Friendship

I feel so comfortable in this house. Sigrid, Susan, and I talk about everything under the sun, and enjoy Mochi (the cat) and Jujube (the dog), and the squirrel that comes into the kitchen to demand his/her daily slice of avocado. I never get the sense that I'm interfering with their plans, and I hope they don't feel they need to entertain me; we just go about our lives and enjoy the moments when they intersect one another. It has been like that at other homes where you, my friends and family, have welcomed me throughout this trip. It's what Rachel called a gift, or grace.

Yesterday I didn't post (the post dated yesterday must have been published after midnight Wednesday). It was a day that illustrates the above paragraph. My hosts were out living their work and personal lives; I did my two weeks' laundry and then walked the almost three miles to downtown Boulder Creek for lunch at the Boulder Creek Brewery and Cafe. Happily fed and with a little glow from a glass of ale, I wandered home - a steep uphill at the end - and really got into Ursula Le Guin's Lavinia until I fell asleep. We all pitched in to prepare dinner. Sorry, no pictures of any of this.

Today I headed to Aptos, south of Santa Cruz, to a pet shop to buy a new kind of comb for my DC cat Merle like the one they use for Mochi, and to a vet to pick up medicine and food for Mochi. Then I drove by the Santa Cruz Boardwalk where Rachel, Alex, the other Sigrid, and I played a few years ago, had lunch at a Thai restaurant a mile or so away, and returned downtown to walk the length of the wharf. Here's part of the boardwalk amusement park as it looked from the wharf on this gorgeous sunny cool afternoon.

The sea lions were more entertaining than on earlier visits to the wharf because they had set up shop on the floating dock usually used for boat rentals and weren't mostly hidden under the wharf. The largest animals did a lot of strutting and posturing like this fellow (the sign says they're males, no surprise), occasionally quarreling, and constantly barking. I shot lots of video of their antics that I'll put online at some point.

From there I headed south along the shore to the small Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History (no photos), and then to the Capitola village and wharf in the next town down the coast, The beachfront village is actually picturesque with its fanciful architecture (note the battlements of the tiny brightly-painted buildings of the Venetian Court Condominium, which a plaque says is on the National Register of Historic Places) even though there's a certain schlockiness about it.

Finally I met Sigrid, Susan, and two of their friends at MoBo Sushi. Their menu is full of standard, exotic, and design-your-own sushi options and other Japanese food. A great dinner with great company for my last night (for now) in their home.