John's visit, part 2

John and Lucy

On Monday, James and I had to go back to work, which stunk because we both would have rather tagged along with John as he went exploring universities in Boston. For dinner that night, James grilled up a steak and we made fajitas with it. I made Martha Stewart's red beans with cheese, a fast version of refried beans, and sauteed some onions and red peppers for the fajitas, and James made margaritas. It was a great Mexican feast!

Indian feast

On Tuesday, John went down to Boston again during the day, then took us out to dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant about 10 minutes from our house, in Salem NH. We ordered three different dishes - chicken curry, chicken korma, and lamb saag (but we got chicken saag, oh well) - and shared them family style. It was really yummy! And we had naan, of course. It was a tasty, tasty meal.

John at the Indian restaurant

James and I at the Indian restaurant

On Wednesday, John drove up to Maine and had a grand adventure in Kennebunkport. James had to work late (8pm), and I wasn't about to attempt grilling fish by myself (we'd planned on having cedar plank salmon), so I decided we'd have leftovers. Between the beer can chicken, the fajitas, and the Indian dishes, we had plenty to eat! I had left work at 5pm, and since John was borrowing our Malibu, that meant James was stranded down there. When John got home, he came with me when I went to pick up James, so he got to see where we work. He even got to see the Patriot missle silo that's stationed near the entrance to the campus, so he got to see a bit of what his brother works on, which is cool. We picked up James and had a late dinner.

On Thursday, John drove up to New Hampshire for the wedding he was in. While he was gone, James and I finished prepping the hallway walls for painting (a surprisingly long and tedious process that spanned several weekends), applied a layer of Killz primer and then two coats of goldenrod-yellow paint. John didn't even notice the difference at first, haha! We were all pretty indecisive if we liked the paint color or not, but came to concensus that it works and will grow on us.

On Sunday, John got back around 4 or 5 in the afternoon. He told us all about his trip to New Hampshire and the wedding and seeing Vermont. He saw quite a bit of New England in his week on the East coast! For dinner, we had the cedar plank salmon that we didn't have earlier in the week (to be clear: the fish hadn't been hanging around since earlier in the week, I bought it fresh on Sunday afternoon!). We also grilled up some eggplant, summer squash and red pepper, and we had brown rice on the side. It was very tasty! We dined al fresco, on the deck. It was a lovely evening. For dessert, we made grilled smores according to instructions I'd seen in a recent issue of Everyday Food. Yum!!

After dinner, we watched the Swedish film version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which I'd just recently finished reading. It was a good film. Afterwards, we stayed up way too late talking with John.

Yesterday (Monday) morning, John joined us for breakfast (something he didn't really do the rest of the week, he's a big sleeper!) and we said our goodbyes, and James and I went to work. John was taking a cab to the commuter rail station 10 minutes away, and taking the train into the city, switching to the subway, and taking that to the airport.

When we got home from work yesterday, the house was empty and felt a bit lonely. But we had a great visit with John! It's crazy that we won't see him again until Thanksgiving.