chipotle | Chicken and apples

Wandering yesterday took me up all the way to Santa Rosa, for no reason other than to see Santa Rosa. I’ve driven past it a few times but never stopped there. It seems pleasant enough, but it’s one of those downtowns where every parking space is metered, which doesn’t encourage a casual wandering-around for an afternoon. I am tempted to try to get all the way up to Healdsburg sometime soon—like, maybe this week—to see if I can get to the Tierra Vegetables farm stand I’ve been meaning to visit but never think about when I’m actually in that area. Why? Chipotles. Really. They’re said to have the best chipotles and chipotle powder available. I’m not a gourmet cook, but I can pretend to be one on occasion.

After that, I took a meandering path between Santa Rosa and Saint Helena, stopping at a local market for a Gravenstein apple—a type that I believe originated in Sebastopol, although I think it’s grown in a few other places around the northwest now. I’d never had one before and given that we’re close to Sebastopol’s Apple Festival, I knew they were in season. (I think of apples as a fall crop, but I guess it’s late enough.) They’re like pink lady apples, if you’ve seen those; tart, but with a little more sweetness than Granny Smiths. Then it was up—and down—Spring Mountain Road, which is a beautiful drive, ranging from twisty mountain roads on the west side to rolling hills topped with Tuscany-style villas and vineyards on the east as you head into Napa.

The path back was along the I-680 corridor, but I did take a short detour to Fairfield to Chick-Fil-A for dinner. Oh, don’t look at me that way, I like them and that’s the closest one to the SF Bay Area. The last time I was in Fairfield, I took a chance and went to Adalberto’s for a “California burrito,” a San Diego specialty; it was fine enough, but I missed the chicken sandwich.

So, news on the job front: interesting. I posted new ads on Craigslist yesterday which were written in an offbeat fashion—not a resume, but a FAQ, essentially, and this time promoting myself as a LAMP developer. I posted it both on the SF board and the Seattle board, and I’ve already gotten contacts from both—it seems people either read it and are interested in it, or don’t read it at all. (Several recruiters have sent me the same job twice, clearly looking at both the Craigslist boards without paying attention to the fact that the postings are written by the same person.) However, after I posted that, I received a contact from the place I was interviewing at last week. More about that later.