Miscellaneous: Not Wasted, Just Different

At about 10:30 this morning, I zipped off to the Saturday farmers market downtown to buy some honey. I arrived home at nearly 5:00PM. The market closes at noon. What happened to the missing five hours you wonder? Read on.

I had planned to get home quickly. I wanted to finish the blog entry below, and I had other work to do. I picked up a jar of honey and started home. Suddenly, the car died. The engine just stopped. It started up briefly a moment later, allowing me to drive a few hundred feet more, then died completely. The battery light came on and I had to coast to a stop on Sonoma Ave.--in a no parking zone, right in front of the main police station. Santa Rosa's main fire station is right next door. "If the car spontaneously combusts, I'm in good shape," I thought to myself. (Actually, that's a lie, but it sounded good, so I threw it in there.)

When it became apparent that I'd have to wait three hours for a tow, I decided to make the best of things. I walked downtown (a few blocks), got a sandwich and a cup of coffee at the kosher deli on 4th St. (I didn't know Santa Rosa had a kosher deli, but there it was. Great.) Afterwards I walked around town, looked in the bookstores, stopped by the library, and spent a few minutes watching the people that were people-watching from the chairs in front of Peet's Coffee. After leaving the car for repair on Monday, I finally made it home (thanks Mom) with not only a jar of honey but also a book (The Girl with the Pearl Earring) and a couple of musical scores bought cheap at the used bookstore. I even had an interesting conversation with the tow truck driver--comparing notes on the trials associated with restoring and running old cars and motorcycles.

Not a wasted day, just not the day I had planned.

I bought honey today for the first time in eight years. Because I keep bees, I'm not used to paying for honey, but I just hived a new swarm last spring after losing the colony that I had going, and I judged the brand new colony too weak to take honey from this past fall. We just used up the last from the harvest of the year before. Honey has gotten remarkably expensive in the interim. I almost balked, but decided to look at it as support for the local beekeepers at the market that often give me free advice.