A hint of spring is in the air

We went to Napa for a one-nighter, and it was lovely, but I don’t think we’ll do it that way again. We stayed in downtown Napa, which was not cheap. The restaurants didn’t excite us, so we ate overpriced burgers at the rooftop bar in our hotel.

One highlight was the Silver Oak winery, which is quite famous for their cabernet sauvignon. The whole experience was ridiculously expensive but thoroughly enjoyable. We now have a special bottle to go with next year’s Christmas roast beef.

The other highlight was the spice shop at Oxbow Market. I’ve been on the hunt for fennel pollen, and they had it. I wanted it specifically for this recipe. I hope you can get through the Washington Post firewall to access it. Or email me, and I’ll send you a PDF.

Anyway, this rigatoni dish with sausage and fennel caused quite the fuss when the Bidens both ordered it at a restaurant. Some people have a thing about not ordering the same food off the menu. Dale and I order whatever we want, and actually, we often order the same thing. I didn’t see what the big deal was.

But I made the dish, and it was exceptional. This was the first time I’ve used tomato passata – pureed strained tomatoes sold in a bottle. Also the first time for fennel pollen, but we love fennel, so I wasn’t scared. The clerk double-bagged it, and yet my purse smelled like fennel for days. It was fantastic.

I would buy fennel pollen air freshener.

As for other wine country trips, maybe I’d stay in Santa Rosa next time and do tastings in Sonoma. We still haven’t been to Paso Robles, so that’s on the docket. Of course, we live in great wine country, so there’s no shortage of options.

I’ve been trying to avoid politics, but sometimes it’s in me, and it got to come out. Please feel free to move along while I share a few of my left-coast perspectives.

Early yesterday I read about Disney snookering DeSantis and thought it couldn’t get any better than that.

While I do understand Disney is no saint, as I understand it, DeSantis wanted to punish them for supporting LGBTQ rights after he passed the “don’t say gay” law. The governor hand-picked a board of conservatives and fundamentalist Christians to control much of the Disney World footprint in Florida. But Disney quietly did things by the book with public meetings and notices, all toward essentially stripping the new board of its power.

DeSantis and his folks didn’t even see it coming. I’m sure some sort of battle will ensue. There’s probably no moral high ground. In the end, it seems most things boil down to profits. However … Disney spoke up in support of the LGBTQ community, so I’m calling it a win for progressive values. And a loss for DeSantis, who in many ways, is scarier than Trump.

Which brings me to my earlier question … can it get any better than this? Well, it could, but I’m delighted Trump has been indicted or as he wrote on his social media platform, INDICATED. In the grand scheme of things, do I think this is the worst of his bad deeds? No, but at least we now have some evidence no one is above the law. He may very well be found innocent, and that’s fine, but at least he’ll go to trial like everyone else accused of such crimes.

To say he has a get out of jail free card just because he was president is unAmerican. You want to be a patriot? I don’t know – maybe you could join the military or pay your taxes.

As for indications, I hope this is the first of many.

Then, on top of it all, the sun came out! We got a blockbuster year of rain and snow to put a dent in the drought, and now we’re headed for some lovely weather. To celebrate, I thought I’d buy a six-pack of Bud Light. You can have all the fancy wines in the world, but nothing says spring like Bud Light.  

In other words, if it’s Bud Light, you must indict.

The upside of losing

I’m a wee bit obsessive about games and hold myself to a high standard. Fear of failure is a real affliction, and I’m not sure I have that, but I do dread losing at anything, and it seems to have gotten worse since I retired. Not getting those wins at work, so I work hard at my play time just to see if I measure up.

Seriously, it’s a curse. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I look at the light outside to see if I can guess what time it is. And yes, I feel good when I get it right.

I especially dread playing bad golf. More so since I retired. When I was working, I could explain it away by saying I don’t get to play enough. That excuse doesn’t fly anymore.

It’s not that I mind other people playing better or winning. But I’m mad at myself for not being as good and just want to go off alone to sulk. On the bright side, maybe I’m finally starting to reverse the trend. Last week our women’s league played on a muddy course saturated by rains, and it was tough. My partners and I agreed ahead of time we would laugh at bad shots.

Let’s just say we laughed a lot. I posted one of my worst scores since I learned to play the game more than 25 years ago. When we got to the parking lot, one of the women said, let’s have a drink for making it through that! She had a little flask and plastic glasses and poured us each a tiny shot of butterscotch liquor (which is delicious). We drank it right there by our cars.

Then I joined the group inside rather than exiting the scene with my head hung low, and we had a pretty good time laughing about how horribly we played. I have to say it was a much better way to end a bad round than my usual pity-fest.

The very next morning, as I was playing Wordle in bed, I lost a game and broke my 159-day streak. I thought I’d be devastated, but I surprised myself. I actually felt relieved. Perhaps the universe was sending me a message. Play for fun – not everything has to be a test.

I wouldn’t say I have a pathological diagnosis, and you probably don’t either, but for some of us, the fear of failure can be greater than the excitement of winning. And it holds us back.

Retirement is as good a time as any to try to recover at least a smidgeon of that wild abandon we had before life knocked us around. However, I don’t want it all back, because I seriously did some dumb shit when I wasn’t scared of anything.

After seeing the upside of losing, I feel kind of free. More relaxed. I’ve always dreaded a complete collapse of my golf game, and it happened. It wasn’t all that bad. The experience helped me understand it’s one thing to fear losing. The trick is to shrug it off and work harder at losing the fear.

Readin’ in the rain

I will always remember the fall of 2017 because I had just retired and read all of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books in order. Such a simple pleasure but hunkering down at home to read after a lifetime of work felt like a precious gift.

That was before the pandemic, before we discovered the dark side of hunkering down. But this staying at home thing … I still sort of like it. To commemorate the miserable rain-soaked winter of 2023, I am burning through all 19 of John Lescroart’s Dismas Hardy books in order. I would describe them as legal suspense with family intrigue, hardboiled criminal investigations and some courtroom drama.

Oh, and the setting is San Francisco.

Early on, I tried to take breaks and read other books in between, but I finally gave up and committed to the blitz. I’ll start number 16 later today and have the rest on hand, courtesy of our local library. I should be done before the rain clears later this week. No one can stop me now.

I’ll be sad when it’s over, the book marathon not the rain, but at least I can diversify my reading material again. However, I do think my compulsive nature rather enjoys the singular focus of one good series at a time. I’ve become immersed in this fictional world, and it’s been a pleasurable escape from the real one. I may just do this again with a new series.

Number 35

On the local art scene, I finally finished number 35. I’m not sure why, but this piece was a bit of a slog. I was so happy to spray on that last coat of lacquer and immediately went to work on number 36. I’m already way more excited about him than I was poor number 35, who never felt the love.

So, today marks 24 years since I was diagnosed with stage 3 primary peritoneal cancer, which is virtually the same as ovarian. I am in a small group of long-term survivors who have been free of disease since their initial treatment. I don’t know why I’ve been so lucky, but I share this information from time to time because somebody somewhere needs to know good outcomes are possible.

Reluctant travelers

We must not be the only ones who don’t have a big desire to travel in retirement, but sometimes it feels that way.

Dale and I traveled a lot when we were younger. Lived overseas and moved more than 20 times, so much of the excitement is lost on us. Our wanderlust peaked in the early 2000s.

It felt like finding a member of my tribe when I read this article about the actor Eugene Levy of Schitt’s Creek – he hates to leave the comforts of home but was convinced to do a show called The Reluctant Traveler.

Has anyone seen it? It’s on Apple TV+, which we don’t get. There’s a free episode, but you have to sign in. I hate that.

As it happens, some of us like to make a nest and hang out in it. I’m not saying I wouldn’t ever visit an exotic destination, but in a lot of ways, our home already feels like a resort. It’s about mastering the art of simple pleasures.

Dale and I don’t have a McMansion or anything, but we have a nice home and live well but within our means. We cook and eat great food, sleep on an amazing bed with deliciously comfy sheets and have a nice little stash of quality wine and weed. There’s space for me to work on my art, and Dale has a small garden. We love our pool in the summer and the spa in the winter.

The other issue is I always thought of vacations as time to recover from work. Now, every day is a vacation, so I don’t need to go anywhere to get away from it all. I can lay around and read all day at home if I want to!

All that said, I do agree it’s important to change your surroundings from time to time and experience new things. I’m the travel planner in the family, and it’s not a job I relish. I finally decided this week to accept my fate in life and embrace the role. No whining allowed.

I bought two books about traveling in California and am starting to get serious about road trips. We like one or two-nighters. I can’t imagine being gone for weeks at a time, but I know many retirees enjoy that lifestyle. I thought, well, if we have some money to spend, why not go to Napa? It’s less than two hours away, and they are happy to take your offerings.

So, I’ve booked us just one night in Napa with one winery visit and a few other stops along the way. Not sure where we’ll eat, but there’s no shortage of choices.

In the meantime, we are continuing to enjoy our little resort. We were going to watch (again) the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but the DVD kept skipping. The player must be at least 20 years old. Same for the DVDs. We figured it was time to buy new, but then Dale remembered for some obscure reason we had two sets of the DVDs.

The other one works without a hitch! That’s on the agenda for this evening. We’re going to split a pan-fried steak accompanied by baked potatoes, salad and some of that tasty wine.

We were jazzed that we don’t have to buy a new player. They’re relatively inexpensive, so it’s odd we’re willing to blow some bucks in Napa but can’t bear to replace the ancient DVD player. I mean, not if we don’t have to, right? The whole idea of wandering through Best Buy trying to figure it all out is pretty exhausting.

In other entertainment news, we like bad Sci-Fi movies from the 50s and have been renting them on Amazon. Below is my watchlist.

  • Cat Women of the Moon
  • Attack of the 50-foot Woman
  • Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
  • The Blob
  • Bride of the Monster
  • Earth vs the Flying Saucers
  • The Man from Planet X
  • 20 Million Miles to Earth
  • The Atomic Man
  • The Incredible Shrinking Man
  • Queen of Outer Space
  • Conquest of Space
  • Rocketship X-M
  • The Werewolf
  • From Hell it Came
  • The Brain from Planet Arous
  • The Cyclops
  • Revenge of the Creature
  • Friend Without a Face
  • Tarantula!
  • Them!
  • The Giant Behemoth
  • I Married a Monster from Outer Space
  • The Thing
  • The Day the Earth Stood Still
  • The Space Children
  • The Flying Saucer
  • The Devil Girl from Mars
  • Curse of the Demon
  • Robot Monster

Does anyone else out there enjoy this genre? Please feel free to share your favorites! While all of the above are from the 50s, we like all the campy classics. I just added Surf Nazis Must Die from 1987.

Bottom line is there are lots of ways to have fun in retirement. Everyone finds their own path, and that’s the joy of it. For those of you who aren’t so much into travel, I hope it’s comforting to know you’re not alone.  

High school. Has it really been 50 years?

The weather is turning gnarly, so I visited the library to load up on mystery novels. I keep telling myself to act like a big girl and read something literary, and occasionally I do, but inevitably I return to my low-brow life of crime.

One might say I’m attracted to the simple and seedy. I grew up in an underfunded and dysfunctional working class family. Certainly, I read my share of literature in school and later, after I hit escape velocity, but it’s not like we sat around the kitchen table discussing Finnegans Wake.

My dad read sleazy pulp fiction, and my mother enjoyed her True Detective magazine. Not saying I didn’t sneak a peek at their reading material from time to time. We children may wander, but sometimes it seems all roads lead back to the source.

I’ve been thinking about connections to the past since I was contacted by two friends I haven’t heard from in decades. They found me through the blog to reach out regarding our 50th high school reunion in Southern California. I haven’t attended any of the previous reunions and can’t imagine going to one, but I was pleased to hear from them just the same.

Both live in California. I joined the military after high school, and most of my friends went to college here. A few went to out-of-state universities, but I’m pretty sure they all came home after graduation. I also returned … 40 years later. Let’s just say it was a circuitous route.

One of my old friends lives in Santa Barbara, so we caught up via telephone. It was a great conversation, and I’m really happy we took the time to share our stories with each other. I always thought she had her shit together, and she always thought I did, so it was fun to confess neither one of us had a clue.

My other friend lives closer, and we’re going to meet in the middle for lunch next week. I’m looking forward to it! Socially speaking, I do better one-on-one or in small groups, as opposed to hanging out with a couple hundred people I barely remember at some sort of party venue. So, lunch. This is good.

What are your experiences with reunions? Do tell! It will be like a Clint Eastwood movie. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Life lessons from Wordle

In his 2022 year in review, the humorist Dave Barry wrote:

Millions of Americans on social media realized — it took them a while, but they finally got there — that nobody wants to know how they did on “Wordle.”

So, let’s just say I knew better, but I went ahead and flashed my Wordle stats at my hairdresser, who then flashed me her Wordle stats, which put my Wordle stats to shame. Aside from a year-long streak, she solves most of the puzzles in three words.

My genius stylist then revealed something I did not know about Wordle streaks. According to Lisa, if you forget to play one day, maybe you actually go outside and (dare I say it) have fun … your streak is gone. Her streak was over 300 days, and she said it would have been more, but she missed a day when she was on vacation.

All that time, sweating over my streak, naively assuming the outcome was binary. Win or lose! The pressure was on, and I was ready to perform with excellence.

But now I know there’s a loyalty clause. Being good is not good enough. Let’s just call it Workle because it’s damn near the same thing.

I went through the stages of grief but emerged stronger for the experience. It’s like a cord has been cut, and I feel free.

Life is different now that I know you can lose without losing. I wish someone had told me this, oh, I don’t know, 40 years ago?

Anyway, that’s a life lesson that needs to come with me to the golf course, where I lost my temper this week. Not only dropped the f-bomb but also the mf-bomb. My profanity was not directed at anyone else, only my charming self, but still, I’m not proud.

I’ve decided to work harder at staying joyful and appreciating pleasant companionship on the course, as well as the unique challenges of the game. It’s not about the score. I repeat. It’s not about the score.

While I usually don’t play on Fridays, due to all the people “working from home,” I booked a tee time so I could practice being peaceful. Lo and behold, I had a better score. Of course, there’s a connection, but now I need to see if I can stay happy when the golf gods fight back.

So much to learn! Become a little less obsessive. Enjoy the game, whatever is is. Accept you can lose without losing.

Just another lesson at the intersection of Wordle and life.

Not messing with my face

I’ve been thinking about Madonna’s face, and I’m guessing that’s exactly what she wanted. Famous people accustomed to the limelight can’t seem to give it up, so why not just maim yourself to get everyone talking? I don’t believe it has anything to do with ageism. I mean, she doesn’t look younger, only worse, but at least she’s in the headlines again.

Personally, I’m more focused on healthy habits and creature comforts than messing with my aging face. Do I sometimes do a little mirror surgery to see what I’d look like with everything tightened right up? Sure, but that’s not how I want to go down.

For example, I went to the dermatologist yesterday and actually had to put on real clothes. Black leggings, black t-shirt, black denim jacket, white sneakers, turquoise earrings, no makeup and a shock of silver hair. I must admit, I looked in the mirror and thought, damn, I look cool.

As I see it, you can dye your hair and inject your face, and that might create the illusion of youth, but I’m pretty sure they know how old we are. My thinking is that silence is a position of weakness, and being silent erodes confidence over time. I refuse to cower.

Aging should be a liberating experience. Wear what you want, say what you think, live how you like and like how you look – perhaps it is the absence of these things that makes aging such a drag for so many people.

But not us! We’re digging it, right?

So, the latest in retirement creature comforts – linen sheets. I mean, if you can afford this, do it before you die. I bought mine here. I can’t quite describe the comfort – soft but not silky. Not warm, not cool. The fabric feels heavier, but air flows through it. Dale preferred silky cotton, but he’s converted now. There’s no turning back for me.

Another indulgence I started this year is a 90-minute full-body massage every three weeks.  I love it. Yes, even though it does hurt a bit when she digs into those trigger points. The pain kind of scared me at first. I thought she had uncovered some sort of rare muscle-wasting disease, and I almost quit going because I thought, well, better not to know.

But now, I just breathe my way through it and it starts to feel good. Aside from the pure pleasure of having my creaky old body tended to, I do think massage is nothing but good news for your immune system, and it helps with stress, circulation, muscle pain and flexibility.

So, back to aging faces. I love the artist Jesse Dayton, and I am absolutely crazy about this reboot of Brand New Cadillac with Samantha Fish. Check out the drummer!

Old and cool. Inspiration for us all.

A bridge lesson

I was invited by one of the women in my golf group to participate in a series of beginner bridge lessons in her home, and I thought why not? They say this complex card game is especially good for the aging brain. It seems to me anything that might help us dodge dementia is a good thing. I’m retired. I’ve got the time.

Today was my first lesson, and that’s an hour and a half I’ll never get back.

Perhaps I should have known. When I told Dale, he reminded me math was involved. While it’s true I picked journalism as a major because it was about the only degree that didn’t require even the most rudimentary of math skills, I thought, well, it’s a card game. How hard can it be?

Many of you probably know this already, but it’s damned hard. I won’t even go into the complexities I tried to absorb during this first lesson, but it reminded me of high school geometry, when the teacher spent an entire semester saying, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

Because that’s what it sounded like to me.

The bridge instructor scheduled an indefinite number of lessons every Thursday at 9:30 a.m. Not bad, but not good for the retirement practice I subscribe to called, “The Slow Start.” But you know, staving off dementia, I guess I could move out faster for a good cause. Also, Thursdays at 10 is my preferred time for massages, and one must have priorities.

On the plus side, I wore jeans and my old Lucchese cowboy boots, which I haven’t done in a couple of years. At least I looked cute, and that takes a few brain cells, doesn’t it?

Bridge is interesting, and I can totally see the attraction. I generally like games. I really liked this group of women. If they had a Yahtzee league, I’m all in. I used to play Hearts back in the day, and that didn’t kill me. Backgammon. Scrabble.

But bridge, wow. I’m 67, reasonably intelligent and in excellent health. However, I don’t think I have enough time left to understand this game.

Even without the card counting and all that, there are all kinds of weird things including where you sit and what cards you play – north, south, east and west. What’s so wrong about left and right?

Sometimes your partner will show all their cards, and you play those, too. Like one hand wasn’t enough. And all these little codes to signal your partner how you want to bid. If everyone subscribes to the same convention, why not just say it in plain English? I have five spades!

I didn’t want to disappoint my friends, but I also didn’t want to pretend I’d come back when I knew it was a lost cause. While I acknowledge some stress is good for you, this is the kind of stress that makes me miserable. Rather than drag it out, I just laid it out for them. They were gracious, but now they have to find a replacement, which sucks for them.

When I got home, I told Dale he was right. Numbers gone wild! Crazy stuff! And all my Thursdays eaten up just to learn the basics? I’m pretty sure I would start dreading Thursdays, finding excuses to stay in bed, when in fact it’s a rather pleasant day of the week that has done me no previous harm.

He said, “So, you’re saying it was a bridge too far?”

The man’s still got it. 

All this is good news for those of you who enjoy reading my blog. I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks, and I had been thinking, maybe I’ll just quit writing. But that’s looking like a bad strategy now that I know bridge isn’t going to save me.   

I promised the bridge gods I would work harder at writing if they would just leave me alone.

Riding out the storm

The weather here in California is still quite something. We discovered a leaky window that will have to be fixed, but we’re OK. A little sick of each other. Sending messages back and forth through the cat.

I’ve been hunkered down in the house riding out the storm. I finished Sea of Tranquility. I liked it, but sometimes that time travel stuff blows my mind. For the record, I also have trouble understanding how the James Webb Space Telescope sees galaxies billions of years old.  You can explain it to me all day long, but my head is still going to explode.

A good legal thriller is Scott Turow’s Suspect. Pinky, the protagonist, is a funny and smart screw-up trying to make it as a private investigator working for a lawyer. She’s also bisexual, and that’s an interesting aspect of the story.

You kind of have to wonder how a guy creates a character like that, but I guess that’s what writers do. Still, how does he know it’s authentic? Or maybe in fiction, there is no authenticity. Just characters as the writer envisions them. He’s an excellent writer, and I thought the character was great, but I’m assuming someone out there will say he got it wrong.

Anyway, I’ve been on the lookout for a new crime series to read. My original plan was to follow up on the Three Pines TV show and read the Louise Penny books. But they are quite popular right now, so I started Dead Irish, the first book in the Dismas Hardy series by John Lescroart. Dismas is a Vietnam veteran, lawyer and bartender in San Francisco. I love it so far and put the next one on my library reserve list.

The good news is there are 19 of them in all!

On the medical front, I saw the doctor about my blood pressure and took my machine with me because the readings were so odd. My BP was fine on her machine and quite elevated on mine. She tried several times and finally asked me how old it was. I dunno, eight, 10 years?

As it happens, these things are not designed to last that long. Some articles I read said two to three years max. She advised me to get a new one, which I did, and my readings are all now consistent with hers. That was a big sigh of relief.

This is my public service announcement (without guitar). Please see if your blood pressure monitor needs to retire, too.

Finally, I will share that I still dream about work quite a bit, even after five years. This week’s nightly drama was about clothes and dressing appropriately for the office. I can’t remember details from the dream, but there was some level of bullshit about not wearing the right outfit.

No big surprise, really. I did struggle with the corporate “dress for success” model and squandered a lot of money trying to fit in. I didn’t land on a good look for me until later in my career, but it was enough to get me to the finish line.

I ended up keeping just a few great pieces, and I even though I told you years ago I was donating them, I couldn’t quite make myself do it. Still hanging in my closet, waiting for the miracle …which would be like me, dressing up for anything anymore.

Men probably don’t do this, but women seriously check each other out at work. What you wear is more than a corporate uniform. It’s also a peer-to-peer evaluation system, a hierarchy of sorts and one I’m glad to see in the rear view mirror.

Another retirement bonus! Nobody cares what I wear anymore, maybe not even me.  

Cry me an atmospheric river

Gosh, we’ve been hammered here in California by much-needed rain. I’m saying we didn’t need it all at once, but that’s me. Just a kid with a dream.

Dale and I have been hanging around the house, squandering time, because guess what? We’re retired, and there’s plenty more where that came from. Going on my sixth year, I continue to be amazed by how little it takes to fill a day.

The newspaper arrived rolled up in a plastic bag, but it was soaking wet nonetheless. Dale pulled the newspaper out of the bag and actually wrung it out over the sink. Then he put it in the oven, where it dried quickly, although I found it a big crisp.

“Convection roast,” he said.

Inspired by Janice at Retirementally Challenged, this is a gentle reminder that if you should find yourself in the same position, don’t be stupid. While that’s a great resolution overall, in this case, it specifically means DO NOT PUT THE NEWSPAPER IN THE MICROWAVE.

Last night was kind of scary. I mean, a whopper of a storm. Riley, our cat, was under the bed, which is where I would have been if I could fit. Wind scares me. By happenstance, I had been using an old pair of foam earplugs to block out Dale’s occasional snoring, and lately they haven’t been working to my satisfaction.

I was asking Dale about them, and he said you can’t use the same pair over and over. Well, I wish someone had told me that before I wasted quality sleep time. I opened a new pack in the middle of the night and they completely blocked out the sounds of the storm. However, I could still hear Dale snore, which means he’s louder than a Category 3 atmospheric river.

Whilst squandering precious retirement time, I finished watching the Louise Penny series, Three Pines. Those of you who have read the books aren’t too crazy about the show. Those of us who haven’t read them seemed to like the series just fine.

Sometimes a movie or TV show will inspire me to read a particular author. I like to read a series in order, so I figured I’d start with number one and get it from the library.

I love the library and have since I was a little kid. But as an adult, I typically do not expect them to have what I want when I walk in the door. But those old ones are often on the shelves. What works better is to read reviews, make a list and add them to your reserve list. However, this is a delicate art, because you don’t want them popping into your queue all at once.

All that said, I guess everyone is on the Louise Penny kick, because the books were all checked out. I suppose I’ll have to reserve it. Sometimes I’ll buy a new book, but I hate spending money on stuff that’s been out a long time.

I did purchase The Shadow Murders, the latest in the Department Q series by Jussi Adler-Olsen. I liked it a lot, but it’s a cliffhanger. That kind of annoys me, mostly because he doesn’t exactly pop these out on a expedited schedule.

Of course I have nothing to complain about compared to Dale, who slogged through all the Game of Thrones books, only to discover the author never wrote the last one.  

I’ve heard Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel is excellent, so I’ve reserved that. The description hit all the right buttons for me: “A novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.”

Another book on my reserve list is A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley. California gold rush, prostitutes. Right up my alley.

We also recorded a slew of Twilight Zone episodes, which have been fun to watch. Perhaps that will get me through the walloping winds of the atmospheric river, that for the record, is not quite as loud as Dale.