Freeway day

Driving north on the 15 Thursday, the outside temperature was reading 73 degrees at 9:00 am and the air was clear as a bell. Another perfect day in a summerful of perfect days. Billboards along the route, while ugly, provide entertainment for the cruising brain: K9 training for your dog; We'll pay money for your old spa!; Obscene radio.com; PUS. PUS???? PUS = Precision Utility Services. This company locates underground utilities and provides other complicated engineering services related to utility operations. What an acronym! The type style used was straight forward and serious. The bill board is small and simple, black on white. It doesn't look like any kind of levity was intended. Still, PUS?

One hour 15 minutes of driving and I had brunch with a vivacious friend at Mimi's in Yorba Linda - she's very excited about moving to Sedona and in the throes of house hunting, flying back and forth every couple of weeks.  I'm helping her recruit a speaker for an IFT meeting. A short visit with Shari followed where I scored a jar of her latest batch of apple butter. I brought along a piece of bacon from brunch as a treat for her dogs but they are far more interested in having a ball thrown than in bacon. One of dogs has a knotted rag he likes to catch. He brings you the rag and drops it at your feet - if you don't get the hint, he picks it up and puts it in your hand, then fixes you with the most intense stare until relent and throw for him. After 40 or 50 tosses, he's panting but he won't give up - he's relentless. Shari is flying to Salt Lake City tomorrow to help her son get settled in an apartment for the next school year and then drive back to Yorba Linda with him where he'll have a few weeks off. Kevin is 18 and this car ride together is a rare opportunity for conversation - he communicates by with text her, but she's looking forward to hearing some actual words from her quiet, thoughtful son. Shari is an excellent parent and has always had an uncanny ability to foresee that a great moment - one of the big pay-off moments- might be in the offing.

To finish off the day and wait out the traffic I spent an other half hour driving to South Coast Plaza where a cluster of stores are located shoulder to shoulder: Restoration Hardware, Pottery Barn, Z Gallerie, Napa Style. Another stop at IKEA for more shelf paper and the Swedish pancake mix to try with a jar of their lingonberry preserves. Once again I'm impressed with the shopping convenience - the little measuring tapes they provide, the shopping lists and the grids for laying things out. Their kitchen design section is set up with computers on which you can plan your kitchen using their various cabinets in combinations. Too bad about the self-retrieval of items from the warehouse - I find this part utterly impossible and such a barrier to purchase. I wonder what their sales would be like if they actually delivered furniture to your car. Maybe they do, although all I see are people navigating big carts with huge heavy cartons through the cash registers.

I hit the freeway at 6:30 expecting the worst but made it home by 8:00 just at dusk. Like a reverse vampire, I have to make it home before dark or driving is too dangerous. My speedometer was nudging 90 at one point which was just barely "keeping up" in the fast lane; for a dizzy dame that's too damn fast. My foot lightened up, I moved over to the right and cruised home at a more conservative 75.