A Series of Unrelated Events

We were all about to go to bed last night when a huge puddle of water was discovered in the laundry room, which appeared to emanate from beneath the washer and dryer. We mopped it up. left a towel on the floor, and went to bed. This morning when I got up and wandered into the kitchen in my pajamas, David had already come and fixed the leak and was having a cup of coffee with OilMan and Rick. He fixed the guest bathroom door (which locked on the inside but not the outside) before he left. How did we ever manage without him?

No get together with Rick and Meg is complete without paella. I started it years ago, purchasing a pan and the requisite dry ingredients from a wonderful store in Berkeley called The Spanish Table (there is also one in Seattle), but Rick took the lovely copper and brass paella pan and continued perfecting his technique and producing a delicious result. One year we even made it for Thanksgiving dinner. The company was evenly divided between the Midwesterners who thought that the only meal worth eating on Thanksgiving was the traditional turkey and all the trimmings, and the Californians who thought it was a refreshing change. The traditionalists won, and now we save the paella for other occasions.

Rick and Meg's visit was one such perfect occasion so we all set out together to procure the necessary ingredients. Santa Rosa doesn't have a Spanish Table, but they have a superb fish market*, with fresh oysters and shellfish, and such good looking salmon from nearby Bodega Bay, that we almost abandoned the paella in favor of salmon. Our final feast together will be tonight, as tomorrow we reluctantly put Rick and Meg on the one plane a day which flies from the tiny Santa Rosa airport direct to San Diego.

I have been complaining about something in my thumb for almost five weeks. After two trips to an overzealous young doctor, one X-ray, ten days worth of an antibiotic, some mumbling about sending me to a hand specialist and one warning about my "predisposition" for heart disease and kidney failure, I pulled a large piece of wood out of my thumb with a pair of tweezers this morning. Nobody was very impressed when I insisted on showing them the evidence of what had been buried in my thumb for almost 5 weeks, but I feel vindicated. And my thumb feels much better.

* My picture is of one ice filled case at Santa Rosa Seafood.