January | 2016 | Michael S. Moore

The from real-winter-to-mild-green/damp transition is always disconcerting…

Not to mention the immediate Immersion into Civilization…

…in the form, between small storms, of Leo Valledor’s vintage paintings at Brian Gross [next door to Masami Teraoka’s unfortunate Boschian pastiches]. Leo’s held up fine, followed by a dinner on Portrero Hill…

…and home in drizzling dark.

California Winter; dogwalks, bicycle rides brightly crisp or occluded, everlasting errands…

Midweek we tried for a quick lunch at the new bakery cafe across from the Capitol only to find it wasn’t; excellent ingredients on the panini and in the burger, true, but service erratic at best. Fortunately we had a window seat with which to amuse ourselves in the interim.

By the time our soggy [it’s a bakery; the pastries look great and the quiche is known to be fabulous but they can’t actually bake…BREAD?] sandwiches materialized the guys who’d come in after us were pretty much done…

…and the poor ladies who’d preceded us finally abandoned all hope, leaving hungry.

Anyway, an illuminating experiment; if the bread and service ever get sorted out we might be back, but meanwhile…

…an hour [and fourteen bucks] for a burger in an unbaked bun ain’t going to cut it.

Thursday into the city for dental torment, not so bad as anticipated, and…

…home, benumbed, just ahead of the weather to discover Linda, Scott and Shawn finishing up burritos in the kitchen after reconstituting “Glimmer “.

Friday morning found us snout to snout with the fabulously friendly E Street dog and on the jetty in the afternoon…

Saturday all the way to Vallejo for industrial quantities of TP prior to lunch…

…and that evening to Rockridge to board a BART full of ninnies headed for the city and for us another gala gallery opening – Noam Rappaport at Ratio 3 who in some sense could be construed as a distant if more painterly descendant of Leo’s hardedged tradition…

Or constructivist. The gallery hosted a big dinner for friends old and [relative to us] young just over the hill from our former Guerrero Street studios, after which we slogged back to 24th, a train reaching Rockridge at precisely midnight and home a bit into Sunday.

The weekend, weakened, waking late to misty straits,

MLKing day loading for the winter desert, having never unwrapped the ’45; given unreliable predictions of what the sky might bring and nearly daily rains it seemed the best practice…

The contradictory forecasts finally coalesced into a Tuesday of danger on peaks [also passes], so gathered groceries, loaded up, and awaited clearing, brief respites coming Monday morning;