Palo Alto is a Big Square

Cherished reader, the pandemic is a terrible thing, causing stress all over the globe. Here in Palo Alto I'm afraid to announce it's the cause of a previously unheard of degree of marital strife. Read on for the gory details.

Exhibit A was a robust exchange of views on how the weather app works on the iPhone, and how this relates to what's happening with the climate here. I'd noticed that the weather here is almost always better than the phone predicts. When pointing that out, the somewhat quizzical response I received was something about Palo Alto being a big square. I really had no idea what this meant, but I'm afraid my attempts to clarify were met with nothing but frustration from my partner-in-shelter-in-place. After what seemed like days of this, we clarified things fully. It turns out Palo Alto is quite a wide area, and the weather app must both be measuring and predicting for one point in that zone. Of course, that may not agree precisely with the weather where we are. Yes, Palo Alto is a big square (although not that big; walk less than a mile to the West and the phone starts telling you you're in Stanford).

And then this happened:

Imagine my surprise when I came to make lunch on Wednesday and found only 3 rashers of bacon left for the rest of the week. On expressing my surprise, I was met with a response of "oh yes - I put bacon in the cookies". Apparently this wasn't a mistake, and neither was it a bizarre anti-viral experiment. We're in America, a place where maple bacon chocolate chip cookies are considered normal. As you can imagine, extensive taste testing has been necessary to verify whether this is actually correct.

Another thing I've learned about Americans is that they're always in a tremendous hurry. Well, they must be, mustn't they? Otherwise, how would you explain this:

This car passes for parked here.

I mean, where do you start with this? The angle? The fact that the front wheel is far enough from the kerb to count as lousy parking in the UK? The assumption that anything within a 30 degree angle counts as parallel? That's the other thing about the US; Euclidean geometry doesn't actually apply here, because parallel lines meet an awful lot closer than at infinity. That's a maths joke for you!

Anyway, some good news; my favourite local coffee haunt, the tremendous Verve Coffee Roasters, has reopened for takeaway.

That first macchiato in 6 or 7 weeks was a pretty special experience. Worth the wait!

Take care, gentle reader, and catch you next week.