Up in flames

Rawley's friend Luke came on Thursday. Like Rawley he has the same skinny and tall build, so much so that they even joke that they are from the same stock, the skinny chicken leg stock.

He works at fancy restaurants as a barista.

Today the three of us went out to hike the Arbuckle Grade with Nellie. After kidnapping her in Rawley's new ride, we rode a few miles north to Rumsey and across the troll bridge to start our hike. The way up was sweltering hot but beautiful. Besides the turkeys and turkey vultures, we were completely alone in the dry heat until we encountered a gang of dirt biking teenagers and two men in a black pickup. Rawley of course commented on how vulnerable we were being all alone in the woods and mentioned how he had run into another person with an ATV and a rifle on another hike he had been on. Of course we were completely fine and made it up to the top of the ridge where we could see the entire Capay Valley in all its beauty. After locating Full Belly from those heights we noticed a huge plume of dark smoke not so far away. On the ride home, the smoke could even be seen above the trees so being the pyros that we are, we decided to go check it out. Stopping first at the Guinda Corner Store for some post-hike ice-cream, we watched Cole speed by in his bright yellow volunteer firefighting suit as we listened to the store women gossiping abut the fire. Apparently some people had wanted to burn some brush and then the fire had gotten out of control. Smelling the smoke beginning to waft through the store door we rushed out to the car to go see the fire for ourselves. We rounded the bend in the creaky Mercedes and all of a sudden the smoke was billowing above us in a seventy foot plume. A small house and some horses stood in the foreground and three kids threw a baseball around in the garden as though completely oblivious to the roaring fire behind them. But as we drove further down the road we could see behind the house to the big flames that jumped and twitched in a blazing orange mass.

Eggs-actly!

Forgot to mention a near catastrophe yesterday at lunch. With so many broken eggs that we can't sell at market I decided to make a crazy dessert item for lunch. If I haven't already said it, dessert has become close to obligatory now. Alex started it by making his signature chocolate chip cookies every lunch and since then it has taken off.

Well anyway, yesterday I decided to make meringues. The flavor turned out well but the presentation was a bit sub-par. The insides were deliciously gooey with a crunchy shell but as soon as we scraped them off the sheet they shriveled into tiny crumpled morsels.

After using up so many egg whites I decided something needed to be done about the yolks so I set off making an "eight yolk delight" with my last fifteen minutes. Being a bit rushed I read the first half of the recipe and then accidentally jumped to the second half of a completely different recipe! Instead of throwing it away I ended up spooning the thick, yellow, cookie batter-like substance into a pan just to try my luck and I'm glad I did because it didn't turn out quite as puke-alicious as I had expected. To my surprise it was not all that bad, just a bit plain and dense. Rawley convinced me to then spruce it up and serve it at his lunch today with a creamcheese frosting and some strawberries on top.

Primavera

I've been saying this for weeks but spring is finally finally here. After a bout of tricky weather full of surprises (big rain storms mixed with sunny skies) we finally reached the perfect spring day today. The evening was warm and sweet and the smell of fresh grass and spring was in the air. You can also tell the days are getting warmer because the everyones' faces are getting rosier as the days go by.

Crash course

My eyes must be getting bigger because everywhere I go now I find something interesting. Today I went to my first therapy lesson and walked in to talk to the fat and grumpy receptionist who coldly led me through the paperwork. Then my name was called by a petite asian lady with a clipboard who took me to the back room to start looking at my wrist. After a series of exercises, diagrams and explanations, she finally left me for a few minutes with a hot pad resting on my scar. As the warmth spread I began to finally look beyond the immediate problem of my unresponsive thumb and inwardly chuckled at the stalky man sitting at the table infront of me. Besides grumbling about being able to return to work at Safeway in the dairy department he didn't say much else and only sat hunched over typing away on his iphone (with his left hand) as the therapist worked on his fractured arm with an ultrasound. To my right an old Chilean lady and a therapist tried desperately to understand each other with hand gestures to no avail. After hesitating for a few minutes my frustration finally won over and I butted in to offer translation. The old woman had fallen and broken her middle finger which was now swollen to twice the normal size. After communicating through me that there was no longer any pain, she proudly held her hand up in a fist and smiled. The therapist nodded back, progress. No translation needed.