Obsessions, Part II
A California Obsession: In-n-Out.
Rarely do I eat fast food, but whenever I am in California, I must have In-n-Out. (I’ll take the #1 with no onions, please.) For those not in the know, that’s a double-double with fries and a drink. I don’t know what it is about this place. Everything is fresh; the meat is never frozen, and the fries are cut from potatoes at each store just prior to cooking. They are great. Their sauce is fantastic. I love that the only things you can get are hamburgers, fries, milkshakes, and sodas, but even more, I love that there’s the unspoken “secret menu.” It’s like a secret handshake for those obsessed with In-n-Out. While San Francisco has many great restaurants, I took advantage of having walked down to the Wharf and ate my lunch outside on a table at In-n-Out. YUM!!!

Obsessions, Part I
I know I have quite a few obsessions. Some good, some bad, but I don’t think that there are any that I’m not willing to share. My friends who live in San Francisco know: One of my obsessions is the Golden Gate Bridge. I don’t know why. I think it stems from the years I lived in San Francisco. Every morning I would walk from my apartment to the Golden Gate Bridge and back to get in my daily exercise. I must say that I do miss it. There are so many vantage points in the city from which you can see the GGB. I love driving through the Sunset district and being able to see parts of the bridge off in the distance. Several weeks ago I was in SF. I got in late Friday night and was going to the South Bay on Saturday mid-day. I didn’t think I’d get an opportunity to see the bridge the way I like it best: up close and personal. My friend I was staying with had lunch plans, and the friend I was going to see in the South Bay had plans until early afternoon. As we were at the farmer’s market at the ferry building, I suddenly realized that the opportunity had just presented itself. I could walk down to Ghirardelli Square which would afford me views of the city and bay, some exercise, and a chance to see my beloved bridge. Oh happy day!

Word of the Day
Tuesday, March 6, 2007

indefatigable \in-dih-FAT-ih-guh-bul\, adjective:
Incapable of being fatigued; not readily exhausted; untiring; unwearying; not yielding to fatigue.

The Mysterious Beast

Well, in all truth, this is a wee bit overdue….

For Christmas, I had asked my parents for a new lens for my camera: a super-duper lens, that magnifies up to 135 times and has an image stabilizer. A pretty nifty lens, indeed. Well, I wanted to try it out prior to my departure. The morning my brother and I were flying out, I got up very early to take pictures. Now, this is the desert, so there are animals around. It was still very dark as I stood on the wall surrounding one end of the pool and began to snap away. I heard a noise and saw something with my peripheral vision between the Jacuzzi and the sliding glass door to my parents’ room. I know that once upon a time my mother found rabbit remains that a coyote had left her, so I was a little leery. Then I saw the beast: it was the largest skunk I had ever seen.

Honestly, I didn’t know that skunks could get so big. If this were a dog, I would say that it weighed between 40 and 50 pounds. The last thing I needed was to get sprayed just before getting on a plane. I had to go back to work, so I needed to avoid the beast at all costs. In a comedy of errors, it kept heading toward me (and no way to get out of the pool area) while I tried to get away from it. Finally it did walk across the step-stones from the pool patio onto the golf course and strode across the fairway and on to greener pastures. I’m so lucky that this story did not have a smelly ending.