A friend recently announced, via face book, that she had made cupcakes and put same in the oven.

     "Is there," asked, "anything better than cupcakes baking in the oven?" My response to her, and my concurrent introduction to this blog follows below.

Rachael, while I'm sure your cupcakes are the very epitome of culinary splendifferness, the following things are better than even the very best cupcakes, so let's try and keep perspective. And have a nice day.

a) being in a new large strange city with a camera

b) beer, dark rich thick beers, porters and stouts. IPA's are not beers by the way. Beer is not made better just by dumping obscene amounts of hops into malty water; just as italian food is not made more italian with truckloads of garlic.

c) clean rivers- not open sewage ditches like say the big brown run off ditch adjacent to my home town. Clean rivers with fish and otters and mountain views. 

d) ribs

e) watermelon in the middle of summertime. 

f) the first day of fall when all the pretty women pull their levis out of the closet for the first time

g) San Francisco. It is all that. 

h) The Stanley Cup playoffs

i) sex. the loud sloppy kind of sex which wakes up the neighbors a 3am on saturday morning. 

J) John Coltrane

k) Riding cross country trains

l) drinking wine late into the night with your mates;especially your brothers and sisters, after a prolonged absence.

M) having your mates support your dreams

N) Your own children on Christmas, but not on most other days.

O) Sex followed by weekend brunch with a new lover

P) making turkey gumbo, the day after thanksgiving, with my teenage sons

Q) sleeping naked next to a pregnant woman on a cold winter night.

r) Mountains

s) waking early in the mountains and sharing a pre-sunrise drink from the river with an elk .

t) whitewater canoeing a unknown river with an old friend, especially when the river is up and there is a tangible threat of death.

u) backpacking Europe

v) My new french mastiff- Coco.

w) Freshly ground coffee in the morning

x) friends anytime, anyplace

y) ignoring punctuation and spelling in order to experience the sheer joy of getting the right thoughts down on paper.

z) girls in summer clothes