Don't Tell Me There's Never Anything Good on TV

Because right this minute, I'm taping the "best of" show from the last twenty years of "Cops."

Mini Vacation

During Scott's week off, a couple days after we hung out with the chipmunks, we went to Palm Springs for one night to get together with some friends from L.A.

We stayed at a whiplashingly beautiful resort (here is a view from our suite), with 49 swimming pools. Do you know how many we got to swim in? None. We got there just in time for dinner and took off the next morning. But it was still great. Dinner and hours of conversation were the main events. We ate at this frou-frou place called The Rattlesnake Club, and they made a beet and lettuce salad that was magic. It arrived on its plate like a little glowing red pyramid and made me want to do somersaults around the table. The "reverse" lobster ravioli was good enough to make you throw a brick through the window. And I won't go into the halibut. Because if I went into the halibut, that would mean I'd been ingested by a fish. When it was the other way around. And THAT was good enough and tender enough and succulent enough that I wanted to slash someone's tires.

I'm starting to realize that magnificent food leads me to vandalism and gymnastics.

Pinata Crisis

My good friend Belle sent me this card a couple of days ago. I love it. She picks out great cards.

She also said she can't see the word "pinata" without thinking about the day of Mrs. Fossilfuel's rectal pinata.

Dashboard Picnic

When we got to the lake last Monday, and it was still raining, we improvised and had our picnic in the truck. Scott put together a ridiculously good cooler of stuff. There was a sandwich the size of a manhole cover on focaccia bread, with four cheeses (fontina, parmesan, jalepeno meunster, romano) and grilled veggies, hummus, flaxseed crackers, apple-smoked provolone (we do like our cheeses) and a tray of cherries, blueberries, blackberries and strawberries.

By the time we were done with the feast, and ready to blow chunks into the forest if we ate even one more crumb of bread, the rain had stopped and that's when we got out and met our posse of chipmunks. In retrospect, it was probably a good thing we spread our bounty onto the dashboard instead of a picnic table. There would have been no saving ourselves AND our food when the munks crossed over from "cute scene" to "Hitchcock scene." Everybody's cute until they start to murder you.

I Didn't Want to Follow Hankie Week with Just Anything

The goal yesterday for Scott and me was to get out of Phoenix and its noise and heat and pavement and hang out somewhere scenic. We drove up to a beautiful lake near Payson, Arizona.

It rained like the world was ending as we got near the place. But when the rain finally stopped, we got out of the truck and listened to the extreme quiet, interrupted only by the skittering, yes, I said skittering, of a dozen chipmunks nearby.

They made it quite clear that they were tame enough to take food from us. In fact, they very nearly insisted on it. I sat on a rock and fed them cracker bites for twenty minutes. As soon as one left with his/her cracker, another one ran up. They were polite. They even seemed to stand in line sometimes.

Look cute.
Lean in to take cracker.
Scrape tiny claws across human finger while pushing away.
Run three feet away from human.
Eat cracker with loud chomping sounds.
Return to cracker source.
Repeat.

Scott patiently sat right beside me and my handful of gourmet crackers, with his camera. As quietly as he could, he provided an early warning system for me by saying things like "Here comes one from the right. No, make that three."