jwg

We deviate from our standard system for various reasons.

For birthdays we usually dine out at a nice local restaurant - but didn't last year of course.

For Christmas and Thanksgiving, some special occasions, and when we have guests for dinner we dine in the dining room using my mother's (actually grandmother's) china and silverware. Bread and butter plates, separate salad plates. Candles, cloth napkins. And wine. Water is served in a pitcher.

And as mentioned in the breakfast post, on holidays such as President's day we have an egg dish instead of the usual.

And back when it was safe we sometimes ate at a restaurant - sometimes for no particular reason other than we felt like it.

For nights when we go to dances we usually eat in some casual place near the dance sometimes bringing the food back to the dance space to eat there.

We have a bunch of rotation conventions:
- weekday breakfast cerials: 4 kinds, keep in order so they don't fall on the same day each week
- cocktail crackers we have 5 different typs running and use 2 each time, rotating, so the pairings change
- for crackers and jam, I rotate 3 kinds of crackers and 4 kinds of jam
- but 7 kinds of coffee/tea cups so they map onto the same day - the Boston Cecilia cups are for monday because that is when rehearsals were when Robert was in the group.
- meat/seafood, vegetables, lunch salads, have no particular choice order, similarly for cocktails.
- my tea choices for saturday - monday are fixed, the others are random.

Cocktail hour in our household is at 6. Just about every night - not when we are going out to a dance.

We have cheese (usually two types) and crackers (two types). Occasionally also smoked mussels, paté or something else such as octopus.

For drinks there is huge variety: single malt scotch, rusty nails, sherry, dubonnet, bloody mary's, martini's, pisco sours. Just one small deink. Robert is the usual preparer - I occasionally do simple things like sherry or scotch and I make the pisco sours.

Pisco sours: 1 oz simple syrup, 2 oz limejuice, 4 oz pisco, 1 egg white; shake in cocktail shaker with ice, pour into glasses and top with a few drops of Angostura bitters. Learned about this drink in our several trips to Peru. Pisco is kind of a Peruvian brandy.

For lunch we have a variety of things that contains protein - mostly store bough such as: quiche, calzones, quesadillas, salami, smoked salmon, tuna fish salad, peanut butter and some prepared salad-type stuff and a piece of toast. Sometimes if we have excessive dinner leftovers we use them for either the protein psrt of the salad. Occasionall puled-pork sandwiches (that's what we had today). Then at the end an apple or a pear split between us and I have a couple of crackers such as AkMaks with a bit of jam spread on them. Water to drink - and I add metamucil to some of the water.

When we go shopping we get some kind of seafood and some kind of meat. In each case enough for 2 meals.

On the shopping day we cook the seafood and save the rest for day 3; on the next day we cook the meat, saving the rest for day 4. Seafood is usually one of: (not in exact order) salmon, shrimp, scallops, swordfish, monkfish, tuna, bluefish (rare to find these days). No exact order depends on what looks good at the fish counter. The fish is usually grilled, but sometimes roasted. The meat is usually one of chicken thighs with bones, steak, lamb chops or shanks, pork loin or chops, sausages - grilled or in pasta sauce, brisket, or lamb or beef stew. For vegetables we choose what looks good. Potatoes with the meat dish and rice with the seafood.

For the cooking days we have fresh salad of mixed lettuce types usually including tomatoes, peppers, and mushrooms. Dressing is olive oil and vinegar - balsamic sometines - almost always with me, occsionally mustard vinaigrette; + ground pepper and herbs (fresh from the garden in the summer)

Beverage is water or occasionally wine.

Shopper cooks on day 1, warms up on day 3, other person on days 2 &4. non-cook washes dshes; on days 2 we save the dish washing until breakfast uless there are too many. Wine glasses get washed on the day of use. Occasionally a day of distruption of we are going dancing - not these days of course. And we always have some frozen pizza or other frozen foods - called emergency food - if for some reason we didn't go shopping or there is a schedule conflict.

We don't have dessert.

For breakfast every day we have a small glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, or occasionally sectioned grapefruit. Preparation is that Robert always squeezes the oranges except on the first of the month when I do it. For grapefruit I always do the sectioning. Occasionally it is oatmeal - expecially if we run out of bananas. Oatmeal is called porridge by Rutherford who helps make it

Robert has coffee - freshly ground beans - light/medium and dark (with a bit of cinnamon and cloves or nutmeg on weekends). I have tea - usually herbal of various kinds - On saturday it is rooibus and on sunday it is something spicy. On special occasions I have Earl Grey.

Weekdays we have cold cereal with homemade granola (Robert makes that), fruit - bananas except in the summer when fresh local fruit is available, and a bit of milk. 4 kinds of cereal - corn flakes, o's, flakes (tasty ones), and wheat squares. Rotated in exact order and since there are 4 kinds for 5 days a particular kind is not locked into a particular day (take from the left put back on the right).

On saturday it is cheese blintzes with yogurt and fruit and a bit of cinnamon and sugar on top. They are home-made. Robert makes the filling the night before, I make the crepes and fill them in the morning. 1 package of cream cheese and 1/2 container of ricotta + orange rind peelings makes about 10 - we eat 4 and freeze the rest; and the next week we use the other half of the ricotta and another package of cream cheese (used to use neufchatel but it is hard to find). So this means two weeks in a row we prepare, and then the following three weeks we just defrost and cook.

On sunday we rotate between pancakes, waffles, and french toast (in that order). The pancake recipe uses egg yolks, corn meal, a bit of soy flour, wheat germ, oil, baking powder, and fruit juice (not freshly squeezed) with beaten egg whites folded in. Got the idea about fruit juice and cornmeal from an inn in Vermont that we stayed in a long time ago. The waffles uses wheat flour, wheat germ, and some soy and rice flour, egg yolks, milk, oil, honey, and beaten egg whites folded in. The ritual for these breakfasts includes an extra egg yolk - the egg white is saved for Pisco sours that evening. The french toast is whatever bread we happen to be using - often challah - in eggs with a bit of milk and some spices. Maple syrup, yogurt and fruit and cinnamon and sugar for the topping for all of these.

We usually have some extra of these as well as crepes and have them several days later in the evening with icecream and sorbet on them.

For special occasions such as holidays - we make an egg dish - often a fritata or sometimes scrambled or fried - or very occasionally poached.

Generally speaking since each of us generally showers alternating every other day, the person who didn't take the shower does the preparation. So no thinking or negotiation is necessary. Whoever doesn't cook washes the dishes.

We have very regular system for meals: planning, shopping, preparation, eating.

Our shopping system is to usually go every four days - triggered by needing food for dinner. it is usually me (before the plague I often went shopping after I went to the gym) and these days often when Robert is practicing singing. We keep a list right by the dining table in the kitchen and add things when we notice them. We have a nice shopping cart/bag with wheels so it easy to bring the groceries home by foot for the few blocks from the store.

One problem with the list is that I have trouble writing bananananananananananas....and fitting it on the page. And today I put Maypole Spyrits on the list when I saw we are getting low on maple syrup. And I always have to decide if it yogurt or yoghurt.

For certain items like bottles of olive oil we have a spare bottle in the closet and when the current one is emptied and the spare is brought into the kitchen we add olive oil to the list so we never run out of important stuff.

We keep what we call emergency food in the freezer - such as pizza - for times when we don't have suitable food to cook or the schedule is bad - such as today with the SuperBowl starting at 6:30.

And there always canned soup and tuna fish in the closet plus a few other things.

Breakfast is when we get up - usually a bit after 8 - our people companions who are in bed try to persuade us to not get up so that causes a bit of delay. Normal lunch hour is 1pm. Cocktails at 6 and dinner at 7+ a few minutes.

Our dishwashing habit is to always wash the dishes after breakfast, not after lunch, and after dinner when cooking is done. The person who doesn't cook or prepare is the dishwasher. Washing in the sink, drying in the rack - never had a dishwasher. Occasionally if too many dishes are piled up in the sink an extra round of dishwashing is done at some point.

Last night we went to The Christmas Revels in Sanders Theater in Cambridge. What a great show as usual. This one was 1930's American - usually a different theme each year, last year's was Nordic. The cast includes a number of groups - some constructed for this show, others who have their own existence. Being there brought to mind a lot of nostalgic thoughts. Lots of audience particpation in singing old Revels favorites or other well known things (the music and words were in the program and they turned on the house lights). The end of Act One involves singing Lord of the Dance and then the audience getting out of their seats and dancing their way into the lobby.

This is the 49th year of the Cambridge Revels. There are 18 performances this year and also in 8 other cities. When it first started there were only 3 or 5 and only in Cambridge.

Some of the nostalgia is related to the distant past. I was in an early music group called the Quadrivium (no longer in existence). In 1979 and one other year we were part of the Revels and once also performed in the Hanover, NH show. I remember that December - between the Cambridge and Hanover rehearsals and shows and the rehearsals and concerts of our own I think I had something just about every day for 3 weeks in December.

The Stage director and one of the script writers is Paddy Swanson. Paddy worked with the Quadrivium for a few concerts. And one weekend we all went up to the farm where he was custodian and did lots of music.

Since this was an early American theme there was lots of folk music incljding some very fine banjo playing. In 1959-1961 I was a counselor at a summer camp, Camp Killooleet, and there was lots of folk music there (the camp was run by John Seeger, Pete's brother). I bought a used banjo then and I still have it. It isn't in vey good shape and I can't really play it anymore, but...

After resting a bit in our hotel room to help recover from jetlag we started walking around Ryekjavik. We had flown over a day before the cruise was supposed to start - conveniently we were able to get into our hotel room at 7:30 am.

One of the first places we visited was The Settlement Exhibition, a museum with lots of exhibits about the early Viking settlers in Iceland. It is titled Reykjavik 871± 2 because 871 or so was the year when there was a volcanic eruption which deposited some materials which were used as part of the construction of a hall that was occupied from 930-1000.

There was a model of the settlement that was hard to photograph because there was no way to get the camera high enough (I should have had my monopod - left in the hotel room - which would have helped.)

There were models of the building which was a pretty elaborate structure (but I apparently didn't take a picture of it) and lots of information that they had figured out about the settlement.

And some items from later times - at many places there were collections of stuff like this which I always like looking at:

We just returned from Motss Con XXXII in Palo Alto. soc.motss, a Usenet news group that was created in the '80s as a means for LGBTQ people to communicate - and called motss for "members of the same sex" since using gay and lesbian in the name would likely have caused it to not be carried at many sites. Starting in 1988 there has been an annual gathering of motssers somewhere. We have been to every one starting in 1991.

Part of the tradition is to have a Foodie dinner on Thursday night, an official welcoming dinner on Friday night, a Dim Sum on Sunday morning, and a Stragglers' Breakfast on Monday morning. For some of these cons a while ago there were over 100 attendees, for this one I think there were 28 people who were at part or all of it. It's really lots of fun to hang around wth a bunch of people who communicate electronically (now on FaceBook) and get to meet in person once in a while. Looking forward to next year's wherever it is.

Most of us stayed at the Stanford Terrace Inn, The foodie dinner was at Evvia, an upscale Greek restaurant with delicious food. The friday night dinner was a picnic in Rinconada Park, the DImSum at Tai Pan, and the Stragglers' breakfast at the Palo Alto Creamery.

Some of the highlight events were a trip to Monterrey to the Dali Expo, a visit to the Rodin Sculpture garden and Cantor museum, and a visit to the Papua New Guinea Sculpture garden, Also the Gamble gardens,

And of course lots of sitting around by the hotel pool with people and going to nearby restuarants for meals. Definbitely a great way to spend a long weekend.

The Rodin Thinker and the Papua New Guinea Thinker

Dali: The Swallow or Defeat of Civilization

We have a set pattern for meals preparation and menus. And who does what.

Our weekday breakfast is orange juice, cold cereal with fruit and milk, coffee for Robert

rsc, tea for me. Milk is poured from Gertrude in Gloucester, Hildegard in Cambridge. We rotate between corn flakes, cheerios, bite-size shredded wheat, and "flakes" (some other kind of flakes). Take from the left put back on the right. Note that it is 4 kinds of cereal so a particular kind doesn't get eaten on the same day which would happen if there were 5 types. I rotate between tea types and always have green tea on Monday.

Occasionally when it is cold we have porridge (oatmeal) instead of cold cereal. And for this Rutherford, our Wooly Mammoth, comes down to supervise.

On Saturday it is blintzes. I make them from scratch - a batch yields about 10 - we cook 4 and freeze the rest, and the second Saturday which uses up the Ricotta and the other Neufchatel yields another 10 so we have usully 3 more weeks worth in the freezer. Blintzes are served with yoghurt and fruit and cinnamon and sugar. Robert makes the filling the night before. Saturday tea is Rooibos

Sundays rotate between pancakes, waffles, and french toast - all served with maple syrup and fruit with yogurt - also cinnamon and sugar. The pancakes are made with corn, rice, and soy flour, wheat germ and the liquid is fruit juice. Waffles are wheat, rice, and soy flour with wheat germ; milk is the liquid. Baking powder of course. Grated orange rind is often also added to these. The eggs for pancakes and waffles are separated and the whites are beaten and folded in. Sunday tea is some kind of spiced tea. The coffee has cinnamon and sometimes something else added. We make more than enough pancakes and waffles and the extras are wrapped in waxed (not wax) paper and are used for evening snacks with ice cream on them.

I am the one who officially pours the pancake or waffle batter into the pan or waffle iron. Once when Robert did it he got this Certificate of Excellence which is posted on our bulletin board in the kitchen. Note the signature.

For weekday holidays we make an egg dish - a frittata, omelet, occasionally poached, fried, or scrambled, and very rarely eggs Benedict. Today it was a frittata. And then my tea is Earl Grey.

The general rule is that who ever gets up first does the cooking and the other person washes the dishes which sometimes includes some of the previous day's dishes. When we cook an elaborate dinner or there are too many dishes we wash them after dinner. Dishes are left in the dishrack to dry. We don't have a dish washer.

The general rule about oranges is: "I don't squeeze Oranges". The exception is on the first of the month when I do them. When we have grapefruit instead of oranges I am the one that sections them. Whenever we buy a batch of oranges we buy a grapefruit - so that is about every 5 days.

Having a system like this makes everything easy. No dithering or deciding about what to have or who does what.

We've been home for several days after a wonderful trip to Guana Island, a fabulous resort in the British Virgin Islands. This was our 24th trip there - the first one in 1983. It is a private island of 850 acres with a ~800ft peak (Sugar Loaf) and a 450ft peak (Pyramid). The dining room and dwelling houses are at about 250 ft and higher. There is a gorgeous beach - close to 1/2 mile long with white sand where you swim, etc - it is called White Beach. It has a coral reef that is no longer in good shape. There are several other beaches at various points. Lots of trails - many of which we have hiked. They will drive you up and down the hill to and from the beach, but we always walk on various routes.

View from the terrace in front of dining room

There are usually between 20-40 guests, many of who have been there before. The dining tables seat 8 - there are private opportunities - and we were mostly with 3 other couples who we have been there at the same time as us.

The food is excellent - there is an orchard and the orchard keeper and the chef cordinate their work.

It was devestated by Hurricane Irma and was closed in 2018. Roofs destroyed, furniture blown out to sea, much of the vegitation messed up. But restoral has been done and much of it looks like it did before. A big tree near the dining area is gone and the tree at the beach that provides shade is much smaller. The owner is a wealthy person whio is really committed to keeping the place thriving for guests, staff, and wild-life so he made sure the funds and other resources were available for restoral - many other BVI resorts are still not open. In October there is Scientist's month.

There is a salt pond near White Beach which has flamingos - there used to be 7 or 8, but this year we counted as many as 38. It is hard to count accurately since they are often clustered in the distance.

There are also some Rock Iguanas roaming around; they are almost extinct - only 100 of them according to the placemats and some are on another nearby islands.

And lots of pelicans - I love watching them dive.

Our usual household tradition is for all the people in the house to come down and over to my couch to see the tree.

To make sure that no-one is forgotten we have an attendance list. (A few years ago James got left in Gloucester when we moved back and we didn't discover it for several months when we went to rescue him.)

Then we had a nice Christmas dinner.

Here is the menu:

After having enough Christmas music on the radio I selected a CD of Klezmer Music, and then a Voice of the Turtle CD: From the Shores of the Golden Horn

Here is the description: "The first to welcome Sephardic exiles was the Ottoman Empire, the heart of which was in Turkey. "Shores of the Golden Horn" resounds with the blending of Jewish and Ottoman musical traditions. You will here the influence of Ottoman court music, para-liturgical maftirim, and the popular songs of the vibrant communities of Istambul, Izmir, and Edirne."

And then to cap it off we went to see the Christmas Revels last night. This one had a Nordic theme. It was splendid. Brings back memories of when I was in the Revels - in 1979 and one other year as a member of the Quadrivium - an early music group.

Every year for the past few years there has been a MIT Class of '60 Mini-reunion: lunch and a speaker. This year the speaker was Robert Dimmick, who is an Etiquetteer. He gave an amusing talk about the evolution of the Dinner Party from Queen Victoria to the Kennedy Administration - proper dress, appropriate food and serving procedures, etc. (I jokingly commented to him and the organizer afterwards that we should have invited the staff of the restaurant to this so when we have next year's event it would be more elegant. It was at the Glass House restaurant in Kendall Square.)

This brought up some memories of my childhood. When my parents had dinner parties we used special dinnerware, fancier silver cutlery, we had a live-in cook and a chambermaid-waitress who wore fancier uniforms than the usual ones and we dressed up. Many apartments in NYC had a small suite of maid's rooms behind the kitchen - ours had two small rooms and a bathroom. I still have some of the plates which we use when we have guests for dinner.

Near the end there was a drawing for a door prize and I won. This year it was a delightlful beaver (the MIT mascot of course). Last year I also won the door prize which was a very interesting book by Charles Sullivan of the Cambridge Historical Commission and another author titled Building Old Cambridge. Sullivan was the speaker for that lunch.

The beaver has joined our family. He told us his name which is Barton. He was named after William Barton Rogers, the founder of MIT.

On our first day in Paris in May we went to visit the Père Lachaise Cemetary, a huge cemetary in Paris with over a million people buried there. There is a Crematorium and Columbarium with even more people's remains. It is still an active cemetary; you have to live in Paris or die in Paris in order to be buried there. Graves are often opened and additional family member's remains are placed in the same tomb.

It's a beautiful place with gardens, trees, and a wide variety of tombs and monuments; it is very interesting to walk around in.

Click here for pictures:

Every year in April there is an all weekend New England Folk Festival. We always go to it and for the past many years our group (Lavender Country & Folk Dancers) runs a food booth in the cafeteria. It takes place at the campus of the Mansfield, MA Middle and High School. This skirt is the traveling skirt brought to many dances by Mark Galipeau and worn by many people.

There is a huge variety of folk dancing and folk singing and other stuff there. We did a fair amount of Contra Dancing and English Country Dancing. When you walk around the halls there are always people jamming. Since we go there regularly and dance at various places there are lots of people that we know. And I ran into various people from past lives - work in the '60s and '70s, the Quadrivium...

Our foodbooth serves a variety of food: pasta with meatballs (real and veggie), marinara or pesto sauce), scones, cookies, muffins, croissants, tea, coffee, lemonade, popovers and frittata in the morning. We have over 30 volunteers

rsc is the volunteer coordinator. Some of the volunteers work just a couple of hours, others such as Chris Ricciotti and Sam Arfer are at work essentially the whole time (plus before and after) (Chris did go off to call a couple of times). We do all the purchasing, preparation, cooking, and serving. We are very popular. The profits (amount unknown as of now but usually between $5,000 to $7,000) go to the various affiliated dance groups where the volunteers choose where their share goes. Without these funds our English Country Dance series would no longer exist. I like my few-hours-a-year career as a food-service worker.

The school cafeteria and maintenance workers are extremely friendly and helpful - they always greet us warmly when we show up. I suspect we are a lot easier to deal with than the kids that usually encounter. At the end of the day I saw one of the maintenance men riding around a floor cleaner/polisher and joked with him that they should get a bunch of them and let the kids used tham as bumper cars.

Here is a 1 minute video taken by Doug Plummer - a well-known dance photographer that gives a good idea of what the festival is like.

Last weekend was LCFD Gender Free Dance Camp where we Contra dance, English Country dance, eat, schmooze, reminisce and have a great time with 100+ people at a YMCA Camp in Western Massachusetts.

It happened to be my birthday on Sunday and this was a great way to celebrate it.

This was the 25th Anniversary camp so there was lots of reminiscing and a special session to discuss the past and the future. Now we have two camps each year. This was my 35th consecutive dance camp! It's always so much fun. We get to see people that we dance with regularly at local dances and others who we just see at dance camp. I love the feeling at the first dance on Friday night as you progress down the line encountering all the smiling faces.

Below is a video of people dancing Chorus Jig - a classic Contra dance that is lots of fun.

Our Queen Mum, Chris Ricciotti, started the first one in August of 1989 a year after he started the first gender free dance in Jamaica Plain. For this camp he was the Contra Dance caller, the main program planner, and a lot of other things. Amazing that he sttll has the creativity and energy after all these years.

We have a Variety Show on Saturday night. I always perform; most recently I perform as Doctor Professor who gives a "scientific" explanation of something very important. This time I reviewed my findings of events from 2,500 years ago when Christos Ricciopolis who was inspired by plans for the Parthenon invented contra dancing.

I'm part of the organizing committee (treasurer - so my work isn't done) and I had a bit of sound system duties so in addition to the enjoyment of it all I do view it from an organizational prospective.

The next camp is May 1-3 at a YMCA camp in Northeastern CT. And there is Queer Dance Camp in Aptos, CA on April 10-12 to which we are going. A number of years ago some of the people who lived in NYC and who went to these camps started a gender free dance in NYC (still ongoing), and then they moved to San Francisco and started a dance there; several years later they started the weekend camp.

When I first moved to my house in 1966, the mother of a friend came over a few times to help paint and cleanup. We had lots to do and to get it ready for in addition to being the place to live it was the location of my wedding reception. She brought a spider plant and a Swedish ivy.

Every year or two I make cuttings to create new plants and thus I still have descendants of these two plants.

I don't like them a whole lot; they are my only house plants. They migrate up to Gloucester every summer where they live outside on the porch and then back to Cambridge to live under grow lights.

I could just throw them in the compost pile but it seems like the wrong thing to do to destroy this legacy/tradition.

This was the weekend of the annual New England Folk Festival. It is an entirely volunteer run enterprise that takes place in the Mansfield, MA High and Middle Schools (on same campus). The two gyms are dance halls, the two auditoriums are used for performances or workshops on the stages, and there are are activities in some of the classrooms. It starts on Friday evening and wraps up on Sunday afternoon. People from all over the country come to NEFFA to dance, sing, buy folk-stuff, play music, Morris dance, and have lots of lots of fun. It is so great walking through the halls and dancing with all the smiling people. Over the years of going to local dances and NEFFA there are lots of familiar people of all ages.

A last year's Pearls before Swine - thank you Steven Pastis.

Our several dance groups run a food booth whose profits (I don't yet know how much they were this year) go to the dance groups to help support musicians and callers fees. A small crew of people do all the cooking and a large number of volunteers, coordinated by

rsc, do the serving, money collecting and various odd jobs.

We have pasta with meatballs, veggie meat balls; marinara or pesto sauce, hot dogs, meat ball subs; coffees, teas, lemonade; 4 kinds of cookies; multiple kinds of muffins; scones; fruit cup; yogurt; popovers for breakfast; egg frittata for breakfast; and more...

I worked about 12 hours helping setup, cleanup and serving food. I did a fair amount of contra dancing and English Country dancing plus lots of socializing. It was exhausting and wonderful.

One of the things that make doing the food booth easier than it might be is that the kitchen staff and the maintenance staff at the school are all extremely nice and helpful. When I walked into the kitchen at first, Carol the head person (I think) there greeted me with a welcome back and a hug. They all seem to enjoy us being there having such a great time. I thanked a lot of them personally.

Last week we went to Guana Island, a private island resort in the British Virgin Islands. It is an 850 acre island with at most 30 guests. It has a bunch of beaches, White Beach is the main one for swimming and snorkeling. There is an 800+ ft hill and a smaller peak and a bunch of hiking rails. The guest cottages and dining area are partly up the hill. They run vehicles up and down to carry guests but we always walk - considering the food, it is necessary. Meals are family style so there is lots of mixing of people. The food is good and just about all the other guests are nice. When we arrived it was pretty full because the owner had an entourage there. Later in the week it was a smaller group and we ate all meals together. It is very expensive and absolutely delightful. This was our 20th visit to this place over 33 years (and not the last). There are many repeat guests.

It is called Guana Island because there is this rock structure that you can see as you approach the island that looks like an Iguana Head. The owner is into conservation. There are a large number of almost extinct rock iguanas roaming around the island. This time we only saw one of them. There is a salt pond with a small flock of flamingos. In October they have scientists' month; among other things they have been experimenting with planting new coral on the reefs.

Click here for pictures
GuanaViews2014FlickrSet

In honor of the day I made my standard cut out a heart shaped object from red construction paper, impale it on a skewer, or this time on a red fancy-pipe-cleaner like thing. (My current piece of red paper has room for next year's.)

I was going to stop in at Walgreens yesterday afternoon to get something non-valentiny but the check-out line had about 30 people in it - all holding valentine objects.

Oh, and I wished Robert Coren Happy Farrell's day (for non baseball fans, John Farrell was last year's replacement for Bobby Valentine, the previous manager).

I chose Dubonnet for our cocktail because it was red - Bloody Marys would have been redder but Dubonnet was easier. And I claimed that "I don't make Bloody Marys".

rsc said it is easy and reminded him that I said "I don't make" not "I don't know how". We have this thing where I claim that I don't make complicated drinks (with the exception of Pisco Sours). So when it is my turn we usually have scotch, sherry, or Dubonnet, although Dubonnet is lots of work - you have to get out ice, and slice some lime. The ice was some Easter Island moia shaped cubes. I remarked that we have to remember to use these on Easter.

So much for modern day romanticism in our household.

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jwg

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Entries tagged with tradition

Our meals/shopping system - miscellaneous

Our meals/shopping system - cocktails

Our meals/shopping system - lunch

Our meals/shopping system - dinner

Our meals/shopping system - breakfast

Our meals/shopping system - shopping/dishwashing

Revels - nostalgia

The Settlement Exhibition in Reykjavik

Motss Con XXXII

Our Breakfast "system"

Our recent trip to Guana Island

Christmas 2018

Saturday's MIT Class of '60 mini-reunion

Père Lachaise Cemetary

Our weekend at NEFFA

A most splendid weekend

My plants dilemma

A weekend at NEFFA

Guana Island 2014

It was that day yesterday