Letter 182 - Talkin' fancy

And this is why you want a rain gauge. A couple of days ago the Apple weather app was saying an inch and a half. And after the rain had occurred it assured me that over the prior 24 hour two inches had fallen. But the rain gauge don’t lie:

Just shy of 4.5 inches. Which, for sure, is a lot. No need to water my lawn for a while after that soaking. It was all part of the never before encountered ‘convenient weather for Satz’s trip’ event.

Now normally when I’m traveling there’s sure to be a deluge on the way to the airport.

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And a few traffic accidents sprinkled here and there for added flavor. Or perhaps some heavy snow and ice. There are different weathers available but no matter which, they’ll align precisely with outbound and inbound. Here, for instance was the trip out to the airport from the trip immediately preceding the latest one.

Yet this week’s trip confounded the rule. Heavy rain in the days before and yet … clear skies the day preceding the flight so I could mow the whole lawn! Clear weather for the outbound fight. And then on and off rain leading to that absolute Noah-level drenching the day before my return. Yet on the actual day of the return? Clear and cool.

And if my luck continues to hold, the day after arrival will still be dry so I can mow the grass that’s now very much ready for it.

In other words, absolute perfection of timing. When such a thing happens you need to savor it.

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This trip of which I speak was for a couple of days to check on things that needed checking. And while on the other coast I came across a bottle of Jameson’s that an old friend had bought for me years back. But not as many years as the bottle actually had on it:

Just look at that artwork. The style of the art plus the choice of font. CLEARLY something from the mid 1900’s. But how mid? When I first got the bottle I had little way of finding out. Not only Google but the entire idea of the internet was still far in the future. I was confident it was plus or minus WW2 but no way to really know. And so when I saw it a few days ago I realized that Google DOES exist now. Hey Google, what about it?

So there you go. My instincts were correct. I know my friend said he found it in the rear of a dusty shelf in a liquor store so I guess enough time had passed that nobody wanted to risk a drink of something so old. Of course, I didn’t open it either, because now it was just too old to do that. And I stupidly stored it in the garage when we were renovating our house. It fell over and had some leakage, hence the less than full status. I suppose there’s evaporation going on as well. And so it remains an interesting example of a small corner of advertising design.

And speaking of corners and design, when I was first starting my flight from NH to CA I did what I usually do - opened my iPad and start designing a new cartoon. And when my mind is foggy from lack of sleep I did what I also usually do, which is to just draw and wait for inspiration to hit. Decided to start with a cat and then for some reason decided to be stylistic with it. Lean and sharp edged. Exactly like this:

As is common when I’m doing the random doodle approach, I had no clue as to the eventual caption. The basic approach is to make the image and then come up with a boffo caption later. Just like the Caption Contest in the New Yorker except nobody can enter but me so I’m sure to win.

Anyway, after finishing the cartoon and landing in Cali it was eventually time for dinner at an excellent French (but totally not snooty) restaurant in Walnut Creek named La Sen. If you’re ever in that particular town you should definitely give it a try. Here’s some motivation - their bœuf bourguignon:

And just because it’s hanging out there in clear view, that bœuf is spelled with an œ and it’s not so very often one runs into that, and not only because it’s French. Because … it’s not. Or, it kinda is but it also was used in medieval Latin to represent the Greek diphthong oi and is totally used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent the mid-front rounded vowel sound. How does it sound? Like if you’re punched in the stomach and involuntarily react with a “uh”. Like this:

The reason for bringing up this rich beefy experience, though, is that in the back where we were seated there was a painting on the wall of four girls having a good time together and my eye was immediately drawn to one in particular.

I’ll put her together with my white kitty and you’ll see why she grabbed my attention:

Pretty cool, no? Other than her being a human and Miss Kitty being a fine feline, there’s clearly a family resemblance. Or am I just being catty?

Last item before I call it a wrap. I already mentioned how I’d mown the lawn just before the trip and while mowing near a maple I noticed a brown thing on the trunk protector: