sacramento, panini and other miscellany

I am freshly back from Sacramento, where I did some worky things and gave what I think was sort of a lackluster reading at Luna’s Café. Luckily I wasn’t the only one on the bill, so other people kept things lively. It was a warm-up for Reading Season, the time when my book comes out and I bombard you constantly with emails and blog posts about where to see me next. For the record, I’m usually a pretty solid reader, so don’t let the aforementioned lackluster-ness scare you away. I’m warmed up now.

More importantly, Sacramento is home to my very good friend Kristi, whom I hadn’t seen in two years. We met freshman year in this ridiculous UCLA class called The Scientific Method and the Search for Life in the Universe, which turned out to be a fancy name for Geology. We bonded over the bummer of that revelation, plus the fact that our class was full of weirdos like the body builder who opened a smelly can of tuna halfway through class every day, plus the fact that we wanted to take ballet at the rec center.

So it’s kinda crazy that Kristi is now a five-months-pregnant grownup with a very nice non-weirdo husband. And despite the different paths our lives have taken (meaning she knows how to do grownup things like grill vegetables), it’s always easy to pick up where we left off. I love those kinds of friends.

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Back in L.A., AK and I joined Sara and Dave for a long-postponed panini lunch. Sara had been talking and blogging and Facebooking about panini for months, and while I’m all for any bread-centric food, I have to admit that at one point I thought, It’s just a sandwich, right?

Au contraire. As the proud owner of her own panini grill, Sara ushered us into a world of fresh mozzarella, lightly grilled mushrooms, olive medleys, big basil leaves and crunchy, crispy—but not greasy because you know exactly how much olive oil you sprayed on it yourself and it was not a lot—bread. Special bread with things like rosemary and olives in it.

So I know what I want for Christmas now. (Santa. If you’re listening.) Either that, or I just need to swing by Sara’s place more often.

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In other news, if you’re in the market for a free, very cute kitten, I can probably hook you up. Email me.

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If you’re in the market for a free trip to New York, and you are a writer, I can’t hook you up, exactly, but you should go here: http://www.pw.org/about-us/california_writers_exchange_award.