John's here!

James' youngest brother John is a groomsman in a New Hampshire wedding this weekend, so he flew over early to visit us in our new house for the first time. It's really great to have him here - we haven't seen him, or anyone from James' family, since Christmas.

John arrived on Friday - well, actually the wee hours of Saturday - so we went to work like normal, then we had dentist appointments (boo), and we had Friday evening for relaxing and last minute tidying. I made snickerdoodle blondies for us to have while John's here. We went to bed, and then James bolted awake around 2:30 when John called, as planned, from our front porch. We got up to let him in, and we wound up chatting and catching up for probably about half an hour. Eventually James and I had to get back to sleep, while John stayed up since he was jazzed from his trip and on California time. I think we fell back asleep as soon as our heads hit our pillows.

We all slept in the next morning, even me! I usually wake up by 8am on the weekends but I slept until 10, which was amazing. I got up and started making French toast for breakfast, and when James got up, he got to work cooking the bacon and making the coffee. Eventually all the good food smells drifted into John's room and woke him up. We had a yummy breakfast feast and kind of lazed about for a while with the intention of going down to the city eventually. Around 1pm I checked the Sam Adams Brewery tour website and discovered that they are only open to 3pm on Saturdays, so we hustled to get ready and get out the door.

We drove down to a T stop and took the train into the city, straight to Sam Adams. We stood in a long line to get tickets for a tour, wondering if there would be enough tickets. Eventually we made it to the front of the line, and were about to get our tickets when we realized that John had forgotten his ID. No tickets for us. So we took the Sam Adams party bus to a local pub where they have a deal set up - if you go on the tour and then order a Sam at the pub, you can keep the glass. So James and John had Boston Brick Red, a beer that's only available on tap in Boston. We had lunch and the guys had another round of beers, and our waitress let us keep our glasses even though we hadn't gone on the tour. Fun!

The glasses are specially designed for Sam Adams Boston Lager. They have a lasar etching on the bottom to encourage small bubbles and the lip of the glass is curved outwards, which is supposed to make you taste the beer rather than the glass when you take a sip. We each got a glass, which say Sam Adams Boston Lager on the front. We were all pleased as punch to be able to take them home.

Then we took the T back into the center of town and gave John a tour of the city. We walked through the Boston Common to the public gardens, where we stopped by the pond to watch the ducks (there were baby duckies too!) and saw a mean old swan motor around chasing a young duck. Then we walked up Beacon St to see Cheers and the State Capitol building. From there, we picked up the Freedrom Trail and saw Park Street Church and the Granery Burial Ground, which happily was still open. So we paid our respects to John Hancock, Paul Revere, James Otis, Mother Goose, Sam Adams, and the five men who were killed in the Boston Massacre. We followed the Freedom Trail to King's Chapel and then the plaque marking the site of the first public school in America, and then the old state house and the site of the Boston massacre, then continued on to Fanueil Hall and Quincy Market. We watched a street performer at Quincy Market, then went over to the harbor, got drinks at Starbucks, and found a nice bench under an ivy-covered arbor to sit and enjoy the beautiful day. There was a street performer playing electric guitar, and he was actually really good - it made for a pleasant summer concert.

Next, we made our way over to the North End for dinner, where we had reservations at Lucca at 7pm. We ended up getting there a half hour early, so we circled the block to walk past Paul Revere's house. When we got back to Lucca, we were able to go right in for dinner. And it was amazing. I had fresh rigatoni with a wild boar ragu, and I was in heaven. We split a bottle of tasty Syrah and had a great time. After dinner, we stood in a looong line at Mike's Pastries to get cannoli and macaroons, which we enjoyed once we were home.

On Sunday, I got up a little earlier (9:30) and read in the living room until James appeared, probably around 10:30. We did some yardwork while John slept - James mowed the lawn and I weeded the flower gardens. Even though it was before noon, it was getting really hot! Finally we retreated inside and got started on breakfast - I made homemade buttermilk Belgian waffles and scrambled eggs my dad's way (lots of veggies) while James did the bacon and coffee. Eventually the smell of food worked its magic on John, and we sat down to a big brunch feast. We had originally planned on taking John on a hike, but with the heat we would have had to leave the house by 8 am. By the time we finished brunch, it was too hot to think about hiking, so I suggested we go see a movie to escape the heat (we don't have central air so hanging out in the house wasn't ideal). We decided to see Inception, which John hadn't seen yet and even though James and I saw it the weekend before, it was worth a second viewing. So we made a quick trip up to Salem NH to pick up some pet supplies, then headed over to our favorite theater for the movie.

After the movie, we stopped at the grocery store and then headed home to make dinner. We made beer can chicken on the grill, which we'd never done before. I used a Food Network recipe to create a yummy rub (smoked paprika, cumin, cayenne, dried oregano and thyme, onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper) which we rubbed all over the chicken inside and out. Then we stuck the chicken on a 3/4 full can of Corona and set it on the hot grill. After a little bit, the chicken caught fire! All the fat dripping down made high flames all around the chicken, and the tail actually caught fire. James turned off the grill, I blew out the tail fire, and we decided to cook it at a lower temperature than the recipe suggested. Despite all that, the chicken was awesome! It was so flavorful and juicy. We had it with roasted sweet potato wedges (which I roasted in the toaster oven on the porch, so as not to heat up the kitchen, steamed green beans and salad. For dessert, we had snickerdoodle blondies and some lime sorbet I'd made on Thursday. Delicious!

After we cleaned up from dinner, I worked with John to make chocolate ice cream. Somehow over the weekend we got to talking about how I make ice cream and sorbet, and he got interested in making ice cream at home, so I'd suggested we make my favorite recipe together so he could learn how to do it himself. He wants to be able to make homemade ice cream to impress the ladies, and I think it'll work! We made a custard-based ice cream, which really is the best kind, and I showed him how to temper the eggs which is the only tricky part of making a custard. It's chilling in the fridge right now, and when we get home we'll put it in the ice cream maker! It's going to be sooo good.

After we cleaned up from making the ice cream, it was pretty much time for bed. John wanted to go down into the city to check out business schools, so I gave him a crash course on navigating the T and we looked at Google maps to figure out where all the schools are that he wants to see. I found a free MBTA app for his iPhone which should help him find his way around using the T. He's borrowing our car today to drive down to a T stop to get into the city. I'm bummed we have to be at work today instead of tagging along with John as he visits the schools. But I'm excited that he's looking into possibly coming to Boston to get his MBA!

10 Workplace Pet Peeves

1. Clipping your fingernails in your cubicle, or anywhere that I can hear that unmistakable sound. It makes my skin crawl. Seriously, who even has a nail clipper at work other nail salon employees? Why can't you take care of that nasty grooming stuff in the privacy of your own bathroom, where I'd never ever have to hear it? Would it be okay if I started shaving my arm pits in my cubicle? No? Then let's keep all those unsightly grooming practices in the bathroom, because each snap of that nail clipper makes me more and more likely to walk over and smack you.

2. Treating the workplace bathroom like a rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike. I'm talking about pee on the seats, toilet seat covers that don't get flushed down, toilets clogged with obscene amounts of paper. Why. Why do you do this.

3. Treating the workplace bathroom like your own personal conference room. NO IT IS NOT OKAY TO HOLD MEETINGS TWO FEET FROM WHERE I'M TRYING TO PEE. Go out into the hall at least, or better yet, GO TO AN ACTUAL CONFERENCE ROOM. Why would you want to talk business over the sound of someone farting, anyway?

4. Brushing your teeth in the bathroom. If you can brush your teeth quickly and without making a lot of unecessary noise, fine. But do you really need to suck violently on your toothbrush, gargle loudly, and take ten minutes to do the job, making noisely along the way that make me gag? Really??

5. Eating in the bathroom. Like, hanging out, leaning on the counter, having a MEAL in the bathroom. I'm sorry if I stare at you like you're a freak, but there is VAPORIZED POO in the air, so you kind of are. Eat at your desk, vaporized-poo-eating freak!

6. Not understanding that travelling in the hallways is the same as driving down the street. When you turn left in your car, do you turn into the left lane? NO. You turn into the RIGHT LANE, because IN AMERICA, WE TRAVEL ON THE RIGHT. God, this one pisses me off so bad, and it happens all the time. I'm walking down the hall, hugging the right hand wall, and when I turn right (still hugging the wall), 9 times out of 10 I almost get clobbered by someone walking in the opposite direction, cutting the corner and turning into my lane. And then, bonus! A lot of the time the other person will look at me like I did something wrong! I WALK ON THE RIGHT SIDE, BUDDY. LIKE AN AMERICAN.

7. Walking slowly in the hallway. If I get stuck behind you, I will think murderous thoughts about you.

8. Walking in a group, especially a group of 4 or more people, and walking abreast. YOU ARE TAKING UP THE WHOLE HALLWAY. And if you're an abreast-walking group of slow movers: murderrrrr.

9. Holding meetings across the hallway. Really, it's just as easy for you two to stand facing each other with both of you up against the wall. It's actually not necessary for one person to be standing in the middle of the hallway ten feet from the person they're talking to, so that you block 80% of the hallway with your meeting space. Then everyone else either has to squeeze past the guy in the middle of the hallway, or we have to cross into your meeting space, which means we have to say "excuse me." This kills me. We have to apologize because you're being a hallway-hogging asshole!!

10. Holding meetings right outside my cubicle. News flash: My cubicle walls are about five feet tall. There is a door that I cannot close. I CAN HEAR YOU. REALLY, REALLY WELL. So if you need to have a big long loud meeting with lots and lots of people, how about you take it into the conference room??

With all the bathroom, hallway, and outside-my-cubicle meetings that are going on, WHY IS IT IMPOSSIBLE TO RESERVE A TIME IN A CONFERENCE ROOM??? They're obviously not being used!!

Camping with the parents

This past weekend, we joined my parents for a camping trip in southern Massachusetts to visit Old Sturbridge Village. We had a really good time and we're looking forward to going camping together again, maybe next summer in Acadia National Park.

We were able to leave work at 4 on Friday, and since the car was all packed, we left right from work. We stopped at a Target along the way because I wanted to pick up the second book in the Millenium series, because I was almost finished with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and I wanted to pick up a pair of cheap flipflops to use as shower shoes. The Target was in a huge mall compound that included a Best Buy, so James wanted to go in to see the new Droid X phone. So we did. Then we got a call from my parents, and when dad found out that we'd been at a Target, he told me that they'd forgotten pillows and syrup for pancakes. Pillows!! So we went back to Target and bought two pillows, but I forgot to get syrup because my parents, the camping experts, had forgotten pillows. PILLOWS. Sleeping without a pillow is the worst, so that's what I was worried about.

When we arrived at the campground, my parents were already there and just starting to set up camp. It was a private campground, unfortunately, because the state park was all full. I'm not a huge fan of camping in private campgrounds, because they tend to be just big open fields with no division between the sites. I want to camp in the woods. Anyway. It ended up being a site in a big field, but we were at the end so the site had woods on two sides, and the nearest four campsites were empty so it wasn't too bad. We were close to the only bathrooms in the place, too. We were also across the street from the dance hall, which would prove awesome on Saturday night. The site we got was actually not the one that we'd been assigned - that one was in the back, boggy area of the campground (far from the bathrooms), near a fly-infested lake, and all the sites were dirt. My parents drove us back there to show us where we could have been, and we felt super lucky to have our nice grassy site that wasn't swarming with bugs.

We set up camp and wanted to get dinner started, but the sky looked threatening in the distance. I used my weather.com app on my iphone to find out that a pretty nasty thunderstorm was headed our way. The app promised winds of 60 mph and quarter-sized hail, and torrential rain.
Yikes!

Meanwhile, James and I discovered that the pump for our air mattress was dead, even though it had been plugged in all night the night before. He tried charging it for about a half an hour in the bathroom, but it still refused to do anything. We'd flick the switch and nothing, not even a wimper. And we didn't have anything else to pump up the mattress, so it was looking like we'd have to sleep on the hard, hard ground.

Eventually the skies got really crazy and violent-looking, and we started hearing lots of thunder. Just as the storm was right on top of us, we decided to bail on having dinner in camp. We piled into our car and took off just as the rain was starting to fall. I used my trusty iphone to find a restaurant, and the skies opened up minutes after we got inside. It rained like crazy. The restaurant was a hole-in-the-wall barbeque place, but it was really good! We all enjoyed it. And the storm had passed by the time we'd finished, which was nice. Then we went to Walmart to pick up a pump for our air mattress (a hand-operated one, which is good because the powered ones are apparently unreliable, but bad because it takes a long. time. to pump up a (double thickness, yay) queen bed by hand. And my parents got syrup for the pancakes, so all was right in the world.

It was somehow after 10 pm by the time we got back to camp, so we pretty much just went to bed. I had a horrible night's sleep. We were sleeping on a very very slight hill, not even noticable when you looked at it but when we laid down, we felt it. And we were lying downhill. It's so hard to sleep downhill! And the trees overhead dripped big fat drops of water on our tent all night long, even though the rain was long over, so that intermittent drumming overhead made sleep very hard. Oh, and the bed wasn't firm enough, so it was kind of squishy and that didn't help. And I woke up at 4:45 to lots of birds singing with gusto and the sky was bright enough that I thought it was 7 am! I managed to sleep in until 7:30 but oy. It was a rough night!

But I felt remarkably good for having very little sleep, which I think has to do with all the fresh air and the novelty of starting the day outdoors. I let James sleep (he'd had a rought night too) and joined my parents outside, who of course were already up and about. I read my book for a while (I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and immediately started The Girl Who Played With Fire), and my parents and I had breakfast, and I took a shower. It cost one dime for every two and a half minutes of shower, and I only managed to scrounge up four dimes in my purse (I had a whole mess of nickles and dollar coins, but the machine only took dimes and quarters, of course.) so I had two dimes for me and two for James. The machine was really annoying to figure out, and the shower only offered scalding hot or cold water, so I took a quick, cold shower.

Eventually James woke up, had breakfast and all that, and we went to Old Sturbridge Village. We spent the day walking around the village, poking around the buildings, talking with the townspeople - they dress in the period costume but they're not pretending to be from that time period. They're very knowledgeable and I felt like I could ask them anything about the building they were stationed in, or any of the furniture or decorations, and they'd know the answer. We watched a cobbler demonstrate shoe-making, we saw a woman make a broom using broom corn, we spoke with some farmers tending their crops, we got a tour and lecture in the herb garden (we learned that something growing in our garden, which we rip out because we thought it was a weed, is actually edible), we watched the potter throw a pot, and we got a lesson in the school house. There happened to be a chili cookoff that day, so we got to sample lots of different chilis and vote for our favorites. There was also an ice cream demonstration, which James and I were excited about because we thought it meant we'd get as much ice cream as chili, but it turned out to be just a tiny spoonful. It was neat to see the whisk they used - a bundle of sticks that were tied together at the top. Since we were all in the mood for ice cream after the demonstration, we went across the street and got ice cream cones. Yum! It was a really hot day so it was a nice treat. We went to the general store and my mom got a new floppy straw hat and we convinced my dad to buy us some freshly-baked spice cookies, and we watched some girls dyeing yarn and I fed one of the sheep some wildflowers, which it went crazy for. We didn't see the whole village, or walk into each and every building, but I think we did it justice. We were pretty tired by the end of the day - that heat really takes it out of you.

We went back to the campsite and James and my mom both laid down for naps. I read my book while my dad read the newspaper. James and I made dinner (heated up the barbeque pulled pork I'd made earlier in the week and froze, the canned baked beans and the beets that my mom had cooked at home), and we ate. Sometime during dinner, the music started. Turns out, there was a dance that night in the dance hall, right next to our campsite. It was stinking loud. It gave me a headache, and I was feeling all hot and gross, so James suggested we drive into town to buy some earplugs so that maybe we'd get a better night's sleep. So we did, and being in the quiet, cool car was a godsend. It probably saved me from getting a full-blown migrane. After we got back to camp, we played Scrabble with my parents (I won), the dance finally ended at 11 right as we finished up the game, and then we went to bed.

And we did get a better night's sleep! We woke up once in the middle of the night with a huge clap of thunder and a sudden downpour, but I was able to get back to sleep thanks to the ear plugs muffling the rain. I slept pretty soundly until 7:30 or so, then laid in bed reading my book for a while. I got up eventually and joined my parents, letting James sleep in until 9:30. We all had breakfast together - my dad made yummy peach pancakes and fried eggs - and then we broke camp. We toyed with the idea of going back to Old Sturbridge Village (you get a second day free within 10 days) but the only person who seemed really up for it was my dad. And then breaking camp took a long time, because we had to let everything dry in the sunshine. Luckily it was a hot sunshiney morning, but everything was wet from the middle of the night rainstorm. Then my dad couldn't find his wallet and we spent a good hour looking for it (it was behind the steering wheel, propped up against the speedometer), and by the time that drama was over, no one was interested in going back to the village. Besides, my parents had a 5 hour drive ahead of them. So we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways.

Once we got home, we fed our animals and promptly fell into bed for a nap. We were both so tired! Then we went grocery shopping, and I hopped in the pool to skim it while James watered the gardens, then he picked up a pizza from our neighborhood pizza place. We ate out on the deck, then I got back in the pool to keep cleaning. A little while later, James poked his head out the bathroom window (which looks out over the pool) and asked if I wanted to go see Inception. I was surprised he wanted to see a movie on a Sunday, which is something we never do, but I said of course I'd want to go. The next show was in half an hour, so we quickly got ready and went. I was delighted by the spontaneous nature of the date. The movie was great, too. All in all a lovely weekend.

Boredom

It's Friday, and I'm bored at work. Most people work a 9/80 schedule, which means they work 80 hours in 9 days instead of 10 (9 hours a day), and take the 10th day off. The day off is every other Friday, and this is one of those Fridays. I'm not on that schedule because the thought of spending an extra hour here every day makes me want to shoot myself. But it's pretty quiet because a lot of people are off, so I don't have a lot to do and I don't have a lot of motivation to do it. I'm just impatient for the weekend to start.

We're camping in Southern Mass with my parents this weekend. We'll be sharing a camping spot and going to Sturbridge Village tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to it - we went there when I was in high school and I've always wanted to go back. It's a living museum of an 18th century village. It should be a lot of fun, although it should be pretty darn hot.

It'll be interesting to go camping with my parents. They're old pros at it so they're bringing all the kitchen supplies and a screen tent to put over the picnic table, and all we have to bring is our own tent and clothes and things. But it's still a lot of stuff! We're bringing our Coleman tent, our lanterns and a flashlight (it's nice to have plenty of lights when camping), pillows, sheets and duvet, air mattress, pump to inflate said air mattress, backpacks of clothes, a campstove (my parents asked us to bring it so we'll have two at the campsite, should make cooking dinner easier), towels, and some food. My parents will be making dinner tonight, and we're providing dinner tomorrow. I made slow cooker pulled pork earlier this week and froze it, and we got yummy brioche buns and baked beans at the store yesterday.

So there's still a lot for us to pack! We didn't get started digging our camping stuff out of the basement until late last night, so we didn't get to bed until 1 am. Then we were scrambling around this morning with last minute stuff, and James had to get to work for a meeting so I stayed behind and packed the car.

And then Lucy got out! She darted out the door and across the lawn and around the side of the house. I chased her and called her name but I lost sight of her when she ran around a pine tree. I searched all over for her and didn't see her anywhere and was starting to panic so I called James and said "Lucy got out and I can't find her! - Oh wait, I see her now!" And I hung up on him. I had heard my neighbor Shirley calling my name from the front yard and turned and saw Lucy coming from the front yard toward me. Shirley saw Lucy escape and me chasing her (our neighborhood watch, she must be watching what we're doing all the time!) and said Lucy had been on the porch trying to get in the front door. Lucy was wide-eyed and making weird low meowing noises like she was really upset. She wouldn't let me get near her. She ran all over the front yard and across the street and I thought I was going to lose her. I had Shirley stationed at the front door to let Lucy back in, and I had to run back and forth, corralling Lucy and herding her toward the porch. Eventually she went in. Shirley invited me over for coffee, the peach. But I told her I had to go to work so I thanked her for her help and got back to finishing loading up the car. I found one very freaked out Lulu hiding under our bed, so I called James back to let him know she was okay. What a crazy morning!

4th of July Weekend

Google maps says it's a 6 1/2 hour drive from my home in northern Massachusetts to my hometown in South Jersey. But really, with traffic and the inevitable pit stops, it's at least 7. And not the easiest 7 hours, either, especially once you get into the Tappanzee Bridge area and pretty much all of New Jersey. It's definitely not the kind of drive you want to do for a weekend trip, which is why we took two days of vacation time for the 4th of July weekend. With the federal holiday on Monday, which our company observed, we got a 5-day weekend, so making the trip down was a bit more reasonable. Still, it was kind of a pain in the butt.

Anyway. We had to work a half day on Friday, then we drove back home to have lunch and pick up our bunny. We had our neighbors look in on Winston and Lucy, but we took the bunn with us because he's higher maintenance (knocking over his food dish and water bottle so he can't be unsupervised for very long) and doesn't handle heat well so we didn't feel that we could leave him. We had to do a few errands before we could leave, so we didn't get on the road until 3pm, and I think we arrived at my parents' house sometime after 10pm. But leaving at 3 was actually kind of good because we managed to miss the rush hour traffic.

On Saturday, we went into Philadelphia. Our original plans were to go to the art museum to see an exhibit on Renoir, then meet up with Lisa for dinner, but we got such a late start that once we were in the city, we realized we'd only have two hours in the museum by the time we got there. So we decided to check out the Old City, and I called Lisa to let her know the change of plans and she met up with us at Christ Church. It was a hot day but it was really nice to see the historical parts of the city right before the 4th of July - it definitely got us in an Independence Day kind of spirit! We saw the Portrait Gallery, Carpenter's Hall, the Indepence Hall area (the lines were huge! But we didn't have any interest in going in.), Elfrith's Alley, the Betsy Ross house, and Ben Franklin's grave. It was great to see Lisa, who we hadn't seen since our wedding. We went to dinner at a place Lisa recommended, the Continental Midtown. It has a funky, modern-retro decor and yummy food. We had a good time!

Sunday was the 4th of July, but Pitman wasn't celebrating until Monday. We pretty much bummed around the house (it was a gross, hot day) until dinner. We had a big 4th of July feast and my aunt Franny came over, so that was good. We watched the Washington DC Independance Day celebration on TV, and the Philadelphia celebration - but the Philly one had a really obnoxious band playing for a lot of it, so we mostly watched the DC one.

On Monday morning, we watched the Pitman parade with my mom. We had good seats under a tree, but it was still really hot. We watched until my dad marched by in the Hobo Band, then James and I walked home.

We had lunch and then went back into Philly to get a tour of a Navy destroyer that was parked at Penn's Landing. The tour was free, and the destroyer is in duty, not retired like I expected it to be. It's stationed in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Somolia. It was insanely hot while we were waiting in line, so much so that I almost passed out and James had me sit under a tree while he toughed it out in line, where there was no shade. It was a long wait, too - over an hour. Luckily we had our water bottles, and when those ran out the Navy had some ice cold water coolers, so we refilled our bottles and that helped a lot. Once we were on the tour, I tanked up our bottles again from water fountains that were located around the ship. The tour was very interesting and and a really neat way to spend the day. We got to see the guns on the front, the helipad in the back, the deck where they steer the boat, and the tactical deck where they control the guns. After the tour, we went looking for an ice cream festival that was also happening at Penn's Landing that day, but it was all closed up by the time we got there. So we walked back to the train station, stopping along the way to catch out breath in the relatively cool shade in courtyard of Ben Franklin's ghost house. We passed by the house where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, which was neat.

That night, we watched Pitman's fireworks from the street in front of my parents' house. We put folding chairs out in the road and got a pretty good view of the fireworks from across town. It was a lot nicer than dealing with the crowds.

On Tuesday, we were planning on going down to Delaware to visit my cousin and her toddler daughter and newborn baby son. Unfortunately the daughter picked up some kind of stomach bug earlier in the week, and although she was better in time, my cousin caught it and was feeling sick that day. Boo. I was really disappointed that it didn't work out. I haven't seem them in way too long.

With our plans for the day totally skuttled, we didn't have much to do. James slept in until noon. We went to Jim and Mike's for pizza and and french fries, which is something we look forward to every time we visit Pitman, but I think this time the magic was gone. The crust was too thick and doughy, there was too much cheese, it just didn't do it for me anymore. The fries were still good, but very salty and greasy. I think our love affair with Jim and Mike's is over. We watched some Sopranos back at my parents' house, but their couch is pretty uncomfortable for lounging. That evening my parents took us to a restaurant in town, and I was really surprised to see a number of new restaurants on Broadway - restaurants with linen tablecloths! It seemed really fancy compared to the pizza and sub places I'm used to - a really nice improvement for the town. Unfortunately the meal I ordered wasn't good; I got gnocchi, which is one of my favorite Italian dishes, and the menu said they were homemade so I really wanted to try them. They had the texture of paste. They didn't have the nice pasta-y al dente chew, they just collapsed on your tongue in a pasty mess, and it just wasn't a pleasant experience. Bleh. I guess I was kind of grumpy all day too so that didn't help.

On Wednesday, we drove back home. It was another long drive. We had worried about our pets over the weekend, when it got much hotter than expected, and we asked our neighbors to move Winston into our bedroom and turn our window a/c on, because we were worried it was getting too hot in the house. When we got home, the house was warm but not stifling, and Winston seemed fine. Whew! All in all it was a really good weekend, it was nice to see my parents (we hadn't been to Pitman since Thanksgiving!) and we had some good adventures.

And, bonus: we had a two-day work week that week! A lot of people at work took the whole week off, so those days were really quiet, too. It was pretty great.