it was sung entirely in Italian by someone unknown to me, and he held the last note long enough that Olivia and I both stopped typing and looked at each other at the same time, as if to acknowledge that yes, we get that he's a good singer but come on, that's just a stupid long amount of time to hold a note.

I just realized I seem to be live-blogging my writing date with Olivia.

I held out long enough that Olivia asked me if she should go get us a caramel raspberry cookie to go with a couple of cappuccinos. Let me give that some thought...ummm, yes please.

Here's a picture of Selland's amazing caramel-raspberry sandwich cookie:

Okay, we may have eaten it before I could get my camera out.

The couple two tables over from us just sat down with some beautiful salads and a bottle of sauvignon blanc. Yes, a whole bottle! It's 3:10pm. Someone knows how to start their weekend right! If Olivia and I split a bottle of wine right now I'm pretty sure Dave would have to come drive us home. (We'll split the bottle of Wente Riva Ranch I have chilling in our fridge when we get home. We don't want to inconvenience Dave.)

Round two cappuccinos have arrived!
The burning question on everyone's minds, I know, is "Will Kim be able to sleep tonight after not just one but TWO full caffeine cappuccinos in the late afternoon?"
It's a really good question that I should have given some thought to before I embarked on my second caffeinated beverage. But I didn't. So we shall see. If you see a blog posting at 2am you'll know the answer.

Goal. Achieved. My last sip of coffee was accompanied by the perfect amount of foam and my cup is now perfectly empty.

It's time to go. I can tell because gone are my lovely Italian songs and currently playing is Moondance by Van Morrison, except it's not Van Morrison singing. I think it's Harry Connick Jr. Moondance is not a big band song. There should not be trumpets blaring in the background.
Nobody should sing Van Morrison but Van Morrison.

Olivia now agrees with me, by the way, that purchasing a really good espresso machine should not be dismissed out of hand.

Things I Don't Understand

I really wanted to title this one, "Things I Don't Understand and Have No Chance of Ever Figuring Out Even Though I Am a Curious Person."

But that seemed like a little overkill.

And then I thought I could name it, "Things I Have No Idea I Do Not Know." Too many negatives. Confusing.

So it's the simple "Things I Don't Understand."
Because there's a lot, I mean a LOT, that I don't understand.

What got me cogitating on this was an article about an amateur astronomer. Here's a brief description of his discovery:

On September 20, 2016, Victor Buso was testing his new camera by taking a picture of NGC 613, which is about 80 million light-years from Earth. Over the course of 90 minutes, he took several 20-second time-lapse photographs, and that’s when the light from the supernova reached Earth. (This is where I would annotate the publication from which I got the above description except I do not have any idea how to footnote... just one of the many things I don't know and also one that I am not going to pursue. Apologies to "I Fucking Love Science.")

Back to my cogitating. 

Okay, first of all this man was photographing NGC 613. I have no idea what that even means but clearly he not only knew what it was but where to find it. Oh, and also, NGC 613 is 80 MILLION LIGHT-YEARS FROM EARTH! I can't even comprehend that number. Or distance. Or time. I'm fairly certain I never will. But it's fun for me to think about. 

Dave once told me that there are more stars than there are grains of sand IN THE WORLD. And here's the thing. I think he's right. Except that it can't possibly be. Because I can't even begin to understand how to wrap my brain around that. 

Dave has also, with his infinite patience, tried numerous times to explain to me the idea that if you go fast enough you can get younger. Right. Uh-huh. 

On a non-space related note, I can pick up my iPhone and punch ten numbers and suddenly I am talking to my daughter in LA or my son in SF. I mean, come on. Who understands that? How is that even possible? How can there even be enough combinations of those ten numbers to allow everyone who has a phone number to have a phone number? 

Ok, math. Just in general. Not something I have ever or will ever understand well at all. 

Random things I don't understand: 

*how come when you hear your own voice talking it doesn't sound the same as when you hear your voice in a recording?

*why does toast taste different than bread? It's not just a different texture--it actually tastes completely different.

*how does music come from a needle moving through grooves?

*how do cheetahs communicate to one another how they are going to work together to kill the zebra that one of them alone cannot take down? 

*how does DNA pass along what you look like? It's so tiny. How can it have that much information?

I could go on and on. And on. 

I'm not frustrated by my lack of understanding (although I think occasionally Dave might be frustrated with my lack of understanding, but that's only because I keep making him try to explain that speed/time thingy). It's actually, for me, fun. I like finding out things I don't know because I like learning (or trying to learn). I don't ever want to stop being curious. 

Years ago, during the George W. Bush administration, I read a quote from then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He was speaking at a DoD news briefing regarding WMD's and Iraq. Here's what he famously said:

   "There are knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know."

At the time, I thought it was a ridiculous quote. I mocked it, and him. But now I get it. And it pains me to say that in retrospect Donald Rumsfeld was a very wise man.

My hope, for me as well as for both my kids, is that the world always has more than enough knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.















I don't know what I don't know. Don Rumsfeld