A warm day for an interesting trip to Block Island. High-speed ferry rental of bicycles, eating of ice cream. Upon return a hamburger at Joe’s with some of the crew

Grass mowing everywhere as we drove nearly an hour to the ferry. So with the ferry ride basically two hours from the house. Takes forever (qb added).

Road construction along almost every highway with cones and cones and cones.

Llamas. Rented bikes. Several mile bicycle ride out to the lighthouse where we walked on sand for a while to almost reach it. Wasn’t open so we didn’t bother climbing all the way. Rocky beach hard on toes.

Could not find the walking path to the pond; we must’ve bicycled past it several times.

Yes ice cream a fitting treat after a long day Garmin watch that over 13 miles

Block Island tee shirts say 1661

QB finally got her belated b’day hamburger at Jo’s American Bistro. Locals here said this is the best place for a burger, QB’s yearly one. With wedge salad!! It passed muster. KB had a professionally made Impossible Burger and preferred it when compared. G & M had real burgers and Marcia had shrimp’n’grits.

Total exhaustion at end of the day. QB retired around 10pm, which is almost unheard of.

Early start with a winding trip to Boston to get a chair at DWR. M&G navigated via a drive to Wickford Station, commuter train to Boston, Charlie subway to Cambridge. Five hours from the time we got up we arrived. Much easier than driving in Boston.

Chairs obtained, tomatoes harvested by Elizabeth – who nicely fixed the fortress squirrel cam. Speaking of the latter, the problem was it got unplugged. My theory, and I am sticking to it, is that the squirrels did it in revenge.

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Then there is the lobster….

Need to end the pig out with some ice cream

And finally an after dinner walk

Lovely dinner party at Marcias. Fourteen eaters!

Interesting tidbit: after dinner Lee took Grant to jump off the coast bridge by goat island. It is a thing here.

Arrived Aug 24th with QB not feeling perfect; by B’Day quite stomach sick. Crappy B’day for her and Judi who was hit with Ida a couple of days later.

Saturday the 28th took a risk and ate with extended family at a restaurant. QB ate meatballs and spaghetti. In retrospect it was a poor choice. Had to have soup and easy digest stuff almost all week. That and lots of over the counter stuff.

Went to Cranston to get a shelf for the kitchen. QB wanted me to wait until George could help. Either bonding (her words) or doubt you will do it right (her thoughts).

Thursday 1 September Ida rain and winds here. Lost power for a very short while. Route 24 closed in parts. Possibly 7.9 inches in some part of Portsmouth.

Friday: KB booster shot at CVS and then long but fruitful trip, got Morris Chair ordered. 7 month or so delivery. Mint chip ice cream after dinner in Bristol

Friday night to Saturday – booster reaction. Chills, tired.

Dinner party with Justine, Gratian and their family as well as Chanaka’s family, (Chanaka, Nimalka and Stephan), Sri Lankan friends of J&G (visiting from Fresno and Sri Lanka).

An especially gracious hosting (we even left with tea from Sri Lanka given by both families, a fine Beringer wine and a few finger limes) of wine, food, conversation and lots of laughter (much needed in these plague years).

This ranks exceedingly high among our “most memorable” dinners. There were two broths, had stomach capacity for only one. The non-vegetarian broth worked exceedingly well for both meats (lamb highly marbled beef) and seafoods (scallops, abalone, fish paste). Veg and shrooms came after.

As usual, abalone, even in a great broth, and well cooked, was still reminiscent of erasers. However, did not stop me from having seconds. The experimentation continues. Lovely Beringer Merlot and Cab.

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Was too engaged with the conversation to take pics of blueberry panna cotta, fruit and interesting Turkish drip coffee. Need to ask Gratian if that blend was made to be used as drip or only for the traditional type.

The smiling faces attest to the evening and the food. Impossible to capture the pleasure.

A delightful cultural item: More than once WE were thanked for coming! Yes, WE were thanked.

Finally all able to get together and hug a bit. Lots of food and a good time with a bit of drinking.

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The following contributed by Dee

Note the fine food! Moorish meat, cherry pie, cauli salad, corn salad, verggie torte (kuku) tomato tapa sticks, nectarine pound cake, pan con tomate (with added glass 🙂 ) and usual good fixins like olives and spanish almonds.

Got to try Lillet and some good wines as well. Overall a really fine post covid lockdown evening

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Depends from when you count…..All good.

Dinner at our favorite Taiwanese dumpling place, Din Tai Fung

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In honor of Bobby and JD pigging out in Spain we added our own oinks.

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Description of oinks:

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A bit underwhelming and disappointing. overall enjoyed but expected to see much more

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Some shots from the exhibit. There is also a nice explanation in the exhibit document via its QR code

lens.famsf.org

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