I'm still in Eureka doing a trial, and most likely will be for a couple or three weeks. I'm hoping to get some Eureka shots soon. I took this one of myself in the motel mirror, and it looks to me like I've got the drop on someone with my ray gun.



Back home last weekend a flock of turkeys passed through the yard. It was hard to get pictures because they would spend most of their time in the higher grass (when I mow I leave the areas with wildflowers until the flowers are spent) which hid them.



And I stopped on the Alderpoint road, right above the paradise ranch, because there were all these yellow flowers. This is a photo of a hawk on the telephone wire, however.



Did I ever show you the massive bull seal shot I took in Usuhuia? Its really good.

Well, the trial will actually start tomorrow, we are told. For dinner it was the Waterfront Cafe where the Monday meatloaf, a fave, was not on this Monday's menu. So I had a pork chop and once again was astonished by what a chef can do with a pork chop. Delicious. Nice Zinfandel with it. Service a bit slow, food very good. The WC stays on my rotation list of Eureka restaurants.

BTW as part of my intentional diet I had a banana for lunch. My assistant got me four apples from New Zealand (well, he got them at the Coop, but the Coop got them from New Zealand) and that's lunch for this week. Very global. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Well, tomorrow morning is the trial. I spoke with the DA in charge of the case and she loves trials as much as I do, so you may be getting a lot of reports on Eureka eateries in the next 3-4 weeks.

Tonite as my assistant and I moved to Eureka's Townhouse to set up for the trial, it was the Ritz night. I walked past Avalon to fulfill my duty, but it is dark on Sunday nights, so on to the Ritz. They have a greeter, but the people behind the bar also have an odd call that they make when a new customer enters It's something like Soooweeee, which , in the South, is a call to pigs to come eat. They gave it despite the fact that we had already encountered the greeter. Nothing personal, I'm sure.

We were a bit late - after 8pm, and got a table immediately. I had Katzu Don, as usual, trusting that rice is low carb, and a Zinfindel, which was quite nice. The water lady had a contest with us to see if we could empty the glasses of water before she refilled them. We lost.

Stopped at the Courthouse Liquors for some milk for breakfast, a coke to wake me up for court, and a banana for lunch. Now to bed.

It looks like I'm about to start a several week long trial in Eureka on Monday, but luckily in the past week I've been able to eat at two of my favorite local restaurants. One night I was at the Mateel Cafe in Redway. I sat on the patio in the cool of the evening, a nice informal and comfortable space. As I was alone I picked a small table in the back corner, enjoyed a good Syrah and looked at the menu. Normally this doesn't present a huge challenge to me. I have my faves list in my mind: sometimes one of their full plate salads, sometimes a chunk of beef.

But I'm on a new diet. Its an intentional diet where, according to my scale, I lose weight according to how intense my intention is. After my gall bladder was yanked I thought I'd lose weight. In fact I thought the surgery might have the side effect of reducing my weight by taking away body parts. But no such luck. The good news is that I didn't have to alter my diet to compensate for not having a gall bladder. The bad news is that I immedately gained about 6 pounds. So when I read recently that a study showed that the lo-carb diet worked the best, I decided to try it again. Last time it worked really well until I went on the River Dutchess cruise.

When I make up my mind to do something dietic I have strong initial intention so the first morning of the diet I got up and weighed myself to have a benchmark. To my delight the 12 hours of intention prior to eating breakfast had already worked well. I was down 3 pounds. Needless to say with this boost at the start, I'm really into this diet now. So I waived the bread they brought, and ordered something lo-carb. A pork chop.

I'm a son of the south anyway so pork chops are a childhood memory, but I don't think my mother's pork chops came near matching the Mateel Cafe's pork chop. Chef Pierre outdid himself. Quite naturally then when the opportunity arose to have dinner with my sweetie at Cecils in Garberville later in the week, I was curious about their pork chops. I have to admit I had blown the lo-carb diet a little bit, and was intending to get back on it in a major way, so I had a glass of Shiraz, which is Syrah to me, and ordered one. Peach sauce on it, and it was really good yet different from the Mateel's pork chop. I'll have to look into this during my weeks of trial in Eureka and see if pork chops are something that universally brings out the best in the chef, or if it just a SoHum phenomenon. More about this later.

BTW for you site fans, Cecils, which is upstairs over Folk Arts in Garberville, has a more formal appearance than the Mateel Cafe. No patio, but a bar with stools, and tables, and then the main dining room with an open kitchen. The blinds were drawn against the evening sun and the room gave off a kind of 30s elegance. I almost felt like I was on one of the great transcontinental trains during the golden age of rail travel. Nice.

Without even noticing it happen I have become directly immersed in the global economy. I need not even leave Alderpoint to do it. The global economy has been around us for longer than we realize. There was a famous essay, possibly in the 1930s, about a pencil, and where all of the parts of it came from, which was an essay on globalism. The point was that we take pencils for granted, but look at how many people from how many places contribute to the seemingly trivial pencil - or so I recall it now.

But that was indirect participation. We buy a pencil at the local store, not from Malayasia. Now I routinely make very small business deals with people all over the word, virtually every day. I do it through eBay, where I buy items for my stamp collection. Typically the item costs less than $10. I'm buying stamps from the Falkland Islands, speaking of globalization. Get out your globe and look east about 300 miles from the tip of South America, and there they are. Were it not for the war between England and Argentina over the islands in 1982, they would be as obscure as Tristan de Cuhna (another island way down south).



So, being an English colony, lots of people in England have items relating to to Falklands philately & I get small packages from England often. But yesterday took the cake. I got mail at the post office (they're still in business, you know) from England, Korea, and Argentina. Pretty global, I thought. But mostly I just take it all for granted, even though back in the 20th century such transactions would have been very time consuming and difficult to arrange. The internet, eBay and PayPal have revitalized stamp collecting by making it possible to learn about and buy very inexpensive items from people all around the globe with practically no trouble at all. Glad I stayed on the globe long enough for it to come about.