A Beautiful Day

After a week of wind, rain, power outages and bleakness today dawned warm(ish) and beautiful and we were moved, along with just about everybody else in Sonoma County, and their dog, to go for a walk in the Regional Park in Glen Ellen. Wildflowers have burned through there a couple of times and a lot of burned trees have been left to the ministrations of mother nature. We have watched as the bark has fallen off leaving leafless ghostlike silvery branches. The high winds of last week snapped off branches and uprooted whole trees (see extras).

As the surgery date draws ever nearer, my knee is feeling so much better that I'm still wondering why I am doing it, but for the moment we elected to forgget about all that and take the ridge route. The steep rocky uphill trail has been completely rebuilt and while still uphill was far gentler. Spike happily met other dogs without going crazy, and we enjoyed the view over the farmland below all the way out to the head of the San Francisco Bay, seen in the main picture as a thin silver streak at the top of the picture backed by the East Bay hills.

Revitalized by a good walk in the warm sun, we stopped by VJB Cellars on the way home for a nice lunch of deli salads and panini on their very Italian style piazza. It was somewhat less Italian today as the entire area was covered by a giant tent and dotted with outdoor heaters. Our server told us that the tent survived the gale force winds of earlier in the week with little damage. We picked up our wine club bottles and chatted with another dog person whose dog was wearing the 'cone of shame' because she wouldn't stop chewing on her leg.

I have been experiencing some strange things on my cell phone and after much investigation Jim was able to figure out that somehow my cell phone number got changed to somebody else's. I have no idea how he was able to figure this out but his charm won over the woman named Apple (Not....) who somehow managed to change it back.  As soon as the change was complete, a slew of messages that had been floating around in the ether all arrived at once....what next?