This unorthodox garage sale was in a very cool building and I found a couple of things with my hopefully increasingly honed eye for thrift goods. I used to hate shopping, but I love doing it when it’s my newfound FB marketplace, thrift stores in and around Vallejo, and situations like this, particularly as I’m imagining things in my home under renovation. It took me a minute to realize how gorgeous the building was. I love the sign that says that the crane has been immobilized!
Greg wouldn’t allow me to leave until he had me pose with this book. Maybe I should have read the title before I realized what he was doing? Greg!!!
We had a wonderful visit with Nick Dong. He is a world-renowned master designer/artist/genius and a good friend of many years who, like so many, helped me find some resilience and silver linings in the horrible event from last January (my catastrophic house fire and the loss of five precious canine souls). It was a privilege to revisit his custom home and for Shea to get to know him.
Nick inspires me to manifest my dream house with this rebuild and find ways to live my best life. In the footage Shea took you’ll see a reflection of the three of us in a small sampling of Nick’s mind-blowing kinetic pieces. If you ever get a chance to see the work of Studio Dong in person, don’t miss the opportunity!
One of his two amazing koi ponds with the most friendly fish I’ve ever met in my life!
This was Shea’s first time meeting my brother-in-law. My niece and sister had stopped by months ago when my daughter was visiting from Florida.
Bonnie made herself at home in Rickie’s bed while Snoopy and Rickie played away.
My sister has some of the work my Zia Antonella from Catanzaro, Italy, painted at her house, so I photographed them. I had some of her paintings at my house which I lost in my January fire.
After a visit to Granite Bay, we made our way to Pittsburg to visit Shea’s family. Sadly we forgot to take pictures there.
I suppose the Tin Man would be the most appropriate character from that story to be at the Vallejo Car Museum.
Yesterday was Shea, Greg, and Steve’s first time at the Vallejo Victorian House tour, which is another Madhatter event. This year the kickoff was at the Car Museum in Vallejo which I had never been to. What an incredible jewel, but sadly I hear it is rarely open to the public and may be closing down. I even heard that many other vehicles have regularly been swapped in and out. I didn’t realize how much I would geek out at car museums until I went to the one in Danville, and now every opportunity I have to see a car show I go to it. I was a Matchbox car fan as a kid, but I was one of those (gay) nerds who never liked them to get dirty like my brother’s Hotwheels cars. Anyway, I hope these exhibits will somehow be shared with the public going forward. This would be such a magnet for Vallejo tourism. Here is just a taste of the exhibits at the lovely welcome reception we had with good food, live music, etc.
I got my obligatory Madhatter character picture outside the Vallejo Museum last year, so this was Shea’s year to get a celebrity shot with him.
Driving to Hōnaunau Bay the first stop is the Painted Church.
This is still an active church with a congregation. It has interesting architecture which makes sense for this climate and has unique depictions of biblical history on the inner walls. I don’t know if we’re allowed to photograph them, but a violinist was playing at the time anyway. It’s pretty much an open-air church on amazing grounds on a hillside, which is the slope of a volcano.
While I had been to this park a few times before, knowing it was expected that one treat the grounds as sacred, I had never ventured quite as far into the park as I did this time. Researchers were studying the freshwater ponds that had been created, which makes sense for the indigenous populations that lived here as a place to store fish near this ocean spot, a woman weaving traditionally and explaining to visitors her process. Shea did not wish to be photographed here, although he might be in the background of a video.
After leaving the park, in other parts of Hōnaunau Bay we got to enjoy an accessible beach where people were snorkeling. We didn’t see a place to rent equipment so I just went in for a dip while Shea read on the beach. Between the cultural center and the beach, near the parking lot, I took a picture of some of the wild goats.
Material things were never the priority in my thoughts when I suffered the horrible fire in January, but a lot of people don’t know that I have been surviving fires since I was a child and the one that killed my five precious dogs was the SIXTH one of my life. Eight years ago my family home was destroyed by fire.
The tapestry that was extremely similar to the one Shea is holding here was “lost” even though the other tapestry below was professionally cleaned and was returned to me. When I started looking for the Filipino-themed tapestry that survived the 2016 fire, coincidentally this “Aladdin-themed” one (as my parents described it) came up first. You can see that the blue-er version of the Filipino traditional dance tapestry hung in my home before the January fire that burned up 99% of my belongings. I almost gave up my search, but my amazing friend Patrick Sheehan (who I used to swoon over when I would see him on the subway when we commuted to work in New York City years ago) found it online within a few seconds when I asked him about it.
Similarly, he did the same thing for a hand-carved dresser that is currently en route from Warsaw, but that’s another long story I’ll post about when it arrives.
Now I will end up with BOTH tapestries replaced even though this first one wasn’t in my life these past eight years. This is very healing and helps me cope with the bit of family nostalgia, even though they are just close facsimiles to the ones I grew up with.
November 2024
This carpet is similar to the one that never got cleaned after Mom’s fire in 2016. My parents bought a very similar one with the reddish part a more blue color in the 1970s when we lived in Spain. I was upset that the original was not professionally cleaned after Mom’s fire, so I assume they stole it since nothing in the main part of my mom’s house was incinerated (only the garage).
I did notice that the blue and red versions of the Filipino tapestry are reflections of each other. That is NOT the case with the “Aladdin” one.
This carpet was bought at the same time and WAS professionally cleaned after my mom’s fire in 2016. Unfortunately, I lost it in MY fire in January 2024.
So, I also ordered another that an art expert friend found online for me, so this is what it will look like:
Bonnie and Snoopy share a peaceful moment here while I do some gardening and read Barbra Streisand‘s first book “My Passion For Design.”
It’s a different experience to read that book this time now that I’m rebuilding a home after the fire I had. I’ve also been watching a lot of videos on home rebuilding after a fire just to understand the steps better. It’s heart-wrenching to see so many families go through what I went through, and I’m not even looking for families who lost pets like I did. Once in a while, I’ll hear about such things on the news and people losing their human family too. Shea made a good point the other day. Why do houses still burn? I’d really like to know that answer myself.
