Traveler

After travelling to all kinds of places in California, I returned home last night. Home. *sigh*

I met many interesting and not-so-interesting people, made a few friends, and almost bought an orchard. The sweet scent of orange blossoms can make you drunk with idealistic notions of living amongst orchards of the sweet smelling fruit. And then you come back home, to a suburbia where you need to wash the pollution out of your hair and schedule everything.

It was all business travel, but somehow it felt more like a vacation. Along the way, I met people who told me the secrets of where to get perfectly and truly organic fruits. And I ran into someone I hadn't seen since I was 8. I didn't recognize him at first, of course. I was shopping at his quaint organic food store and he asked me if I needed any help, which I did, because I couldn't find the roasted cashews. We got to talking and it turned out that his favorite nut of all was the cashew. We talked some more and upon mentioning that I was from the San Fernando Valley, his eyes twinkled and told me that he went to school there for one year when he was very young and before his parents moved up north. A few sentences later, we discovered that we had been in the same class that one year. And, what's more, we'd been good friends that year. That night we went out to have dinner and reminisce, catch up on all that had happened in our lives. It's a great feeling to "reconnect" with someone. We promised we'd keep in touch and we inked his visit to LA in mid-May. I'm looking forward to that.

On my way back, I bought two large boxes of fresh-picked organic strawberries. Mmmm... They have a sweet smell and an even sweeter, juicier taste. You just can't get strawberries like that anywhere around here, or at least if you can, I don't know from where. So I'm making strawberry jam. There's nothing like homemade strawberry jam made with sweet, ripe strawberries.

Tonight, I'm going out to an art gallery opening of a friend, which is why I came back last night. Hmm... I'm already running kind of late. I better go.