Happy Holidays!

Hello to all dear friends and family!

Well, as many of you know, many changes are afoot in the Cox household! We decided that it was high time to move from our little cookie cutter house of 10+ years. We decided that we wanted to find a property that better matched with the things that are important in our world right now – having a more “walk-able” community, having a separate address where Barbara could have her office, having a little land to do some edible gardening on, working our way into an “intentional community/co-housing” space, of having others that want to spend time together there, etc…
So, we started looking a few months ago and found a property on Georgia Street that we loved – but someone else initially beat us to the offer punch. Well, Barbara and a number of her friends worked their magic, and the universe returned the property to us a few weeks ago (after in escrow for 8 weeks!). Thus, we will be moving to a three-on-one lot – 3928 through 3932 Georgia St, San Diego; Link: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=114605334561509999673.0004384bec27cefc191ae&t=h&z=13

The main house was built in I think 1907 (it may have been 1900). One building will be our home, one will be Barbara’s office, which we will convert into a two office center, and she will rent out the other to a complimentary practitioner, and the third will be a rental, hopefully for a community minded person(s) that would like to do a periodic get together for dinners, and other such fun stuff. We have room in the back for RV parking (perhaps a home for a foreign exchange person?), gardening, perhaps a yurt or other structure for gatherings, etc.

Since there are renters presently, the process will be a bit drawn out. Escrow should close by end of December, and then 30 and 60 days notice to the tenants, along with repairs (termite tenting, roof, foundation, along with a long list of odds and ends). So, we’re hoping to be “in” to live by sometime in late Feb or early March.

We’ve had some questions about our annual Christmas Eve Eve party – well, this year, it’s being moved out a bit in time to Christmas Eve, Eve, Eve *310 or so… and combined with our house warming party which will happen Hopefully in Early March. We’ll be doing the same ornament exchange, Carols, Egg Nog and Fondue, just a few months later. You should be able to get a REALLY good deal on your ornament at the after Christmas sales! 

For now, we’re living in the RV on Campland on the Bay which has been a mostly fun adventure, though compact, has lots of great amenities that we keep saying we’ll take advantage of when we have time, and aren’t doing escrow papers, scheduling inspections, working with contractors to get quotes, filing for change of use permits, etc… Will be doing Christmas at my brothers in LA, which will be fun.

In any event, this is the extent of our Christmas Letters this year!

Hope that you have a lovely holiday season, and that it is cheery and bright and full of joy for you.

Much love – Dave, Barbara and Delilah Cox

Thoughts on life - the ultimate "big trip"

I had an interchange this morning that got me thinking, so I wrote this out...

As we live our lives, we amass experiences; and as thinking creatures we attempt to tie these events back to other things we've done and experienced before, to make sense of them. We build opinions as we build this web of experience and action and observation. We develop many mental tools and constructs to aid in our logical process; generalizations, expectations, assign weights to them, try to communicate, to persuade, to try to make sense of it all. We define “truths”, weak or strong, and opinions, which in the larger scale of a life are sometimes well anchored, and other times will change subtly or profoundly as we continue to grow, to live our lives, and experience.

But ultimately, the experiences that each of us have are different, and our perceptions are colored or filtered by this web of life, our society, our family, the people we spend our time with - thus in myriad subtle ways, we are all different. Different is. And in this space of difference, we judge action, idea, experience - as always from our own point of reference - which is, from that point of reference, by definition right. Thus, there is no single universal right or wrong, save only the universe of one.

So, we are all different and we are all right.

Halloween 2009 - The Dolphin Costume

So, Delilah announced that she wanted to be a dolphin. Sure, no problem - I'm sure someone has a costume... Looking, looking... Ok, well, how hard can it be to make one?

So, get 8 ft of 1 inch foam, and make a laminated outline...

Figure out how to stick your kid in it, get a bunch of fabric and, kinda cut, and sew and...

Special thanks to Annette for Sewing Support, as well as Barbara and Delilah for their help as well!

SLO and Morro Bay - Oct 2009

As part of her Continuing Education Units, Barbara signed up to take a seminar in Morro Bay, which is a hop skip and jump from San Luis Obispo in the Central Coast. Running the numbers on RV Gas+Camping+Mixed eating in/out vs. Car gas + hotel + eating out, we came to the conclusion that it was pretty much a wash, and so packed up the coach, the youngun and the cat, and off we went for another extended Thursday to Sunday weekend.

Thursday night we did the SLO Farmers Market - a favorite event. They had a number of Fall Events set up, including a number of the clubs from Cal Poly SLO (My Alma Matar), and some good Halloween booths. While B was in her class Friday, I took D for a nature walk, did some homework while away from school. Then on Saturday, we hung out in Morro Bay wandering the streets, and visiting their little aquarium.
Delilah hoofing up a hill - one of the Seven Sisters that surround SLO.

A bull that tolerated us along the way

More mountain adventures.

One of the harbor seals in the Aquarium in Morro Bay.

Burning Man Decom aka FDLM

This year, we decided to take Delilah with us to the San Diego Burning Man Decom.
Delilah LOVED it - said that she had the best day of her life, with all the people giving her stuff, and being friendly and so attentive to her. Interesting that there are definitely folks that TOTALLY focus on the kid - as I was walking with D, they would walk up to us, and look just at Delilah, like I wasn't even there. Lots of folks tossing her little trinkets or giving her stuff - glowing whistles, to elephant outfits. We mostly spend time at the art booth there, D painting her pony pink, and me working on pimping out stuff.

One evening, we made Tom Kah soup (as always), and when we shared it with some walkers by, Delilah really impressed them with her friendly hugs - giving one gal a "Koala Hug" (sort of a tackling the leg with legs wrapped around deal). They laughed at the Koala hug name. When I went to one of the art displays the next day it was a wishing well where you wrote your name on one side of a rock, and your wish on the other side - then took someone elses to see if you could help make their wish real. I was just reading some of the rocks - and one of them said that they wanted another koala hug!

Having Delilah there definitely changed the flavor of the event for Barbara and I, since we couldn't both do the late night catting around with kidlet in the RV. It was fun, but something that we'll probably wait on for a few years before we bring D again, unless we have a live in assistant :)


FDLM (Feuago De Los Meurtos) is at the Telemagic Site at Jacumba - which is also a railroad museum of sorts - or perhaps more of a staging area for Carizo Gorge RR down the way.
This was the "Create!" Art Camp - lots of stuff, and tools and materials - just go do your own thing. Pretty awesome stuff.


Delilah with the Elephant Costume that she was gifted.



One of the funky vehicles - a bus with a suspended cage ala Mad Max.
The hot spring pools there were new this year - four pools of different temps. Picture taken when not in use, since, um, well, people might not want their pict taken bathing!

This was a "Godzilla" reinactment - two guys in flaming robot suits duked it out and distroyed a mini-city - one has a flame thrower on his head, the other on his arm.
Head shot!
Art made with glow sticks. Pretty cool stuff.
A tent with a flaming top. Yeah, it's a little Burning Man thing...
Naughtia and Barbara (awoken from a meditiative trance)!
One of our camp mates

Burning Man - 2009

Ok, since you can't really explain Burning Man to someone that hasn't been there, pictures are at least an easy way to get some of the story, so I'll mostly focus on that.
General overview - a great and amazing time. It was windy and dusty this year, so several days we were more inside than last year. That didn't stop us from having all sorts of adventures just the same! The event was smaller (both physically and attendance - I think I heard 45k this year, vs. almost 49 last year) largely from the economy. We still managed to have a vibrant and fun camp. We spent a bit more time around our camp also, because we had such fun camp mates - and such great food!

A few particular memories -
* A giant slide made of Astro-turf that you could slide down on cardboard
* A 60ish foot tall, '50s vintage rocket that you could actually climb in. It was slated for take off Friday night, but they had, um, technical problems (on a colossal scale)
* Hammocks on the playa - napping in the shade
* Jazz camp at 2 AM, one guy in a Scuby Doo suit that was the best trombonest ever, another nude guy playing as well on the alto sax, his oiled rear gleaming oddly in the light, as they took shots of absynth and played on into the night
* Tom Kah Guy Soup, Salmon, Brockely Salad, Margaritas... Did I mention we ate well?
* A gal named Molly wandering into our camp in a wind storm
* Cowboy hats, bandanas and goggles

The line heading in
Windy/dusty, but still so amazing
Welcome "home" :)
Our camp mates on Monday.
Evening Adventure on the Pedi-Trike - with B in back, and me peddling... oh my aching knees! :)
The temple at the far side of the playa. We circumnavigated the playa that night along the esplanade.
The Playa at night.
Giant Rubics cube (Like 20 feet across) and othe camps
A panaroma of the Playa

Cube close up. It "digitally" rotated - by changing colors on the panels.
Flower ball tea - Bob's signature tea
A stilt camp/party
And a Super Stilter!
The Man during the day
Giant legos - made from wood... they made over 300 of them...
The 6 o'clock path to the man.
One of the MANY art cars - this a giant, 6 wheeled Cady cruiser...
.
The theme was "Evolution" - so a platypus works well...
Ok, this one is for any gear-headed gal, that works on her own car... (Laura R, where are you? A wedding???)
7:30 road where we were camped was a hotbed of Playa Culture!
Cooking at Bacon Camp. Turns out Bacon is great with Beer... I don't even usually like beer, but man did I cook some fine bacon!
Our entire camp with fine food (one of many lovely meals we shared).
Pinky, Barbara, Patrick, Naughtia, Bob, Marietta, and Lourdes.
A giant dragon boat the size of, well, a boat!

A full size '50s vintage rocket, ready for blast off
And the same rocket, 2 hours later, still ready for blast off! Wind storms et al.
The wings - yes i finished them, but they were so big and unwieldy (they kept unfurling) I didn't wear them much. Need to pasivate them better, and - next year... Some tail action there
Wings spread
With friends (less Patric who was adventuring)




And an ultra short video - wind and wings. Don't blink!