Swimming with Tarragon and Driving with Genghis Kahn
I hope that you’re all well and happy. Here we’ve been struggling to cope with the challenge of a new location. This week’s issue was tarragon.
“I can’t find tarragon,” Nazy claimed.
“Hmm...” I replied. “Wasn’t that from Gone With the Wind?”
“What?”
“Remember: after the war: Scarlett almost lost the plantation? Tara? Gone!”
“Spices, Dan. I decided on Spice Islands spices,” Nazy continued. “But they don’t have tarragon at Ralph’s, Lazy Acres or Albertson’s. It’s..”
“.. a catastrophe?” I interrupted.
“ ... a disaster, Dan. A total disaster.”
“I’m sure they have tarragon..”
“.. French tarragon, Dan. That’s the best for culinary purposes.”
“Actually, I favor tarragon from the Turtle Islands. It’s their speciality: terrapins and tarragon. But I digress. I’m sure that you can find it in other spice brands..”
“You are missing the point. I’ve standardized on Spice Islands. I like the shape of the bottle - which fits nicely in the spice rack. I need Spice Islands tarragon. Not McCormick.”
“But I like McCormick Pure Vanilla. We use it for Christmas cookies..”
“I want all of my spices to be in the same size bottle. And I can’t find tarragon...”
“What kind of a tarrgon-less country is this?” I asked. Astonished. Aware that home tranquility was threatened, I skulked off to my MacBook Pro. A short time later, I located a Spice Islands tarragon supplier. I placed my order - ready to surprise and delight my spouse.
A few days later, at a different supermarket, Nazy found Spice Islands tarragon. I told her not to buy it because..
“.. it will arrive in the mail tomorrow.”
“Why did you do that?”
“You could just say ‘thank you’.”
“You knew I was going to find it. Why did you pay for shipping..”
“Maybe I wanted to surprise you on your birthday,” I mumbled.
“Tarragon as a birthday present?” Now Nazy was astonished.
“I wanted to spice things up.”
“It’s a herb, Dan.”
“I wanted to herb things up.”
Although my spontaneous gesture didn’t meet with the overwhelming enthusiasm that I’d expected, there was excitement when the package arrived.
“See!” I exclaimed as I unwrapped the package.
“See?” Nazy replied examining the contents: Allspice - and not one, but three bottles.
“The packing slip says ‘tarragon’,” I pointed out , both accurately and irrelevantly.
“Didn’t you also buy lightbulbs that were the wrong size?” Nazy asked.
“The Internet, my dear. Isn’t it a wonderful invention?”
When we’re not opening delivery boxes, Nazy and I have begun to explore the local neighborhood. Although I liked walking along the ocean, the new place is more inland - and uphill. But it includes some pretty walks and plants:
When we lived in Zürich, I swam several times a week at a nearby 50 meter pool. It took me a while to find a suitable venue in Santa Barbara. But, I’ve found the Los Baňos del Mar Pool on Shoreline Drive - a great place to swim. It’s an outdoor (but heated) pool overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It was opened in 1939. (There were pools on the spot earlier - some destroyed by fire or earthquake.) The lap swimming times are somewhat constrained: 7:30 - 9:00AM and 12:00 - 2:00PM. But I don’t have to worry about driving through the snow. However..
Flashback: I had just parked at the Zollikon Schwimbad (Pool). I saw a confused and obviously distraught newcomer pacing the area. “Where do you pay to park?” She asked. “Parking is free.” I responded. “Free? Are we still in Switzerland?”
.... However (the author repeats himself), parking here costs $2.00/visit. Individual swim sessions are much less costly (about half) in California. In Switzerland, I shared the pool with nonagenarian nuns and clueless splashers. Here..
“Nobody is flapping around like a ceiling fan that’s missing a blade,” I explained. “The people here are swimmers. They swim.”
“That’s good.”
“Mostly in a straight line. But the lanes are crowded and labeled: VERY FAST, FAST, MEDIUM and SLOW, I have found the SLOW to be too SLOW and the MEDIUM to be too MEDIUM.”
“Too Medium?”
“Okay, the MEDIUM is too fast, but only because the Medium ‘swimmers’ use flippers. I think that’s cheating.”
“It’s not contest, Dan.”
“So?”
“So they can’t be cheating.”
The Pool
And, finally, this week I was booked into the California Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) for my on-the-road driver license examination. (It seems that California doesn’t recognize the validity of a Swiss Driver’s License.) Proud of a quick ‘pass’ on the written examination, there were butterflies in my stomach as an Inspector named Genghis Carn arrived. Oops... out of space. Find out how things turned out next week.