Clementine Bitters

Local expert has been "toying with such concoctions" for several years!
hic. more mentions in the press. will it end?
Speaking of bitters, I feel a double dare challenge coming on.....! Is there any gentian root in Pardeeville?

Faux Thanksgiving Eve

The Chef & I are celebrating Thanksgiving....tomorrow...so that all the usual suspects may attend. We thought it would be a lark to postpone the turkeytime, but today we are feeling a little melancholy and lost. We substituted the family drama by going to a matinee showing of "Rachel Getting Married" and just when we thought that the recorded voice of Kaiser Permanente was our only holiday pal, a good friend rang to say hello. Still, thankful no matter what day we celebrate!

The Big Show

Stage Peek

Julia's UKE

Magic Moments

Thanks to the recent visit of M&N from the UK -- the past few weeks have been a blur of activity. Halloween, the historic election *yay*, dining at neighborhood restaurants, Speakeasy Brewery open house, walking on beaches and a trip up the coast to Point Reyes National Seashore. Oh, and we finally made it to the new California Academy of Sciences -- is it ever amazing! We are in search of the next visitors who will accompany us there. There even is a penguin cam!

this is a "frog fish"

Star of the Academy -- the albino alligator.

Halloween Bus Ride

Wedded Bliss

A happy (second) wedding day was celebrated earlier this week -- congratulations to Rodeo Queen and the Great & Powerful Oz on their shotgun nuptials. Those resourceful longtime sweethearts wanted to make a historic broom jump (again) and now their bliss is of the wedded sort. Again.

As they stated so beautifully in their announcement of this occasion to celebrate: As we have often repeated: if we needed legal & societal approval in order to sustain our commitment to each other, we would certainly have broken up long ago. So our wedding marks a different kind of tipping point: a moment of political & cultural significance-nothing less than a watershed between love and hate. The fact of our marriage signals this moment in history, when the State of California has reached a new level of commitment to us, the moment at which we are no longer seen as second-class citizens or as perverted, threatening monsters, but as legitimate, adult human beings capable of true love & deserving of equality under the law.

Our wedding, then, is a celebration not just of our relationship with each other, but of our evolving relationship to society, culture, and our home state of California. We would like to believe that we are entering a new era of love.

...and don't forget to vote No on the Hate, that's a No on Proposition Eight. It's a love vote.

p.s. we look forward to the cake.