ONLY 10? Irvine Co. senior vice president...

ONLY 10? Irvine Co. senior vice president Larry Thomas knows friends may question his decision to give up his high-paying job to work for the reelection campaign of old friend and former boss, Gov. Pete Wilson (D1). So Thomas has produced his own Letterman-style Top Ten reasons for the move. . . . Among them: “I can’t stand yet another beautiful Newport Beach summer.” “They promised me my own cubicle to share with 10 campaign workers.” “Who really needs a corporate expense account and potential annual bonus?”

PINE CIRCLE: At American Independence Park near Jerusalem, there’s a new circle of young pines growing in honor of Newport Beach. They were planted by the Jewish National Fund, to honor the city’s vigorous tree planting program. . . . The city has also been honored by the National Arbor Day Foundation. Fund president Herbert J. Patt told city officials this week: “We thank you for having a beautiful city of which we are all proud.”

SHOP TALK: What’s the grocery bill for a family of five and two hungry cats? Try to match Vicki Cowell of Tustin--$70 a week. “And that’s with three teen-age daughters who eat four meals a day,” she laughs. . . . Cowell, with a master’s degree in family resource management, is in demand for seminars on bargain shopping, like one she gave at Rancho Santiago College this week. One Cowell caution: Plan ahead by studying food ads. “The worst thing is to just roam the grocery aisles,” she says. “That leads to costly impulse buying.”

NOT JUST A SUNSET: If you’ve ever traveled Laguna Canyon at sunset, did you ever see it this way: “I love the way the hills empurple and sky goes nectarine, the way the lights appear like little electric fig seeds, the wet west burnishing over into the indeterminate colors of the divine.” . . . . That’s how poet Charles Wright sees it, as part of his “Looking Across Laguna Canyon at Dusk, West-by-Northwest,” in a recent New Yorker magazine.