Three Beautiful Things 12-14-12: Shopping with Handel, Solitude at Delta Ponds, Hammerhead Rules

1.  I drove the Deke to work early this morning and went straight to the grocery store to buy food and drink and enjoyed The Messiah being played over the sound system and the uncrowded aisles.  Sometimes my solitude was such in the store that I felt free to whistle, softly, some of my favorite passages from The Messiah.

2.  The sky cleared.  Then it clouded over.  Sometimes it was patchy.  Rain showers fell.  I saw a rainbow.  The egrets, heron, ducks, geese, and other fowl seemed unperturbed by the weather changes and I had a good walk and took more pictures at Delta Ponds.  I was the only visitor for most of my time there.  A woman with her camera was taking pictures when I first arrived.  We smiled politely at each other and whispered a hello.  We both seemed to know that the other didn't want conversation.  Here's a picture of one of the egrets in flight:

3.  I sample a lot of different beers served in Eugene at Sixteen Tons, the Bier Stein, Falling Sky and other places.  After a drink at the noisy and crowded Cornucopia and after discovering that Billy Mac's was packed, the Deke and I discovered that the 19th Street was quiet and I ordered my favorite beer of them all, the one most reliable, satisfying, perfectly balanced beer in this town or anywhere else, in my humble estimation:  McMenamins' Hammerhead.  I last had one in Portland back in the early fall and I'm always invigorated not only by the taste of the Hammerhead, but by all the great memories locked up in this beer, memories of conversations, good company, and reflective times by myself since I drank my first Hammerhead back in about 1996.  I love those other beers, but Hammerhead, in my little world, rules.