Oh choko!

It took three tries, but I’ve sprouted a choko. Watch this space for delicious Depression era apple pies! Mmmmmm, choko-ey.

Shades of grey

Me: Check this out. It’s a grey and brown hair. But look – the brown bit is not the end, it’s the root.

He: Hang on, let me have a look in the light.

A pause, while he inspects the hair in question and verifies my outlandish claim.

He: It seems you are ungreying. Or perhaps turning brindle.

We both turn to look at our brindle dog. Her brown eyes remain inscrutable.

Two kinds

There are two main types of seasonal contagion.

There’s the good kind, producing a sniffle or a cough makes you just poorly enough, and just social-pariah enough, to stay home from work. Yet brain and hands remain nimble and dextrous and you can make and do and read and drink tea. It’s a bonus day bestowed upon you by the universe. It’s a little bit awesome, even if you’ve rubbed raw the stretch of flesh betwixt nose and upper lip (the philtrum, I believe).

Then there’s the bad kind, with symptoms that leave you so wretched that you can scarcely crawl out of bed to deal with basic bodily functions which, most likely, are so perturbed by viral activity that they are more base than basic. Where you hide from the light and wimper a bit.

Guess which one I just had?

Cheese Shop variations

At the Meteor Crater Gift and Rock Shop, Arizona:

Me: May I have a thirty-two cent stamp, please?

Woman 1: We don’t have thirty-two cent stamps.

Me: Oh, OK then.

Woman 2: Do you mean just a postcard stamp?

Me: Yep.

Woman 1: We have those but we charge more for them because we have to go out and buy them.

Me: How much?

Woman 1: Thirty-seven cents.

Me: That’s fine.

Woman 1 then sells me a thirty-two cent stamp for thirty-seven cents.

One Delorean, two Deloreans

…three Deloreans, four.

Actually, there were five all up in this parade.

Highlights from the Amtrak TravelMall catalogue

1. Orbitwheels, a “cross between a skateboard and inline skates but with more freedom and simplicity than either”.

2. Thundershirt, a tight coat for anxious dogs that works on the same principle as “swaddling an infant or people with autism”.

3. Protein Ketchup that “delivers the taste and mouthfeel you expect, with the nutrition you want”.

4. Video pen “ideal for anyone in an evidence gathering situation”.

5. Portable infrared sauna (visuals: think girl wearing tent at Occupy Melbourne, only with better lymph drainage).

6. Traveller’s bed bug thwarting sleeping cocoon with “durable polyester threads impervious to bed bugs’ teeth”. Entomological note: bed bugs don’t have teeth. But I bet traveller has a sweat problem.

7. The Hypnocube, creating an LED-charged light show extravaganza with 4,096 different colours.

Profound thoughts inspired by travel

Curmudgeon: Imagine how strange it would be if the word ‘bet’ was spelled like the word ‘debt’.

America, I am in you.

The Curmudgeon and I are on a winning streak.

That’s not us. But this is.

This morning we asked a chap where we should go for breakfast. Somewhere the locals eat, we said. Turns out he’s San Diego’s top food critic. So we took his recommendation seriously.

The Curmudgeon hasn’t been here as long as I have so he’s still enraptured by the novelty of eating the oddest thing on the menu. Peanut butter and banana-stuffed French toast for him! Elvis-death styley! Apparently it beat an Iron Chef in a breakfast throwdown and was featured on a telly show called ‘The Best Thing I Ever Ate’. For me, a more modest pile of pancakes as big as the fat-tyres wheels of our hired beach cruiser bikes.

I am very greedy. I am a lifetime member of the Clean Plate Club. Yet this is as far as I could get.


In further luckiness, we strolled past the San Diego Museum of Art and free tickets were thrust at us by a passing couple who had spares. So we found ourselves in a fantastically kitsch and barmy exhibition of floral interpretations of artworks. It was the silliest thing. Some people interpreted paintings of a vase of flowers by constructing… A vase of flowers. Others got a little freaky. We loved it. I took one snap before I learned I wasn’t allowed to do that. Oops.

Today: on to San Francisco!

Friday is good because

Did somebody say buns?

Some plans

The Curmudgeon is making hot cross buns. I am watching one of those train-wreck shows about hoarders until Noel Fielding’s new telly show starts. Soon I will to bed, for tomorrow we rise at dawn to eat buns. That is why it is called Good Friday. Because Buns are Good.

Oh, and then on Sunday? Really, really early? I’m going to get up and go to the airport and go to America for a month.