Bar None

 

On Friday I met a friend for lunch at an oddity in our area full of standard restaurants. We were at a Russian-owned crepe house, with not only create-your-own crepes but also a menu with pages and pages (6? 8?) of teas.

          I’m a tea drinker, so it’s definitely a happy place for me but their crepes are fun, too. I chose fillings of lox, asparagus, mushrooms, and spinach for mine. The crepe wrapping everything up is so thin you could probably read through it, but the end product of even a ‘small’ is massive. The rest of the menu is reminiscent of a New Jersey diner’s with endless choices like perhaps a ‘flight’ of 6 pancakes – including beet, potato, and zucchini – or maybe you’d rather aim toward the dinner part of the day with beef shish ka bobs.

          We swore we couldn’t eat another bite and then of course opted to build a dessert
crepe to share, choosing a filling of strawberries, blueberries, puffy cream cheese, and warm chocolate.

          It has an interesting layout, too. Aside from the dining area with tables and chairs, you first pass through another with three groupings of twin couches facing each other, where some people had chosen to sit, their food on the coffee table before them.

          The two areas are divided by a long bar, so I asked our waitress for a menu of cocktails, thinking maybe we’d want to return for dinner sometime. I knew the place was open until 1:00 a.m. and imagined a lively bar scene, everyone relaxing on those couches while they chatted.

          She smiled and said no, they did not have a liquor license and the bar only served tea.

Fishing Expedition

 

In these perilous times I rely on the blogosphere more and more to escape when I feel I can’t handle all the darkness and impending doom one more minute - and yes, I admit it, to find validation once in a while of my side of things.

Stem to Stern

       I suspect most women are like me and would prefer a yoga class of just their own gender. Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s wonderful for men, who are generally less limber than women, to be interested in keeping their joints operational. And it’s refreshing to see guys recognize the value of something physical other than the usual traditional fitness regimes that can be hard on aging parts.

          But today as I veered sideways during sun salutation I was disconcerted to see a very hunky guy immediately to my left, one mat behind. No matter how enlightened the fella, if I’m going to be raising my keister to the sky during downward dog, I’d prefer to have a lady's gaze on the stern of my own imperfect personal boat.

          After that came the grocery store, which was blissfully quiet, except for the employees busily stocking the shelves. The store’s flyer for the next week’s deals takes effect on Thursdays, so maybe everyone else is waiting till the new prices go into effect before shopping. Still, I found a good deal on Progresso soup, although that was cancelled out, I suppose, by the $8 jar of mayonnaise I bought.

         

No worries about invading the young man's privacy since his hair screens his identity.

And I was disconcerted for the second time today by this sight at the counter where a worker was assembling a grinder for someone. I’m the last to get in a lather about someone else’s hairstyle – it’s only hair, folks – but I did wonder about the point of the baseball cap and the flexibility of local health codes.

Fun and Beauty

 

Little news from here other than what was probably my first and last venture onto the new town pickleball courts this morning, since today it will get up to 80 degrees and then go plunging downward until probably spring.

Back to the mat

 

I’m such a Virgo that a schedule can soothe my soul, although paradoxically I sometimes find myself grinding my teeth over the sameness of my retirement days. There's just no pleasing some people.

What a difference a week makes

 This time last week we were gearing up for the first overnight visit here by the twins without parents. Okay, it didn’t really take me a week to recover enough to write a post, but things are definitely different around here than they were last weekend.

Overwhelmed

 

I grew up surrounded by books.