To start the year, i found this Diamond Street siding just irresistible:

I am continuing last year's policy of posting material in the journal as i write it, rather like a blog except that there will be fewer posts than in the typical blog and that the entries are in ascending chronological order.

Here's a tasty tidbit, plus my snarky comment, from the 23 June 2008 The New Yorker, which had got buried for six months but was paid for and thus had to be read.

In a splendid article on the cave art in Southern France, Judith Thurman writes: "From a corner table in the dining room [in a hotel in Foix], I could watch the swollen Ariège river flowing toward a distant wall of snow-covered peaks - the Pyrenees - that were black against a livid sunset."

Ms. Thurman does not say so, but i am speculating that there is a local folk belief that two drops from this miraculous river on the forehead of a true believer can cure the plague. But only a true believer. And the holy water must be taken from the river just at the point at which, high in the mountains and pitifully shrunken, it flows into a small crack in the rocks.

I realized decades ago in graduate school that OK, i'm not really a scholar, but still there's a little streak of it in me, and every now and then i run across something that makes my heart pitter before my head patters. Like somehow blundering last night onto this Wikipedia graphic of Faroese isoglosses:

Ahhhh, don't those southerners talk funny!

A key sentence of the accompanying text reads: "... Faroese ... has a very atypical pronunciation of its vowels, with odd offglides and other features."

Thirty years ago I was discussing the character of a mutual acquaintance with Allen's friend Laura when she interrupted me, giggling, "I just love hearing you say that." Didn't understand what she was talking about until she carefully pronounced for me "a-yes ho-ule" [IPA approximately æjəs hoʊəl] in the Texas accent that i had had in those days mostly lost except in stressed moments.

Yes, those "odd offglides".

And speaking of offglides, I glided off the other day down to the Noe Valley Bakery with the fully premeditated intent of buying one of their divine pecan pies. They had me cold: I'd saved the packaging from the previous one and had it with me so that my virtue in not wasting all that paper and cardboard would outweigh the vice of eating most of the pie myself. Luckily, the pie is seasonal, and the season is over, so I had to settle for this lo-cal shot of the BofA ATM across the street in the winter morning sun:

I spotted this afternoon an only-in-San Francisco moment, or maybe it was a simply a sign of our times:

A young street person, less scruffy than usual, holding up some text crudely lettered on a piece of cardboard. No, not the usual plea for spare change for a hot meal, but rather a straightforward business proposition. Alas, i was on the Segway and had forgotten my camera, but in any case, there was a line in front of him and i was in a rush. The sign?

I'm definitely gonna check out his corner tomorrow, as i can't decide which i'm more likely to see: 1) same guy, same sign, but the price raised to whatever the market will bear or 2) in the true capitalist spirit, a row of competitors offering the same service at a discount.

I did think of a couple of profit-enhancing lines for him, though:

"That one was worth two dollars, Ma'am."

and

"The dollar was for me alone, Sir. There is a two-dollar additional charge for invoking my mother."

The pic of the day? Well, how 'bout this glimpse of the ovipositor of the elusive giant Castro arboreal wasp:

A pic from this morning down the street, a modern representation of an ancient savage spring ritual, a bunny impaled the wrong way on a carrot and then hanged. Silly, of course, but they thought it brought them eternal life, so they joyfully slaughtered each other over how best to hang the bunny. Isn't it wonderful that our modern world is free of all that ignorance and superstition!

One of the greatest horrors of aging is watching your friends sicken, maybe worse than watching yourself sicken.

My friend Bob had been in remission after surgery for colon cancer last winter and had moved to Palm Springs for his retirement. Alas, his doctors have found a recurrence, but he's still feeling good, so i've come down to Palm Springs to pay him a visit while we can have some Quality Time.

As usual, getting here provided some Moments. Like blasting down I-5 and passing this huge truck and noticing in the mirror that the radiator was painted like a gigantic, gaping mouth with great fangs. Gave him a thumbs up out my window and he tooted me back. Highway humor, there's not enough of it.

Well, i do provide plenty of my own entertainment, like by somehow forgetting to check Mapquest before the trip and realizing as i neared the obligatory stop at the Kettleman City In-N-Out Burger that i couldn't remember the damn highway i had to take east once i got into the Los Angeles area. Luckily, when i got the paper map out, the route was obvious: I-5 to 210 to 57 to I-10 to 111.

It was also rather longer than i'd remembered, a full 500 miles (800 km) although it's almost all at freeway speeds and goes faster, especially since when you're on feature-limited I-5 the boredom factor is so high that almost everybody is going well over the speed limit, so you can cruise along between 75 and 80 (120-130 km/hr) with plenty of decoys out there to attract the attention of the highway patrol, of whom there are lots.

In other ways, though, road trips don't go as fast as they used to. Sure, my Prius can go well over 500 miles on a full tank of gas, but my bladder, alas, is good for only a couple hundred miles anymore.

The southern part of the San Joaquin Valley is pretty much desert now, with intermittent patches of bright green irrigated farmland. Painful to remind ourselves that much of this desert was once the largest lake west of the Rockies (Tulare Lake) plus a gigantic marsh teeming with wildlife. That was before we changed the ecology by harvesting the wildlife and repurposing the water, pumping it over the mountains to Los Angeles.

In the superb, copiously photographed Farewell, Promised Land by Robert Dawson and Gray Brechin, Brechin paraphrases an account of the death throes of the lake in the 1880's as described in 1954 by an ancient settler named Bill Barnes, who had been a youth when the lake was murdered. The rivers feeding the lake were diverted and "starved of inflow, the lake shrank. Millions of fish died on the mud, making a terrible stench, Barnes recalled, but the otters feasted for weeks. Then they too starved, and never returned. Raccoons moved in for their turn on the carcasses of the dead otters until nothing was left, and Barnes later watched thousands of them stagger about, emaciated, on the dry lake bed. The birds went elsewhere to starve. Then, there was silence. 'The country was never the same afterwards,' he observed laconically."

One of these trips here, i'm going to make an early start so i can waste some time on one of the scenic routes that cut through the Tehachapis even though there is plenty of beauty crossing them on I-5 and in at least parts of the route east through greater LA. I love the approach to Palm Springs through Banning Pass, the stark mountains on either side, their lower slopes and the valley floor adorned with thousands of wind turbines turning oh, so gracefully as they generate electricity to aircondition the desert. Well, some of it, at least.

In any case, there's a good deal of beauty here, especially in some of the newer condo developments. Here's a shot of Bob's place from the pool in his complex. A crisp contrast between the barren background mountains and the juicy landscaping down below.

There was one major breakthrough on the trip down. I mentioned it's 500 miles. For the first time in memory, at least on this continent, I drove 500 miles without a single chocolate milkshake, normally my sustenance of choice when on the road.

Well, i made up for it at brunch yesterday. Bob took me to the Manhattan Deli, where i fressed upon the hot pastrami and chopped chicken liver combo sandwich, generous portions of each with potato salad on the side.

But then Bob keeps the house so hot that i took my shirt off while i was wrestling with assembly of this multi-adjustable office chair he'd bought. Unfortunately i caught a disgusting glimpse of myself in a reflective surface and thus began the diet last night. I stir fried us a supper of a couple of ancho chiles, a few stalks of fresh green garlic, and some baby artichokes that i'd smuggled down from San Francisco. Skinned and boned and broke up a couple of baked chicken breasts outta his refrigerator, and threw those in. Tasty. And no damn extra calories, either.

Still fat this morning, though, so the diet may have to be continued.

An aspect of Palm Springs i like very much is the street fair they have on Thursday afternoon and evening. They close to vehicular traffic something like eight blocks of Palm Canyon Drive, the main shopping street, and fill it with a double row of stalls selling everything from kitchy crafts to fresh vegetables to fast foods to various services. All the shops and bars and cafés and restaurants are also open, so it's quite festive. The closest thing to this i've experienced is the Albert Cuyp Markt in Amsterdam, although i don't recall a climbing wall for little kids to clamber on in Amsterdam.

In any case, though, the vibes at this market are superb. The majority of the people attending are pretty clearly tourists, but tourists are by and large having a good time, so they bring their own fun with them and share it with the natives. Not that the natives are incapable of a bit of humor:

Palm Springs also fascinates me in a different way because it's the only retirement community i know. So what's a retirement community like? Well, basically the population seems to consist of retirees plus their waiters, bartenders, car washers, housecleaners, gardeners, property managers, retail clerks, pool cleaners, air conditioner repairmen, and security guards.

Especially security guards. The level of paranoia is breathtaking. Think i'm exaggerating? Here's a little photographic essay i took this morning in the space of half an hour:

I'm speculating that part of the reason for the paranoia is that the typical retirees here are folks who made a good deal of money and got a lot of nice things, which they enjoy admiring and fondling and displaying. And now that they're retired and their income is reduced, replacing My Precioussss would be between difficult and impossible.

So they're prisoners of their possessions, afraid to leave their houses for fear that somebody might break in and get some of their stuff. Thus, the layers and layers of security.

Not that the paranoia is groundless. I was astonished when a reader sent me a link to a crime rate site indicating that Palm Springs enjoys a burglary rate more than double the national average. Looks like i'm not the only person who's surmised that those houses are chock full of choice items.

At the end of the first week in May i came down with what i thought was some kind of flu with no respiratory component, so i just treated it with bed rest and plenty of fluids even though i felt really really awful. So bad, in fact, that after five or six days i stopped bringing the newspapers in and alarmed my upstairs friends, who pounded on the door until i gave up and let them in.

They immediately saw that i'd got far sicker than i'd realized and browbeat me into calling my internist, who talked me into going to the hospital. Turned out i was near death from a bacterial infection and was immediately clapped into the ICU, where i drifted off to sleep stuck full of IV's piping antibiotics into me.

The next several days were the most hideous of my life because the IV antibiotics triggered diarrhea, and the hospital, practicing what is called "defensive medicine", was fearful that i might fall if i got out of bed to sit on a toilet...and then i or my survivors might sue them. I didn't feel up to arguing with them and kept getting out of bed. Their solution was to tie me down in my own shit, which was a new experience that i found highly distasteful, and i continued to try to get up until in frustration the Big Nurse jabbed me with so much thorazine that i was out cold for a whole day.

When i came to, the situation had not improved. I was still tied there in my own shit, and so i embarked on a campaign to secure my release from the hospital, arguing that i had plenty of experience with pulling an IV trolley around and could do this just as well in my own home as in a hospital. I tried enlisting the help of several friends to get me out although they were no help at all since they, not being tied down in their own shit, felt that it was "for my own good." In fact, my primary attending physician told me that one of them had told him on the phone that i was "incapable of caring for myself," which i was just devastated to hear.

But since i was still tied in my own shit i got over my devastation and persisted in arguing for my release as my condition improved. Finally, finally after a full week in the ICU, i got out. One of my upstairs friends picked me up early on a gorgeous sunny afternoon, and when i prattled on about how happy i was to be out, he observed, "Well, hospitals aren't so bad...so long as you're unconscious."

I learned several things out of this experience: Number One, at the first sign of illness, put your newspaper delivery on hold so as not to alarm the neighbors if you don't take them in. Second, don't go into the hospital without a written agreement that they're not going to tie you down in your own shit. Third, tell the hospital you have a roommate who can take care of you because this will make it much easier to get out. Fourth, don't give them the phone number of any of your friends other than somebody who's agreed to say he's the mythical roommate...and to help you get out. The bottom line here is that i have no interest in living if i cannot take care of myself, at least other than for a brief hospitalization, and i will never again give to a hospital contact numbers of friends who might work to keep me in the hospital "for my own good" when i'm trying to get out. Call me stubborn, but i really do prefer to define for myself exactly what "for my own good" is rather than leaving this chore to others.

Where'd i get the infection? They have no idea although they say that it must have been either airborne or in something i ate. Well, hell, as we all know, i eat everything, so that's no help.

I am, of course, grateful on an intellectual level that my upstairs friends talked me into going into the hospital, since it's pretty clear that i would have just laid here until i died had they not intervened. On the other hand, knowing on an emotional level that unless i'm lucky enough to have a massive heart attack or stroke, i will have to go into a hospital again is so profoundly depressing that much of the time now i feel like i'm just running the clock out and see no point in getting out of bed.

Well, except for going to my farmers' markets and buying gorgeous produce, which i then have to eat or preserve before it rots. Take a look at the Production Report at the end of the journal, as i'm trying some new things this year.

Let's lighten the tone here with a pic of a windowbox treatment on 19th Street between Hartford and Noe. Hmmmm. Wonder if it's a gay windowbox? You decide.

Rina already had her plane tickets for a visit here when i fell sick, and she arrived six days after i got out of the hospital. I'd warned her that i didn't have the strength to do much running around, but she's so generous that she volunteered to nurse me back to health. I didn't really need anybody to nurse me, but i did take advantage of Rina's offer to help in one way.

When i got out of the hospital i had a really ugly deep hole the size of a fifty-cent piece in the outside of my right arm a couple of inches or so below the elbow, which was left from where the infection had erupted. The nurses had given me instructions on how to treat the wound and change the bandages every day, and they sent a visiting nurse around every afternoon to do this for me. All i really needed, though, was an extra pair of hands to help put this elastic net-like device over the fresh gauze pad to hold it in place, and so when Rina arrived she agreed that we could reduce my use of medical services by letting her do this.

Rina is the least squeamish woman i know, the only woman, in fact, who was as entertained as i was by my getting to watch on live television the progress of the catheters while they implanted the stents in my aorta and femorals four years ago. So after she agreed to help me change my bandage, i started to show her how the elastic net thingy worked and accidentally ripped the bandage off, exposing the suppurating wound.

We nearly bumped heads trying to see down into it simultaneously.

The rest of her visit was low-key, as i didn't have the strength to do much. We did get to Renzo Piano's masterpiece of sustainable design, our new California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, to our legendary Exploratorium that i hadn't visited in over thirty years and that was still as wonderful as ever, and to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium was a mistake, as my the time we had walked from the parking garage to the Aquarium i was already exhausted. Rina came through by commandeering a wheelchair and pushing me around in it. Humiliating, but i could never have done it otherwise. On the other hand, perhaps the high point of the whole visit was Flora Grubb, not your typical plant store. Rather, it's a gorgeous botanical garden with, it you look closely, small price tags on just about everything. No no, it's the tags that are small. Check it out:

I have written on several occasions about how the ability to read the body language of others is a skill that improves with age. And i've been less than modest in describing my own ability at this. Yesterday i had an enlightening experience.

I had gone out shopping, as usual on the Segway, and had stopped first at Costco and then at Rainbow, completely filling my pack and two shopping bags suspended from the handlebars, so i was heavily laden. But on the way home i realized that i needed coffee and could treat myself to a bag of the good stuff at Four Barrel on Valencia.

He'd read me like a book and had me cold, so i immediately confessed and we got a good laugh over it.

Oh, yes. To celebrate my 68th birthday i Segwayed out this noon to Raja for some curried spinach and naan, and what did i discover but a Morcky opus right here in San Francisco that had been there on Fillmore off Haight since sometime last fall. I wrote about Morcky Boy, as he then styled himself, in my 2004 Amsterdam tale Amsterdam by Foot, which was before anybody else had covered him on the Internet. By the following year, he was all over it and even had his own site. Now he's intercontinental...and getting better.

About 1980 a couple of guys named Ditmar and Wolfgang came to San Francisco from Munich and established The German Oak on Market Street between Noe and Sanchez. It became a very popular restaurant owing to their hard work, the good food, the reasonable prices, the gemutlichkeit, and the excellent wait staff - the two stars of which were Richard, whose last day at the Oak ended when a couple of large men in shiny black shoes dropped by with the terrible news that according to their records he had died twenty-five years earlier at the age of two in Los Angeles, and Susie.

Susie was about thirty, the daughter of German immigrants and completely bilingual. She was also very pretty, completely charming, and totally on top of any situation that might come up.

Like that time one evening when the Health Inspector paid an unannounced visit. As soon as one of the somewhat over-indulged patrons at the bar realized who the visitor was, he bristled and stood, about to "protect" the establishment. Susie picked up on this instantly, and before anyone else could move, she swooped in and deftly distracted our would-be savior, thus preventing a scene.

I saw her do this sort of thing routinely. Her radar covered the whole restaurant, and she was never at a loss.

But then, toward the end of the restaurant's run, she announced that she was going to be married, not to anyone we knew but rather to this mystery boyfriend named Philip no one had seen and she hadn't even mentioned having. A couple of weeks later, she announced that they were having a simple civil ceremony at City Hall followed by a party at her house, where we could all meet Philip.

So on the happy evening Allen and I wrapped our presents and walked over to Susie's house.

She and Philip opened the door.

"Philip!" I shrieked.

"Aarrgh!" squealed Philip.

"Well," observed Allen to Susie, "I see your husband knows my husband."

Susie, on the other hand, was speechless.

And OK, it wasn't as bad as it looked because Philip and i had met a year or so earlier and done some pawing around, but negotiations over who was getting what broke down before any real sex occurred.

Finally, since we're in an Amsterdammy mood after that Morcky shot, how 'bout this San Francisco version of a gevelsteen i spotted on 11th Street between Market and Mission. A little harder to read than most, but at least it's in English:

There's been a fabulous medical breakthrough:

Yesterday morning when i took the dressing off my arm to change it, i discovered that finally finally finally after two and a half months, i have a real, honest-to-goodness scab where the skin is missing. I would have tap danced for joy except i was standing in the shower and prudence prevailed.

This little shred of good news has so turned my head around that i am positively ebullient. What slough of despond?

I was so excited that today, in the course of a routine maintenance at Luscious Garage, my new auto shop, i accessorized my Prius.

Well, it was that or spinning hubcaps.

Oh, and here's my new mechanic on a Segway test ride inside her garage:

And unlike my previous mechanics, she writes entertainingly. Here's her blog, and note the date of this entry.

The menu for tonight's dinner for Ian, my visiting Canadian anthropologist/linguist/lexicographer friend, who deserves a good American home-cooked meal, having spent years in a thatch hut in the wilds of Borneo with the Penan while learning their language and writing a dictionary and grammar for it.

Seeded Sourdough Baguettes from Noe Valley Bakery. When i went down to the bakery this morning to pick up the bread, the staff were wearing their new tee-shirts, "Born and Raised in Noe Valley." I was laughing so hard over this that i was back home before i realized that if it had been "Born and Risen in Noe Valley", it would have been just as funny and grammatical to boot.

A salad of dry farmed Early Girl, Golden Globe, and Purple Cherokee tomatoes on a bed of baby spinach and adolescent arugula, dressed with a vinaigrette of Stonehouse Lisbon Lemon extra virgin olive oil and my own raspberry vinegar.

Wild Coho Salmon poached (while the groundskeeper's back was turned) and served cold with caper mayonnaise, garnished with brined and lightly pickled red onion and Dasher cucumber.

Fresh Cranberry beans simmered with Chantenay carrots and generic yellow onion, lightly augmented with epazote from the Castro Farmers' Market that i dried myself.

A stir-fry of okra, red and green jalapeņo, and red onion (I'm putting enough jalapeņo in this that there'll be no complaints about slime.)

Willie's Crisp made of blackberries and the last of the season's yellow nectarines, optionally dressed with quark from Oakdale Cheese.

And speaking of epazote, yesterday afternoon i'm Segwaying to the Castro Farmers' Market to get the cucumbers, and in the next block down speak to a woman on the sidewalk. She's curious about the Segway and i give her a trial lesson. Turns out she lives around the corner from me on 21st Street and is headed to the market herself, never having been to it. So i fall in beside her for the remaining three blocks, touting the market up one side and down the other enroute. As we arrive, i excitedly point out my epazote vendor and say, "I never saw anybody with it before, but she usually has fresh epazote."

My new friend replies, "I grow it in my garden."

Speaking of gardens, here's a friend of mine in Stephen's:

Oh, tra la. My excitement knows no bounds. My beloved baby sister is here for her first visit in ten years or so, and better yet, she's brought Charlotte with her. I'd not spent much time around Charlotte, especially not since my doctors got me off those meds that were screwing my brain up, so it's not all that surprising that the more i saw of her, the more i enjoyed her.

I remember her wonderful coup in 2000 when she managed to get my sister and me into the brand new Denver International Airport immediately after the opening ceremony when it was still fully illuminated but no human besides ourselves and a handful of maintenance and security folks remained inside. Picture having all that space to yourself and with a knowledgeable guide leading you to all the best vantages. When we'd had our fill and were driving home just after sunset, Charlotte stopped the car about a mile away from the terminal so that we could get out, look behind us, and see it rising from the prairie, brilliantly illuminated from within and without and glowing like not an emerald city, but rather one of diamond.

Nothing so dramatic this time since i was the expedition leader, but I did get to take them up to meet Gloria in Santa Rosa, have a fine lunch at Rendez Vous Bistro (where the food is much better than their French), and drive them home down the coast. We spent an hour at Stinson Beach on a day when the air was so warm that the sand was packed with people and there were even a few folks in the icy water.

I think it's against the law to fail to post a pic of your sister when she visits, so here she and Charlotte are on Stinson Beach on probably the hottest day of the year:

Becky is the light of my life. I adore her, and know she loves me, too. We marvel at how lucky we are to be so devoted to each other when we see so many other people at war with their siblings.

But it's not surprising i love her since she's so kind and thoughtful toward everyone. For example, she recently learned that a friend of hers in Denver wanted to make our mother's famous pie, for which i had painstakingly described the preparation in the recipe section here on NoeHill. Anyone but my sister would have just sent her friend an email containing a link to my recipe. But no, Becky is so loving that she went to all the trouble to copy the entire recipe and then painstakingly edit out all the entertainment and background material, leaving only the minimal necessary information. Then she printed this out and passed it on, thus sparing her friend the ordeal of slogging through the quagmire of my prose.

How could anyone not love a sister so thoughtful?

And yes, despite Becky's background as a journalist, her own prose is not "nasty, short, and brutish" like that Stella Gibbons accused journalists of writing in Cold Comfort Farm, but it is certainly short.

This remarkable video of a polar bear playing with a sled dog. got me to thinking about our relations with the animal world and how we categorize various animals differently.

For example, Rina loves pigeons and throws food scraps to them over my protests that this is a violation of San Francisco's health code. Well, she's Dutch, and one of the things i love about them is their brazen disregard for little rules. What i don't love is pigeons. I hate the damn things and consider them flying rats but without the high level of personal hygiene observed by rats.

But then one day during her visit last June we were out in the Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park, and there were these cute little squirrels politely, even graciously, accepting crumbs from kind strangers. They were just adorable, and even i could grasp the hypocrisy in my desperately wanting to feed one as i sat beneath a "Please Don't Feed the Animals" sign knowing full well that if i had had a single crumb on my person i would have tossed it to the cutest.

And now my sister has just left after a brief visit during which she updated me on the progress in her decades-long war with those rats with fluffy tails that occupy her backyard trees and have made her life miserable by getting into the walls of her house and other atrocities.

So i'm sitting at the kitchen table this morning and look up to see a new sight: one of them sitting prettily on the banister of my balconette. Remembering my sister's warnings, i grabbed a piece of bread out of the refrigerator. Alas, he was gone before i could get to the door with his treat.

The Welcome Wagon has placed on the balconette an introductory platter containing a wedge of cheese, a chunk of bread, and a few almonds to let him know that the NoeHill Downstairs kitchen is an excellent place for a mid-day snack, an afternoon nap safe from cats, and even, later, after we've got to know each other and if he's into it, a nude photography session. No no, the photographer will be fully clothed.

Actually, i'm getting ahead of myself there, as it's now late afternoon and the food is untouched. Of course if he comes back i'll be headed out to Costco for a fifty pound bag of Purina Squirrel Chow.

And since i don't have a pic of my little bushy buddy, here's one of yellow door i like:

I like having guests, i love having foreign guests, and i most especially love foreign guests who haven't been here before. Fresh and impressionable. And under ideal conditions, they see or hear things for which i can supply a translation. Harm Jan and Mark meet all these criteria except for virtually never needing a translation, so i'm having a blast.

Actually, the blast started on their first morning when, after they'd showered, i jumped in the bathroom for my shower and discovered that their towel bars had sprouted washandjes.

I had written about Rina bringing her washandje last year, and this is clearly the final piece of evidence required to prove that the Dutch consider it so unspeakably barbarous to bathe without one that they carry their own wherever they go.

And damn me. I have at least three washandjes in my towel cabinet, all given me by Dutch friends in an attempt to civilize me, but somehow i forgot when i was putting their towels out that my visitors were Dutch and that i had the opportunity to blow them away by providing an unexpected amenity.

No, wait. I wouldn't have put them out if i'd thought about them because i was trying to make the visit as strange as possible for them. So i thought it was a nice touch to make their bed up using a top sheet in the American style rather than having the comforter directly on top of the bottom sheet in the European style. And to make sure they didn't cheat and just crawl in on top of the top sheet, i stuck a really hairy blanket in there beneath the comforter. The bed linen Nazi, that's me.

I had great fun with them and ran them around the city to as many farmers' markets and grocery stores as they could bear, having to remind myself that all tourists are not as obsessively focused on local foods as i am. To give 'em a break, i took them to the Marin headlands. Here they are with the Point Bonita lighthouse barely visible in the background:

I spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas with Gloria, as we cooked for friends on Thanksgiving and wanted to do very little on Christmas. I offered to take her out to some place in Santa Rosa that was doing dinner on Christmas and then somehow, damn me, let her talk me into letting her cook for me on Christmas. Just the two of us.

And then my friend Bob got me an invitation to a Christmas Eve dinner that i've been hearing about for years at Saratoga Springs, so the plan became to drive up there on Christmas Eve, have the dinner, and then drive back down to Santa Rosa on Christmas morning. Airtight.

Well, until i got there after the beautiful drive and unloaded my contributions to the dinner and then started discovering things i'd failed to bring. Like a pillow, which sounds trivial except that my degenerative disk disease makes it necessary to prop my head in just the right position at night. And then i realized that i hadn't brought enough warm bedding since the place i'd be sleeping was cold. And then i started trying to socialize with all these people i didn't know by sidling up to a group of them and eavesdropping until somebody said something that gave me a conversational opening. And then realized that i'd forgot my hearing aids, which i really need now if i'm in a group of people.

So despair swept over me and i told 'em i wasn't feeling well and left. Had a hamburger and chocolate milk shake in Hopwell on the way home.

Got up on Christmas morning and drove back up to Santa Rosa, but on the way, on the first block of Scott Street there between Duboce and Waller, a block i've traversed literally thousands of times over the past 35 years, i spot for the first time a sight so fine that i turn around and stop the car and get a pic:

When i arrive at Gloria's she's making a wonderful Christmas dinner for us featuring a roasted chicken with dressing on the side, good veggies, and for dessert a lemon meringue pie that was the best i ever ate. She'd brought her cymbidiums in from the freezing night temperatures, so it was like eating lunch in a greenhouse. Afterwards she led me over not far from her house to a fairly new commercial development that was built around a spring they accidentally uncovered at the very beginning of the development. Handsome place:

And to close the year out, here's a bachelor household tip i developed just this morning.

That handsome rubber coaster beside your keyboard for your coffee mug?

If you don't hose it off periodically, the crud buildup will reach the point that the coaster will briefly adhere to the bottom of the cup as you raise it; but before the cup reaches your lips, the coaster will release and fall to the desk, dramatically reducing the weight of the coffee cup and causing you to involuntarily jerk it upwards. Sensing in a millisecond that this is not desirable, you will abruptly halt the upward motion of the cup....but not, alas, that of the remaining coffee.

Shirt, pants, desktop, keyboard, and floor.

The mouse, alarmed by my great oath while the coffee was midair, scurried to safety.

Let's start this year's Production Report with a food-related pic, a shot from the second floor of the Crocker Galleria looking down onto the Thursday morning farmers' market on the ground floor:

As usual, I do not list the countless jars of chocolate sauce I make, nor do i track the cocoa powders i use. However, last fall i brought several boxes of Blooker cocoa powder back from Amsterdam so as to give Americans a taste of something they can't get here.

BOM - Blood Orange Marmalade - 1 Feb, 2 Feb, 8 Mar. The blood oranges are from Gloria's tree, as is the token lemon. Until further notice, the lemon in all my marmalades, jams, and jellies will be from that tree.

KPJAL - Kiwi Pasilla Jalapeño Jam - 4 Feb, 1 Mar. I'm continuing last year's experiment with using Pasilla chiles to add chile flavor complexity without excess piquancy. Actually, it's not an experiment anymore, as i love it.

BOOM - Extra Bloody Blood Orange Marmalade - 8 Mar. I discovered some blood orange juice that i'd frozen last year, so i used it instead of the water that normally goes into this marmalade. If Gloria's tree cooperates, i'll do this again next year, as it worked.

GLJM - Gloria's Lemon Jalapeño Marmalade - 9 Mar. Just a marmalade from Gloria's lemons with a little bit (not enough) of pepper flavor.

KHM - Kumquat Honey Marmalade - 24, 25 April. Glenn Tanimoto, my kiwi and French plum vendor at the Heart of the City Farmers' Market, gave me six pounds of kumquats that had minor blemishes. I dug through the internet for recipe ideas, and ended up making a marmalade with honey instead of sugar. Well, hey, might as well take it all the way upscale. It worked, although i was nearly crosseyed after picking the damn seeds out of what felt like hundreds of kumquats.

BPAJLL - Blueberry Pomegranate Apricot Jalapeño Jam - 24 May. Sort of cleaning out the refrigerator on this one, but interesting. [OUT OF STOCK]

RB - Raspberry Jelly - 31 May. Just a plain old Raspberry Jelly, nothing complicated. [OUT OF STOCK]

RBV - Raspberry Vinegar - 12 June. I poured boiling vinegar over the strained seeds and pulp from that last batch of raspberry jelly and let it steep for a couple of weeks in the refrigerator. Then strained it through a cotton cloth. Nice color. Great taste. [OUT OF STOCK]

BBJ - Blackberry Jalapeño Jelly - 14 June, 15 July, 11 September. I put only one seeded and one whole red jalapeño in the June and July ones, so the pepper level is subtle, just enough to brighten up the flavors. Not willing let well enough alone, in the September one i used two huge red jalapeños, seeds and all. Turned out pretty hot, so this one's definitely not for the kids. Actually, when Sr. Yerena, who is still my main berry man, tasted his jar, he remarked, "hey, i can taste the chiles." Take that for what it's worth. Alas, like the previous ones, it didn't set hard.

TBJ - Tayberry Jalapeño Jelly - 15, 30 June. Three whole Jalapeños in these, so you can definitely taste the pepper.

CPK - Cherry Jam flavored with Patak's Lime Relish - 18 June. I tried this last year and didn't get much feedback until this spring, when i gave the last jar to my adorable retinologist, Dr. Anne Fung. She and her husband loved it so much that she gave me a phone call in hopes that there would still be some left. So i tried it again, and frankly, i like it better myself this year. [OUT OF STOCK]

CNPK - Cherry Nectarine Jam with Patak's Lime Relish - 25 June. Just to be different, i tried it with half nectarines.

BBV - Blackberry Vinegar - 13 July, 15 August. From the seeds and pulp from the 14 June and 15 July jellies. Tried steeping this a whole month. Flavorful. [OUT OF STOCK]

NAL - Nectarine Jam - 17 July. OK, to compensate for all the esoteric stuff recently, here's a plain old nectarine jam with nuthin' in it but the pulp of a couple of Gloria's apples and the juice of a couple of her lemons. So there. Got the nectarines at the new Castro Farmers' Market, which i am just loving at least partly because it's not as up$cale as the Noe Valley or Ferry Plaza markets.

TBV - Tayberry Vinegar - 21, 30 July. From the seeds and pulp of the June jellies. The flavor is more concentrated in the second batch. [OUT OF STOCK]

NPK - Nectarine Jam with Patak's Lime Relish - 31 July. I used a delicate hand with the lime relish in this one so as not to overpower the nectarines. I also threw in a couple of seeded and deveined red chiles of an unfamiliar variety that look like pointed jalapeños but are much milder. Tasty.

N7JAL - Nectarine Jalapeño Jam. 14 August. Trying to amp the hotness level up, i threw in seven little red seeded and deveined jalapeños. You can taste 'em but it wasn't enough. Well, they were the littlest ones i ever saw. Months later it struck me that perhaps they weren't jalapeños.

RBJ - Raspberry Jalapeño Jam. 15 August, 11 October. I was generous with the jalapeños this time, and it has a really lovely pepper flavor without being overpowering. That said, it didn't set well at all, so perfection remains elusive. I put one whole large red jalapeño in the 11 October one, and it turned out damn near perfectly hot, enough that you don't have to wait to taste it, but not too hot. Hell, this one even set well. Go figure.

BBJ - Blackberry Jalapeño Jam - 11 September. Not willing let well enough alone, in this one i used two huge red jalapeños, seeds and all. Turned out pretty hot, so this one's definitely not for the kids. Actually, when Sr. Yerena, who is still my main berry man, tasted his jar, he remarked, "hey, i can taste the chiles." Take that for what it's worth. Alas, like the previous one, it didn't set well.

RBJV - Raspberry Jalapeño Vinegar - 15 September, 13 November. Now that i've figured out how to make berry-flavored vinegars, i find myself making the jellies primarily so that i'll have the seeds and pulp to make vinegars with since everybody likes the vinegars so much. The jalapeño flavor came through nicely into the vinegar.

BBJV - Blackberry Jalapeño Vinegar - 12 October. [OUT OF STOCK]

Pickled Peppers - 17 October, 24 October, 7 November, 14 November. A couple of years ago i started pouring boiling white vinegar into bottles i'd filled with little peppers. Sprinkle a few drops of the vinegar onto your spinach or anything else that needs a kick. As you deplete the vinegar, simply add more, since the peppers will "keep" in the vinegar for years. The bottle i use for myself is probably five years old. This time of year, vendors like the Herrs at the Noe Valley Farmers' Market sell whole branches off the pepper bush, so you get a pretty mixture of red and green peppers.

SAL - Strawberry Jam - 19 October. Plain old, plain old.

SJAL - Strawberry Jalapeño Jam - 19 October. For the adults.

GGLM - Gloria's Green Lemon Marmalade - 10 November, 21 November. Gloria had her lemon tree pruned and gave me a big bag of green lemons so i could experiment with them. A good taste, and distinctly different from the marmalade made with her ripe lemons. Had to wait a little while before making the second batch because i took filets outta two of my fingers with the mandolin the first time around. Damn safety guard slows me down, so i put it aside and can't find it now.

WBJC - Whole Baby Feijoa Chutney - 17 November. Got only one batch made this year, so chutney lovers better speak up.

YCGLM - Yuzu, Clementine, and Green Lemon Marmalade - 30 November. I heard folks talking about the Hamada's yuzus and thought it would be wonderful to make a marmalade of them, so i bought four pounds. Got 'em home, sliced into one, and saw the error of my ways: each half was two layers deep in big seeds. Tried using my juicer, but there were so damn many seeds that they filled the seed tray for every two pieces of fruit. So i gave up and picked the seeds out with a knife and julienned the peel. I was blind and crazy by the time i'd finished half of 'em, so i did a bunch of clementines plus one of Gloria's green lemons leftover from Thanksgiving. One thing for sure, they don't sell this one anywhere. And hey, in all modesty, it turned out pretty tasty even though it did set like concrete. Here's a look into the heart of a yuzu. The upper level seeds in the right half have been removed:

CYM - Clementine Yuzu Marmalade - November. This one has more Clementines than Yuzus.

BHM - Buddha's Hand Marmalade - 13 December, 23 December. "Buddha's Hand" is the fingered variety of citron. The Hamadas sell both this variety and the variety know as "Etrog" that has traditionally been used in Jewish rituals, which i mentioned to Sybil as we were shopping that i didn't want because i didn't want anything with religious connections. Then it struck me, whose Hand? Ah well, Buddha, schmuddha, i said, and went ahead and bought it. The marmalade turned out delicate although both batches could have been sweeter. And oh, all my marmalades seem to be setting up a bit too firm this year. Too stiff? Just stir in a little water. Next problem?