When Men Go Shopping

Or should I say when men get dragged into shopping. It began as a trip to the kitchen store for Matt to get a 'peel', the large wooden spatula-like thing that Jim uses to transfer pizzas onto the hot stone in the oven. That took ten minutes in one store. None of them signed on for a trip to this "Urban Garden" store. If they could have gone outside, they would have gone out there and stared into the traffic.  Since it is still raining, they huddled in the middle of the store planning their exit strategy.

Jerry, the tree guy, showed up unannounced this morning after postponing two appointments with us to cut up the tree that fell on our fence and into the neighbor's driveway. He and OilMan went out into the rain to look at our other trees. I was unclear on what had transpired out there, but it seems that Jerry found one that has a big split and several that need to be trimmed, deemed none of them emergencies, and promised to send an estimate and come back as soon as trees stop falling on other  people's houses. In spite of the the fact that I have been 'suggesting' to OilMan that we should get a tree man out since we moved here, it wasn't until a tree fell on the neighbor's driveway that OilMan announced that this "had to be done". Good, OilMan. Great idea.

Matt and OilMan and I met Connections and Philpo at the Flying Goat for an Aztek Mocha. I'm glad they both enjoyed them because their trip to wine country has certainly been marred by rain. We had driven past the Russian River Brewery on the way to coffee. It had just opened and there was nobody about...a good sign. The plan to adjourn from coffee to beer was abandoned when we got back there only to see that there was already a queue of crazy people with umbrellas standing in the rain. Waiting for a beer. At 11 am. Saying good bye in the pouring rain was unappealing, so we abandoned the whole thing and went our separate ways. Hey guys, I hope you give us another chance and come back again when the weather is more amenable to our outdoor lifestyle.