Elephant in a Dress Shop

Odd choice for a mannequin in a dress store, but kind of a cool looking elephant, made from canvas. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that he's in a shop called "Anthropologie", or perhaps it doesn't have anything to do with anything. She is eye catching….

Driving on the 101 freeway is always an adventure, one which I undertook today to meet my Berkeley friend in a shopping mall which is roughly halfway between us. The pleasant part of the drive, or what used to be pleasant, is now marred by construction--orange fences and cones, cement guard walls confining everybody to impossibly narrow lanes, trucks , bulldozers and dust--tons of dust. I'm grateful for my car with air conditioning.

I would have loved to blip a small herd of cows, huddled together under a tree not ten feet from the freeway, or a house which has been lifted from its foundation awaiting removal to another location. These were the last vestiges of a once bucolic place, sacrificed to the dubious cause of progress.

The whole shopping experience in Corte Madera is dictated by the assumption that everyone has access to a vehicle. It straddles the freeway (which is 6 or 8 lanes wide there), so that getting from one side to the other requires fifteen minutes of traversing overpasses and negotiating acres of parking lot.

We have, however, found a restaurant with excellent salads (sorry, Lady F--they are a summer staple here) and a pretty good wine list (if only we didn't have an hour's drive through traffic to get home.) We got caught up with our respective family and other news, and made plans to get together again (in Berkeley!) in August.

I managed to resist an expensive pair of cowboy boots lavishly embroidered with flowers….not so difficult in the 90 degree heat.