welcome.
crazyknee.com is:
a personal Web page launched Nov. 1, 2000,
the day Leanne had ACL/meniscus repair performed
on her right leg. Hence the "crazy knee."
This page will be updated in some weekly way. Hopefully.

20 june 2004 . 11:59 pm PT
Saw David Sedaris give a reading at a bookstore on Friday. I arrived an hour early, and it was packed. I mean, every square inch of this bookstore was jam-packed and sweaty, 55 minutes early, people turned away at the door, all for a short man in a pink button-up shirt. He was wonderful, of course. I love him. I am also going to read "Random Family" by Adrian Nicole Leblanc (Matt's sister?) because David told me to. I'll let you know how it goes.

Anyone still need a Gmail account? Let me know. I'll hook you up.

There's way too many pictures on this page, isn't there? What can I do? Oh, yeah, redesign the site. Hopefully soon.

10 june 2004 . 11:11 pm PT
The fishing's fine off this Embarcadero pier.

There can never be enough photoshoots on hay-colored hills.

Yes, there lives a fur-covered beast with long yellow teeth. Meet the nutria, a large rodent that populates Louisiana and beyond. Lovely Jess is a huge fan -- she collects their pelts and bones and can regal a crowd with nutria lore for hours. Of course, the homemade sangria doesn't hurt. It's also fun to spend a Memorial Day weekend making nutria faces and/or kissing small shivering dogs.

I am now an accidental Crayola crayon collector, hence my work-area shrine. The box on the far right is from the 1930s, the middle box is '40s, and the neon-colored, scribble font is circa the '90s.

03 june 2004 . 11:11 pm PT
We recently visited the Winchester Mystery House and survived. For 38 years, Sarah Winchester had people adding to and remodeling her house, 24 hours a day, seven days a week (or so the story goes). Since the widow Winchester was a multimillionaire back in 1884, she had enough cash around to make people do her bidding. She also had enough dough to install three elevators, 40 staircases (most with 13 steps), 47 fireplaces, greenhouses, stables, gardens, and modern heating and sewer systems.

People thought Old Lady Winchester was pretty spooky, and it makes sense given her predilection for cobwebbed window panes and the number 13. (She had 13 drain holes in the kitchen sink; she signed her will 13 times.) She also did wild things like build stairs into the ceiling and doors to nowhere.

The story of Sarah Winchester, heir to the Winchester Rifle fortune, is quite fascinating, if you have a moment. After her young daughter and husband died, Sarah contacted a medium for advice (as was popular in the 1880s). The medium told the widow that her family was cursed by the spirits of everyone who had been killed by Winchester rifles. Apparently, the medium told Sarah that she must buy a house and continue to build on it (like, why would gunshot victims want this woman to construct a huge house? makes no sense. I guess there are some forces we just can't understand). And if she ever stopped building, she would die. Which she did in 1922, at age 85. More here.

Let's take a break from the Winchester. Here are two pictures from the walk along the Embarcadero, followed by a license plate: