WOW — boys everywhere. Frat Boys, Farm Boys, Red Neck Boys, Geek Boys. Maybe it’s Mikal and Mudd’s neighborhood near Chico State. Makes me want to think about buying a house here!
Errands today: get the oil changed (1,000 miles late and a quart low), get the car washed. hit Trader Joe’s for liquor (only to find out they don’t have their liquor license yet — even after two years of fighting with the city — ended up getting $175 worth of sale booze at Long’s Drugs across the parking lot.
Got back to the house and spent another hour plus packing, organizing, and cleaning out the inside of the van. The “Evil Box” that ripped a whole in Jamie’s boat at the put-in had been emptied of it’s garbage, hosed out, and turned into the box that holds all the car junk — the chains, tow hitches and balls, straps for the rack, etc. What it doesn’t include is all the windshield washer fluid, water, and anti-freeze. Oh well. Still looks neater.
Dinner was brats and polenta with a nice salad followed by more Animated Bat Man videos from NetFlicks. It’s been an amazingly relaxing stop and perfect at two nights — I’d hate to become Mark Twain’s fish (“House guests are like fish — they start to stink after three days.” ) which turns out to be by Benjamin Franklin according to several sites. And as an odd aside to quotes about house guests and Mark Twain, on the New Yorker site featuring a book review of OLD CLEMENS AND W.D.H. The Story of a Remarkable Friendship. By Kenneth E. Elbe, I found this lovely quote from a friend of Twain’s:
Here, for instance, is Howells writing for himself and his wife after having Twain as a house guest in November 1876: ”Your visit was a perfect ovation for us; we never enjoy anything so much as those visits of yours. The smoke and the Scotch and the late hours almost kill us; but we look each other in the eyes when [ you ] are gone, and say what a glorious time it was, and air the library, and begin sleeping and dieting, and longing to have you back again.”
Got to get ready to leave in the morning — trying to make it all the way back tomorrow.
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