I went to the Safeway today. I was on a mission to get cherries. We have been anticipating their arrival for weeks. Chris really, really likes cherries. Anyway, returning to the car, I witnessed a scene of devastation. Seagulls had carpet-bombed our RAV4. This event occurred in the twenty minutes that I was in the store. It was a massacre. The rain that we had received in the last two days had washed the car clean. Making it all the more tempting of a target. The gulls were merciless. There’s a carwash across the street. I suspect they are accomplices.

We are in the land of murder as in murder mysteries. The current flavor for mayhem comes from New Zealand, in the form of Brokenwood. This latest entry in the genre of British murder mysteries is not even British, but at least it is a member of the Commonwealth. On the quirky end of the spectrum this show nurses several running gags of a possibly sexist bent. Like the female detective who cannot make a decent cup of coffee to save her life or the female Russian medical examiner who is always spouting out sexual innuendos. Either she is also on the spectrum or with English as a second language, she does not realize the double meaning of what she says. It is still fun trying to guess the perp.

I took the birthday girl out for lunch, but we had a deadline. In a little over an hour the street outside, where we had parked was hosting a farmers’ market. There was a row of signs down the centerline proclaiming the coming towaway zone. With half-an-hour yet to go I got a text from the Monterey police warning us of potential towing. How they collated our parked car with my phone is another mystery. Anyway, the service was fast, and we had enough time to walk across the street and pick up an ice cream cake for tonight. Happy birthday!