Travels with The Rayman

Good morning all. Big Sur, south end, what can I say? We caught a beautiful morning the other day when driving north on highway 1 to see the elephant seals. And we were the only ones on the south path of the preserve. That was special all by itself so we decided we’d travel up the coast to Ragged Point for breakfast. And this is what awaited us. Wow.

See all the butterflies. The Monarchs. They made a beautiful picture with their orange color against the backdrop of the purple flowers and green leaves.

 
Here’s a picture of our good friend, Nancy, who had ventured over to visit for a few days. We had a grand time.

 

 
I really like the special effects caused by the sun. This pic was taken by me holding the iphone. Very cool.

So, Nancy and I love french macarons. We’ve made them together before. We also love France having visited several times. Our plan, then, was to bake some cookies when we returned home after breakfast.

What could go wrong? I had printed out several articles about the proper way of making this delightful meringue cookie and we settled on a caramel macaron. Yummy. But let me back up. One of the articles I had printed out contained very specific instructions on the making of this cookie. Nancy read the article and pointed out that it must have been written to scare the cook. Language like “this is a critical step” infused the tome. See sidebar for the article if so inclined. She got us laughing about how scary the article was. So with that in mind, we donned our aprons and got to work.

One other thing. I wanted to try the italian way of macaron making. It includes adding hot liquid to the egg whites for a superior meringue. Also, I had noticed that the woman that penned the article about macarons used dry egg whites to stabilize her meringue and that intrigued me as well. So. My aim was to try this method.

One of the things the generic instructions included was the idea that you must separate the eggs and let the whites rest at room temp for up to 72 hours. This is so some of it evaporates and causes the meringue in some way to be superior. The media has us completely afraid of food. I personally must wash my hands with soap and water 33 times when preparing and cooking chicken as an example. So the idea of leaving the egg whites out caused some concern…but not enough not to try it. So I had “room temperature aged egg whites” standing by. Nancy sifted the almond meal and the sugar together, I beat the egg whites and everything came together just fine. We piped the batter onto cookie sheets and let them rest for 30 minutes. But wait. Our scary instructions told us to let them rest but the recipe we were following did not. We opted for the rest. Then the recipe said to bake them at 200 for 5 minutes and then raise the temp to 375 and complete the baking for 8 minutes. The original scary recipes did not say anything about two bakings. We opted to follow the recipe. Fete accompli. However, the cookies were a flop. They looked okay but they were soggy.

Before we knew they were soggy, we made the caramel. Caramel is tricky. It’s very easy to undercook and a disaster if over cooked (with a putrid burnt taste). It has to be just right. So, I got right to it, screwing it up from the start. I flipped the directions and put in 1/4 sugar to 3/4 water. When it turned a fine shade of color, Nancy stirred in the cream and then the butter. Well, the recipe said it was supposed to look like paste. Ours had the consistency of water. OMG. We had to do it again. That’s when I discovered my mistake. It should have been 3/4 cup of sugar to 1/4 of water. AND the recipe stated 200 g of cream. So, I double checked what that really was. We had that wrong too. First of all, who ever writes a recipe using 200 g of liquid of any kind? That doesn’t make sense. I equate grams with dry ingredients. Well, google reported back to us that 200 g of liquid was about 1/2 the amount we had used before (using some arcane methodology). So….we were pretty much cursed from the beginning!! And I did our share of the cursing. Words like “dogged gone it and fiddlesticks” came floating out of the kitchen.

Well, the second batch of caramel was much better BUT it wasn’t a paste. Would work well over, say, ice cream.

There we were, two firecrackers of food in the kitchen with soggy meringues and not-thick-enough caramel. We howled with laughter. We were armed with the very detailed instructions, a half-baked recipe and fine ingredients and we ended up with a total flop. As I threw the instructions away, I glanced at the recipe one more time and noticed that it was not even authored by the author of the detailed instructions. OMG. Just about everything was wrong. The measurements, the baking technique…everything. And the recipe did not, I repeat, NOT use the italian method and it did not call on the addition of powdered egg whites. OMG. What were we thinking? More howls of laughter ensued.

So…for those of you that think experienced cooks don’t have flops…well, you’d be wrong. It happens.

Epilogue. We cleaned up the kitchen, left the house, went out to dinner and took in a movie. Ray will eat the meringue “nipples” as he dubbed them and we’ll use the caramel sauce for an ice cream dessert at thanksgiving. Or maybe I’ll throw it away. Either way, we had a great time and learned a lot…what not to do. And it starts with the recipe. If you don’t have a good recipe when you bake (it’s chemistry), you are going to have a flop. Also, it helps if you read the recipe correctly…but I prefer not to think about that.

Next time I will do the italian method and use one of the good recipes that add egg white powder. Main thing is…there will definitely be a next time and it will probably occur when we drive over to Ridgecrest to Nancy’s house because we are both obsessed!

So, today I was adopted by these people…Ray and Dianna. I was wondering when someone was going to choose me….all my brothers and sisters were picked before me. I was beginning to feel like chopped liver…but then the Jacksons showed up.

It seems that Dianna was talking about her blog and since it rhymes with dog…I figured it was something that I should get involved with along with sniffing the kitchen floor and learning how to walk up and down stairs. I’d had not seen stairs before and they really threw me for a loop.

But I digress. My new parents came and met me, wrote a check, signed some papers, asked all kinds of questions about me and my personal habits and then off we drove to the beach (from Atascadero). Actually, my new mom and I have a lot in common…we were both born in Atascadero but she is ancient. We stopped at a pet store and we all went in and they bought me all kinds of toys and a leash that serves as a dog collar too and some treats. They seem like they are generous enough.

They drove me home while I sat in Dad’s lap and it was a really winding road but I managed to not get sick, apparently to the relief of all concerned.

I’m very nervous about this arrangement. Where’s my real mom? my real dad? I’m lonesome. And the stress has tuckered me out.

My new parents spent the afternoon baking an apple galette which made the kitchen smell really good. Dad moved a crate and some toys and food and water to the garage, they turned on the light and that was the last I saw of them until after 10 p.m. Boy was I glad when they returned but I was also scared and I hid on the other side of the car that they had left in the garage. They found me, took me outside, I relieved myself which seemed to make them exceedingly happy and we all went inside to watch TV. Well, they are. I’m busy authoring my blog. As a puppy, I want to get off on the right foot and blogging seems like a good way to do that.

My mom really got tickled tonight. And I found one my sisters. Yes, mom found out thru Becky, the breeder, that someone who had a house in Morro Bay had adopted one my sisters. And it ended up that mom knew the woman…so doggy beach romps are planned and they are convinced I will love it. I’m not so sure. What’s a beach? I’ve haven’t seen one yet. One thing I know for sure…it sure will be nice to see my sister again. Here is a recent picture my mom just received. Her name is Jaycee.
So, I’m still a bit nervous but I think it will all work out. So, I’m just going to stretch, relax and enjoy the evening. Tomorrow is another day. Of course, I will have to do a little payback as they left me alone for 4 hours and I DID NOT appreciate it. That garage was cold. So, we’ll see what comes. But for old folks, they aren’t bad.

What a great day, this national eating holiday. And we made the most of it. See Charlie cut the chard tart while Al looks on with pride.

 
So, everyone arrived at 10 a.m. to begin a day of cooking and eating and drinking together. Too much fun. The way it works is that I plan the menu and buy the food. Then everyone cooks. It is true that I assign the dishes, but people are free to switch, trade, help on additional dishes, etc. It is so much fun to do a big meal like this. This is our second year and I’m sure we’ll do it again next year.

There were 11 total people. Three buddists, one vegetarian, a thespian, a lawyer, 4 bicyclists, and a bunch of us are retired.

The TV remained off but the music played all day. Pandora was streamed and I chose Traveling Willburys as the station early in the day and then Fleetwood Mac later on. Great music to cook to if you ask me.

We ran out of shallots and brandy which necessitated a run to the store. That may have been the only faux pas on my part as far as groceries were concerned. Not bad.

The recipes are on included to your right except for the persimmon pudding. And may I say a few things about the food. It was GREAT. After years of contemplating this turkey cooking method, I took the leap and decided to have the butcher cut up the turkey like a chicken. And I also had the breast cut in half. Used a 15 pound bird which, if it had been any bigger, would have necessitated more pans. And speaking of pans. Convection ovens were marketed to us as faster cookers…which they are. What they didn’t tell us or what I missed in the sales pitch was that convection ovens are smaller. And many of my pans don’t even fit in the darn things because I had a big old Wolf before and I could, if I had desired, have roasted a goat in it, it was that big.

But I digress. So, the pan barely fit but it did fit so two pans were avoided which made things much easier. And cutting up the turkey allowed me to use my instaread thermometer on each piece of the turkey to ascertain the temperature so that I could remove each piece when it reached the desired temp. As a person that includes cooking as a hobby, the intaread should be present in every person’s kitchen. Actually, I recommend at least 2 just in case you doubt one you could verify with the other. So many people that fancy themselves cooks do not have this tool and I don’t get it. Of course, you can feel when a steak is cooked to your desired “doneness” if you are experienced in that methodology. But, there is nothing like knowing exactly where the meat is (temperature wise) thereby avoiding under and over cooking. It takes the guess work out of it and when I’m cooking a piece of meat that costs, let’s say, $16/pound, I want to know when it is medium rare. If I overcook the darn thing…I get cranky.

The recipe called for a bed of root veggies cut up that was then used as a “pillow” for the turkey. That was fabulous because all the turkey fat and the flavored butter that was used between the skin and the meat, dripped or oozed all over the veggies and they were sensational. And did I mention how easy it all was? It took about 1 hour and 15 minutes to cook. WOW.

My cousin, she had a completely different kind of experience. I called her the day after and asked her how her meal went. She had announced earlier on that she was cooking EVERYTHING HERSELF. I used to do that but have given up on that idea because by the time I sit down to eat my back hurts, my ankles are swollen and I’m just exhausted. Because let’s face it. It is hard to cook and entertain simultaneously. My cousin, she is smart and she had cooked nearly everything but the turkey ahead of time. So what could go wrong? Well…she purchased a very expensive, very special turkey that was pre-brined and it came with special instructions which she said looked “suspicious”. But she followed the recipe and the turkey (17 pounds and unstuffed) did not get done. In fact, when she pulled it from the oven there was something about congealed blood that really bothered her…you think? Well, the turkey took an extra hour and thirty minutes and when she took it out she declared that the white meat was done…but not those pesky legs so wouldn’t let anybody eat the dark meat. And did I mention that Susie is a perfectionist? This did not go down well and I can report that I know this for a fact because she was going to buy an oven thermometer and check her heat and then write a letter to that turkey company explaining exactly how they ruined her dinner and she also swore that she would never, ever, ever, ever again cook a turkey in her home. No sir. She is going to buy it pre-cooked and keep in warm in her oven. But no more cooking of the turkey. And, did I tell you? She doesn’t even eat turkey…too wild tasting for her. Well…I howled. I couldn’t help it. The story after the fact was a scream. I love my cousin. She is a hoot!! Actually, we have a storied history. One time when she was down for a visit I made banana cream pie. The crust was so hard a jackhammer would have come in handy. The cream was runny…a total debacle. And I followed the recipes to the letter.

So…back to my party. I digressed again and people wonder about me digressing. But there are worse things…like wandering into the pantry and then looking all around it hoping that whatever you were going to get in the pantry would present itself because you don’t have the foggiest idea of what the heck you’re doing in there. But there I go again.
Anyway, we started the party with billinis, a chard tart that Al made and brought to us and scones around 10:15 and the party lit up right away…I made the persimmon pudding which required 2 1/2 hours of steaming on the top of the stove. K.C. started the pumpkin pie because the crust needed pre-baking and then after cooking, the pie needed to cool completely. Al, who is of Italian descent and for whom I chose the Italian theme for the dinner, made the Italian sausage dressing, Bob cooked the pancetta, Jake cut the root veggies up, Bub made one of the cranberry dishes, his sister Charlie, married to Al, made the other cranberry cherry, shallot compote, …the lawyer, Katy and her beau Brandon, the thespian and teacher, made the vanilla cream and hard sauce for the persimmon pudding and they did dishes and helped in many things as the craziness transpired. Margaret did the Brussel sprout salad which required hours of carefully shredding 3 pounds of sprouts….meticulously. Good thing I didn’t do that one…I would have thrown them in the cuisinart and shredded them in about a minute…but the process was important to her and the shredding continued by hand. Did I mention it took hours? Oh, I kid Margaret. Bob did the fresh beans. Perfectly. Actually, everyone did everything perfectly. It was wonderful.

Jake chops the roots.
Of course, how would I know? As we cooked we drank. There were a zillion wine bottles left empty and two of the eleven didn’t even drink. Oh, my. This may have slowed us down. It did take from 10 a.m. until 3:30ish to get the dinner done…with all hands on deck…yes, wine may have contributed as we would chop and slurp…mince and sip… dice and then pour another glass.
Margaret toasts, Bob stands by his beans.

When we sat down we all had plenty of energy left and ate with great gusto. Seconds were had. And the stimulating conversation continued. Seriously, it was wonderful preparing the meal together and then partaking of it together. A communal happiness emanated from the kitchen and dining table. Everyone had a great time.
From the left, Bub, Katy and Brandon

Well…I did manage to burn myself with steam so I applied aloe vera 100% gel on it and that stuff worked like a charm to calm the heat. I keep it by the stove at all times because I do tend to burn myself with some regularity…this may fall within the category of standing in the pantry. Oh, I forgot I just took that pan out of the 400 degree oven two minutes ago and the handle is HOT. Yikes. And I do this sort of thing all the time. Oh, well. If you do something, something is bound to happen. And I’m embarrassed to say I think I was the only person to self inflict pain. Uhmmmmmmmm.
Our beautiful plate. So colorful, so delicious.

After dinner, we moved to the couch and comfy chairs to let things settle before dessert. Well, about a half an hour later, half the group was dead to the world…sleeping. OMG. And I wasn’t even showing them on vacation pictures at the time. And did I mention, everyone brought slippers to the party? and wore them? Yes, they took casual to a new level! How cool was that? Myself, I can’t cook in slippers because if I drop a knife on my foot…it wouldn’t be pretty and there is, unfortunately, a few gouges in my wood floor that prove that knives have fallen. Sometimes coordination fails me. Although, sometimes I get hurt through no fault of my own. This Tuesday, Ray and I arrived at the golf course and started unloading our clubs and I bent down just before he started pulling his clubs out of the back of the SUV so that when I stood up the bottom of his bag hit my on the head…sort of keystonish. He was horrified and I was seeing baby birdies. And I didn’t play so good that day either.

But I digress. Where was I? Oh, yes. All the cooks were sleeping except for me and Ray and the lawyer and thespian (they are young) and we simply could not allow ourselves to fall asleep at our own party…this time. But when they started coming to, we went back to the table and ate dessert and that pumped us all full of sugar so we could continue the fun.

 
Reminded me a bit when I was a kid…I grew up around all adults (in terms of age) for the first 10 years of my life. And so after every thanksgiving meal I can remember…all the adults disappeared and took naps…of course they were all related and had worn themselves to a frazzle in the annual family fight…but I digress.

Thank goodness for friends!!! We pick them!!

Good morning all. Big Sur, south end, what can I say? We caught a beautiful morning the other day when driving north on highway 1 to see the elephant seals. And we were the only ones on the south path of the preserve. That was special all by itself so we decided we’d travel up the coast to Ragged Point for breakfast. And this is what awaited us. Wow.
See all the butterflies. The Monarchs. They made a beautiful picture with their orange color against the backdrop of the purple flowers and green leaves.

Here’s a picture of our good friend, Nancy, who had ventured over to visit for a few days. We had a grand time.
I really like the special effects caused by the sun. This pic was taken by me holding the iphone. Very cool.

So, Nancy and I love french macarons. We’ve made them together before. We also love France having visited several times. Our plan, then, was to bake some cookies when we returned home after breakfast.

What could go wrong? I had printed out several articles about the proper way of making this delightful meringue cookie and we settled on a caramel macaron. Yummy. But let me back up. One of the articles I had printed out contained very specific instructions on the making of this cookie. Nancy read the article and pointed out that it must have been written to scare the cook. Language like “this is a critical step” infused the tome. See sidebar for the article if so inclined. She got us laughing about how scary the article was. So with that in mind, we donned our aprons and got to work.

One other thing. I wanted to try the italian way of macaron making. It includes adding hot liquid to the egg whites for a superior meringue. Also, I had noticed that the woman that penned the article about macarons used dry egg whites to stabilize her meringue and that intrigued me as well. So. My aim was to try this method.

One of the things the generic instructions included was the idea that you must separate the eggs and let the whites rest at room temp for up to 72 hours. This is so some of it evaporates and causes the meringue in some way to be superior. The media has us completely afraid of food. I personally must wash my hands with soap and water 33 times when preparing and cooking chicken as an example. So the idea of leaving the egg whites out caused some concern…but not enough not to try it. So I had “room temperature aged egg whites” standing by. Nancy sifted the almond meal and the sugar together, I beat the egg whites and everything came together just fine. We piped the batter onto cookie sheets and let them rest for 30 minutes. But wait. Our scary instructions told us to let them rest but the recipe we were following did not. We opted for the rest. Then the recipe said to bake them at 200 for 5 minutes and then raise the temp to 375 and complete the baking for 8 minutes. The original scary recipes did not say anything about two bakings. We opted to follow the recipe. Fete accompli. However, the cookies were a flop. They looked okay but they were soggy.

Before we knew they were soggy, we made the caramel. Caramel is tricky. It’s very easy to undercook and a disaster if over cooked (with a putrid burnt taste). It has to be just right. So, I got right to it, screwing it up from the start. I flipped the directions and put in 1/4 sugar to 3/4 water. When it turned a fine shade of color, Nancy stirred in the cream and then the butter. Well, the recipe said it was supposed to look like paste. Ours had the consistency of water. OMG. We had to do it again. That’s when I discovered my mistake. It should have been 3/4 cup of sugar to 1/4 of water. AND the recipe stated 200 g of cream. So, I double checked what that really was. We had that wrong too. First of all, who ever writes a recipe using 200 g of liquid of any kind? That doesn’t make sense. I equate grams with dry ingredients. Well, google reported back to us that 200 g of liquid was about 1/2 the amount we had used before (using some arcane methodology). So….we were pretty much cursed from the beginning!! And I did our share of the cursing. Words like “dogged gone it and fiddlesticks” came floating out of the kitchen.

Well, the second batch of caramel was much better BUT it wasn’t a paste. Would work well over, say, ice cream.

There we were, two firecrackers of food in the kitchen with soggy meringues and not-thick-enough caramel. We howled with laughter. We were armed with the very detailed instructions, a half-baked recipe and fine ingredients and we ended up with a total flop. As I threw the instructions away, I glanced at the recipe one more time and noticed that it was not even authored by the author of the detailed instructions. OMG. Just about everything was wrong. The measurements, the baking technique…everything. And the recipe did not, I repeat, NOT use the italian method and it did not call on the addition of powdered egg whites. OMG. What were we thinking? More howls of laughter ensued.

So…for those of you that think experienced cooks don’t have flops…well, you’d be wrong. It happens.

Epilogue. We cleaned up the kitchen, left the house, went out to dinner and took in a movie. Ray will eat the meringue “nipples” as he dubbed them and we’ll use the caramel sauce for an ice cream dessert at thanksgiving. Or maybe I’ll throw it away. Either way, we had a great time and learned a lot…what not to do. And it starts with the recipe. If you don’t have a good recipe when you bake (it’s chemistry), you are going to have a flop. Also, it helps if you read the recipe correctly…but I prefer not to think about that.

Next time I will do the italian method and use one of the good recipes that add egg white powder. Main thing is…there will definitely be a next time and it will probably occur when we drive over to Ridgecrest to Nancy’s house because we are both obsessed!

Ah, ha. You thought, perhaps, that once on American soil that the sheep stories would dissipate. Well…that would be a logical assumption but you would be wrong.

 

Yesterday, we headed south to the California desert and arrived at Borrego Springs. See the sidebar and click on the link for Borrego Springs for more info. On our way, we had to stop to take this picture. Out in the middle of no where. That’s what is cool about taking 2 lane roads…you never know what you are going to see.

 

 
Our old friends, Al and Charlie (she’s a woman), recently moved there to be able to ride their bikes year round although they will escape the summer desert heat by heading to friendly weather. Anyway, we wanted to see them on our way to Palm Desert which is our final destination to meet friends and play golf.

Our visit included a visit to the a Day of the Dead festival and an excellent pork dinner at their home. But the best was yet to come. This morning we took a walk to see if we could see any big horn sheep that reportedly live in the mountains behind the golf course. And this is what we saw. See the sheep on the mountain? A far cry from the NZ sheep we had just seen. These guys live in the rocks…not nice green pastures with plenty to eat.

 

So imagine our surprise when the sheep came down the mountain without any prompting from us. They blend in so look really, really close. Until they jaunt down from the mountain and head for the golf course. Pardon the thumb on the top of the picture. Just too excited to concentrate.
Then…

 
the others started coming down. And more came.
And then more….
And more…

 
And they walked right by me. I was hiding behind a tree. The first male stared us down and all my friends and Rayman moved to the lawn, you can see some of them in the distance. I moved behind a tree by myself. Once the lead males walked by the rest of the sheep followed except for a few which stayed on the mountain at various points…must like look-out men. It was fabulous.

 

 

Then there was a steady stream…OMG. And where were they going? To the GOLF COURSE!!! And then after grazing on the 7th fairway…they headed back up the mountain with the aid of the greensman beating a golf cart with a golf club…

 

 
What an incredible experience. I accused our friends of hiring the animals to pose and visit for us…they denied it. This is not an everday occurrence and we were very luck to see it. Oh, and all these pictures were taken with with our iphones.

 

 

 

The two pictures above were taken by Al and he used a camera with a zoom lens.

We then made our way to Palm Desert to join our friends in Palm Desert for a week of golf. There will be stories!!

Something to consider. We’re going 968kph in our 747 zooming toward Los Angeles. We just took off and they have already called for a medical practitioner. I have the menu selection to consider while they reboot the entire entertainment system…there is a glitch. Oh, I hope they get that fixed because they are showing Midnight in Paris and I’d love to see that movie again.

I’ve had my issues this trip but one of the more interesting has manifested itself in getting myself all tied up. Let me illustrate. To fly, I’ve been wearing jeans, a top, a scarf. The scarf is so the jeans and top don’t always look the same. It’s a fashion thing of sorts. Anyway, I’ve also been at times in charge of the camera which dangles on a strap. And the passports are kept in a passport carrier which hangs by a strap as well. Oh, and my purse. It has a very long strap so that I can easily push it aside or toward my back as circumstances dictate. So…the international flights have caused me the most problems. As you can imagine, I’ve got a bit going on with those straps and when passing through security issues arise. At one security station, I took off my purse which I forgot that I had donned before my jacket. The order should have been camera, jacket, passport holder, scarf and then purse. But in the heat of the moment I did camera, purse, jacket, passport holder then scarf. Well…everything was wrapped up with everything else. The straps got, for lack of a better description, intertwined. I’m quite sure even if I tried I could not replicate the situation I found myself in….which required me to drop my purse completely to the floor and step through it to extricate myself. And while doing that to unwrap the passport carrier from around the camera…twice and untie the scarf that had formed a knot. How did I do it? I have no idea but my feelings got a bit hurt when the guy on the other side of the conveyer belt said something to the effect that he had never seen anything quite like it to which I replied, “Just call me Houdini.” In the meantime Ray had moved away from the scene in hopes of avoiding himself any embarrassment. It was a hoot. And after further reflection, I have decided that I remind myself of Inspector Cloisseau (or however you spell it. Peter Sellers.) Except that I’m an unintended comic genius.

So…at every opportunity to go through security I tried to avoid performing this fete again to various degrees of success. This a.m. was my best performance yet…but I did notice that Rayman wanted to hold the passports, the boarding passes and anything of any consequence. That may because as we were boarding the shuttle at the hotel to go to the airport, the driver came out of the door of hotel holding up a wallet and asking if it belonged to anyone. IT WAS MINE. I slithered up and took possession and asked the driver where he found it. “On the floor in the lobby”, he replied. Well. Rayman just looked at me. Well, okay, glared at me. This required a hug from him after we arrived at the airport. Reassurance is very important after such a major screw-up. Oh, and we gave the driver a very nice tip!!

So…resolutions for the next trip.

1. Take the small camera that fits IN MY PURSE. It does not require a strap.

2. Leave my coat at home. I’ll wear a sweater that will remain on my body until I’m strapped in for take-off.

3. Forget the scarf.

4. Delegate the passport holder to Rayman.

5. Take a purse that zips shut so that things don’t go missing.

Poor Rayman. I’ve had so many snafus on this trip I fear for my freedom. Having me committed might be one of his options. Or perhaps refusing to leave town with me again. Even I have to admit I look hapless and hopeless at times. He is a dear for not raising his voice….although he may end up with an eye problem before all is said and done because of excessive eye rolling.

Oh, well. They are giving us drinks and nuts as we approach the international date line. Guess I’ll close for now and enjoy the ride. God knows I paid enough for it.

We made it home!! We are so happy to be here…the sunset was fabulous, the weather warm, the taco from Taco Temple divine…and my bed beckons. Yippee!!