1) Left town after work with my friends for the drive northwest to southern Vermont. We stopped in Leominster for a Mexican-inflected dinner (Inflexican?) that I found both tasty and amusing. The amusing part was the "Big Mac" guacamole special, based on "two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, but no sesame seed bun."
2) My friends T and D moved into a new-to-them home in a different town, still outside Brattleboro. Walking into the house late Friday night was like walking back into the good parts of the early 1970s: rough chocolate-brown woodwork inside and out, cathedral ceilings with exposed beams, and triangular windows at the apex - just like the den Mother and Daddy added to the back of the house in 1973, but without all the harvest gold and avocado green.
2a) This house begs for a macramé owl wall hanging with orange beads for eyes and beak, but I think they'd never speak to me again if I gave them one. :-)
3) Saturday and Sunday mornings were spent on coffee, writing (for me), yoga, soaking in the hot tub, and delicious breakfasts. After such a long time away, all that yoga kicked my @$$. Will I answer this wakeup call, or hit the snooze alarm again?
3a) Sunday breakfast was enlivened by a squirrel (see above) practically making love to a block of seed-studded suet discovered at the base of a tree.
4) Saturday evening it was off to Rowe an hour or so away for a potluck at the home of a mutual friend. A house bursting at the seams with good conversation and a superabundance of pasta. More than once I retreated to one of the upstairs bedrooms for a little breathing room.
5) This afternoon we saw the documentary Tab Hunter Confidential on ye Nytflyxe, which interested me very much since I'd read the book when it came out a few years ago. Almost fell on the floor when I saw that one of the talking heads was Rona Barrett! As the extra said of Norma Desmond, "I thought she was dead!"
6) On the last leg of our drive home tonight, surprised and pleased to hear a radio ad for the event I'm speaking at for WGBH on the 10th.