With Bud and Loraine looking after the house, load up Harriet's car, orchestrate four more pages of Samson and Delilah: XIII. Disunity, then head out the door for the trip south, stopping briefly at Laverne's to drop off a transcript, Starbucks coffee and Chron, more brief stops merging south from I-680 to U.S. 101 in San Jose, then smooth sailing in the stormy twiight of the Santa Lucias above the Salinas Valley, through dark storms and squalls
to the veranda of Sweepstakes, at the inimitable, over-the top
Madonna Inn, with its pink/stony portecochere,
cupola'd dining room,
Jeff Koonesque Christmas decorations --
calling Bette and George and Sorrel and Crystal and Tisha et al, whereupon Harriet and I take refuge in the holiday cheer of the bar lounge, and the bar-counter of the coffee shop, ultimately retiring with visions of cookie-plums...
