SLOOOOOOOWWWWLY Goes the Refrigerator Replacement, Hohoho!!

 In honour of the Cherry Cream Soda font I MUST use pink for this post!!

The saga of getting another fridge continues.  By 1pm today we realized we likely were not going to hear from the refrigeration technician, so my husband hiked across the parking lot to the office to ask what was going on.  As we suspected, the employee from the management company struggled with his English comprehension and didn't understand why we still had food in the refrigerator portion of the unit if it wasn't working, didn't realize that my husband was NOT telling him that unit was still working and didn't understand why there was over twenty dollars worth of ice slabs in plastic bins in there keeping the food sufficiently cold as to keep it all from being wasted.  He apparently told the tech that our fridge was still working so there was no rush on the order.  Sigh....why are we not surprised. Even the staff for whom English IS their first language don't seem to comprehend what we are telling them a good deal of the time. hahaha

So the office staff worker called the warehouse to see if there are any fridges in stock that are in working order. She finally got a response around 4:30pm and the response is there is a fridge and the tech will try to get it to us sometime tomorrow.  In the meantime we had to purchase another ten dollars worth of ice ($31 and counting...) after dinner tonight to get our food through safely until tomorrow until hopefully at least noon. The office staff worker begins her shift at 10:30am and will call to let us know, if she can find out that is, when the tech and the fridge will be arriving.

Unfortunately my husband has an eye appointment at 11am and will be leaving at 10:30am to be there on time. So, he will have to leave me to deal with this call, or with the tech should he arrive before or without said call. Tomorrow will mark my third day in a row of having to stay home all day waiting for assistance with the fridge.  Sigh.....I was really looking forward to going to his appointment with my husband so I could look longingly at all the expensive eye glass frames while he is in with the doctor and start thinking about what kind of frame I want to purchase after my own annual eye examination later this fall.  After accidentally sitting on my present very delicate frames that I've had only one year, they were so bent and took so much work for the frame techs to straighten out, it is unlikely I will be able to put new lenses into them safely ever again.  At present one of the original lenses is remaining in place "just kinda barely", so....guess it will be an expensive experience since I only get coverage for frames once every two years and then only if my prescription changes, which I suspect it may this time. Whatever....eyes are so important, so they are worth spending money on.

Tonight we had a wonderful time.  We met a now retired former colleague of my husband's and she treated us to a meal at DarBar.  Yum, yum! I decided to have a simpler meal tonight so ordered off the appetizer list: a chana curry with fried bread....basically a fluffy puffed up pillow of thin bread dough that was able to be dipped into their home made tamarind sauce...to die for....and then one of the best green salads I have ever had there, plus a helping of raita.  Gosh, it was a full meal even without eating both rounds of fried bread.  It was unexpectedly delicious...not a great fan of chana as a rule...and I was not expecting that amount of food from the Appetizer list. WOW!  I will order that again.

The conversation was wonderful and contrary to the last time we saw our friend, her face is smoothed of all the "worry wrinkles" from her last position in her career, she has lost weight; she looked so happy after her first year of retirement. She was cheerful and talkative.  Gosh, it was a wonderful time together.  We all look forward to getting together once again.  ( have been trying to think about what else it was that was different about her this time and it just struck me that this is the first time I have seen her without her clergy collar. She was completely clad in "civilian dress" and I can't believe how different she looks.  Incredible.)

Although it is well before 11pm I am more tired than usual tonight so am going to get to bed right away.  I think the stress over the mix up with the fridge has gotten to me, plus being stuck inside for 3 days in a row has precluded going for any long walks, so I am craving exercise.  Maybe tomorrow after the ruddy fridge arrives?  Stay tuned to the never ending saga of refrigeration!  

Is It Possible To Be Completely Annoyed And Completely Grateful At The Same Time About The Same Situation?

That is how I feel tonight: I was hoping, after sending a maintenance request into management about our refrigerator starting to pack it in, that the thing would last until Monday when all the crew are back at work, but nope, the refrigeration system gave a little whine and a squeal and died late this afternoon. Everything in there began to thaw quickly. Sigh… So, I am annoyed! 

I am also grateful: back on the spring my husband purchased a  camping refrigerator/freezer. I didn’t begrudge him because although I suspected he would rarely use the unit and he spent several hundred dollars on it, he rarely purchases treats for himself. Wow….did that little unit ever save our bacon tonight; and our sausages and our chicken and our 10 pound turkey and our beef! (and our bread and bagged veggies and fruit packs and cheeses and herbs) 

We have cold packs and the salvageable ice cubes packed around the milk and eggs in the dead refrigerator and we can only hope the fridge items survive until Monday, since we are gone all day tomorrow and won’t be able to check on them. Guess the good thing about that is that once breakfast is over we won’t be opening the fridge door and letting the cold escape for the rest of the day. 

These things are indeed sent to try us! 

Cook Cook Cook Cook Some More!

 It is a very busy day and I need to sit down for a few minutes before I start making lunch.  Was up at a decent time for breakfast today, got ready and started the prep for our company who are coming for dinner tonight.  I find cooking very frustrating and difficult because my creativity sometimes deserts me, or I discover I can't get the ingredients I need for what I was hoping to make.  Today I am dealing with some special dietary needs: corn product intolerance, lactose intolerance and diabetes.  Oh joy, hahahaha.  However, I was able to substitute olive oil for butter in my veggie dish and change my wonderfully forgiving Poor Man's Pudding recipe to remove both of the dairy products and replace them with other things.  Whew!! The fresh raspberries in the pudding will cover a multitude of culinary "sins", hopefully. I will know in about 45 minutes when it comes out of the oven.  The potato salad turned out great, so that is a bonus.  I have discovered that tossing in a quarter cup of either dill pickle or sweet pickle juice into the mix adds wonderful flavour to it and I had fresh dill to chop into it as well.  

I finally discovered why, after decades of frustration, the hard boiled eggs are always so hard for me to get the shells off of without gouging the egg.  I have been letting them get too cold before shelling.  Today I was in a hurry so poured off the boiling water, dowsed them in very cold water for only about five minutes, then peeled them. The shells came off wonderfully well, leaving a smooth egg behind, no gouges. Why was I unaware of this prior to today?  hahaha  Okay, so cooking is not my gift. I admit it. It is a good thing I grew up on the prairies and am living there again right now because my simple supper of panko chicken, potato salad and a fresh veggie mix with a dessert will be acceptable.  I may even go Full Prairie and put out a plate with a stack of bread slices on it, hahahaha.  You don't get any more prairie meal than a stack of bread on a plate.  

Now it is time to make lunch, re-tidy and shine up the bathroom and get the table set for tonight.  Having another couple over for dinner seems to take several days of preparation....guess I am my mother's daughter after all, but hopefully I can NOT spend half my day crying because my house isn't going to be clean enough nor the food delicious enough to suit me.  Please Lord, spare me that! Amen!  Poor Mom. We had company at least once most weeks and she went through agony every single time.  I felt so badly for her and don't want to repeat that part of her personality in myself as I get older. She truly suffered from severe performance anxiety and as hard as my father tried, he was unable to help rid her of that inherited family tendency.  Spare me O Lord, thank you.

An Unexpectedly Marvellous Day!

 I use the word "unexpected" because when we first woke up this morning the day seemed destined to be less than satisfactory for both of us.  The sky was losing an overnight fog, the clouds were grey, it was cold and my husband admitted to me that he simply wasn't up to walking to church and back in a chilly wind because he had not slept well during the night.  He had a foot cramp that wouldn't go away, he ran out of water from his bottle beside the bed, he had dreams that kept waking him....it as quite a tale of woe and I felt badly for him as I have been the victim of many a sleepless night, but it is rare for him.  He was as "white as a sheet", but insisted on going to the adult Sunday school class as it was going to be the introduction to a series of which he has a class to teach in a couple of weeks.  He felt so lousy he couldn't even eat breakfast so barely managed to force down a very small banana and half cup of tea to prevent him from passing out.  

As I suspected and hoped would happen, the class material and the socialization restored his good humour and he decided that we could stay for church after all.  I am glad we did because we were warmly welcomed back by quite a number of people who hadn't known we were on holidays, but wondered why we weren't there. That was a nice surprise.  

I assumed that as soon as the service ended we would be on our way home to get my husband some lunch, but shucky darn if he wasn't feeling extremely hungry and preferred lunch out at Fancy Fork instead, despite it being a longer wait for the meal to arrive in front of him.  He even looked about the congregation for someone to issue a spontaneous invitation to join us, although that didn't pan out this time.  Our meal was delicious and not expensive.  My husband had the 3 paper thin crepes stuffed with chicken and mushrooms and sliced onions, covered in a yummy pesto sauce and the plate had a large number of hash browns as well. He was delighted.  I ordered the Greek Bowl: a base of hash browns with fresh spinach leaves, sliced chicken, cubes of feta cheese and blackened red and green peppers and tomato slices.  It included a side dish of a delicious take on Hollandaise sauce. on  My meal was equally yummy.  We took our time, relaxed, chatted. For the first hour we were the only customers in the place and usually it is teeming with people. Don't know if a special event in the city took the customers away, but we certainly got specialized service as a result.  The server even managed to change the music line up on their Spotify system at our hopeful request. hahaha  We were able to change the twang, twang a deedilang country music to some more classical pieces.  Cool!!

We arrived home early in the afternoon, my husband was feeling much better but had a short nap while downloading Day 6 of the current Sumo Basho from NHK Broadcasting Network.  After we watched that I headed upstairs to start part 2 of my huge pile of ironing.  Half way through my husband called to me that company had arrived.

It was our former next door neighbour who had come to pick up her post-move mail...my beloved Afaf!!!  She and her family are very, very happy to be living in their new digs...twice the size of the place they were crammed into next door to us and they are saving nine hundred dollars a month in rent. The federal portion of their refugee status has now ended and they are living on provincial social services until Salim is able to find work. The kids love their new school and the two youngest are able to walk as the school is so close to their residence.  The oldest boy entered high school this year and is getting at least 3 hours a day of English instruction, as are his two younger siblings.  Afaf's English classes are paying off.  She has improved leaps and bounds since the spring. The great news is that after searching for months for a decent car, a friend from Edmonton found them exactly what they are looking for and delivered it to them a few days ago. Salim passed his driver's test and once the car is insured on Monday afternoon he will bring it by to show us.  Getting the license and now the car has kick started Salim mentally after a wretched year of fighting with the emotional trauma of having to flee for their lives a year ago from Lebanon.  He not only passed his driver's test, he is now signed up for English lessons starting in one week's time at the same school his wife has been attending.  We are thrilled for them and thrilled that they want to keep in touch at least somewhat.  

While we were visiting with Afaf, there was another knock at the door. It was the mother of "our little trouble maker", come to tell us that they too are moving out today....the last of our Syrian connections here in the complex.  After eleven years in Canada spent scrimping and saving, they have been able to purchase their first Canadian home in another part of the city, a brand new house in a brand new housing development.  How happy we are for them, but we are going to miss their boys and their constant invitations to play football and soccer. hahaha  (You haven't lived until you have seen moi attempting to keep up with those kids and their sports! hahaha BUT they continue to ask both of us to play with them, so what the heck, right? If nothing else I am able to give all of them a good case of the giggles with my fumbling attempts!)

I also finished my ironing after the break for visiting.

So, it has been a wonderful day after all.  Good things.

I also heard from our daughter in law as she was on her way to the Kol Nidrei service at Synagogue for Yom Kippur.  That was a special treat. We had an email from her aunt today as well and an email from our son to let us know he has an interview about his next set of green card requirements in a few weeks' time, so we are surely praying hard about that.  He is enjoying his new painting studio and is keeping busy at work as well.

What a marvellous day it has been after a rocky start.  

Tomorrow morning my walking partner and I are going to actually go for a real walk, for the first time in about a year and a half or so and I am so looking forward to that.  Rain, rain, stay away!!! Come again another day.  For today the weather has warmed up nicely and the threat of possible rain has ended.  We DID get a bit of a walk in as we walked a few blocks to the restaurant and back....a total of 10 blocks without my cane!  YAY!!! A new first....thank you NYC for all the enforced walking.

Good thing tomorrow is going to be great as well because the next morning is our next dental cleaning and annual check up. Blecch!!  However, I have a haircut that afternoon to look forward to.  I have to somehow work a thorough housecleaning into our schedule because we are having another couple over for dinner the following evening...and then it will be time to see my coffee buddy again. This week is going to fly by, all going to plan. Here's hoping!

Finally Got To Jackson Hole….

 …..the Manhattan location burger restaurant, not Wyoming! 

After a lazy morning, (after a great catch up sleep), we skipped breakfast so we could walk a few blocks to Jackson Hole restaurant to try their famous burgers. We decided to arrive as soon as they opened at 11am as the place is notoriously crowded there by noon and today was no exception by the looks of things when we left just prior to that time.

So…..nobody other than a heavy duty construction worker or sumo wrestler, (or my unbreakfasted starving husband, poor guy), needs a ten ounce burger! hahaha I knew they were large so ordered mine sans bun, and replaced the copious amount of fries with what turned out to be a copious amount of onion rings, so I ended up leaving a fair amount of food on my plate. Felt badly wasting it, but medium cooked burgers tend to be crumbly and don’t save over very well. And have you ever tried to re-crisp an onion ring? Yikes! 

I have finally accepted that most restaurants here do not season their burgers with much more than a dash of salt, so while the cook on my burger was perfect, I got more flavour from the yummy toppings than the burger itself….again! I give up. These topping were delicious and I ate all of them: decent slice of cheese, not the usual “American cheese”, which is nothing more than uncoloured edible oil product like the old Kraft cheese slices, a goodly amount of combined chopped tomato, dark green lettuce, dill pickle and bacon, topped with a huge pile of crispy fried onion strips. I could have eaten a whole bowl of that plus some onion rings and skipped the meat altogether, hahaha. Guess I prefer our smaller, overly salted Canadian burgers and I definitely prefer Canadian pizzas. 🍕 American pizzas, particularly the thin crust versions usually, with a few exceptions like Rocky’s, tend to be horrible. Little schmears of tomato or pesto sauce with bits of barely recognizable chopped up toppings and a sprinkling of cheese. Blecch! We tried a slice from Spoton Pizza last night, but preferred the considerably tastier Rocky’s slices…more topping, less sodium.

I am grateful that tonight we will enjoy a Rosh Hashanah dinner with our daughter-in-law’s family. I am happy that I found a gift bag and tissue wrap at Duane Reade pharmacy down the street so our hostess gifts of honey, apples and pomegranates are ready to go.

I was bemoaning the fact that we are leaving in a couple of days, but my husband reminded me that the September sumo tournament starts the night before our flight, so at least we will have something fun to watch on tv for a half hour each day while we recover from this trip. Watching sumo will keep our minds off the surrounding prairie landscape just a wee bit.

Remember The Crazy Intense Struggle I Had To Find A Wedding Reception Dress But The Reception Was Cancelled?

And remember also the racing around our fair home city I did to locate a brooch for the first dress I bought and then changed my mind about when I found the side panelled black dress pants to wear instead?

So here is how that whole fiasco has turned out: I left the pants at home in Regina because they were too bulky for my carry on and too dressy for anything else we would be doing here on our holiday, the dress I did bring and have worn four times, discovering in the process that it doesn’t look as good on me as I hoped it did, isn’t a style I like as much as I thought it did when I purchased it in desperation, my husband who pays no attention to my clothes telling me after I wore it out for sushi dinner last night that he doesn’t care for it on me and my son’s unusual complete lack of any comment at all about the dress, landed that dress and the brooch I purchased to wear with it in a recyclable bag this morning and now they reside in a thrift store ten blocks from our apartment! Buh Bye…….👋 

The thrift store on 3rd Ave and E 29th Street was our first stop along our daily walk. (4 miles today) After depositing my wee bag of goodies there we headed west along E29th up Lexington to stop #2, lunch at Anjappar Indian restaurant, South Indian cuisine, for chicken curry, rice, chicken tikka masala and garlic naan. The prices were too high because of the location, but oh yummy, the food was excellent and the service wonderful for such an unassuming looking establishment.

From there we walked a couple of more blocks south across Park Avenue to Madison Avenue to Madison Square Park, taking photos of the nearby golden spired New York Life Insurance and the landmark Flatiron buildings. Photos will follow when we get home. The park had so many big arbutus and other trees, a dog park, lots of benches lining the paths that were filled with business people eating their lunches, a company setting up large screens and speakers to livestream part of the U.S. Open competition and a beautiful fountain in the centre of a large pool where people have been tossing loose change. Our useless small change joined the rest of the pennies, dimes and nickels already in residence under the shimmering water.

We walked most of the way back straight down Madison Avenue past Fendi and Versace and Issey Miyake and other designer stores. Jammed in between between some of these upscale clothing establishments we stumbled across elderly Madison Avenue Baptist Church, looking a tad lost in the midst of the overpowering retail ridiculousness. Hahaha….

As we wandered up Madison Avenue we came across one of Amazon’s Whole Foods stores. We have been looking all over Midtown and downtown for a pomegranate to take to our Rosh Hashanah dinner hostess on Friday night, with zero success. We had been wondering if we would have to take the long subway ride to crowded Zabar’s for a pomegranate to include with the rest of our typical Rosh Hashanah gifts of honey and apples, but today came across an outlet of Amazon’s Whole Food serendipitously and there were the elusive pomegranates: only a half dozen remaining in the bin, but all in good condition. What an unexpected blessing. Now we feel prepared to greet our dinner hostess.

So it is 3:30pm, we are having a bit of a rest, we have leftover curry and tikka masala for dinner tonight, but I know we will be craving another little walk after dinner, so we may walk back up to the library and sit in the park for half an hour.

It is one of the hotter, more humid days we have experienced since we arrived, so we have both air conditioners running in the suite and are lazing around in our jammies. How very lovely! 

To think: when we arrived here nearly a month ago I could barely walk the five blocks to Trader Joe’s and back carting a small bag of groceries and now I can walk 22 consecutive blocks before feeling the need to sit down. I LOVE 💕 NYC!

Day Of That Wet Dishrag Kind Of Feeling!

Yesterday turned out to be a tad overstimulating for both of us, so we had trouble falling asleep in the wee hours of this morning. I slept for just short of 6.5 hours, but my husband slept for a solid 9.5 hours. He woke up at 9:15am. Now it is 11:15am and he has gone to bed for a nap. 😴 I am zapped out on the living room sofa, fighting to keep my own eyes open, haha.

I managed to wait to eat breakfast until 10am despite waking up at 6:45am, yay! I wanted to wait for my husband to wake up with no prompting from me. Since we decided already last night that we need a break from our same old, same old daily breakfast menu here at home, I was determined to be able to wait this morning for a walk to Townhouse diner for eggs Benedict florentine. Oooh, so glad I held out. There was SO much wilted fresh spinach that it was worth the wait. Yum! My husband enjoyed his eggs and turkey sausage sandwich with a goodly portion of my hash browns to pad out his already generous meal. We were sated and found ourselves dragging along for the five block return walk. 

When we got home we sat down and stared at each other vacantly for a few minutes, then our son texted us the location of the sushi restaurant they are taking us to this evening. So, we sat and perused today’s menu items so we wouldn’t have to take too long to make our menu choices. Since I can’t possibly eat the amount of rice in most of the sushi platters I have opted for two appetizers: chicken karage and tempura sweet potatoes. 🍠 They will both be small amounts so then I can have a dessert of a small scoop of green tea iced cream! Yum! The food should be excellent at this Michelin starred restaurant, but the biggest draw tonight is being with our kids!

I am yawning myself silly while writing this post. Gotta go and lie down!

Now I’m Tired

Although it is only 3pm, we are home and exhausted. It is good exhaustion though, brought about by the intensity of the day’s project. 

We weren’t exactly rushing after we got up this morning but still found ourselves at Grand Central Station before 10:30am. The ride on the 5 Train Express took less than 15 minutes before reaching the Battery Park station where we disembarked. We took our time wandering around beautiful Battery Park, enjoying the shade giving trees on this warm day, as well as the remains of the hydrangea blooms. We loved watching the water and gazing across at the Statue of Liberty, the ferry boats filled with tourists heading over to Ellis Island and various small boats towing wake-boarders behind them. The bright sunshine lit up the water and sent glitters of light dancing on top of the wake. Gorgeous!

We wandered about the farthest south end of Battery Park past Fort Clinton before discovering the pathways that would take us to the entrance of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, aka the Holocaust museum. What an incredible place. The whole history of the beginnings of antisemitism (just after 1000AD),to the rise of the Nazis and subsequent Holocaust. It was fascinating and sickening, both, to see pre-war photos of many prosperous middle class Jewish families, most of whom were exterminated during WW2. There were many articles on display that were collected from the over 1800 killing sites scattered around Eastern Europe before the concentration camps were established: prayer books, blankets, prayer shawls, socks, tattered dresses, shoes, dolls etc. The panels explaining the historical events were well written but very general. Specific names of well known antisemites that could be inflammatory to other religious or cultural groups who have tended to whitewash their antisemitic but otherwise heroes, such as Martin Luther, were not specifically mentioned. None of the actual films of the gas chambers or firing squads and their immediate aftermath of bodies were shown, but I have seen those films and I believe every non-Jew of adult age who has no family history of recent cultural, or religious violence to deal with should have to see them to understand what true cruelty looks like. There were a number of televised interviews with Holocaust survivors that were touching and brought tears to my eyes. 

These displays took up the first two floors of the museum. On the third floor there is a large exhibition detailing the Danish resistance movement and how the Danish government was allowed autonomy by the Nazis for the first few years of the war because they saw the Danes as being on a similar level of superiority to their own people. So, the Danes welcomed thousands of fleeing Jews into their country and gave them full rights like the Danish citizens had. Despite the huge number of Nazi soldiers on the Danish streets the Jews moved about fairly easily. Once the Nazis realized what was happening in Denmark they made a plan to quickly round up all the Jews and deport them to a concentration camp, but word of the plan leaked out so thousands of Jews were able to be smuggled out to Sweden and safety. Incredible! By the time we were finished we were “plum tuckered out”! 

We sat in the museum cafe for a while to eat lunch and rest. My husband loved his huge bowl of split pea soup while I munched on a black bread sandwich filled with tuna/egg salad and dressed with lettuce leaves and purple tomato slices. For dessert we each crunched down one of the popular and very sweet black and white cookies, but they were small so….yum! 

Our original plan was to head across the street to a museum dedicated to American indigenous peoples but that will have to wait until next week. We have a couple of days that are not yet filled with other activities. 

More “Touristing” Today!

What a lovely day we are having! This morning we walked a few blocks west to Bryant Park and sat for half an hour at a little cafe table under the trees while we waited for our son to arrive for a tour of the NYC Public Library museum collection right beside the park on 5th Avenue. I have never seen as much marble in one place as I saw in this building: floors, walls, ceilings and so beautifully carved with pillars and inlays, and a long series of low rise marble steps up to the second floor. The old wooden ceiling in the main exhibition hall is also beautifully carved. Lovely!

Wow! What an eclectic display of interesting “stuff”! Large glass cases display everything from a hand written copy of the U.S. Constitution to Agnes de Mille’s dancing shoes to a gorgeous and giant book of bird illustrations by Audubon to Charles Dickens’s writing desk to the original Winnie the Pooh doll that inspired the writings of A.A.Milne to the elongated conducting batons used by Arturo Toscanini to historical relics from the American Revolution to capes and other artifacts from both the original and modern day abolitionists The Wide Awakes to what I think is the most important exhibition of all in these modern times: a history of American abolitionist and protest movements from the 1800’s to the present day. So many movements, so little progress in too many ways. There is even a banner designed by Christopher Gadsden from the anti-colonial movement of 1775. It features a timber rattlesnake on a yellow background and on it is printed, “don’t step on me”. In other words if Britain was going to be heavy handed with their colonies the colonists would fight back. Apparently it is now used by modern movements to promote personal liberties such as gun rights. There were posters and lapel pins from movements I remember best: the Black Panthers, the Equal Rights Amendment and AIDS Funding. Considering what is currently going on in North America I personally consider this smaller side room exhibit to be as important as the original Constitution documents. My son set up the lighting for most of the exhibits so I learned a tremendous amount about lumens, light bulbs and fixtures, etc. and it was more fascinating than I thought it would be! 

After our enlightening two hours there it was time for lunch so we walked back closer to our place to the Sofra Grill. We hadn’t yet had any Mediterranean style food and this place had good reviews. The reviews are correct. We started with an order of baba ganoush with yummy poppy seed bread for dipping,  we ate fabulous lamb “pizzas”, chicken gyro wraps stuffed with meat, sautéed onions, sliced pickles, arugula and tomatoes and cucumber slices, beef gyro, rice and pickled beet salad. What a fantastic meal for a most reasonable price of under one hundred dollars for the three of us, taxes and hefty tip included. After lunch our son came back to our place for a cup of tea and a long visit. He left eventually to go home for his bike and carry basket because today is his weekly pick up of freshly picked farm vegetables from Farmer Ted. 

My husband is napping at the moment but once he wakes up we will go to the grocery in the next block for some more of our favourite spritzers. We purchased a 6 pack yesterday and there is one left! Hahaha Gotta get this brand while we can because it is not available in Canada. Time for a quiet evening at home and a very light, late dinner.

I’ll Have A Plate Of Salt With A Side Of Burger 🍔 and Fries 🍟 Please!

 Around dinner time our son texted that he had completed his day of working from home due to his cold and was crawling directly into bed in order to conserve his flagging energy for moving his studio tomorrow since he has no choice but to have everything out of his old studio by noon. Thank the dear Lord my husband will be there to help him! Now I am praying 🙏🏻that my husband 👴🏻 will not catch our son’s cold! 🤧

We both felt kind of mogey this afternoon, (interpret mogey [hard G] in light of whatever word you use when you are feeling a tad tired, 🥱 somewhat unmotivated, and bordering on crabby 😠 because you are tired of sitting around reading but don’t have any idea what else you want to do), but eventually we decided to take a wander a few blocks east of our place to walk for a bit on the path beside the East River and try to locate the ferry terminal in case we want to take a short cruise up and down one of these fine days. It was lovely looking out across the river into Brooklyn and watching the NYC ferry delivering its rush hour passengers to various stopping places. If we want to sometime we could take the 8 minute ferry ride to Stuyvesant Cove terminal a few blocks east of our son’s apartment complex. We will try to accomplish that apart from the rush hour crowds. 

We were ravenous by this time so we stopped at a river side restaurant called Hole In The Wall. Contrary to the image that name conjures up for me, the interior was light and bright with a high ceiling that absorbs the music 🎶 playing over the sound system. There was a good mix of ages and styles among the customers and I FINALLY had a chance to see the elegant new fashions worn by the young up and coming professional crowd. They are what I think of when I think of New York fashion. Thus far most of the people we have seen don’t dress that much differently than ourselves to go out shopping 🛒 or dog walking or taking the kids to the park during the day…you know, not poorly dressed, but kind of schleppy. It was fun watching the older 20 somethings in their fancier dresses and heels, suits and ties, perfect makeup and hair. They remind me of myself and my colleagues from a few centuries ago when I had a career and money enough to look good all the time. I hope all these young people are enjoying and appreciating their good fortune. 

The menu at the restaurant consisted of a couple of pastas, two salads, four burger choices, a handful of appetizers and about six pages of drink choices, haha. My simple smash burger had more flavour in the beef than any burger I have had here to date and that is because it was also the saltiest burger I have had to date! Hahaha There were four rounds of sweet pickles on the burger…more salt. There were slightly sautéed and extra salty onion slices on the burger. The fries were perfectly cooked and completely covered in sea salt. Salt abounded in both our meals. Salt, salt, salt! The place is an Ode To Salt! Oh yes, my husband’s burger had two strips of SALTY bacon! (and the cook had heated them to crispy blackness in a microwave no less! hahaha 😂) 

Salt 🧂 🧂 🧂 Salt! And again I say SALT! 🧂 

We are currently back in our suite after a beautiful long walk home past the gorgeous gold domed St. Vartan Armenian Apostolic Cathedral and its beautiful gardens across the street from the building, pickle ball courts and a soccer field…trees! 🌳 Flowers! 💐 It was a lovely walk👩‍🦯 home. 

It was really fun to walk along the river path and see the ferries ⛴️ operating. A big tugboat passed by at one point pushing a huge rusting old scow. We have been only vaguely conscious of our proximity to the river until this afternoon. Must remedy that in the coming days! 

I apologize for these ever changing font sizes. Trying to correct them after the fact is too complicated and sometimes it doesn’t even happen until I press Publish…so please bear with me, thank you.  If it is bothering you go make yourself a margarita and SALT the rim! Hahaha….

Oh Frick!

 We received a nice surprise this morning! Our son had the morning off so he wondered if he could accompany us to the Frick Museum. Of course we said he could. Since he is extremely familiar with the collection, having worked there several times in the last couple of years lighting various exhibitions, he knew exactly which salons we would enjoy the most. What a joy to see works by Rembrandt and Turner, Veronese, Goya, Hals…..the list goes on. It was a delight for all of us to see our favourite painting: Saint Francis in Ecstasy (Saint Francis in the Desert) by Giovanni Bellini! It was painted around 1475-1480. The painting contains a fair amount of symbolism that my husband enjoys. It was amazing to see the actual painting!! There are rooms filled with oriental porcelain and small bronzes, as well as some incredible medieval works from between the 13th and 15th centuries. The colours of the medieval works are still vibrant: reds and oranges in the Italian works and blues and green favoured by the German painters.

Unfortunately the pigments used by artists in the time of Rembrandt, as well as the use of so much linseed oil, are blackening. Details in many of the paintings of that era are disappearing, fading away to black. The fading colours are called Fugitive Pigments and it is a shame their green, blue and brown vibrancy does not last forever the way the bright medieval pigments seem to. Grateful we saw some of these famous works before the remaining background details blacken into obscurity.

After a delightful couple of hours there admiring the paintings and the lovely fountain featured in the inner courtyard, it was time for lunch. Even though our son has often worked at the Frick he has never eaten a restaurant meal in this most exclusive and expensive area of the entire city. So, he contacted his wife’s aunt who lives in a penthouse only blocks away from the Frick. She suggested the Leo Cafe at the nearby Asia Society Museum. Tucked away at 725 Park Avenue we nearly missed the unassuming looking building. The cafe there was perfect for us: clean, quiet due to a small number of customers, and a short but comprehensive menu. My son had a flank steak sandwich on ciabatta bread with spicy chips,  my husband enjoyed a salmon bowl with a large piece of salmon on a bed of quinoa and assorted cold vegetables, while I had a chicken salad: six large slices of chicken on a bed of shredded curly cabbage, mixed greens, dried shiitake mushrooms, green onions, diced fresh pears and a large amount of slivered papaya. Oh wow, we really enjoyed the clean restaurant, attentive staff, muted sunlight, surrounding greenery, small number of customers and most delicious foods at an incredibly reasonable price. The quiet ambiance was conducive to family visiting before our son had to get back to his studio to continue packing for the move that will now happen early next week….giving us an unexpectedly free day tomorrow to do something on our own that neither of the kids would enjoy. Maybe a ferry ride over to  Staten Island for the day? Could be raining by late afternoon so if we can get ourselves moving in the morning we could get to the Island in time for lunch at Blue, then home before the rain falls. Think I will suggest that to my husband. 

On our way home this afternoon we stopped in at a museum only a block from home: American Kennel Club’s Museum of the Dog. We knew nothing about it and had low expectations, but it was the most fun we have had at such a cute place in ever so long. The walls on the ground floor are set up like a portrait gallery for dogs of any and all breeds. Some of the artists are gifted at realistically capturing the various expressions on their poochy subjects’ faces and the fluid motions of their muscles when walking or running.  There was a large ceramics collection, antique dog collars and leashes,  an interactive video where you can play at being a professional dog trainer, interactive dog recognition and breed histories challenges, a wall covered in drawings and paragraphs about their own dogs written by elementary school children, amazing full sized bronzes and heavy ceramics of several breeds…two full sized ceramic replicas of Dalmatian spotted Great Danes immediately caught my attention. On the top of the three floors of exhibits was an art contest: 20 works of art and photography created by local dog lovers. We were each given a ballot when we paid the entry fee and chose our most favourite from among the twenty. That was fun. I loved a small bronze of a dog carrying a large stick in its jaws, running toward someone with the obvious intent of wanting to play Fetch! It was titled, “Favourite Stick”. My husband voted for a black and white headshot of a rescue bulldog cuddling up head to head with its new owner and it was captioned, “You Chose Me!”  We each took a self photo that was then matched to what breed of dog each of us most resembled. I have done this before several times over the years, in various places. As always I was matched with a bulldog, but my husband turned his head just as his photo was being taken, so he matched with a bulldog as well and I didn’t feel so badly, hahaha. The biggest joy for me was discovering oversized AKC tee shirts for sale in the gift shop! Now I have the extra item of sleepwear I have been needing for the rest of the trip! YES!  👏 

In a couple of hours it will be time for dinner. I would like to return to the sushi shop we went to last week, but am guessing my tired husband will prefer to remain here and finish up the last tomato 🍅 and remaining strips of skinny bacon 🥓 for sandwiches. We shall see whose views win out tonight! Hohoho!

We have finally opened all the windows to try to rid this suite of the disgusting deodorizer that has been making me ill since we arrived. Tonight I will try sleeping on the living room sofa with all three windows open and see if it helps rid me of the overnight congestion. Here’s hoping….

The Benefits Of Getting Lost!

 We managed to find our way yesterday around the bus and subway systems to meet Aunty J for a tasty lunch at L’Ami Pierre….tasty Caesar salad and baguette chicken and brie sandwiches. We arrived a few minutes before she did, so sat on a bench outside people watching. The noon hour brought out hordes of younger up and coming business men dressed nearly identically in shirts of white or pale blue and dark navy suit pants and jackets, brown shoes. I guess individuality in suit and shirt colour is not encouraged here. It was most interesting watching this blue suited army. The women tended more toward blacks and greys, their feet shod in dark coloured flats with at least some variety of styles.

After lunch we headed to the Museum of Modern Art where we enjoyed looking at the small exhibition of older Diego Rivera sketches and coloured drawings and paintings. Many of his works paid tribute of course to Frida Kahlo, fellow artist and romantic partner. I had forgotten that she died at the age of 47. The humour Rivera injected into his small drawings about man vs the machine was amusing while still making his point. One large painting paid tribute to those who overthrew dictator Diaz during the 1910 Mexican revolution. Apparently it lasted until 1917 and it took another three years for the country to stabilize. After the Rivera exhibition we stopped at an expansive exhibition of works by Marcel DuChamps. I had seen most of his newer paintings and modern sculptures such as his “Fountain” urinal collection, but what I had not seen before were his earlier published cartoons. They are hilarious! After we saw these two exhibits we sat for an hour outside in the lovely sculpture garden sipping proper iced tea (cold tea with ice cubes, no sugar) and chatting. It was a lovely afternoon.

At 4:30pm as we were leaving the MoMA my husband told me we were within walking distance of Barnes and Noble in case I wanted to pick up a couple of books to take to the cabin this weekend. It would save us having to get up early this morning to race off to the Strand bookshop. Seemed like a good idea at the time, so we confidently headed to 5th Avenue. 

Here we made our first mistake. My husband, the intrepid mountaineer path finder was looking at the street map on his phone and for some reason became directionally challenged. Instead of walking toward the Barnes and Noble outlet we were ten blocks away from starting point before he realized we were walking in the opposite direction! Groan…..we were going to have to retrace the same ten blocks, then start our hike to Barnes and Noble all over again. Nooooo….after two hours of walking, sauntering and standing at MoMA my hips were already tired. Oh well….

There were some lovely surprises though due to our misdirection. We came upon St. Thomas Church which my husband has been hoping to view since his first trip to NYC in 2018, we passed by the famous Plaza Hotel, fronted by gorgeous Pulitzer Fountain, the huge bronzed statue of General Sherman, and lo and behold, a street-side pop up from Strand Bookshop! Oh wow, how cool! Right there in plain sight was the Emily Wilson translation of the Odyssey that J recommended only an hour earlier. I snapped it up! Finding the Strand street side meant we wouldn’t have to go to Barnes and Noble, so could retrace the ten block error and head to the subway station to catch the train that would take us home.

Along that part of the route I realized how exhausted I was getting, but walking along beside the south end of Central Park was a gorgeous visual distraction. Until……hey, wait a minute…to get to the subway we should have turned away from the park at the exact point of having retraced our ten block mistake! Wha? My sheepish husband rechecked the route on his map and realized he had made the same mistake in orientating us to the route on the map. This time we were “only” six blocks out of harmony, but oooh my, such long blocks! Another retracing of our steps to our original starting point, we covered the four block walk to the subway, finally arriving to catch an immediate train as I was about to collapse from exhaustion. (Please note, I was also very ill with the respiratory reaction to sleeping with the AC on overnight three nights in a row.) I must have looked pretty ill by then because two women on the rush hour jammed train cleared seats for me to sit down. Fortunately when we disembarked we were only three blocks from home. I staggered into our suite, dropping my cane into the middle of the living room floor and collapsed on the sofa. By this time it was over six hours since I had eaten and after so much exercise my blood sugar was too low. My sweetly penitent husband, feeling humiliated by his route mistakes, made me a sandwich, forfeited his last slice of Japanese green tea cake roll to me and pampered me like crazy. The poor guy was so upset, I felt badly for him. There were so many nice surprises by us taking incorrect routes that there was no reason to be upset.

We were both in bed with the lights out by 8:45pm and we didn’t get up and going until 7:30 this morning. It is about 10:30 am now and I have made a trip to the nearest pharmacy a couple of blocks away for a small jar of my favourite respiratory healer: Vick’s VapoRub, at my husband’s insistence. Now I am at home resting while he makes a long loop to a few organic markets and  a computer store for a new mouse. He forgot to bring his and that is why we had so much trouble completing our government forms. Using the little roll pad on the laptop was frustrating and slow. It is nice to now be familiar enough with our neighbourhood to each be able to get out on our own. 

This morning our son is picking up the car from an in-law that we are borrowing for our trip to the cabin tomorrow. Once he finds a place to park it near his home he will come here for lunch and an afternoon visit. We may go to the Morgan, or I will send the guys on their own. I want to be as healed as possible before we go upstate tomorrow.

Yesterday was the hottest day yet at only +31C and today is a lovely +27C, with rain possible tonight and tomorrow. Love this weather. It is cooler than usual for August in NYC, but perfect for us.

Fun With Phones!

My husband had a struggle yesterday getting my mobile phone set up to keep a copy of my I-94 available for quick download in case I ever need to present it. The struggle lasted all morning and then into the late night hours when the Google Play he was forced to put onto my phone in order to get Firefox in order to get Document File in order to get the I-94 “in the hole in the bottom of the sea”, started sending out message after message at 11pm before I had my phone shut off for the night. We couldn’t get the Incoming Text notification volume turned down for some reason but finally succeeded after freaking out about the tenants right around us possibly being awakened by the noise. What a nightmare! My phone then needed charging so I couldn’t shut it off overnight, but we finally got the Do Not Disturb to work. We were so tired when the first 25 notifications started arriving that we were completely bamboozled by how to make it stop! As soon as we get home I will have my phone scrubbed, purged of the whole works and return to my usual Phone Calls And Texts Only format. What an hilarious time we are having here with our technology, hahaha…

We did get out for the afternoon to explore our immediate neighbourhood a bit more. Completed our list of small purchases needed for food and kitchen comforts, found another discount grocery, a nice Japanese grocery and a great hardware store. 

We ate lunch at an Italian restaurant as the deli we wanted to go to still had a lineup at our late lunch time of 2pm. The Italian place wasn’t fantastic but it was packed with regulars who know every cook and server so the atmosphere was relaxed and fun. There was enough food to feed four people so we skipped cooking dinner last night and traded leftovers. I ate the last couple of slices of my husband’s chicken parm pizza…his so called personal sized pizza was 12 inches…and he finished up my giant plate of veal parmigiana and mountain of spaghetti. The spaghetti sauce was quite bland, but each table had a shaker of mixed Italian herbs to use “to taste”. We were rather liberal with our use of it and here at home my husband shook some Tabasco onto the remains to spice it up a bit more. The huge side salad that came with my meal was delicious and we both enjoyed sharing it. Today it is back to cooking for ourselves. 

Best grocery find of the day: no sugar added Kind bars. Not available in Canada. Also they are very low fat, as in less than a third of the fat content of the ones we get at home that I can eat only occasionally. Wish I had room in my luggage and a heart to fill in declaration forms so I could bring a few boxes back with me.

When In Doubt Choose The Heat!

After a crazy busy day today my husband and I were zonked out by dinner time this evening.  We looked around at the leftover pot of delicious carrot-ginger soup my husband made that we'd had for lunch already as an appetizer to go with the perch, baked potato slices and brussels sprouts he had prepared for our entree, decided we couldn't face soup twice in one day and headed out to DarBar for dinner!  Oh so glad we did.  This time I ordered my coconut pepper chicken spiced "Indian medium".  I will definitely to that again next time. By the time I was spooning the leftovers into a takeout container my sinuses and inner ears and mouth were tingling happily from the heat, my tummy was comfy and at peace....it was marvellous.  A couple of spoonsful of jeera rice and some fish pakoras with green chutney and life was very good indeed. YUM!!!

My to do list has many things crossed off of it now and so tomorrow's and the next day's tasks seem less daunting.  I am waffling though on what outfits to leave out of my overly packed carry on bag.  I refuse to take under the plane luggage and I will be gone for more than thirty days, but as grateful as I am for the laundry facility in the rental building it is still a daunting task to be able to take enough clothes and still save two outfits for special occasions happening in the second half of the trip.  Aaaargh! Decisions, decisions.......I am hopeless and mostly I am afraid I will make the wrong decisions and regret it when it is too late to change my mind.

As I think of the victims of the Colombian earthquake and the BC forest fire evacuees, I feel pretty spoiled and even a tad guilty that choosing travel outfits is my biggest concern at the moment.....sigh...... 

Also, I have to apologize to family and friends that, while I will likely do some blogging while we are gone, there won't be any photos until we get home. Long story about the technology we will have available while we are away that I won't bore you with, but probably the best thing will be to write up the posts while we are there, while details are fresh in my mind, but wait to post until I can include any photos you might find interesting.  Also, don't cut me off from your newsy emails friends and family.  There will be time nearly every day when I will be eager to put my feet up and spend time with ya'll! I don't want to spend a whole month without any contact from you.

Another Loss For Our Family

We arrived home after church this morning to the sad news that my husband's last remaining aunt passed away this morning. She was the youngest in my father in law's family of 11 siblings and is the last to pass on to better things.  She and her husband had incredible ministry and social outreach for several decades in Africa. We always called her a force to be reckoned with, which she was, but it was a force for good everywhere she went.  She was organized, forward thinking and very, very kind.  Uncle passed away a very few years ago and now we have lost our last Auntie as well.  We are very sad to lose her but happy to know she is no longer suffering the physical pains and mental indignities of old age in the midst of her 90's. My husband is very sad to lose her.  She and Uncle hired him several times when he was still in construction to build various projects at their home in the Okanagan.  During their last trip to Africa a few years ago they offered us the job of house sitting for them as we were "between residences" at the time and we were touched and delighted.  It was a mutually beneficial arrangement for our last summer before my husband went to seminary.  The house was filled with beautiful African artifacts and their wooden floors were inlaid with gorgeous patterns made of African wood that they brought back with them after one of their many sojourns there.  It was like living in a foreign palace.  It was a house of healing for us after a very rough time in our lives.

Dear dear Auntie...may she rest in peace and rise in glory! 

Church went well this morning. My husband's sermon based on the parable of the manager who hired workers one day at various times of the day, but paid them all the same exact wage, certainly had us thinking about "fairness" vs "justice" and why we have that built in mechanism that makes us quick to address things we see as being unfair in this world....how it is a good mechanism that is based on our creation in the image of a just God, but often poorly utilized due to our issues with greed and envy. He was delighted that one of his non-believing friends came to hear him preach and stayed to have a visit over an outdoor lemonade in front of the church when the service ended. Afterwards we went to the Fancy Fork and enjoyed our lunches: 4 item customer's choice egg plate breakfast for him, (he chose 2 scrambled eggs, asparagus, three strips of bacon and hash browns, plus he was given a hefty slice of watermelon as a bonus), and a very filling beef dip with a side of ginger carrot soup pour moi.  My husband ate most of my Italian bun so I could keep my carbs down and I pulled the beef slices and onions and Swiss cheese out of the bun and onto my plate where I could pour the delicious pan drippings au jus over it.  It was delicious!!  The prices were very good as well.  Our food and drinks came to just over forty dollars!  What I like about their breakfast and lunch menus is that there is such a broad range of prices.  

Now my husband is napping and I am going to try to complete a silly computer game I have been working on in my spare time over the past few weeks...another of my mouldy oldies from way in the past that today's game players would find incredibly boring, but is perfect for this old gal. 

The weather is delightful today now that most of the smoke has blown away.  While the temperature is still a bit high, there is a stiff breeze blowing so even this early in the afternoon we can have all the windows open on both sides of the house to stay cool. Wonderful!! 

A Day Away Keeps Depression At Bay!!

 Yesterday was a wonderful day out of town. Our friend whose father passed away earlier this year, (my husband performed the funeral and graveside interment), wanted to take a trip down memory lane, so he and his wife picked us up at noon, (after my wonderful weekly coffee visit with my Thursday buddy), and we headed south west to the farmlands near Avonlea.  My husband is somewhat familiar with the area because his father was born near there and his aunt farmed in that area for many decades, until she was nearly 98!

It was a wonderful day for a drive: warm but not sweltering hot, just enough breeze to scare off at least a few of the hordes of mosquitoes currently in charge of all things outdoors and good roads, both paved highways and gravelled side roads.  We saw some gorgeous fields of still blooming canola, their neon yellow blooms so bright as to be nearly headache inducing, but several weeks of unrelenting heavy rain has destroyed large swaths of crop in too many fields.

We started at our friend's family farm, now run by a nephew, who talked to us about the family history of the farmstead and how the land and crops have changed over the past fifty years or more.  We were able to check out his cattle barn and have a good look at this year's calves gamboling in the fields. Fortunately both our host family and ourselves took large containers of heavy duty mosquito repellent or we would have been forced back into the vehicle within seconds of getting out of it. WOW....heavy rains leaving standing water followed by several days of warmth and bright sunshine....perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes, but there are not enough dragon flies around at the moment to eat enough of them.  The back of our pant legs and long sleeved shirts turned black with bugs within seconds of stepping outside. It seemed the repellent was particularly effective because I received only one bite on a knuckle and it only itched for a couple of minutes.  Most of the four of us received a minimal number of bites so we are all grateful for that.

From there we headed into the town of Avonlea where we toured their extensive museum site.  At about the time we began moving between the buildings to see the various pioneer exhibits and community displays for the various sports teams and tributes to their downed world war soldiers, a fellow arrived to mow down all the grass around the buildings, unleashing a fresh army of mosquitoes, so we made our way quickly VERY quickly from building to building. We spent a long time there enjoying the displays and all the work that had been put into the planning of each room full of items.  Of course we particularly enjoyed a little old Anglican church that had been moved there from one of the many now non-existent hamlets in the area.   

About the time we were completing our tour of the museum, our host started contacting the two restaurants in the town in regard to us having our dinner there, only to discover both local restaurants closed before 5pm.  Drat!  We did find out that the nice little grocery store had pre-made sandwiches and wraps and they were open until 6pm, if we wanted to purchase those and eat them in the car.  For some reason this was not appealing to any of us, so our host contacted the next nearest town of Rouleau and discovered the old King George Hotel grill and bar would be open.  Whew!

On the way to Rouleau, (where the Canadian comedy tv series, Corner Gas, was filmed years ago), we took a tour of Dunnet Lake Regional Park. Our host learned to swim in the river there when he was a kid, so he wanted to see what improvements had been made there over the years. What a beautiful little area!  There are lots of camping spaces and picnic tables, the lake and the dam, a beautifully appointed outdoor swimming pool and a large concession booth with not only drinks and shakes and iced cream but big meaty burgers and sides.  There were too many mosquitoes of course to make the idea of eating there at the picnic tables very exciting for us, so after our tour we headed the rest of the way to Rouleau.

The hotel didn't look particularly up and coming, but it was open so that was a huge plus!  We were pleasantly surprised by the yummy char grilled burgers and home prepared fries, plus the decor had some newly installed upholstery and the place was very clean....I would not recommend using the washrooms under any but the most dire of circumstances and perhaps not even then, but the kitchen was clean, the staff very helpful and the meal quite delicious.

From there we drove at somewhat breakneck speed back to Avonlea's museum parking lot to hook up with the guide for our tour of the small Badlands area only a few kilometres from the townsite.  

 

Our guide is an archaeology graduate and her enthusiasm for her job and for the badlands area made the little tour very interesting and exciting indeed.  We were amazed at the amount of plant diversity as we hiked along on the 3km round trip after parking our cars along the highway by the entrance. The field we walked through is virgin pasture land but we didn't see the cows, only a coyote that eyed us warily from a safe distance and lost interest in us quite quickly as it loped away.  The amount of cactus plants was fascinating to me.

 

The guide asked us if we would like to hike down to the bottom of the badlands to see some of the plants that only grow in that dry bottom area and nowhere else. I told everyone else to go ahead because I knew I could likely make it down to the bottom, but would never get back to the top in this lifetime, but by this time the sun was on the verge of setting and all of us were a bit tired, plus we found out that we couldn't take the little tour through the entrance to a couple of caves down there due to the heavy rains making the clay layer on the top of the hoodoos too unstable. No one wanted to risk being trapped in one of those caves if the hoodoo tops collapsed of course.  Anyway, cave or no cave, the view from the edge of the cactus lined top field was gorgeous and it was enough to make us all happy.  We walked back through the field to our car and headed for home after a wonderful day away.

"Tip toe through the cacti".......everybody sing along.....

We both slept very well last night once we "un-hyped" from our busy day out of town.

We both slept in a bit this morning, thankfully, and we both woke up feeling really good, really happy, really peaceful.  That seemed a tad unusual because we knew we had an appointment at the "Bank of Seemingly Never Ending Offences" just before noon.  

But...ya' know what?  It went spectacularly well!  My online survey answers from a month or more ago for that bank apparently caused something to click. Not only do we have a new advisor who apparently knows how to do the work she is paid to do, she was helpful, explained everything really well, answered our questions, apologized for the mess the previous FA had made of everything, helped us fix every issue AND sent a toe curling email to the third party institution that messed up our US credit card limit so badly back when we first applied for it.  She said she does a lot of this sort of thing and that she is sure when the people there see another email from her that they don't even want to open it. She very bluntly wrote to tell them the mistake was theirs and she expects them to fix it immediately and restore our the original credit limit they gave us before all the mess happened.  Will her email bring results...well, perhaps not, but for once we felt like someone with at least some authority has gone to bat for us!  Someone actually heard us and understands why we need this limit restored before we go away! So, all we can do now is pray and trust God for whatever the result turns out to be!  If we don't get that original credit limit back then we have to assume there is a good reason for it that we may or may not understand.  At least someone has really tried to help us.

My husband was so buoyed up by the appointment that he headed to the nearest restaurant to buy us lunch...kind of a celebratory lunch for the successful appointment there...for once...and also because it hit him suddenly that he never has taken me out for the special meal he promised me when he had to be absent for my birthday back in June, hahaha.  Lunch today was not particularly special in that sense, but it was a nice surprise and I am not sorry he feels just a tad guilty for forgetting my request for a meal at a particular restaurant some evening in honour my now long past birthday. I suspect that once he gets his out of town church commitments over with on Sunday he will be able to relax and enjoy an evening out more....at least more than he would have today after accidentally erasing the last day's worth of work on his sermon from the upstairs computer he was using as he attempted to save it for transfer to the basement computer where he can work in the cooler air.  Aaaah, the poor guy. I do feel really sorry for him, but he at least remembers well what he had written so I suspect it won't take him long to rewrite that portion.

It is hotter today than yesterday and we are hitting the +30C mark for the weekend, but then the temperatures will supposedly be more reasonable again next week.  +30C seems just fine after several days of nearly +40C so we are not complaining about the heat today! 

 

 

Happy, Happy Weekend!

 It has been a fulfilling weekend despite the never ending rain and thunderstorms!  In the next seven days we have one day of forecast sunshine midway into the week, but more storms are forecast for that evening and then onward to another few days of rainfall.  At this rate, if this is the result of global warming, either our area will end up becoming a permanent icy wasteland or turn into a jungle habitat....rain, rain, rain, rain, rain and more rain!  What a miserable summer weatherwise.  Our weekly rainfall forecasts are very similar to those on the west coast, but our temperatures are a bit cooler and slightly less humid..so far anyway. I am already wondering what next summer will bring!

Yesterday was a wonderful day despite the weather:  we attended the diaconal ordination of two people my husband has been helping to mentor along their pathway to eventual fully ordained priesthood.  There was a good turnout of people at the service from the church that was sponsoring them, also quite a number of clergy from other parishes were robed up and in attendance, the Bishop gave an inspiring talk to both ordinands that the rest of us were fortunate enough to be able to hear. It was thrilling to receive the Eucharist Cup for the first time from one of the two new Reverends. The delicious snacks in the visiting room afterwards kept me from going into a coma after eating my breakfast far too late after sleeping in accidentally, then not having a proper lunch for, as it turned out, 8 hours!!  I so enjoy returning to this church to see old friends and get caught up.  We spent a long time visiting and snacking and enjoying the beaming faces of the two new deacons in our diocese.  What an edifying and encouraging time for us in our little diocese who have seen so many large drops in church congregational sizes, a dearth of acceptable clergy, financial restraints etc.  Now not only do we have these two very capable new ministers who will spend one year as deacons and then be fully priested, but there are several new hires coming into the diocese who are very capable and experienced priests already. AND they are younger with young families...YES!  As far as clergy hires go we are set up well for the future.

A small piece of cake and a couple of crackers and cheese doth not a late lunch make, so just after 4pm my husband and I found ourselves ensconced in a booth at a restaurant around the corner from the church munching ourselves silly on chicken wings, fries and mounds of cole slaw.  As soon as our massive meals arrived we took out our take out boxes we brought from home and put half of our meals into them for lunch today.  Getting two full meals out of the deal made the price even more reasonable than it already was.  The service was excellent yesterday and our waiter got into a philosophical discussion with my husband before we left to drive home, hahaha.  There is something about my husband's clergy collar that starts up theological and philosophical discussions with many of the restaurant servers we meet around here. hahaha What fun! There are some very bright minds out there "slinging hash" and attempting to create fulfilling futures for themselves.

My husband and I both slept badly last night due to our brains fixating on a few issues we are dealing with and those thoughts kept going around and around and around.  I managed a little more than 4 hours of sleep and my husband got closer to six hours....4 too few for him as a rule....so I was the only one that toughed it out and went to church this morning. I figured perhaps being out and about might perk me up, and it did temporarily as I was able to sit with my coffee buddy who was also sans husband this morning, but as soon as I finished my lunch at home after church I was asleep in my recliner chair, tv blaring away for no reason at all, while my husband had a nap in his office. hahaha What a pair!  The thunder woke me up after an hour of sleep, so I staggered into the kitchen to wash some dishes and do a few more small chores.  As soon as I finish this post I am going to do a bit of reading but I am not sure I am going to get more than a few pages read before I doze out once again.  

We have few plans thus far for the coming week.  Not that we don't have plenty to do right here at home, so hopefully the lack of social commitments will make room for lots more downsizing around here. We have another load of "goodies" to take to the thrift stores and to recycling so once we get those things loaded into the car there will be that much more space for my husband to work in the basement as he continues his sorting and tossing out project.  He had also hoped to build the hangers necessary to attach our canoe and our friend's canoe to the side of her house at some point this week, but so far it looks like the ongoing rain is going to scotch that idea.  Maybe the week after???? 

Kudos To Tamarind South!

 We certainly enjoyed our dinner tonight at Tamarind's newer southern location.  The decor, or lack thereof, in this smaller restaurant nearly hidden from view near the end of a small off the beaten path strip mall, was not encouraging when we walked in to sit down at a nice sized booth, but the upholstery is still looking new and everything was very clean.  The food was a real treat: my chicken mughulai was slightly spicy with just enough coconut flavour in the gravy for my taste and there was a goodly amount of chicken pieces in the bowl.  Our friend's malabar chicken curry was absolutely delicious, not at all spicy as she had ordered a mild version and the curry sauce was thinner and well blended with spices. My husband ordered the balti lamb and it came with slices of green pepper and onion to add another layer to the slightly more spicy flavour.  All of us had an enormous amount of meat in our dishes, which is wonderful. It seems so often these days that with the price of food now the amount of meat has slowly been halved and the amount of gravy doubled at many of our Indian restaurants, so this was a great treat.  The curries and sauces had good depth of flavour....it seemed to us that they were actually more tasty than any of the dishes we have eaten previously at the original Tamarind location, but perhaps we need to go back there now and see if that is still the case.  We rounded out our meals with a large bowl of very tasty jeera rice and two large naan cut into three pieces each.  We all have enough leftovers for another full meal each tomorrow. YAY!  The prices are just as reasonable as DarBar over all and the flavours run in a not too far behind second place. 

We had a most delightful dinner with our friend as we listened to her stories of the past year, her first year of retirement that has seen her visiting all over North America and the Caribbean.  We were surprised to learn that she is not prepared to abandon Canada completely after all and is just debating with herself over whether to purchase a smaller house here or in some other part of Canada. Talking with her has given us new hope for a possible "one last adventure" before we get too old to do much more than sit around waiting for the end to come, hahaha. 

I am hoping and praying I can have a decent sleep tonight despite knowing I have to set my alarm for the morning.  Hopefully I can just forget about that relax into a good rest. 

Lovin That Sunshine!

 Although I could happily do without the howling winds today, it was marvellous running errands late this morning in the blessed sunshine!  The warmth of the sun's rays are so welcome and so soothing for the soul and body.

It has been a very good day indeed in productive and fun ways.  I wasn't feeling terrific by the time we went errand running before lunch, even though I had a solid just short of 7 hour sleep last night and originally awakened feeling quite healthy, but after getting some banking done with no hassles for once and driving around to various library branches while my husband picked up books he had been waiting for, I was feeling pretty cheery and relatively healthy again.  (I did make a doctor's appointment for tomorrow afternoon to see if I can get some nasal allergy spray to get a handle on the inflammation in my sinuses. Happily, our neighbour has not smoked his hookah for the past two days so I have had a break from worrying about the horrendous odour taking even more toll on my respiratory system.)

We found ourselves parked near the downtown library branch round about the time we needed to eat a late lunch, so we toddled into the Western Pizza across the street from where the car was parked. We had low expectations, but our meal was a slight bit better than meals we have had at their other locations around the city.  WP is kind of a last choice spot, but we were parked, our parking pass was already filled out for an hour's worth of parking and, well, why not since WP was right there. I had the smashed dill pickle burger with a Caesar salad.  The salad was pretty much not very Caesar salad-like, but it was tasty enough. My burger was delicious with two smaller sized smash burger patties, lettuce, cheese, tomato and red onions on a very nice small bun with a brushed butter top crust.  My husband's pizza was very tasty although he found the sauce to be an odd combo of "sweet and sour" for lack of a better description. I noticed that he still ate half of it, plus all my croutons and part of my salad, hahaha. He will have the rest of it for dinner tonight. I am so stuffed from lunch that I will have a couple of slices of ancient grains bread with melted cheese and a glass of water for dinner!  That will be more than sufficient!!  The bonus for us eating at this restaurant is that we arrived at 12:45pm and they close the table service at 1:15pm when they revert to take out and delivery only.  We were allowed to still order anything we wanted and stay seated as long as we wanted. The only thing we had to do differently was to pre-pay for our meal.  No problem, happy to do so.  Lunch was just over $40 including the sales taxes, we were delighted.  The restaurant was seating only ourselves, so we felt quite relaxed and happy with no noise to interrupt our chat with each other.  We will try that same arrival time again some time just to have that kind of alone time in a public restaurant.  hahaha

The sun is still shining as I write this post just after 5pm. I can't believe how a few hours of sunlight makes me feel better over all.  I would be almost as happy without it today though because my husband booked our flights to NYC at long last.  Yup, expensive compared to other years, BUT nearly eight hundred dollars cheaper for the basic fare than the same flights were charging three weeks ago when we first looked at the possibilities. Even with paying extra for our seat choices, we are still all in at five hundred dollars less than that original base price, so we are content.  Hallelujah. So now the prayers begin that we won't be delayed leaving and miss our connection to NYC from Toronto on flight day!  I have already explained to my OCD that God is in control and if we do get delayed for some reason that is on Him and no need to get all in a twist about it. Things will work out.

Here's hoping for more good weather tomorrow.  My husband is going out for breakfast with a buddy, so that will be fun for him.   We started out this week with only one commitment on the calendar and now there is only one day free....but I think we will have to do our grocery shopping and other away from home errands that day, so...... it should be a good week! I have a haircut scheduled, coffee with my friend and other happy events planned. We will not be bored, that's for sure!

Grey Skies In Winter, Grey Skies in Spring! WHAT THE HECK???!!!

It has been very nice to have all the rain showers we have had over the past week and more, but it would have been even nicer to have had some more sunshine between showers.  An hour or two scattered here and there throughout the past ten days or so has felt sadly insufficient, not only for us humans but also for our struggling tomato plants and herbs.  The tomatoes vines are stunted this year and the two or three tiny pieces of fruit on the one plant have not ripened at all in the past week since they appeared. I am afraid we may lose those teesy tomatoes to rot. The second plant wasn't huge when we got it and it hasn't grown much at all. Both plants are too spindly for this phase of the growing season. Glad the herbs are thriving much more and we have a fair crop of usable leaves and stems all ready. YAY!

I am discovering the joy of Ancient Grains bread that my neighbour shares with us on occasion.  For a strictly commercial brand...Dempster's....it is quite delicious.  Not being a great fan of the flavours of spelt and kamut they do blend together well with the other grains in this particular bread.  Yummy!  I have a loaf in the freezer that I am going to thaw today and enjoy!  It is a good kind of bread to intersperse with my Coop and Superstore Loaves of Alpine Grain breads.  

My husband is so refreshed after his trip to the mountains and his mind is clear, no headaches at all since going off his current statin meds. So on Monday he will call his doctor for a new med to be prescribed. He really does need the help as exercise and diet adjustments are not quite sufficient to keep his cholesterol count below scary range.  Inheriting that penchant for over producing cholesterol of the bad LDL kind, makes it that much harder to control without help.  At least he has tried to avoid meds, very seriously, but has had to admit defeat.  

Yesterday I got my courage together and called my orthopaedic surgeon's office manager.  I told her what happened at my appointment with the fill in doctor earlier this week and asked her the question I was leery to ask:  would I have to return to my GP to start the referral process all over again for the second hip?  The answer, to my huge relief, is NO! Hallelujah! His desire to do that hip is right there in his notes.  She will know sometime in August when and even whether my surgeon will be returning to work sometime in September after his extended medical leave. She has explained to me exactly what I need to do to see him as soon as possible after I return from my trip in August/September.  It will involve my GP ordering new x-rays of the other hip and getting them sent into the surgeon's office as soon as possible upon my return.  She also confirmed that should the  worst thing happen and the surgeon cannot return at all, there is indeed a contingency plan in place. YAY! The O.M. has been incredibly helpful and when this is over I must find the perfect card of thanks to send to her and to the surgeon.  It has turned into a very long haul between the length of recovery time for the hip revision arthroscopy and the eventual surgery on rapidly deteriorating hip number 2.  I am going to have to get a prescription for Naproxin again to get through my month long holiday this summer.  Drat!  My kidneys will be less than thrilled about that, but I already know there is no other way I will be able to cope with all the walking I am going to be doing on the trip.  Such is life, right?

So now that my husband is back and rested we are going to have to tackle our CRA account notices and track where they are with assessing our income tax forms sent in to them in April.  Oh please Lord, don't let me owe any more money to them because it is such a hassle ensuring the bank and the CRA employees actually get that money to the correct department, as I have sadly discovered in the past.   What a year it has been with this task!  Well, it can't be put off any longer. In the next hour or two we MUST get to it.  

After being awake in the middle of the night for a couple of hours,  for the fourth night in a row  last night, I finally got a solid four hours of post awake time sleep today. It was nearly 9:30am when I finally woke up. YAY!  My husband also slept in and we feel a lot more clear headed today, have more energy and are now up to dealing with that CRA account and other online "things" that have been amassing this week.  

Have  a happy weekend one and all!!