I’ve read three books — wait! No! four! (finished ’em! My kids don’t believe I ever do that) recently, partly thanks to being on airplanes on my way to California and home from Utah, so it’s time for some reviews. 1. Airplane reading, A Fatal Thaw by Dana Stabenow. It’s a mystery story set in …
Author Archives: deanb
Aug. 29, Gualala to Willets
These Naked Ladies were growing right outside our motel: See, no leaves at all, just the flower stalk. OK, so that was another slightly mean trick to play on people using search engines. The woman running the Gualala Country Inn told us that the best place for tide pools was McKerriker state park north of …
Callaway cars
The company I work for has customers who do pretty fancy mechanical engineering. One of our customers adds their products (designed with our software) to Corvettes to make extra-powerful cars. They brought a couple of them over yesterday to show off. I’m more of a basic transportation, “my other car is a bicycle” guy than …
Another sheep festival
Say, here’s another kind of sheep festival, more than a little out of the way: The Trailing of the Sheep in Ketchum and Hailey, Idaho. I imagine I picked up the card about it at the Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nevada. I think there will be less yarn and lots more sheep than at …
Knit hiatus
My knitting is on a break for several days. The back of the knuckle of my left index finger got between a sledge hammer and a wooden stake that I was driving. That description makes it sound worse than it feels, but it looks pretty bad too. I saw my doctor this afternoon and he …
Aug. 28, Point Reyes to Gualala
Arlene has always wanted to see good tide pools with things like sea annemones in ’em. We asked at the visitor center where we could find some at Point Reyes. The rangers looked at the tide tables and told us that we were probably too late that day, but that there was a chance at …
Aug. 31, Winnemucca to Pocatello
Two great place names in one post title! Woo hoo! I’ll put them up with any place names anywhere. Add Ogalalla (Nebraska) and Canajoharie and Tonawanda and Cheektowaga (NY) and you’re well on your way to a top ten. It reminds me of a song by a Canadian folk group, Stringband, “Mail Sortin’ Man”, in …
Lee’s recipes
Arlene’s Aunt Lee visited us in Maine this weekend (Sept 9-10). Arlene’s brother Ira and his wife Greta, and Greta’s dog, were also with us. That’s a dog under that blanket, a little carefully groomed Shi-Tzu named Shanie Tikva. I sort of thought that pet photos are obligatory on blogs and since we don’t have …
Aug. 27, Point Reyes
We drove out to visit the house I lived in when I graduated from high school. From there, we went out to Point Reyes National Seashore. I had been there once when I lived in California. I don’t think my family did anything that time except drive out there as a day trip. This time …
Aug 31 – Panaca Jane
We saw several guys dressed similarly at breakfast in the lobby of our motel in Winnemucca, Nevada, wearing T-shirts with a skull-and-crossbones logo with tommy guns for the crossbones, and the words “Panaca Jane”. When we got home I tracked down Adventures of Panaca Jane with Google and found that the polite young man who …