First–happy birthday, Dad!
I love this town. My folks lived here the first year they were married, before they moved to Maryland in the early 50’s, and when they found out we were considering a job offer here, worried quietly–but didn’t tell us till we’d accepted the offer–that if we moved here, we’d never leave and we’d always be far away.
They were right. It’s been a good place to be.
My husband and daughter and I on impulse ditched the all-week leftovers last night and went to a place new to us, Thaiphoon, for dinner. You have to love a restaurant that introduces itself to you with a pun while referencing Real Weather (and the food was good). We do miss having a greater variety in the sky and air; it brings you, as one friend noted, closer to nature when the weather’s bad. The interesting nature award will probably have to go instead to the mountain lion that was sitting on our orthodontist’s fence a few years ago. Or the golden eagle eyeballing me as I got out of my car at home. I’ll take the eagle, thanks.
There is a local artist, Greg Brown, whose late mother-in-law used to play the organ at our church, her territory for decades–till a young teenage upstart of a show-off started horning in on her turf a few times a month. If he goofed, she let our son know with a grin: “Great improvisation there, Richard!”
Greg is famous for his murals on some of the downtown buildings. Check out this one, my favorite. Or this one, up in San Francisco. Or this.
This is also a town where once upon a time two new Stanford MBAs looked at the pet rock craze, where someone had just made a fortune peddling plain old pebbles with fun packaging, and they were sure they had a one-hit wonder in them, too. So they wrote, “Juggling for the Complete Klutz,” making good on their goofing off, expecting that that would be that. Thus Klutz Press was somewhat inadvertently born: the authors, like us, stayed. Klutz is a local institution whose one vividly-painted retail store is named “Klutz Intergalactic Headquarters.” Where they sell, should you need it, extra rubber chickens.
We walked from Thaiphoon last night towards Couppa Cafe for some hot cocoa as the evening foggy chill set in. We saw a jewelry store a few doors down. With a rubber chicken standing guard just inside the window: don’t steal the rings, or you’ll be henpecked.
I so love this town.
Meantime, just for fun, given all Richard and Kim’s wedding festivities of late, I had to share this picture I shamelessly stole from cuteoverload.com:
