This week we're between rains and it's warmer, so it's really good Segway weather even though I'm not above riding in the rain if it's not raining hard. See, I do much of my shopping on the Segway partly because it's so convenient and partly because I get great joy out of being able to mention that I had to break down and put some gas in the Prius last week but that the previous time was over a month ago and a couple hundred miles south of here on my way back from Palm Springs.

There's actually another reason to ride the Segway, though, and that came up today.

This morning I rode down to the gym and then went on down 18th Street to see if Jivano was there so I could inquire about how long he'll be around. Yeah, that block is gentrifying, what with Delfina and then Bi-Rite and then Tartine and then the Delfina Pizza place and now the new Bi-Rite cafe and bakery.

So this investor has bought the building where Jivano lives in back of the ground floor and sharpens knives in his shop at the front, and after the deal went through before Christmas he told Jivano that he'd be evicting everybody after the new year to do something with the building so he can turn it over. Not exactly sure what yet, but it's gonna be a major renovation and probably won't be appropriate, that is, affordable for a knife sharpener any more.

But Jivano didn't have his blinds open, so I didn't ring and rode on down to Tartine thinking maybe I could squander the day's glycemic load on one of their astounding croissants. Luckily, the line was snaking around enough to boost my will power. So I went on down to Valencia and over to Casa Guadalupe at 25th and Mission, where I bought a chicken for a Mole Poblano Gallina and also picked up some good-looking mangoes and jalapeños for a chutney.

On the way back home I'm going up 24th Street, where the lights are timed real well for a Segway. So well, in fact, that I keep catching up to this guy my age driving a large bright-black American luxury sedan. By the time I've passed him the fourth time, I realize that surely the energy equivalent of an entire barrel of Middle-Eastern oil could be generated if we could only somehow run through a turbine the steam venting at high velocity from his ears.

You know, just the inherent wrongness and downright unfairness of it all can get to a man whose very vehicle shows that he does not deserve to be passed over and over and over by a whirring, obnoxious insect...even one that in no way impedes his progress.

But on a lighter note, how about some Petaluma hoppers:

I'm sitting around the house reading David Denby's article about the future of Hollywood in the current The New Yorker. He wrote about the old downtown picture palaces with names like the Luxor, the Alhambra, the Roxy that were like cathedrals as opposed to the more casual neighborhood theatres where "sometimes we arrived in the middle of the movie and stayed on until it reached the same point in the next show."

That's what my mother did when I was a kid. Only when I was old enough to go to movies with other kids was I introduced to the concept of timing one's arrival to coincide with the beginning of the movie.

In later years I had assumed that my mother's approach was just one of her weirdnesses rather than something that was common behavior, but I recently checked around with friends and discovered that the parents of many in my generation did this.

Did you ever go to movies like that? Do they even let you do that nowadays?

Why would anybody want to start in the middle of a movie? Was the concept of plot totally alien to them? You go into the thriller when it's three-quarters over and learn that the butler did it and pouf, there goes a great deal of the enjoyment of the first three quarters.

The answer, I suppose, is that they were going to the movies as an escape and that they gave not a fig about plot.

So strange now that it would have seemed so normal then.

How 'bout a yellow driveway around the corner on 21st Street:

The San Francisco Chronicle was too cowardly to print this one.

Editor,

Regarding the Rev. Malloy's letter denouncing Nancy Pelosi: Since his church is now advising us on political issues, shouldn't it start paying taxes like other political advocacy groups?

Louis Bryan
NoeHill

I arose this morning at 6:45, Rayteked the garden, and got readings from -1 to -3 in various locations. Celsius rather than Fahrenheit, of course, since I'm in training for this May's stay in Amsterdam, but still...

So what did I then do first thing on the coldest morning in San Francisco for the last fifteen years? Pulled on several layers of my warmest clothing and headed down to the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market. In the Prius, because I barely survived the much shorter Segway ride to the gym yesterday morning when it was several degrees warmer.

I didn't really need anything at the market since I'm going to drive to the Jack London Square Farmers' Market in Oakland tomorrow to pick up some quark from Oakdale Cheese, but I wanted have coffee with Sybil and to express solidarity and sympathy with the farmers as last night's weather forecast for the central valley was partly terrible to catastrophic, with record-breaking freezes predicted for many localities.

Got to the market a bit early because Sybil had finally got me curious about her passion for the eggs from Marin Sun Farms, and you have to be there early and get in line because they run out before they have served all the people in line when the market opens at 8:00. Yes, they're a cult item now, and priced accordingly at $6.00 per dozen. That's what I said, fifty cents apiece.

Sybil, normally a cautious and prudent shopper who serves as an exemplar, justifies this expense by pointing out that she uses them as a main course that is cheaper than meat. So she'd convinced me. Then I got in line and saw the sign announcing that the price was now $8.00 per dozen. Nonsense, I thought, I can be pushed only so far, especially now that I'm giving up some luxuries, and if that ain't a luxury, I don't know what is.

But then Sybil arrived and somehow her very presence re-convinced me and I bought a carton, which I immediately hid underneath the avocados so nobody would know I had committed such an extravagance.

As we went off for coffee, I took picture of the folks in line and announced that for a mere dollar donation each I would refrain from telling their mothers that they were now paying eight bucks a carton for eggs. Not all were amused.

As we bought our fruit and vegetables after coffee, the farmers were stoic. Many citrus growers, already resigned to losing a good portion of this year's crop, were hoping that the even colder temperatures predicted for tonight would not cost them too many trees.

I got in from the Ferry Plaza with my eight-buck eggs knowing full well what I was having for lunch - an old favorite consisting of a couple of slices of oat-nut bread oven-toasted to perfection while I sauteed a chopped strip of bacon and then scrambled in it two or three eggs seasoned with freshly ground black pepper. When I have it, I also sauté a stalk of fresh green garlic in with the bacon, and luckily I had some extra already sautéed that was nearing the end of its refrigerator life, so I threw that in well before the eggs.

And as I was scooping creamy spoonfuls onto the toast, it struck me. Why in the world am I doing this with eight-dollar eggs? I should have made a plain omelet with a dab of butter and four grains of salt so as to get the maximum egg taste rather than covering it up with bacon and garlic and pepper.

Still, it was delicious, and there are ten more eggs, so that's not the bad news, which is that when I got in from the market and unloaded the car, I thought I'd just go ahead and hop on the Segway and zip down to the Noe Valley market and pick up one of Smit's cherimoyas and some sorrel since that woman at the Ferry Plaza not having brought hers today really confirmed for me that I am suffering from a severe oxalic acid deficiency that can be relieved only by the administration of a bowl or two of sorrel soup. (See the watercress soup in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol I.)

Alas, before I left the house I somehow managed to break the damn zipper in my only pair of warm pants. So now I'm faced with the prospect of freezing to death if I take the pants out somewhere to get a new zipper put in.

Then again, I'm not the California citrus crop.

On the way down Noe Street, I couldn't help noticing this manhole tragedy:

My big news of late is that while sitting there at the SAP Open (see the 2007 tale in Lobs and Volleys I had an intellectual breakthrough and am going to do some reprioritizing: Learning some more damn Dutch has moved to the top of my list. I want my improvement to blow my friends there away when I arrive in May. Besides, I'm in too deep now: my German has been destroyed or at least verschmutzt by my Dutch study and my Spanish and French, forgot.

That stack of books I haven't read yet can just wait awhile. That list of books I haven't bought or borrowed from the library can just get longer. Some of those magazine subscriptions can just expire. The tedious emails I've been sending folks are going to become less frequent, or at least shorter. Etc.

The other breakthrough I had at the Open I already mentioned, the intention to return to the gym. And this morning my resolve was still firm, so I Segwayed down there.

After suiting out, I approached the scale with some trepidation, wondering just how bad it was going to be. What? I reset the scale and tried again, but got the same result. A third try confirmed it. I've lost weight.

How the hell is this possible? I mean, could I have maybe lost a dozen pounds during that three weeks of illness before the Open and then gained only half of it back during my week of gluttony?

I was thrilled. I was ecstatic. I had been emotionally prepared to grit my teeth and get through the workout on sheer shame. Instead, I hit those machines like a galley slave who's just been told he can get time off for extra effort. It's been ages since I had so much fun at the gym although the giggling did attract some disapproval from the devout. But then, it always does, doesn't it?

And while I was pumping away on the step machine it hit me: I must have burned a lot of calories at the Open while I was wriggling around so much during crucial points that I rubbed the skin off the backs of my thighs.

Hmmm. Can I maybe market this? Coach Bryan's Miracle Weight Loss Plan: Squirm Your Way to Thinness.

Here's a red doorway I like:

Today I carefully prepared for a first date.

I showered and shaved with extra care and smeared some deodorant in my pits. I thoroughly brushed my teeth with extra toothpaste. Hell, I even trimmed my nose hairs.

I've been dressing much better than usual this past week to go to the SAP Open, but today I put even more effort into it. Like the newest pair of Dockers in my closet with my best belt and my finest LL Bean shirt, which I buttoned at the wrist (both buttons) and tucked in.

I allowed double the estimated driving time, which was a good thing because there was enough traffic that the trip took longer than I'd estimated. I parked a block away and waited until two minutes before nine to pull up in front of her place.

A lot of the things my parents tried to teach me just rolled right off my back, but I did for sure pick up on the importance of first impressions in establishing relationships. After all, I want Colleen to do my taxes for the rest of my life.

Why, if it came down to it, I would live in a Tenderloin SRO before I would leave San Francisco was explained in Leah Garchik's column in today's The San Francisco Chronicle:

Probably the biggest showstopper in "Legally Blonde" is the song "Gay or European?" which asks the question about a suave gent with an accent. Before the show set out for New York, Emily Nozick attended a performance at the Golden Gate Theatre that included what she calls a "true San Francisco moment": 6-year-old Sarah Graup asking her mother, "What's European?"

Which reminded me that thirty years ago when Allen had joined me in San Francisco and started working down the peninsula and attracting this mob of co-workers with his combination of radiant personality and great talent, his friend Laura started coming to the City to hang out. After she'd met a few of our San Francisco (i. e. gay) friends, she remarked to Allen how much she enjoyed them, as they all seemed so....... and she paused to think of just the right adjective, "European." Which immediately became a code word among us.

That one. Whaddya think?

Oh yeah, European. Definitely.

And now, a cute little balconette on 21st Street:

Since May will be my fifth visit to Amsterdam, I'm trying to do some serious language study so as not to embarrass myself quite so much this time with my lack of command of the language.

I'm sitting here peeling lots of outer leaves off some Brussels sprouts that I had forgotten in the bottom of the refrigerator while they got rather tired. I didn't live on tulip bulbs in the winter of '44 like Rina did, but my parents were both from poor families, and they sure didn't believe in letting food go to waste, which rubbed off on me and my sister.

While I'm prepping the sprouts, I've got Donaldson's Dutch: A Comprehensive Grammar open to the chapter on verbs, and I'm looking at the ablaut series charts, tearing my hair out because suddenly I notice something perplexing: Instead of three columns of words like in English (sing, sang, sung/ thrive, throve, thriven etc. for the infinitive, past, and past participle), there are four columns, and I just spent half an hour combing back and forth in the chapter trying to figure out what they represented because nowhere does Donaldson mention this.

Finally, I spot in his discussion of the formation of the imperfect that the student had to memorize the singular and plural forms because the plurals are sometimes irregular, so obviously the extra column is for the imperfect plural. Grrrrr. Yet another needless complication in Rina's language.

But while I'm speaking of Donaldson, OK, he's a pedagogue, but he does have a sense of humor. Well, I hope he's intentionally being funny when he writes, regarding Dutch v's and f's: "The distinction is a difficult one for foreigners to make and not one worth trying to make: by pronouncing all v's as f's you will sound perfectly (northern) Dutch, whereas by trying to make the distinction there is a good chance that your v will sound like an English v, and this must be avoided at all costs." (Italics mine)

So now I can go back to peeling and trimming Brussels sprouts with one eye on my book while I chant, from series III: delven delfde delfden gedolven/ drinken dronk dronken gedronken/ dingen dong dongen gedongen.

And yes, drinken is drink and delven is delve, but to keep me from getting cocky, dingen means compete.

And not to change the subject, but here's some dentals on a Victorian I like over on Scott Street:

On a recent trip to southern California, I whiled away those hours on I-5 in the Central Valley by examining the names of the other vehicles. I found the connotations in these names highly entertaining, but lest I be accused of casting stones from a vulnerable location, I'll admit that the name of my own vehicle, the Prius, suggests nothing to me more than it does insect genitalia.

And OK, I'm throwing in a few not yet seen, but you decide.

Aviator, Bombardier, Commander, Gunner, Mariner, Navigator, Pilot.

Cavalcade, Excursion, Expedition, Iliad, Odyssey, Quest, Saga.

Caliber, Crossfire, Cartridge, Gatling, Magnum, Nitro, Revolver.

Braggadocio, Bravada, Elan, Poise, Verve.

Decoupage, Entourage, Frottage, Sabotage, Sportage.

Armada, Carrier, Cruiser, Cutter, Destroyer, Fleet, Galleon.

Avalanche, Lahar, Rockslide, Torrent, Tsunami.

Chinook, Foehn, Hurricane, Mistral, Sirocco, Tornado, Typhoon, Zephyr.

Denali, Niagra, Rainier, Sequoia, Sierra, Tahoe, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Yukon.

Cinnabar, Cobalt, Mauve, Puce, Sienna, Taupe.

Jupiter, Mercury, Neptune, Saturn, Titan, Uranus.

Arrow, Dart, Javelin, Kris, Lance, Scimitar, Spear, Tomahawk.

Barracuda, Orca, Pike, Shark, Sting Ray, Trout.

Bushwhacker, Deerslayer, Explorer, Forester, Mountaineer, Pathfinder, Ranger, Raider, Trailblazer.

Apache, Cherokee, Comanche, Karankawa, Mohican, Sioux.

Highlander, Inlander, Lowlander, Outlander, Uplander.

Bruiser, Crusader, Crusher, Eviscerator, Shredder.

Inquisitor, Interrogator, Investigator, Terminator.

And OK, while I was down there I took a few pics I liked. Here's an early morning flower bed shot in front of the public library:

Oh, there was a wonderful moment this noon.

Rafaël is visiting Amsterdam for a couple of days and staying with Rina, and they decided to take advantage of this opportunity and Skype me on her computer, which she has set to speaker mode. So I got to talk to both of them at once.

During the conversation, I was using as much Dutch as possible since I'm in major language study mode now, and I managed to entertain them with a few of my creative coinages. But that's not why I'm writing.

I have bragged a bit here and there about having finally more or less mastered a couple of the difficult Dutch phonemes, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. At one point, my pronunciation of a word was so egregious that for the first time in the conversation, they both interrupted to correct me.

Luckily, they didn't speak exactly simultaneously, so I was able to hear quite clearly that, Rafaël being from way over on the eastern border and Rina from Amsterdam, they were saying the offending word very, very differently.

So then I was off the hook because they turned on each other.

This morning I met Sybil for a farewell coffee at the market, and while browsing through it I was just blown away to see that a favorite vendor (who will remain anonymous for reasons that will later be obvious) had a bin of fresh cherries...the first of the season from any vendor and in time to take to Amsterdam to delight the Dutch since theirs won't be ripe for another month at least.

So I dug deep into the bin and got a large bagful. Seventeen bucks worth.

And then as we neared the end of the market I practiced my Dutch on Johann Smit, telling him about how happy I was to have found fresh cherries to take to Amsterdam.... and offered him a taste.

Moments later, after Sybil and I had parted, the look on Smit's face as he tasted sank in, and it struck me that I had been so excited about seeing the cherries that I had neglected to taste one before buying them.

What was the fourth thing your mother taught you after to say "thank you" and "please" and to count your change?

Caveat emptor, right? And OK, that was not quite the way my mother phrased it in Wink, Texas in 1948.

With some trepidation, I popped a cherry into my mouth.... and then another.... and another. And no, they weren't bad. I mean, there has to be some taste before something can be bad. So no, they weren't bad at all, just nearly completely tasteless.

So now I'm thinking, well, is it even worth trying to boil all seventeen bucks worth of 'em down to about a quart in hopes that I can concentrate that faint hint of cherry flavor into something worth squandering sugar on?

Or do I even want to waste the gas to boil 'em down? Not to mention the effort to stem and pit the damn things.

Sigh. I just threw 'em into the compost bin and went down to Matsuya on 24th, which has recently reopened, and had a sushi supper. Sushi has yet to sweep Amsterdam, so it's not all that good there and is hideously expensive...at least in my experience.

Matsuya is a fine little place again, and they even had toro, albeit at ten bucks a pop. And the best unagi I ever ate anywhere. There was something under it that would have been slimy and disgusting if it hadn't tasted so good.

Anticipating Amsterdam, here's something you very rarely see over there, exterior stairs:

I'm back from Amsterdam (see Amsterdam for Free) and am clear that there's nothing like being away from town for a month to make me a thoroughgoing San Francisco chauvinist. Friday afternoon I went down to China Basin to get a CT scan, and it was quite an enjoyable excursion not only because of the weather - blue sky, warm sun, crisp summer breeze - but also because of all these taunt new buildings I'd never seen before. There's some fine architecture in this city, a lot of it new and South of Market.

There is also great joy. As in handsome young med techs being genuinely kind to sick old men. In the holding pen, the old farts, dazed by such unaccustomed kindness from young folks, were inspired by nervous bravado into a frenzy of camaraderie and fine gallows humor...talking about making our friends and relatives nervous by asking 'em questions like, "you're not using both of those kidneys, are you?"

Headline in this morning's Chronicle: "Hot Days Ahead - Temperature to Hit 75 in SF." (That's 24 degrees Celsius for the rest of the world). The text of the article included warnings to citizens to keep themselves well hydrated, to avoid over-exertion and unnecessary exposure to the sun, and to seek shelter in the shade on the north sides of buildings.

But of course, who listens to suits anymore? I just went out on the Segway for some shopping. It must be 70 already, and the streets are swarming with folks wearing tee shirts, shorts, and smiles.

Went down to the Civic Center market and picked up some delicious cherries for $1.50/lb. as well as some very pricey okra, but it was too fresh and gorgeous to pass up. Also picked up some 'Dolly' plums to make some chutney, only after I bought them realizing that 1) I had sworn I was gonna take a break from cooking so I could get some writing done in the Amsterdam tales and 2) a scorching, merciless heat wave is not the best time to go heating the kitchen up and spending the afternoon stirring steaming cauldrons.

Oh, and I was holding out on you. The real reason I went to the market was that I had gone down to the gym to see if I could do a tiny little workout, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my muscle weakness I'd been whining about seems to be mostly in my legs. And as I was changing back into my street clothes, I realized that a perfect celebratory brunch would be a falafel in pita with crunchy veggies and sauce at this little stand at the market called The Art of the Falafel that has very good ones, right up there with De Bazar in Amsterdam.

On the way home I stopped to tell Sami (he's my Palestinian friend who has a corner grocery at 19th and Noe who shares my passion for tennis and whose wife makes the best baba ghanoush I ever ate as well as very good hummus and who had recommended the falafel at a little restaurant on 16th St.). Am I a serious culi-freak or what? Telling Palestinians where to get falafel.

Here's a doorway I like:

Just another entry in my Cranky Old-Age Observations file.

Some days, I am moved to take from the slowest goose in the yard a quill, that I might sharpen it to set down my outrage.

Remember how when we were kids and we finally wore our mothers down and got them to buy Raisin Bran occasionally even though it was a lot more expensive than the other dry cereals?

And how you had to be very careful to ration the little rock-hard raisins out so you got at least a few in every bowl?

Well, I was in Safeway the other day and grabbed my favorite cereal, that Oatmeal Crisp with Almonds, and was sticking it in my cart when my eye was caught by the price!!! The damn box was six bucks! Gotcha! Eternal vigilance is the price of shopping. Not that it always hasn't been, but still...

So I put it back and looked for a more reasonable alternative except that I already had cheerio-type cereal and shredded wheat at home, so I had to look for something entirely different. And then I spotted the Raisin Bran man stocking the shelf with 2-for-1 boxes. Much better. I hadn't eaten raisin bran in years, and I got to make his day.

Alas, I just ate a bowl and discovered that there's been a considerable change in raisin bran over the past fifty-something years: instead of not having enough raisins, it now has too many! And I am not losing my mind, at least not over this, because I distinctly remember having to shake the box around and even, when my mother wasn't looking, do a little hand redistribution in order to get a single damn raisin to appear in every fifth spoonful.

Now, you can't get a single spoonful without two or three raisins in it. Too many.

Couldn't they have just quintupled the amount instead of making the damn cereal half raisins?

OK, and I'm not quite ready to call for jihad on General Foods, but they better not push me.

Oh, and speaking of raisins, here's some grapes up at Saratoga Springs I kinda liked:

Oh, and reading!!!! Not to mention spending last week reading every single one of that big pile of periodicals that had stacked up, this week I have read A Meal Observed (Andrew Todhunter), The Road and No Country for Old Men (Cormac McCarthy), Stalin's Ghost (Martin Cruz Smith), Last Watch of the Night (Paul Monette) , Oblivion (short stories by David Foster Wallace), Emporium (short stories by Adam Johnson), and now I'm into Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly.

Not really the best thing to be reading before retiring for the night, what with lines like

IF I HAD KNOWN IT WAS HARMLESS
I WOULD HAVE KILLED IT MYSELF

which you don't really need context to savor....and re-savor....and get to thinking about. Kinda reminds me of that line from an Orange County (FL) county commissioner, "Just because we've ruined ninety percent of everything doesn't mean we can't do wonderful things with the remaining ten percent."

Next time you're in the library and feeling like a tasty tidbit, read Adam Johnson's "Teen Sniper." If you want a full meal, and leave it to David Foster Wallace to write one of the more complicated short stories in history, try "Mr. Scrushy."

I recently discovered this blog that I find fascinating. Here's a man who is profoundly concerned about the future and the direction of our society, and yet he is dispassionately non-political. Nowhere in this blog has he, to my recollection, ever mentioned the name of a political party...or an office-holder. For that matter, even though he is a Druid, I do not recall his ever suggesting in his blog that any other person on the planet might want to be one.

Check it out: The Archdruid Report

My Palm Springs friend Bob has hired a real, professional chef to cook dinner for me this evening. After some consideration and discussion with both Bob and the chef, I realized that the best approach to this was not to try to somehow coordinate having one or two friends join the chef and me but rather to hog him for myself.

That way, we can talk about food and cooking while he cooks us a fabulous meal with me as his semi-skilled kitchen help. That is, when I'm not taking notes.

Besides, being a chef, he has only one day a week off, and there was an emergency last week so he had to cancel the original date, and I couldn't possibly subject friends to this kind of uncertainty.

I'm getting more and more keyed up over this as the day goes on. Gonna be great fun, except I realize this morning that my two best knives (old Henckels) are both dull, and of course while I know a real chef is gonna be bringing his own knives, just as I take my own to Amsterdam and Midland (if Mel, the old fart, stays alive until November), but still, what if by accident the chef picks one of mine up? I mean, the shame, the shame, the sarcophagic shame.

So I make an emergency call to Jivano, my sharpener, but damn his eyes, he doesn't pick up.

See, I've got friends whose extensive collections of always-razor-sharp knives are slotted alpha-numerically waiting, waiting for the absolutely correct need to arise. Me, where's the excitement in that? Oh no, much more fun to pace frantically around while Jivano doesn't return my call until I'm near hysterical and then snatch up the phone only to get a recorded message saying there's a server problem in the local area that will be resolved shortly while we patrons display our customary high levels of understanding and patience.

I feel like running down there and pounding on his door screaming, "we know yer in there, dude." Except of course I don't know he's in there.

But luckily, just before I expire of frustration, he gets through and I rush down there with the knives. Well, I try to rush, but see, there's absolutely no place to park for blocks in any direction around his shop so I grab the Segway, forgetting that the damn thing is fully charged and thus allows me only to c r e e p s l o w l y down the hill because you can't turn off the regenerative braking and it won't allow any electricity to be generated.

"Mommy, why is that man on the Segway screaming as he inches down the hill?"

So of course the delay allows this yuppie bastard with fifty dull knives to get in ahead of me, which gives me the chance to calm down while cruising around the neighborhood snapping pics of pieces of things while I wait.

Like this narrow window of opportunity across the street from Jivano's. I mean, for that shaft of sun to get down in there and illuminate that light well, both the time of year and the time of day had to be exactly right:

Then I kill a few more minutes at Tartine since I'm on the block. The croissants are like clouds...at least until you heft the bag and realize that while you can't see all that butter, you sure can feel the weight of it.

Luckily, it's 3:00 now and so I dare eat only one. The chef will be arriving at 5:00, and now I have to straighten the house up and lie down for a few minutes and then shower and shave and spray myself with this German SS-strength deodorant that I picked up in Amsterdam and guzzle a pot of coffee before the bell rings and I amble to the door and slowly open it, casually brushing my hair out of my eyes and saying calmly, "Give you a hand with that?"

The total eclipse of the moon last night was a truly memorable experience.

It had sounded like it would be good enough that I'd thought about setting an alarm and going up on the roof to view it, but then I realized that hey, my anaconda prostate gets me up to pee at least every couple of hours anyhow, so I could just look at the progress of the eclipse during bathroom breaks.

Which I did.

First break: nothing had happened yet.

Second break: the partial eclipse was underway in the southwest sky.

Third break: Totality, and I had the sense to get out my little binoculars but was not quite fully awake, so there was some difficulty in getting my eyes onto the correct end. And then when I achieved that, the fully eclipsed moon was nice and big, but it was also all fuzzy, with or without my glasses, so the binoculars turned out to be useless. Still, the moon was lovely.

Fourth break: A disappointment at first, as I immediately saw that a bit of cloud cover was to some degree obscuring the show, but then it swept me that I was indeed blessed because the clouds were somehow causing an astonishing color display, turning a big chunk of sky around the moon mottled ruby reds, or perhaps reds like those of the old strontium glass, achingly brilliant with some variegation caused by different thickness of clouds.

It was so stunning that I could hardly tear myself away, but I realized that I might be able to set my little toy camera on its Night mode, go out on the balcony, and brace the camera on the balcony railing so as to somehow record this amazing phenomenon as I stood there freezing in my underwear. So I grabbed the camera and was frantically trying to find the Night mode in the dark because I didn't want to turn the lights on and ruin my night vision.

Well, damn me, I kept fiddling around and when I looked back up at the sky, the show was over. Well, not quite. I did manage to catch the last few seconds of that display as it faded out.

Only then did I look to the northwest and see that the city had erected a giant screen on which the phenomenon was being displayed, but alas it was shutting down, too, and the crowd was already dispersing. Well, shucks, I thought, I totally blew this one. Hadn't heard a peep about that screen event.

Disappointed I didn't get to see more, but still happy that I had the memory of that regal red display to savor the rest of my life, I went back to bed.

Fifth break: I went into the kitchen and, as I expected, the clouds had dissipated and the eclipse had progressed to partial mode again. Not much to see there. And then my eye alit on the kitchen table. There were the binoculars, and I had to laugh as it struck me that the reason the damn eclipse was fuzzy was that I hadn't been together enough to twist the knobs and focus the damn things. Oh, silly me.

And then I looked again at the table and saw no camera. Where's the damn camera? I know I'd put it down beside the binoculars.

No camera. Curious, I went hunting for it and found it on the floor at the front door, where I remembered putting it yesterday afternoon because I wanted to be sure to take it with me on an errand I'd planned for this morning.

Remember how I wrote last year about the Sustiva dreams? The ones caused by this med I'm taking that blurs the line between dream and reality for a few hours after ingestion? Ummm. Could it possibly be that the city did not, after all, erect yesterday a hundred-foot high screen to the northwest that I could see from my kitchen windows? Could it possibly be that there had been no spectacular red cloud display? Could it possibly be that the fourth break did not actually occur but was rather a Sustiva dream/hallucination?

The tangible evidence of the binoculars on the kitchen table suggests that the third break happened as described.

The camera being in a place where I now recall leaving it yesterday afternoon, plus the absence of a hundred-foot-high screen to the northwest, not to mention that I would not in any case have been able to see people at the base of such a screen, all make it clear that the fourth break was a figment.

Betcha nobody enjoyed that eclipse as much as me.

This elevator door, however, is real:

I'm reading the current The Threepenny Review and get to the letters and there's this one that's especially sensible and that I'm particularly enjoying until I reach the end and see it's from this San Francisco person named Louis Bryan.

My mind is now a piece of overripe brie, but at least I'm consistent.

Well, the fifteen-year-old Braun died last week, and what with all my anti-consumerist talk I've been boiling water on the stove and then dribbling it over the ground coffee in its filter balanced precariously atop a wide-mouthed jar that was the only thing in the house that would hold it right. Which has got tedious.

And yes, I went online and found all these bargains but couldn't really tell what they were like.

So this morning since I had to go to Walgreen's to get some meds, I dropped in next door at this yuppie high-end kitchen supply place with the intent of kicking me some tires, which turned out to take less kicking than anticipated since they carried only one coffee maker, their focus not being on appliances. It was the Cuisinart model DCC1200, which has got more switches on it than a 747 cockpit.

But of course being a careful shopper I knew that even though it was love at first sight, it wouldn't do to just consummate the relationship immediately, so I told the nice girl I'd think about it.

So I came back here and messed around here for a couple of hours not making the marmalade out of those very, very bitter little oranges that Carol gave me and which have been growing old while taking up half a whole shelf in my refrigerator.

And then I thought that since it was such a gorgeous afternoon I could hop on the Segway and run down to take another look at that Cuisinart. And might as well throw a piece of heavy cord in my pack in case I needed to lash anything to the Segway handlebars.

And when I go in the nice girl asks, "Will that be cash or charge?" and we laugh while she gets a boxed one out of the storeroom and the owner wrings his hands with pleasure over the sale.

I get out to the curb and rig a sling to hold it onto the Segway so that I can take it home like a hunter with a deer strapped onto the car. And when I get it home and claw it out of the packaging I see that it's a good-size buck, too, with a footprint worthy of the granite countertops of a McMansion.

And then I lose myself in the instruction manual. Such a well-thought-out machine with a luscious redundancy of features, like for example its triple-level filtering. Yes, there's a little filter between the water reservoir and the heating element for those whose water is not up the standard set by Hetch Hetchy, and then there's a metal "gold tone" filter, whatever that means, and then you are encouraged to use paper filters inside the gold tone filter.

And there's a little light that comes on to tell you when you need to activate the decalcification routine.

And we won't even get into all the things you can program it for, like how long the hotplate stays on after the coffee is brewed.

And now I've flipped all its switches and run the preliminary cleaning cycle and ground some Sumatran from Spike's and brewed a trial batch, I'm drinking my first cup and see that with a machine of this quality I'm going to need to start buying my beans from Ritual Roastery down on Valencia, they being tastier and costing only about half again as much.

I think this is what they call a hidden cost.

A Market Street fire escape I like:

So much fun. Pinker was just hanging out up front doing nothing before the lecture, so I went up and told him I might be the only person on the planet whose favorite of all his books was Words and Rules. He laughed (incidentally showing that he is far handsomer than the book jacket photos reveal) and said it was actually his favorite, too, which may have just been PR but it sure worked.

The lecture was fascinating, and even though I of course recall little of it now, I was able to follow all of it at the time. Better yet, when he was talking about the mental functionality of swearing, he brought up the case of U2's Bono saying on live national television that something was "fucking brilliant" and right-wing congressmen being so outraged over the court ruling that the network couldn't be prosecuted that the House passed HR 3687, the Clean Airwaves Act that actually listed words like "fuck" that were to be forbidden, not to mention derivatives of these words including adjectives, gerunds, etc. but alas omitting adverbs, which "fucking" as used by Bono was.

All this gave me a flashback to Gore Vidal's introduction to Myra Breckenridge, in which he lamented a then-recent Supreme Court decision declaring that certain words were, in and of themselves, obscene. The obvious solution to this problem, Vidal declared, was to substitute the names of the Justices for the nine most common obscene words whenever they had appeared in his book, thus avoiding any possible obscenity.

He concluded his introduction with the observation that he hoped that this would once and for all solve the problem since there had been by then entirely too much Burgering around with the language. (For those who are not history buffs, Burger was then the chief justice.)

It occurred to me that Pinker might be just young enough and such a serious scholar that he might not have read Myra Breckenridge. And luckily, as I was getting him to sign my copy of his latest book, The Stuff of Thought, which I had just purchased from a great stack oddly enough available on a convenient table, I had a chance to mention the Vidal coup.

He didn't know it.

How utterly wonderful. After years of feasting on the works of this brilliant scholar, I was able to toss a crumb back.

Oh, and I just recalled one other point in the lecture. Pinker mentioned that when Norman Mailer wrote The Naked and the Dead in 1948, he had to substitute "fug" for "fuck" to get it published. The novel was an immediate commercial and literary success, and when Dorothy Parker met Mailer, she remarked, "So you're the man who doesn't know how to spell "fuck."

Here's an interesting paint job on Duboce:

Another one the cowards wouldn't print:

Editor,

According to news reports last week, nothing was done to the huge majority of the audience that howled in derision when Iranian President Ahmadinejad declared that there were no gays in Iran, but in the same week audience members were forcibly removed when they verbally protested over Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Pace's reiteration of his previous statements that gay behavior....anywhere, not just in the military...should not be condoned.

What this tells me is that it's OK in this country to speak out against bigotry when it's Islamic but not when it's Christian.

Your faithful subscriber,

Louis Bryan
NoeHill

OK, I admit it. While I am usually a reasonably nice person nowadays, every now and then I am possessed by the devil for just long enough to do something cruel.

Like today, on this gorgeous day with the whole city scrubbed squeaky clean by yesterday's rain and the air crystalline and the streets filled with folks enjoying the Noe Valley Farmers' Market and the Noe Valley Harvest Festival on 24th Street and the Boccalone salumi pickup day enlivening Church at 27th Street.

So I'm cruising around on the Segway taking pics, and on 26th Street there's this Victorian.

What you don't see is that on the ground floor the garage door is open and this young bodybuilder is strutting around in there doing this workout with these huge stacks of weights which he is tossing around seemingly effortlessly with his enormous, bulging muscles.

And a little voice in my head started whispering, "Louis, don't do it! It would be cruel, unspeakably cruel." But I couldn't stop myself.

I confess: I rolled back and forth in the street in front of his garage door with my camera pointed high, taking pics of that luscious architectural detail on the upper parts of his house. Nothing below the second floor of course. And then pocketed the camera and waved to him and shouted as I sped away, "Nice paint job"!

Somehow, something has clicked, and after several years of carrying around a belly I have, without actually following any diet in particular, in the past couple of months inexplicably lost fifteen pounds. Well, not totally inexplicably because I have trouble remembering to drink as much alcohol as my doctor prescribes, so I've been making a compensatory effort to please her by reducing my consumption of foods she doesn't want me to eat, a list which by now has grown to include salt, fat, sugar, and starch. Which rules out about 90% of everything edible and 98% of everything good, so it's not too surprising that I've lost 10% of my weight.

I have to say, it's a wonderful feeling. This morning I'm Segwaying down to the Civic Center Farmers' Market (now officially called the "Heart of the City Farmers' Market" to pick up some raspberries and okra and jalapeños and fresh peanuts and fresh cranberry beans and anything else healthy that catches my eye.

It's a beautiful day, and as I glide down Market Street, I notice that with my long sleeve shirt open and flapping in the wind, my tee shirt is now pressed against my much flatter stomach, and I'm not looking as bad as I had been.

This feels so good that as I ride, I burst into song:

"I feel pretty, oh so pretty. I feel pretty and witty and gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay...."

Naw, just kidding.

It was "C'est moi, c'est moi...."

It's November and I drove back to Midland again because at 97 years old Mel is still 100% clear that I'm coming to see him every fall...and because it makes me feel good to do so.

This year I drove there if not the shortest route, pretty much so, stopping for a couple of days in Palm Springs to visit friends going and returning. And, oh don't get me started on this slough of wastefullness. Well, do get me started, as I've plenty to say.

They seem utterly oblivious to the fragility of their existence. So what if the daytime temperatures are normally well over a hundred most of the year. They have air conditioning. Oh, yes they do. That hum in the air here is the air conditioning units. A quick glance into the shed housing the one for my friend's condo explains why his electricity bill is hundreds of dollars a month: the engine and motor in my car are smaller.

And then there's their attitude toward water. Being from west Texas, a land where, because it would not normally grow, the grass lawn was considered both mandatory and precious, I formed the habit as a child of not walking on the grass unnecessarily. I knew how fragile a lawn actually is in a desert, and that it needed constant watering and care to survive.

The houses and office buildings in Palm Springs are almost invariably bordered by gorgeous lawns with excellent flower beds, shrubbery and trees. But mostly it's the broad, immaculate lawns.

I'm out in the early morning crystal desert air taking photos and find myself in a moral quandary. To take the pic I want, I'm going to have to take a few careful steps out onto one of these perfect lawns. I consider briefly taking my shoes off and then realize, for God's sake, it's not like I'm gonna be running around out there with cleats on.

And besides, I'm doing this for Art.

So gently, I step off the sidewalk, and immediately am struck with a wave of horror, something unspeakably awful. Remember, this is a desert we're in. The water that makes these lawns possible comes from an aquifer that otherwise intelligent residents have told me contains an infinite supply of water because it is recharged by rains falling on the mountains surrounding the natural bowl in which the city sits.

That's ridiculous, but it's not horrifying. The horror came when I stepped on the lawn, and it squished.

Now, that folks, is obscene.

Here's a typical morning scene in Palm Springs, the lush lawn of the luxury condo complex soaked and the excess water running across the sidewalk to the gutter, where it evaporates as it flows down the street:

Taking this more southern route to Midland gave me an opportunity to drive across western Texas from El Paso on "blue highways" rather than the interstate. And you can't get too much bluer than the part of this route where, having had a spectacular view of Quadalupe Peak, you approach the New Mexico border after 130 miles on US 62. Turn right onto TX 652 to Orla, hook south for a few miles on US 285 before turning onto TX 302 to Kermit where, at the 230-mile-mark you encounter the first gas station since you left the outskirts of El Paso. That's 370 km. for the folks in Enschede.

Poor Orla has fallen on hard times. You think I exaggerate? There are four standing buildings in Orla, and this is not the most derelict:

Midland? Well, Midland was still Midland although I was pleased to discover that, they not being big sissies about their arteries, there were two drive-ins on Big Springs Street that had excellent fried chicken livers. Those'll stick to your ribs.

I also got the joy of being the weird outsider, probably a Communist and perhaps even French, when I said I didn't need a plastic shopping bag to carry my Midland College tee shirt to the car. Figured I shouldn't tell 'em it was a Prius. Didn't see any of them Jap rice grinders in Midland.

The other memorable moment was realizing that this big tree out in the middle of the plaza in front of the student union on the campus was actually a mesquite bush that had been given all the water it could drink for thirty years. Good grief. I'd never seen one taller than me! Note the gardener with the leaf blower over on the left side to get an idea of the size of this thing:

The visit with Mel was wonderful, mainly because he lets me feel useful. On the way back, I took the interstate, ten miles farther but with legal speed limits up to 80 MPH (130 kmph). The general deterioration of the towns, especially the smaller ones, was saddening. I pulled off the interstate to take the old highway through Van Horn so I could get a hamburger at the Dairy Queen®. Oh, I know where my good hamburgers are in Texas, and if there's not a Whataburger® around, a Dairy Queen is usually approaching the same standard.

The Dairy Queen is still there, but alas, the rest of the town is fading fast, like this former drive-in, whatever it was:

I was a few miles east of Benson, AZ as the sun was going down, and as I crested a ridge where there was a rest area I saw the photo op of the year. Knowing that the opportunity would last only a couple of minutes, I roared into the rest area, skidded to a stop, leaped out of the car and started snapping shots. Alas, my haste brought its usual reward, and all the shots were blurred except this one:

The next day, I drove on to Palm Springs via the Salton Sea, which was pretty much what you'd expect from a natural disaster allowed to fester for a century. Still, I got a pic I kinda like:

Palm Springs definitely has its own mystique. A lot of wealth and determination to hang onto every last bit of it. The new UPS deliveryman calls ahead:

Best part of the trip was, as always, getting home. And going to the farmers' market the next day and discovering that feijoa season had begun. They make great chutney:

Now that the diet is over, a little snack:

Retrieve from the refrigerator the pot of last night's Barbarian Pork.

Reach in with the left hand and tear from the rich, congealed grease a tennis-ball-size chunk of pork, taking care that it brings with it some of the cooked-down jalapeño and herbs.

Grasp salt shaker in right hand and carefully sprinkle a reasonable number of crystals onto the pork. Put down salt.

Bite off mouthfuls and chew slowly, fastidiously blotting the grease from the corners of the mouth with a wad of paper towel in the right hand.

Repeat as necessary, wipe the left hand with the paper towel, and return the pot to the refrigerator.

Chase with slugs of Diet Dr Pepper directly from the bottle. No no, not that vulgar two-liter thing but rather the dainty 24 oz. size.

There was a memorable moment at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market this morning when I saw that Olsen was back. He grows clementines and oranges and is at the market for about a month this time every year. Superb clementines, if pricey.

So I rush up to the booth and exclaim over how good it is to see him and his clementines again, and by the way, he's looking great this year. He gives me this perplexed look and then I hear this guffaw from the shadows at the back of the booth.

It was Olsen. I was talking to his son, whom I'd never seen and who failed to participate in the hilarity shared by his father and me.

Well, hell, I said he was looking good!

Some days I do well and eat reasonably, which means smaller quantities of uninteresting foods with all the good stuff metered out in niggardly portions like slices of butter so thin they're translucent, salt apportioned by the grain, 1 damn milk, no sugar on nothing, potatoes only on special occasions and then not enough of 'em, etc.

And then I'll snap.

Like the other day I'm in Safeway and passing thru the strait between the chocolate puddings and the Eagle Brand, and my cart was tossed in the currents and brushed the cliffs to starboard, leaving it still aisleworthy but causing a six-serving size box of Jello Original Cook and Serve Chocolate Pudding® (not that Instant swill) to become entangled in the rigging.

And once it's in the cart you have to take it home with you.

And of course it sat radioactively in the pantry for only one day before I cooked it, adding an ounce of grated Scharffen Berger 99% chocolate, a couple of tablespoons of sugar, and two tablespoons of butter (to compensate for that 1% milk).

And poured the six portions into bowls, cooled them to room temperature on the dining room floor (to save energy), chilled them in the refrigerator, ate them by spaced small spoonfuls over the next six hours, and retired somewhat dyspeptic.

Well, see, our rainy season has started, so I need to store up some energy to get through it.

And I look down and notice, yes I have.

On the other hand, these stairs are looking good with the winter sun in coming in sideways:

We ranged in age from me all the way down to a 20-year-old who'd moved here from Japan to be with his father only six years earlier, just a hair too old to learn unaccented English, but he makes up for the slight accent by being totally glib and articulate. He's already a star salesman for Verizon part time while working full time on a BA. I asked him the secret of his success, and he said he just figured out what people wanted and then let them buy it from him.

Gloria and I had a fine time cooking together and hanging out, the dinner could not have been better since all the food turned out delicious, the fellowship was fabulous, and the conversation was stimulating because all the guests were interesting and of different backgrounds.

Oh, and the dinner included as appetizers: perfectly poached shrimp and crudites brought by Cynthia, Tortini Luigi and a Boccalone Sopressata brought by me.

A cold sorrel soup that I brought.

Pork tenderloins Gloria marinated overnight in a mixture of wine and my mango chutney and then briefly seared and roasted to safe but still pink doneness. Gloria and I made mashed potatoes with an obscene amount of butter, and Jae cooked a stir-fry of baby bok choi and mushrooms.

And dinner rolls that Gloria and I made, freely adapting an old recipe of hers to use the modern instant dry yeast. They were pretty good, but nowhere near as good as either of our mothers'.

For dessert Gloria and I had made the night before a lemon tarte and The Pie.

The day after Christmas we dropped in on Sebastiano, this curandor (as best I could hear what they called him....sort of a secular faith healer). Not sure my neck is any better, but I got this pic of a shed outside his house:

Once again, here's the annual report on the year's jams, jellies, chutneys, and pickles. As in past years, I didn't record all the times I made batches of chocolate sauce. The big news this year is that since my initial experiments with adult jams last year went over so well, this year I threw various peppers into many of my jams and jellies.

See previous Production Reports for an explanation of the naming conventions.

Pickled Brussels Sprouts - 1 Jan, 10 Jan, 2 Feb, 2 Mar, 30 Mar.

GMC - Green Mango Chutney - 11 Jan.

BORM - Blood Orange Rosemary Marmalade - 6 Mar. I dearly love Sybil for many reasons, not the least of which being that she is the most reliable critic of my preserves. When I asked her about this one, she got back to me immediately that the rosemary was a hindrance rather than a help. Some experiments are failures. Some friends are true.

KMJAL - Kiwi Mango Jalapeño Jam - 7 Mar.

BOM - Blood Orange Marmalade - 31 Mar. Muuuuuuuuuch better without the rosemary. That said, somebody obviously likes the rosemary in there since I got the recipe off the internet.

TSAL - Thai Pepper Strawberry Jam - 1 Apr, 2 Apr.

TSL - Thai Pepper Strawberry Jam (no apple) - 1 Apr.

CCC - Chimayo Chile Cherry Chutney - 4 Jun, 5 Jun. This is a cherry chutney made with Chimayo chile powder smuggled in from New Mexico rather than the jalapeños I normally use.

CL - Cherry Jam (no apple) - 5 Jun.

FPAL - Flavorella Plumcot Jam - 5 Jun. No, that's not a pluot, it's a plumcot, which is genetically half plum, half apricot. Pluots are more like three-quarters plum and apriums, three-quarters apricot.

TB - Tayberry Jelly - 6 Jun, 11 Jun.

CAAL - Chimayo Apricot Jam - 7 Jun.

SWCC - Southwestern Cherry Chutney - 7 Jun, 11 Jun. In this one I used chile powder from Hatch, New Mexico as well as herbs like cumin and oregano and coriander instead of more Indian subcontinent flavors, stuff like cardamom.

CCRC - Cherry Cranberry Chutney - 16 Jun. Here, I used dried cranberries instead of the traditional raisins.

YPC - Yellow Pluot Chutney - 17 Jun. Didn't write down the variety.

CJAL - Cherry Jalapeño Jam - 10 Jul.

NJAL - Nectarine Jalapeño Jam - 10 Jul, 19 Jun, 19 Jul.

POPC - Post Office Plum Chutney - 11 Jul. The passport lady at the Noe Valley PO gave me some plums from her tree.

GPJAL - Gloria's Plum Jalapeño Jam - 16 Jul. Gloria gave me these plums from her neighbor's tree.

ANMJAL - Apricot Nectarine Mango Jalapeño Jam (low sugar) - 17 Jul.

PNJAL - Plum Nectarine Jalapeño Jam - 18 Jul.

PJAL - Peach Jalapeño Jam - 24 Jul. A special request from Becky.

NAL - Nectarine Jam - 25 Jul, 30 Jul.

CNJAL - Cherry Nectarine Jalapeño Jam - 27 Jul. This one got very high reviews, and I sure do hope I can duplicate it next year.

Pickled Haricots Verts - 31 Jul, 10 Aug.

Pickled Okra - 31 Jul, 10 Aug.

SAL - Strawberry Jam - 1 Aug.

SJAL - Strawberry Jalapeño Jam - 1 Aug.

AAL - Apricot Jam - 2 Aug.

WNWGAL - White Nectarine White Grape Jam - 6 Aug. OK, I was going for color here, and that's mostly what I got.

NJWGAL - Nectarine Jalapeño White Grape Jam - 7 Aug. Well, better than without the jalapeños.

Pickled Romano Beans - 17 Aug.

CLBOM - Carol's Little Bitter Orange Marmalade - 30 Sep, 2 Oct (but mislabeled "9-2-7"), 16 Oct, 15 Dec. This one was well received.

RALiJ - Raspberry Lime Jalapeño Jelly with only one seeded and deveined red jalapeño - 3 Oct. The pepper is just barely detectable.

RALJ2 - Raspberry Jalapeño Jelly with the usual lemon, a whole red jalapeño, and two apples instead of the usual one - 10 Oct. Better with more pepper.

BALJ - Blackberry Jalapeño Jelly with two whole jalapeños - 11 Oct. Hotter still.

CLBOOM - Carol's Little Bitter Orange Marmalade with naval orange juice to compensate for the bitter orange juice I clumsily spilled - 16 Oct. As the reviews on this batch came drifting in, it turns out that either Sybil's helping make this one or the addition of some naval orange juice made it a favorite. Gotta pursue that concept next year if Carol gives me more oranges.

SJL - Strawberry Jalapeño Jelly but with no apple - 19 Nov.

FWFC - Baby Feijoa Chutney with Hand-Plucked Wild San Francisco Fennel - 20 Nov, 27 Nov. OK, the zenith of chutneys has been reached, and perhaps simultaneously the nadir of chutney names.

And finally, to close out the year, a winter window treatment: