Christmas December 25, 2000 with nine hours of delay, it has finally arrived to California as well.

This week carried the banner of Christmas. It began with me, self-contentiously explaining to Sid how making cookies is really a piece of cake, you just follow the recipe, slap together some dough, put it on a cookie sheet, smack into the oven. Somebody up there must have heard it, for unseen fingers poked into my Linz dough, until it all went flat. And so I advanced from stage alpha (work out the dough) into stage omega (while stirring, flush thoroughly). After that, I approached my next batch with respectful awe.

	My Vizovice style cookies

Of course for the second time everything went just fine, despite using same ingredients and sequence. My esteem inflated like a cockscomb, so I used it to master Vizovice style cookies. Ladies, you may now envy me. Our electric oven bakes beautifully slow, figures don't bloat up and don't crack. I baked them so long that I almost forgot I had the oven on...

On Tuesday I went to Santa Clara, armed with my rope. I found out that a lead climbing class for 72 dollars applies only to Alfy, who has never done it before. It simply matters who you ask. Alfy approached a new boy who just wanted to be sure and claimed that everybody must go through the class. I intercepted the lady boss, who admitted that if I had at least one year experience, I don't have to go. Hooray!!!

We only had to report at the front desk that we were going to lead climb, and someone on duty (in our case, Kris) came to watch us. I was quite glad, they have it thought through and know what a climber and a belayer should each know. They also wanted me to simulate a fall, watched Alfy and did not let him let go of the rope. It's nice to climb with a person who already tried to catch somebody falling and knows what to do with the line and the mechanism. In Prague, I always had to organize such "test" with some sympathetic climber friends.

I was not aware how much I had missed my climbing on the "right" end of the rope. There's a difference between hanging off of a "top rope", and leading, like between walking and flying. Just tell me: would you keep marching on, if you could just take off an soar???

Lead climbing took its toll on me, after six routes I was so weary that my hands kept opening all by themselves. Anyway, the feeling was great, reinforced by a small detail; gym staff started relating to me on a different level.

	Kozí Ranch

	The ranch has a wooly goat herd

And since I was this nice and skillful, I decided to reward myself with a trip on Wednesday. When we drove over the hill with Sid to Half Moon Bay, we noticed off Alpine Road a gate with a sign "KOZI RANCH". We were wondering if it meant "Goat Ranch" in Czech language, or if it was an intentionally misspelled "Cozy Ranch"

Then Martina mentioned on Monday that she was going to go with Madeleine to visit with Martha, who had a ranch somewhere near Alpine, and so I retorted with my story about KOZI RANCH and naturally, Martha owns Kozí Ranch. This also took care of the mystery about the origin of the name and I inconspicuously invited myself to come along for the visit.

A couple of Czechs named Sehnals had built Kozí Ranch de facto with their own hands. Their property includes a stretch of forest and a pond, a "barn" where they lived originally, and a huge house. The settlement was designed as a self-sufficient unit, with all thinkable farm animals. To this time, Martha hold goats (for wool), ducks, chickens, and a herd of dogs. I think that currently she has two rottweiller bitches, a spotted puppy (I forgot the name of the breed, but it looks like a rugged street mix), and a rejected pittbull. She also had a female cat and a male cat, but the male just wandered off recently and the female was so shy she did not even come to check us out.

	Madlenka is quite used to cold ... but still ... this is our weather on December 20!

	Americans CARRY their dogs when they go mushroom hunting...

While we had drinks, Kren's dog Smudla lost interest in devouring my sleeves and turned to play with Nunik (that spotted puppy). After an hour or so, the puppy looked as if it would fall asleep any moment, but a little older Smudla would not go down.

Eventually we went out for some mushrooms. Martha picks chanterelles practically next to the house, and so the younger dogs could be brought along. Bringing is the correct literal expression. Blackberry and other thorny things were the reason for both animal scouts to start hobbling and biting their paws, until they got picked up by their respective mistresses and carried around. When I took a picture of Martina with Smudla, she exclaimed that I should definitely capture this for everybody to see that "these Americans have nothing better to do that CARRYING their dogs when mushroom hunting!". (Unfortunately there are darker sides to California, one of them being poison oak, which is a tiny, easily overlooked menace. That's just a little extra on top of all the blackberry and other, drier thorn bushes, and stinging nettles.)

After returning from mushroom hunt, Madeleine ran off to goats in their pen, which the dogs watched with great disappointment (they were supposed to stay outside the fence), until they could not bear it anymore and both pushed through the fence. Nunik actually went only not to miss any fun with Smudla, but Smudla lost all interest in his younger buddy and focused on serious "work". He started to exercise the goats, who took it very seriously and behaved as if controlled by a very competent shepherd's dog. You could literally see Smudla grow bigger. The end result was, however, goats running around in their pen in panic, with Smudla at an incredible orbital speed around them, the whole affair punctuated by Madeleine running after them, afraid that goats could lose patience and turn against Smudla. This circus then went over the horizon with a great racket, and Martha decided it was time to take control.

After quarter hour she reported finding the dog and Madeleine (goats would return home on their own, and Nunik already slept in the house, as was proper for a baby dog). Smudla complained about thorns in his paws, and eventually had to be de-thorned manually.

	Dogs, sad outside the gate... not for long...

	Everybody, after the hunt...

Martha offered us, city folk, "a few evergreen branches" for Christmas decoration, saying that she just had felled a tree. She grabbed big twig cutter and I was later leaving with Cecilia stuffed with branches. When I unloaded them onto our balcony, our poor little fir looked next to them like a sad heap. But since I disposed of most of the evergreen at our neighbors', nothing got really wasted.

On Friday night we had a dinner with Stone. We had no idea it would be a larger company. Besides the doctor and Aňa, there were Goša and Ed and two more couples. Stone kept talking with the other four about golf, while we had good time with Goša and Ed. They are very fun people and seem to not care to be "politically correct", so we kept challenging all kinds of issues, like guys vs. girls (very sexist or feminist). Aňa would have liked to chat with us, but she got trapped at the golfing side of the table, and had to suffer through it. I think that we did not really qualified ourselves for the "golf" company anyway .

	Šmudla is being de-thorned...

	Christmas

On Saturday Sid went out to do his Christmas shopping, and I decorated our tree. I had made a portion of our decorations myself (ginger breads, vizovice cookies), and I borrowed straw decorations from Krens. Toughest was unwrapping those tiny light bulbs. At that time I was still enjoying Sid being out and not getting in my way. When he was out for five hours, I got slightly nervous. Could it be that Sid immersed himself in generally hated activity of shopping so much that he would forget to return home, to his beloved wife, and refrigerator??? He came back alright, with an insane expression and a full car, just at the moment I decided to call police. He did not become the hero of the day, for he failed to locate a small waste bin for our bathroom. This I dreamed up during the summer, but everything here is made in such huge sizes that we gave up trying to purchase something like it after almost two months of intermittent shopping.

But Sid bought us a beautiful color printer, which lets us print photo enlargements and do our own graphics.

On Christmas Eve we played with our new printer, and in the afternoon went to a small hike over Morgan Hill. Most of the mountain is split into lots, but some of the top area is reserved for a park (a smart decision from the land management), although I can imagine how some loaded jerk would not hesitate to grab it for a few millions. This way, though, we the mortals have at least a place to go hiking.

	Snails

	Šmudla got a bone for Christmas...

For holiday dinner we baked mahi mahi (saltwater fish) with horse radish, with a side of home made potato salad we made in the morning. We drank our favorite red port (experts may roll their eyes at the idea of such a combination, but we like it a lot). Presents started off well, we both got beer steins (a pint each, which is about 1/2 liter) and a traveling axe from Vana's. When our neighbors drop by, they get their beer in bottles, and I borrowed a saw from them yesterday - as one can see, they think practical.

Sid has already discovered that in order to keep our marriage happy, he must keep me warm -- in the largest packing was a blanket (we already have one and keep fighting over who's going to use it on all our trips -- it's a wonderful addition to a sleeping bag), and my second present was a thermos coffee mug (I am useless without my morning caffeine shot). Sid got two polo shirts (he does not wear regular shirts and all his T's are awfully threadbare), to keep representing our family properly, and a chalk bag (now that he climbs so well ).

	Sid gazed at the snails with suspicion. They gave the poor guy such a small spoon!		No worries though, there something else cooking!!!

On Christmas Day I woke up wonderfully rested, despite opening my eyes before Sid did. He usually wakes much earlier than I do. Looking at the clock, everything became clear. It was ten thirty. There was only some time for breakfast and shower left, before we had to go to Kren's to have a Christmas Ham. Sid and George immediately rushed to a computer, Madeleine had earphones on (she got CD walkman for Christmas) and played a small game gadget. Smudla as usually decided that I came to visit only him, and bit my hands and arms all the way to my elbows. When he finally noticed I wouldn't provide any more fun (I aimed at drinking wine and chatting with Martina, alternatively with the boys), he returned to biting into his new bone, which he got from Barbora (Martha's daughter).

We boasted to George about our new color printer, Kren's in turn brought out a great new digital camera (our journal pictures have come so far mostly from our Mavica, which is not that great in sharpness) and told us about receiving Czech radio programming over the internet (which we subsequently failed to accomplish ourselves at home). But it was all mostly eating affair, if I remember correctly; besides lots of wine we had jellied fish, which I skipped for I can't bear the "shivering" texture. Then we had snails, but the real snail shells were not filled with real snail meat, and the main course was ham and mashed potatoes and veggies etc., and cookies and strudel and... then we cowardly ran away home .
We thought we would pack that night, so we could take off early morning with Martin's family for the mountains, from where we planned to continue on an extended trip. Martin promised to teach me how to ski downhill, but this evening he cancelled everything, since his car broke down. So we would rest and think about the remainder of our trip. Sid is going to be off work till January 2, and we have to take advantage of that.

Copyright © 2000-2004 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.