Sunday 10/18/2026
Sunday morning ritual. Oops, I failed to complete the NYT crossword. Had to refer to the answers for a couple of words. Then at 9:30 I joined Joanne and we drove first to the Cal. Ave. farmers market. This because the food writer, Chris Gardner, who we heard speak Tuesday (7.316), had said that he gets a variety of fermented foods from a vendor at that market. So we walked the market, picked up a small bouquet of flowers as a hostess gift, and found the vendor.
Side note, Joanne has been pushing me to try some fermented foods for the sake of my microbiome. I tried Kefir. That was an instant No. Even worse than the Kombucha I sampled last year (6.069). So this time I bought a jar of sauerkraut. I would say how it tastes, but I can’t get the lid off the damn jar.
Anyway, from there we drove to Cousin Darlene’s place in Oakland. Darlene and her partner Jessea bought the Prius off me a couple years ago. The main reason to visit them was just to stay in social touch. But also, they had never plugged the Prius in! They had been waiting to do that when I could be there. So we did. They have a nice grounded outlet outside the house near where they park, so it was just a matter of plugging the charge cable in to the house and the other end into the car, and show them how a little plug icon lights up.
Then we all got in the Prius and Darlene drove us to a restaurant, the Grand Lake Kitchen in downtown Oakland. It was a fun place, jammed with the Sunday Brunch crowd but we had reservations. Various things were ordered and eaten, and I have a bag of leftovers in my fridge now. Big servings. Lots of conversation.
Darlene’s mother was a contemporary of Marian and Jean, child of one of their aunts or uncles. So Darlene is to me a cousin by marriage once removed? Something like that. Anyway she is just a delightful person to talk to. She was a nun for 15 years, then left the order and spent most of her career as an elementary school teacher.
We drove back after lunch, getting in at 3:30. At 4pm I went and set the auditorium up for a Sunday@Home talk. Residents Dean and Ellen told about a trip they took to the Northern Territories of Australia, including a visit to an isolated island. Good talk.
