Travelog for: Orkku Orava

It has been a sad week here for me
but very exciting for my good
TV friends.  We said goodbye to Airi and Robby. 

They will both be home for Christmas!!!

Bye,

Orkku Orava

Hi everyone,

Today I went out with a resident plushie named The Squirrel who also likes to climb trees!   We toured a one block long street called Havens Place which is pedestrian only and dead ends into someone’s fenced yard so there is no through foot traffic.  Residents and volunteer groups maintain the landscaping.  It alternates between stairs and inclined sidewalks for a full and very steep city block. 

The street has views of Alcatraz on one side and Coit Tower and The Bay Bridge on the other but we decided not to zoom in.  The street was named after lawyer/real estate developer Frank C. Havens who was the poet George Sterling’s uncle; as you can see in some of the building decorations, Mr. Havens was interested in Eastern culture and meditation.  There is a Sterling Park nearby. 

Hey, someone put a quick walk down this street on YouTube.  There was no dog barking today.  Can you imagine taking a walk without a plushie on view.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q1MF1mSJ3k

Enjoying the last days of Autumn, your

Orkku Orava

Hi there all you spooky people and scary TVs,

We’re going out today to do a reverse Trick or Treat. 
He he, my friend The Squirrel is such a clown! 
We will decorate our favorite acorn tree with
these scary ornaments.  Someone said there is
a ghost between us.  But you really have to have
the spirit of Halloween to see it, there is nothing there. 



Happy Halloween!!


Orkku Orava

Hi Mom and everyone,

We completed our ceremony at the great acorn tree. 
We decorated it for Halloween in appreciation of all the
food it gave us for the winter.  My silly friend, The Squirrel,
was a little confused about which holiday this is and sang
all the verses of "O Tannenbaum" in German.  He emigrated
about 50 years ago but is still fluent.

Happy Día de los Muertos. We are so overdosed on chocolate
we think we know what they mean by “Day of the Dead”.

Ciao,

Orkku Orava

After Halloween and a resulting major episode
of "death by chocolate," all the streets looked askew.  
This is a surreal time of year.  The Squirrel (who really
should have a real name by now, don't ya think) and I
took a walk on Filbert Street between Hyde and
Leavenworth which is tied for steepest drivable block
without curves in the city at a 31.5% grade.  Cars are
required to park perpendicular to the curb.  Some years
ago David Letterman brought his crew here to roll
watermelons and super bouncy balls down the street.  
That event has been immortalized by a geocache called
Watermelon Hill which is the first one my host looked for.
We are not allowed to tell you where it is. .  There is so
much personal history here.   Cabs take riders round
and round the block so they can go from a flat section
at the top and drop onto the 31.5 grade, screaming all
the way downhill.

Here we are on the steep street and stopping to climb
a tree.  The last photo shows a beautiful way to decorate
a house; I mean it's me hanging upside down from a
branch, decorating the whole block.  

Having Fun,

Orkku Orava

We took a sunset cruise aboard the Scorpio, that is,
a one-hour, fifteen minute ferry boat ride.    The Squirrel
and I almost blew away in the wind posing on the life preserver
but don’t worry, Mom, my host sacrificed photo quality for our
safety.  The first photo is very dark but gives an idea of what
the catamaran ferries look like.  The boat is built for speed,
not so much viewing so we leaned over the rail attempting
to get photos.  The last two photos are of the Bay Bridge
and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Bye for now,

Orkku Orava

The squirrel and I took our host out to show her how to forage for food, beyond acorns.  Well, all we found was edible flowers, nasturtiums.  It wasn’t very filling so our host showed us how humans do it.  First, you look for the place where the wagons circle.  Eureka, those are food trucks.  It’s an occasional happening called, “Off the Grid” where people drive up with food already cooking.  Many of them are new to the business and haven’t been able to establish a restaurant yet so get started with a food cart or truck.  The Squirrel and I wanted to try a Kung Fu Taco but Jeanne decided to go with the place voted best food truck of 2011, and we shared a delicious filipino-style chicken taco with cilantro cream sauce on a soft corn tortilla with onions, lettuce and slice of lime.

Then we wanted a creme brulee but that tent wasn’t open yet so we checked out the Cupkate truck but they looked like cupcakes you can get anywhere and they were trying to teach someone how to do a credit card sale, two cupcake minimum.  We thought food trucks take cash only.  Ah ha, moving on, we came upon a Japanese-Korean place, called Ko-Ja Kitchen, that does its special version of tiramisu called, “mochimisu”.  It was out of this world!!  There was music playing, the sun just going down (still on daylight savings time), not too cold and we got there early enough to find a place to sit down and mellow out.  Then we went grocery shopping and headed home, we had so much energy after the sweet dessert, we skipped two buses and walked most of the way.  So that is how homo sapiens hunt and gather in a big city.

Miss ya, Mum, and the mushroom hunts,

Love,

Orkku Orava

We had a dark and stormy night and a cold snap so The Squirrel and I spent some time indoors putting together warm outfits. We hunted down the umbrella stand as more rain is predicted.  There!  We're ready and The Squirrel has come up with an outing idea that works for all of us.  

This is Grace Cathedral and Huntington Park on top of Nob Hill; there was an organ recital today from Bach to Franke and Saint Saens and so on.  We were even blessed by the patron saint of the city, St. Francis, a statue by a (locally) famous artist known as Bufano. 

Bye for now,

Orkku Orava

On the way to the traditional ToyVoyager consultation with The Great Yoda, we stopped to pick up vibes on a haunted place. No one knows if the Letterman Digital Arts Center is haunted just because it stands on the site of the demolished Letterman Army Hospital.  The hospital had several known hauntings. We think it stands to reason the ghosts rendered homeless would be disturbed and might stay on or return to haunt the new buildings. The landscaper George Lucas hired said it was a pleasure to work with a practically unlimited budget.  They would need a big wad of cash, we think, to calm the spirits.  A very good restaurant failed here in the new building.  That could be explained away by insufficient foot traffic but we wonder....  Yes, we think there are ghostly food critics here.  As haunted trails go, this one is lovely.  We will save the night tour for later.  

The other statue is of Eadweard Muybridge who showed that the camera could prove things that the naked eye cannot detect.   So look at my photos carefully, please. 

May the force be with you,

Orkku Orava

Our host weeded out all the junk mail, leaving two postcards and a favorite organization membership renewal request, and asked us to open the puffy package.  So The Squirrel got out the scissors. Who could it be?  Miss Kitty seems to know.

It is Cheerio with a postcard, home for the holidays.  Can't wait to get to know her.

Orkku Orava

Jeremy is home for the holidays!  And he shared his morning brew with us.  I could get to like coffee. 
Bye for now,

Orkku Orava

ps:  I’m getting good vibes off the pine cone I held during my consultation with Yoda.  The force is with me!

We are learning how they celebrate Thanksgiving here.  This will be Jeremy’s first holiday season, he gets excited about everything!  

We made up greeting cards and here is the one where Jeremy played the part of the horse. 

Jeanne’s family sing this song on the way to Thanksgiving Dinner:

Over the river and through the woods
To grandmother's house we go.
The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
Through the white and drifted snow, oh!

Happy Holidays!!

Love,

Orkku Orava

Hi Mom,

I’ve been playing with my Life Mission to ride various kinds of transit, “anything that moves”.  Here I am on the Jolly Trolley.  So much fun, you just pull back on it and it rolls forward, fast.  It has Mickey on one side,



and Minnie on the other.




We went to the Asian Museum and thought about taking a ride on Ganesha but the guard was watching.



Next we will try riding in the cat toybox on wheels, that should be a good trip for a rainy day.

A package arrived marked “ToyVoyagers”.  Who could it be? 



Cheerio knew it was her old friend, BarryO.  I never met him before as I arrived here during his last trip.



He was so exhausted, he wanted to go straight to bed so Jeremy and I tucked him in.  We think he is hallucinating; he muttered something about the Christmas elf bear.  We didn’t see the elf but I sure would like to.    Jeremy will bring him a pot of coffee in the morning to wake him up so we can hear all about his adventures.  I will bring apple fritters and Cheerio has a gift for him.  Pleasant dreams, BarryO.



May the elf be with you,

Orkku Orava

Thanksgiving U.S.A.

We got up early to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and make apple-cranberry sauce for today’s big dinner.

Here are the ingredients we used:



I helped with peeling the apples.



Then we put everything into the pan and added orange juice.



Here is the final product, cooling.  The recipe made more than this but we will bring just this bowl to the table.



We all gathered ‘round the TV to watch the Parade.



This is a character from the Spiderman musical:



Wow, a band dancing and kneeling:



What’s this, the sacrificial animal, the poor traditional turkey:



Can you recognize these characters?  Lots of potential ToyVoyagers here!















After almost three hours of announcements that Santa Claus will be here at the very end of the parade, the TV developed technical problems and we could not see Santa.



We all ran to the window to see what was the matter.  It was a guy from the cable TV company in a cherry picker; that’s him behind the scaffolding and netting the painters put up.  He turned the cable off for about five minutes.  Well, they say, “timing is everything”.  We were very disappointed but we are grateful that some people are available to fix flickering cable networks even on holidays.  Thank you, Mr. Cable Guy.



We know that just because you don’t see Santa on TV doesn’t mean he isn’t there.




Happy Holidays, everyone!!

After The Squirrel and his family showed me how they celebrate Thanksgiving I felt a little homesick for snow.  The Squirrel said he never made a snowman so I showed him how.  Well, you know, snow is the main ingredient but substitutions can be made.  It was all fake but we are having fun.

We are making a bed and decorating a room!  We are doing it by hand and it still needs a lot of hemming. It will be a gift for the Christmas Elf Bear who lives here 11 months of the year, he is working at the North Pole now.  Santa will drop him off here on Christmas Eve so that will be our deadline.  He he, in the meantime we will use it as a couch for raucous discussions of our daily travels. The other bed is too small for him.

Bye now,

Orkku Orava