Thursday night we attended to the flutter mobiles readying MFO for yet another journey to Wisconsin.
Friday was spent with various chores, planning the grass garden, tidying up and hosting various craftsmen. The “pool guys” came over to pre-shock the gray lagoon so that when that wonderful day arrives when we “open” the pool for the season, it won’t be so laden with plant life. In the process of peeling back the cover, they discovered a very dead squirrel floating that must have fell through the deer hoof holes. That wasn’t pretty. The HVAC guy also visited assuring the ECS system in the house was ready for today’s preview of ninety degree temperatures. Then we went to the annual dinner for the St. Mary’s County Historical Society, historically held at Breton View in with Eddie Bailey’s historical buffet. Same stuff, casseroles followed by rolls, followed by mashed potatoes, followed by some manufactured chicken cordon blue probably prepared by some food service company, but then, all is forgiven there are those fried oysters. Crisp outside, creamy inside, flavorful. Be polite and taste the others, leave lots of room for the oysters. Then there’s that haunch of beef that somehow always gets carved with the grain. The program for the evening was a short talk about Mark Twain and his relation to the river as an allegory to life. The Historical Society needs members! Especially “younger” ones…
Saturday was spent in our annual trek to DC to see the Smithsonian Craft Show, one of the nation’s premier craft shows. For once a seamless ride not resulting in an unwanted trip to Virginia and we arrived at a friend’s house without incident and even found a parking place. We had a nice respite with a cool glass of Riesling and some great cheese from Eastern Market. We then hoofed it to the Metro and got to Foggy Bottom and walked to the Founding Farmer’s Restaurant. (See “Farming in DC” for the extensive review). Then, back on the Metro and the Archives station and into the National Building Museum for the Craft Show. Unlike the Baltimore show where there are many, many hundreds of crafters exhibiting, there were only 120 here, which makes it “doable” in a reasonable amount of time. We have noticed that although it is a juried show it seems like some crafters were there year after year. This year we were pleased to see that almost 40 new exhibitors were present. A refreshing change. Our only trophy was a nice little ceramic dish. There were beautiful things as usual, jewelry, wearable art (the term used for fancy jackets and coats), wood, glass, ceramics and so forth. Almost any media you can think of. It’s amazing what people can do. Some of the jewelry is just gorgeous and if you have 10 or 15 thousand bucks, you can have a nice piece. On the way home, we stopped off at Nick’s of Calvert and picked up a steak and a couple of chops. Say what you will about them, they all give you eye contact, talk to you and are very customer focused. A refreshing change from the Giants and Shopper’s where the checkout people carry on conversations around you. By the time we got home, we were so pooped that we put off the steak, had a glass of wine on the porch and hit the sack.
Yesterday was comparatively quiet; we did a quick stop in at the fund raiser for St. Mary’s Caring, and then went down to the Visitor Center at Historic St. Mary’s City and heard a lecture from Tim Riordan about the findings from last year’s Summer Archeology Program’s “dig” at the Lord Calvert House. It never ceases to amaze me how they piece together stories from what they find. They’re trying to figure out the configuration of the “north wall” when the house was used as a “fort” during the time of the so-called “Ingle’s Rebellion”. It’s such neat stuff… Go visit the city..
Concluded the weekend last night with Nick’s steak and a nice bottle of ’05 Catena Malbec which is drinking very well.
Odd that I still think in terms of "concluding" the weekend. This morning feels just like it did on the weekend!!
This and That:
Next weekend is the St. Mary’s County leg of the house and garden tour..
For those of you who remember our old ITT friend Tony Pence, his son is very much into bicycle racing and following an excellent example (ahem) – has started a blog. It’s pretty techy, but interesting reading..
Check out Google's logo today..
And to paraphrase CCR, here’s “Pollen on the River….”:
DFD
No comments:
Post a Comment