Comedian Will Durst (whose first book, The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing, has just hit the stands) co-hosted a first-ever Red Room Writers' Mixer last week at Tosca on Columbus in San Francisco, with his wife, Debbie, and Red Room CEO Ivory Madison, and if you missed it, you missed meeting some pretty nice people.

I made the trek from Healdsburg (about 2 hours away), and met Ivory and her capable staff, plus David Corbett, Deborah Grabien, Blake More, Jeanne Powell, Richard A. Moran, Wendy Merrill, Victoria Zackheim, Ellen Sussman, Adair (a columnist) and Bill (Chronicle Books), and of course Will and Debbie Durst.

It was fun and frenetic, and the decibel level was extreme, but most of us managed to shout our names at each other, and I passed out lots of Accidental Cowgirl bookmarks. If you missed it, we missed you. If you're one of the many people who asked where I got the bookmarks printed, it was Sepracolor Studios (aka Simply Postcards), 1-800-770-4102, or www.simplypostcards.com. Talk to David, and tell 'im I sentcha!

And speaking of berries, my current excuse for not getting down to writing of late is a four-week spate of blueberry-picking on our Healdsburg farm. Besides blueberries, I picked raspberries, strawberries and wild blackberries (the ones I could save from the wild birds, the dog and our neighbor's geese).

Yep, it was hard, hot work, but I'll remember all you cityfolk as I eat our next fresh blueberry pie, and I sure won't miss the traffic. I guess I really am a country girl at heart.