Burning stress means don't burn the holiday turkey. And then let a long holiday weekend unfold, giving pause along the way.

• Pooling resources: Millerton Lake looks like a prune in training -- how far must one hike to encounter water? And how is it, given how few the water hazards at Brighton Crest, that my return to golfing after two years still found me kerplashing in ponds and creek beds?
• Gawk at hawks: Lots of screeching and swooping of Cooper's hawks near Brighton Crest and Table Mountain -- a bit of nature made more ominous by their cousin-critter that killed a family pet recently in my backyard.
• Watching and hurting: Son the Navy medic showed the exercises he did in training with the Marines. I chugged ibuprofen.
• Words to remember: "Blashy" -- watered-down beer, courtesy of the Balderdash board game. "New fake" -- the Christmas tree purchased to replace the 12-year-old crinkly "old fake."  A "second that's better than a first" -- sales technique in which a tobacconist sells a slightly flawed cigar in lieu of a pricier intact name brand. "Cobalt" -- a new "color" learned with purchase of first Western boots. "Staple remover" -- story told by a relative who had a nurse-friend remove staples from his head injury because he couldn't afford a trip back to a hospital.
• Rubik's Cube moments: Who does health inspections on the carts that ferry food around golf courses -- and how often? Do you put shredded mail in the blue or gray trash containers? Where do you find a do-gooder who can refurbish old bikes for an impoverished family your church is helping? When you're standing outside Fresno's Amtrak station at 5 a.m., waiting for the Amtrak bus connection to a train in LA, do you feel relieved when staff pound on the bus windows and can't find the driver -- meaning he's not asleep in the back -- or do you just begin to feel the first red-faced buzz of "the holiday's over" stress along with 70 other people?

The Tao of de-stressing officially closed, in the 7 a.m. fog on the 168/180 merge, when a driver used one elbow to scratch at her fogged-over side window while using her other arm to apply mascara.