On our way back from signing the lease on our new digs yesterday, we pulled off the freeway to get something to eat and ended up on a couple miles of twisty, dark road east of San Bernardino. About three minutes after I suggested that maybe I’d led us astray and that there was nothing out there, a small and in the low light slightly disreputable looking Greek place hove into view off the starboard bow. We shrugged and went in. We’ll be back. A lot. It was fantastic. I should have suspected, of course, given that we were in Yucaipa, from the Greek Ευκαιπεπαομνγ, which translates loosely as “authentic and good to eat.” Best Greek coffee I’ve ever had. When I raved about the coffee to the lovely proprietress who had made each cup, the elderly man in residence hustled behind the counter to show off the briki in which it had been brewed. If you’re ever in Ευκαιπα, you should go.
It was a good day overall. We signed the lease on our new place – we get the keys tomorrow and start measuring things – and then spent the rest of the day soaking up the ambiance of our new neighborhood. I have a strong feeling of yes about this change, and I’ve adjusted the tagline of this blog just like I said I would. We checked out the art museum (closed on Mondays), the library (ditto), the street scene along Palm Canyon (mostly not closed on Mondays) and sat and ate some acceptable Mexican food while looking up at the “low” foothills of San Jacinto a block west. Our new place is in a neighborhood that while rather low-key has a completely ridiculous number of walkable amenities, including not only branches of each of our banks but a thrift store with $5 levis and tame saguaros and hotels for when friends come to visit and a wine place with tastings and bighorn sheep and a bicycle store and a running shoes store and a cats-n-rabbits food store and I may have mentioned the mountain.
Odd thing: During the course of the day The Raven and I discovered that each of us feels that the only acceptable Xmas tree is made up of bare manzanita branches, which is strange to discover only after weathering three consecutive Xmi with a person.
Anyway. We’ve been gearing up for the change and are both excited by possibilities and daunted by the amount of work we’ll have to get done in the next three weeks or so. Moving the boys will be interesting. We’ve thought of enticing Thistle with tales of the Coachella Valley’s big carrot festival, but that way lies confrontation. For the last week or so I’ve made a game of putting Nosy in his cat carrier and letting him walk right out again to much praise. Boy, is he gonna be pissed when he finds out.
Speaking of Mongolian barbecue, we also had a very nice and very long late Ethiopian lunch with the proprietor of the world’s most popular closed blog this weekend, who was in town for the Modrun Language Association confab. We then dropped him off at his airport shuttle and drove off to eat yet again. In sum, we have been spending restaurant money like hungry sailors on shoreleave in North Berkeley. Unwise as a long-term policy, but oh so much fun.
