DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

It’s harvest time in northern California. We picked 15 lbs of tomatoes and made about 15 lbs of soup. The entire house smells like tomatoes, onions, garlic… not a bad thing actually, but I had to quickly bake some sourdough before olfactory vertigo sent me reeling.

I saw Nurse Betty today. Renee Zellweger is unreal, or perhaps more accurately, hyper-real. It’s as if she has a knob for sincerity.

On the recommendation of the proprietors of the Inn at Schoolhouse Creek, I hiked through Jug Handle State Reserve today. To be frank, I’m not a hugely successful hiker; I typically end up recalling little but the view of my feet trodding on a dirt path, and an occasional vista, especially when the dirt path is at Julia Pfeiffer Burns state park.

But the story of Jug Handle is intriguing and has stayed with me. The land in the Reserve has been sculpted by an unusual interplay between glacial action and weathering; the result is an “Ecological Staircase” that climbs through five distinct microclimates. At least, they’re distinct to geologists, who write the fabulous prose on this website:
http://www.mcn.org/1/mendoparks/jug.htm

That site describes the park much better than I ever could.

Topolos at Russian River Vineyards is just south of Forestville on highway 116. The thing you have to like about Topolos is the sheer number of Zinfandels they pour… about six at this visit.

Sadly, they were not pouring the ‘96 RRV California Zinfandel, which we’d enjoyed previously. Most of what we tasted this time were too sour for our liking (not that that prevented us from buying anything, natch).

My day started as do most of my travel days, with the consumption of a pizza shortly after arriving at the airport. The St. Louis airport, oddly, boasts a California Pizza Kitchen, a restaurant I’ve actually never been to. Further down the terminal hallway I spied a Pizza Hut, too, making me feel wealthy beyond any rights.

I had a half-hour to kill before boarding, so I ordered the barbecued-chicken pizza and waited while they slid the pie into a huge wood-fired oven. This seemed like an unusual feature in an airport snack bar, but then again I guess kindling won’t show up on the X-ray machine at the head of the concourse. Anyway, the pizza was quite good; I can tell because, four hours later, I can still taste it. So, I think, can the woman sitting next to me.