Bookends

I don't do as many swaps on SwapBot as I used to.  But I do like exchanging post cards and journals.  This year there have been monthly journals, where you keep a journal for a whole month and then send it off to your partner.  There has been one of these journal swaps every other month, and they've all been fun to do.

The day before I began the current (May) journal, Walt and I met our friends Jeri and Phil (the other Jeri and Phil) for lunch at Fenton's in Vacaville.  At that lunch, I discovered (after years of eating there) that they have (free) post cards, including the one at he left, which is one of my favorite pictures--a larger-than-poster size copy of this picture adorns one of the walls of the restaurant.

I brought home a couple of the free postcards and so the first page of my May journal was this photo and a description of Fenton's.

Today is the 30th of the month and the journal will end tomorrow, and yesterday I met Char...at Fenton's, so I got a different free postcard that that will be at the end of my May Journal.  It's kind of like Fenton's was bookends for this particular journal.  

Given the distance from Davis to Vacaville it's definitely rare that I would eat at Fenton's twice in one month.

As usual we had a great lunch.  We started with shakes (I had a vanilla malt) and I learned a great secret for next time.  It used to be I would get a small sundae which comes heaped high in a small bowl and dripping with so much topping that the topping all rolls off the ice cream and pools at the bottom of the plate that the bowl sits on.  Awhile ago I asked for my sundae to come in a LARGE bowl and that was just GREAT.  For the first time I didn't have to try to figure out how I was going to get hot fudgs off of a flat plate without licking it.

They deivered the shakes.  The waitress had asked us if we wanted whipped cream and we both said yes, but my malt had no whipped cream on it.  When I complained to the server who brought it to me she said she would get some more.  She came back with a whole little bowl of whipped cream -- easily twice what would have been squirted on the top.

(the whipped cream was actually heaped on this bowl)

 

Next time I will order my malt with whipped cream on the side and see if I get that much whipped cream again.

My new favorite menu item is a crab melt sandwich which is different from the usual crab salad sandwich I have gotten on several trips to Fenton's.  The melt comes with avocado and I like it a lot better.

The sandwiches are huge and I usually bring half of my sandwich home to Walt, if he doesn't come with me.  Today he was here with Ned while an assessor came to check the house and give us an idea of what it might be worth.  We have no plans whatsoever to sell it, but Ned thought it would be good to get the assessment before he and Marta start doing major rennovation around here.. 

When I finished the first half of my sandwich, I did consider taking the other half home, but it just tasted too good, so I ate it.

After lunch, my plan had been to stop at one of the other stores in the mall where Fenton's is located, but once I got into the car, I felt so full I couldn't see getting out and wandering around a store again, so I just drove home.

I got home in a full post-prandial exhaustion.  I thought about the standard Mexican siesta after heavy meals and what a good idea that was.  It took me a good, oh, 5 or maybe 10 miutes to get to sleep and I slept for an hour or two.  I woke up still groggy, was up for an hour, trying to think about what to cook for dinner, given that there was no way I was going to eat anything.  I was so groggy that I went back to sleep for another hour.

I finally woke up and made dinner, but gave it all to Walt and stumbled back to the recliner.  It was probably 8 p.m. before I actually felt "normal" again!

I woke up in time to paste a Fenton's postcard into my May journal, to make the second half of the Fenton's bookends.  Now it's time to go back to sleep.

Not Again

It  was a bit after 3 when I woke up, after sleeping for about 3 hours.  I turned on Morning Joe, hoping it would put me back to sleep.  I thought I had mistakenly chosen the wrong channel because they seemed to be showing a rerun of the Pittsburgh massacre and talking about "11 people killed."

In short order, I realized this was not Pittsburgh, it was Thousand Oaks here in California and another shooter had gone berserk and killed 11 people (12 now, at the time of this writing) and wounded "at least" 12 others. 

With the shooter also killing himself, they may never know what prompted him to open fire on "college night" in "the 4th safest city in the country."  The gun was not an automatic, it was purchased 4 years ago, he has no terrorist connections that they have found yet.  Maybe they can find enough to make a "best guess" scenario, but there are still 12 dead, including a long-time Ventura county sheriff near retirement age.

Once again, my heart hurts and I feel the helplessness of being an onlooker.  Jeri had maybe the best suggestion for all of us:

Assignment for everyone: when you are out in the world this week, look people in the eye and acknowledge them. Smile and say hello. Hold the door for someone. Let the other car go first. Thank the barista. Whatever.

Maybe if we start an epidemic of "kindness" in our communities we can begin to prevent such heinous acts.  Maybe not, but what a more pleasant place it will be  to live.

Kindness did not start in the nation's capital, where the president, crowing about a glowing victory in the midterms (what TV was HE watching??), took on the members of the press and even threw out a CNN reporter and took away his White House access pass, using a doctored videotape claiming the reporter had manhandled a White House staffer, when comparisons between the WH tape and the original CNN tape (and memories of everyone who watched it live) show that he did not.

But this White House is unscrupulous and will go to any lengths to achieve whatever goal they desire.

"CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them.
You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn’t be working for CNN"

Good news in the midst of all this was checking my blood test results.  Last CK result was 558, this time it's 498.  Normal is <200 .="" better.="" feeling="" font="" i="" m="" nbsp="" no="" wonder="">

With nothing positive but blood tests to think about at home Walt and I took off for Vacaville to meet Char for lunch at good ol' Fenton's.

Fenton's is our go-to meeting place whenever Char and I get together for lunch.  It's a longer drive for her, but she will drive that distance to get a crab salad sandwich.

Fenton's is amazing.  We first encountered it in Oakland and were pleased when they decided to open a shop in Vacaville.  We don't eat there often but it's a special place.

They have humongous sundaes and my complaint is always that there is copious sweet sauce, but the ice cream is piled so high in the bowl that the sauce goes all over the saucer on which it is served.  I got smart one time and requested that my small sundae be served in a larger bowl and I was able to keep most of the chocolate sauce in the bowl so I could eat it with a spoon rather than debate about what people would think of a 75 year old woman licking the plate.

I have never ordered their banana split, which is reported to contain a quart of ice cream.

But we all ordered vanilla malts (loaded with malt!) and crab sandwiches and were very happy with our lunch.

On the way home there was thick smoke in the air, which we thought was coming from the fire that is burning about 100 miles north of here (14,000 people without power right now and mandatory evacuations of several small towns).  The traffic was surprisingly thick and in spots actually stopped, but then we discovered an active fire in the median, which professionals were in the process of putting out.

From there it was clear sailing home and an opportunity to catch up on the latest depressing news from the midterm results and the latest lies from the White House.