In PA with Sandy, Dianne and Sadie

We left Manhattan Friday afternoon and had the usual traffic through New York and part of New Jersey. We were meeting Sandy and Dianne at an Indian restaurant on the way to their house in the Poconos. There was a delicious buffet, all vegetarian. I think I liked the soup best, having 3 portions of it.

Their house is on a lake. It's big and comfortable and we've been going there since they bought the place. We used to visit them at their first house in the area when we drove up with the my daughter and young son and their oldest son 20 years ago. We brought our first Bouvier, Spree, with us. The Caedmon Playgroup in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn was where we met. We'd all lived in Fort Greene, where we enjoyed an extension of college days, with new people and now kids.

This weekend we did nothing . I love doing nothing. We drove over to their new property close by which sits on a large beautiful lot with several buildings clustered on one part of the property. They've planted a fruit orchard and are renovating the main house which was once a barn. They don't need this space or the work, but it's a project Sandy wanted to do. Dianne says it's a mid-life crisis sort of thing.

They walked and and I read. Our friends love good cheese, so we had 4 really nice cheeses with cocktails before our dinner of rib-eye steak on the grill, accompanied by fingerling potatoes
and dandelion salad, which was very bitter but I'd made tomatoes in a balsamic vinaigrette so that sweetened it up somewhat. We washed it all down with red wine and had a melange of desserts brought from NY.

Sunday was more of the same. We took a long walk with Sadie, their beautiful Bouvier. I gave her an eye trim which she really needed. I drove to Jeffersonville where I write this. Marty is going home with Sandy and Dianne. They'll drop him off in Manhattan where he'll have dinner with Harry, our son, who's in town for the week. They'll got to an all-you-can-eat sushi bar near our apartment. I don't like sushi, so this is a good thing. I'm not sure what I'm having yet. Something from the freezer.

Tomorrow is yoga and meetings with the DEC and energy company to resolve the blasted boiler issue. I'll let you know how that goes.