Saturday Slog

Santa Barbara is a bit of a slog. Two more days to see if I can make chicken salad out of the current doldrums. I brought really strong material to the show, maybe too strong. A good client ran past the booth like I had the plague. Simple, people feel tapped, plus yesterday was the worst day for the stock market the past year. Will marshall on and put one foot in front of the other. Things can turn on a dime.

Not a lot to report. Nice meal at Super Rica, as always. chorizo, chalets and asada, washed down with some jugo de sandia aka their wonderful and pulpy watermelon juice that you have to finish off with a spoon.

I think I am actually off of beef for a while. Sort of overdosed this week, steak at the Tee Off and one at Chucks. Hour and a half wait at Harry's last night so we went for a lackluster pasta meal. It has not been a great week of dining, or much else for that matter.

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Jerry sent a link. The Himba tribe, at least according to the Free Thought Project, don't count the date a child is born or conceived as its birth date, but instead the date the mother thought about having a child.

Here is a tribe in Africa where the birth date of a child is counted not from when they were born, nor from when they are conceived but from the day that the child was a thought in its mother’s mind. And when a woman decides that she will have a child, she goes off and sits under a tree, by herself, and she listens until she can hear the song of the child that wants to come. And after she’s heard the song of this child, she comes back to the man who will be the child’s father, and teaches it to him. And then, when they make love to physically conceive the child, some of that time they sing the song of the child, as a way to invite it.

An interesting approach, especially juxtaposed against the current conundrum in Texas, where a judge has just ordered a hospital to shut down a dead mother being used to incubate a nonviable, hydrocephalic child. The comments in this morning's New York Times article are quite instructive, once again revealing our deep national divide.

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Did you know that in Japan it is considered bad luck to break a noodle? I didn't until I read Helen McHargue's excellent blog this week. And apparently slurping actually helps the unbroken noodle taste better, like aerating a sip of wine.

Speaking of blogs, Lena and Ron are in Thailand for their near annual asian trip and send a great tale of their trip to Pai. Easy town to visit.

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Of course, the weather and the waves have been epic in California this week. Did you catch this fantastic photograph on the front page of the Union Tribune by K.C. Alfred this week?

K.C. Alfred - Union Tribune

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We all get those emails. Here are a couple I received lately. Cam walked by this decorated lovely in Monterey recently.