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Dec 25 02: road trip
Here we are in California again. We spent the first couple days with Paul’s younger brother Rob, doing an overnight drive-around-and-taste-wines trip. We drove up the Anderson Valley, visiting a number of small wineries, and stayed overnight in Boonville. Bought ourselves a lovely magnum of bubbly at Roederer. Useful wine fact: sparkling wines age better in magnums—magna?—than they do in the smaller traditional size. Much mellower, richer flavor. Those of you who show up on New Year’s will be able to sample.
The Anderson Valley takes your breath away, it’s so beautiful, and it was a perfect weekend for a drive. The roads wound up and down and around and around, past vineyards we’d never heard of and tiny towns that the twenty-first century has thus far forgotten about. Boonville, the closest thing to an urban center that the AV has to offer, may be small and sleepy but the little hotel has one bang-up kitchen. The AV was also the home of its own local dialect, Boontling, spoken in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Now it’s pretty much a curiosity for linguists, but it used to be a lively local way to talk about taboo subjects in public and to insult out-of-towners to their faces.
The Phillips brothers both snore.
The fog was burning off as we headed south for home on Monday morning, unveiling oaks hung with pale moss and, on the shadier side of the narrow valley, thick stands of redwood forest. Anybody with time to spend in Northern California and a car to drive in is hereby urged to hit the road.
brightly-colored paper
The buildup to Christmas always makes me insane. Have I bought enough yet? Are the gifts all personal and guaranteed to delight and have I left anybody out and can I stop now? Don’t get me wrong. I love to give the gifts, but the selection, the acquisition, the dealing with the crush of manic suburbanites with Coach handbags, reduces me to a whimpering mess in the parking lot.That being said, it’s over now, and the anxiety was wasted. As usual, it came in waves: dinner the night before with Dad, then back to Mom’s for the night, then open presents at Mom’s, then back to Dad’s for breakfast, then dinner at Mom’s…you get the idea. Vast quantities of wine, time to see aunts and uncles and step-siblings, good food…what’s not to like? My sweet sister Rebecca got a big pile of maternity clothes. Paul got sweaters from both of my parents. Becky gave me a Spongebob T-Shirt, which is without question the most aggressively happy article of clothing I’ve ever seen. I think I got a little manic when I put it on. Hard to imagine, but true. We’re all lying around like a bunch of blissed-out elephant seals now, surrounded by scraps of mylar curly ribbon.
Excellent.