Tuesday, August 29, 2006
It's gone very chilly in Boston--actually cold at night--so Fritz and I pulled out an extra acrylic blanket to sleep under the last two nights of his stay down here. Last night I folded it up into a thick square and left it on the now-empty other side of the bed where it's deep softness and warmth has become THE place for my cat. She sacks out there now, occasionally roll
ing on her back, looking at me invitingly, waiting for me to realize there's a tummy to be rubbed, a chin and throat to be scratched. The folded mass makes a 
pedestal high enough that she can easily look from its summit across the blanket chest and out the window without having to exert herself by anything so tedious as actually getting up and moving. I suspect that blanket will have to remain there all winter.
That's a lot longer than the post I wrote up last night remained in the word file where I'd composed it. I made a careless wrong choice and the entire thing vanished never to be seen again. Here's what the weekend looked like: Fritz and I worked both inside and outside the house depending on the weather which is now acting very much like early spring. During one of our pruning and weeding sessions, I got hit on the ankle by a ground hornet--only one this time, not like the half dozen that had at my inner thighs (PLEASE, no comments) earlier in the month when I was powe
r mowing. This time I made it into the house and got an antihistamine into me and some ammonia on the sting point within about three minutes so the intense, burning pain and resulting itch have been greatly reduced. Other than to create misery, I've yet to see any purpose to ground hornets in Nature's great plan.
Most of our work was in the house, clearing out the chronically unused, obviously unusable and totally obsolete from several areas of the house, the storage attic and my studio in particular. We had begun by inventorying all the furniture in the house and listing what was going to be moved to the new house, placed in a big yard sale, left for whoever buys the house or just given to MIT's prop stock. We filled six huge trash bags, packaged years (in some cases, decades) of Opera News and other classical music and CD review magazines for recycling as I'd determined from a local used CD and music book dealer that they have absolutely zero resale value.
It was all a very healthy and nowhere near as painful a process as I'd feared. We broke the weekend up with fun social events, like the latest Queer Boston Bloggers dinner out at Boston's famed Parker House on Friday night. Boston Crème Pie, Baked Schrod with a butter and herb cracker crumb topping, and of course, Parker House Rolls had been invented there. There was a $30 prix fixe menu as part of the summer edition of Boston Restaurant Week. Neither Fritz nor I had been to the Parker House in years (our table was directly below the portrait seen in the picture), and I discovered that the dining room was completely redone in rich jewel tones and dark wood. Karl, Bryan and Jason (on the eve of moving into their first place together), Keith and the two of us made up the party.
The food was pretty good. Although lobster gazpacho was far more gazpacho than lobster, it was quite pleasant. The grilled mahi-mahi was very good. No "nouvelle" squiggles of sauce on the plate where food should be, there was a satisfyingly large slab of well cooked fish and properly crisp and flavorful veggies. Fritz opted for grilled veal which looked (and tasted, he said) fine. We all went for the Boston Crème Pie for dessert and got a surprise--ordered at the source, it’s a healthy cylinder of cake and filling rolled in slivered nuts, topped by dark and white chocolate fondant with a generous dollop of whipped cream on the side along with chocolate and raspberry sauce--not the ordinary two layer yellow cake with whipped cream in the middle and simple chocolate frosting that's the standard at other restaurants in the area.
Service fell down at the end. After dessert was served, our waitress forgot about us for a half hour, disappearing from the floor. Fritz found our check on a sideboard and Keith ventured out to the hostess station to pay our bill so we could finally leave. Fritz, normally the gentlest and most forgiving of men, got delightfully incensed over this kind of neglect at a restaurant of the Parker Housess reputation, after which we all hugged goodnight and headed home.
Sunday morning we hosted the guys who bought the house next door to me last spring for brunch. We’d had some over-the-fence-contact and they'd met Fritz briefly but we'd never had a chance to really get to know each other. The weather made us abandon any thoughts of brunch on the deck, so I set the dining room table with the good stuff. Fritz made one of his Southwest Egg Dishes with layers of flour tortillas, shredded Monterey Jack cheese, and mild green chilies, all left to soak in a milk and egg mixture overnight and baked in the morning. Yummy! We also had a sweet whole wheat Italian bread from our local Fornax bakery, and fresh fruit salad including our home-grown raspberries. The boys brought a bottle of pink Champagne with which I made mimosas, and we spent three hours talking, laughing and and having a really good time.
ing on her back, looking at me invitingly, waiting for me to realize there's a tummy to be rubbed, a chin and throat to be scratched. The folded mass makes a 
pedestal high enough that she can easily look from its summit across the blanket chest and out the window without having to exert herself by anything so tedious as actually getting up and moving. I suspect that blanket will have to remain there all winter. That's a lot longer than the post I wrote up last night remained in the word file where I'd composed it. I made a careless wrong choice and the entire thing vanished never to be seen again. Here's what the weekend looked like: Fritz and I worked both inside and outside the house depending on the weather which is now acting very much like early spring. During one of our pruning and weeding sessions, I got hit on the ankle by a ground hornet--only one this time, not like the half dozen that had at my inner thighs (PLEASE, no comments) earlier in the month when I was powe
r mowing. This time I made it into the house and got an antihistamine into me and some ammonia on the sting point within about three minutes so the intense, burning pain and resulting itch have been greatly reduced. Other than to create misery, I've yet to see any purpose to ground hornets in Nature's great plan.
Most of our work was in the house, clearing out the chronically unused, obviously unusable and totally obsolete from several areas of the house, the storage attic and my studio in particular. We had begun by inventorying all the furniture in the house and listing what was going to be moved to the new house, placed in a big yard sale, left for whoever buys the house or just given to MIT's prop stock. We filled six huge trash bags, packaged years (in some cases, decades) of Opera News and other classical music and CD review magazines for recycling as I'd determined from a local used CD and music book dealer that they have absolutely zero resale value.
It was all a very healthy and nowhere near as painful a process as I'd feared. We broke the weekend up with fun social events, like the latest Queer Boston Bloggers dinner out at Boston's famed Parker House on Friday night. Boston Crème Pie, Baked Schrod with a butter and herb cracker crumb topping, and of course, Parker House Rolls had been invented there. There was a $30 prix fixe menu as part of the summer edition of Boston Restaurant Week. Neither Fritz nor I had been to the Parker House in years (our table was directly below the portrait seen in the picture), and I discovered that the dining room was completely redone in rich jewel tones and dark wood. Karl, Bryan and Jason (on the eve of moving into their first place together), Keith and the two of us made up the party.
The food was pretty good. Although lobster gazpacho was far more gazpacho than lobster, it was quite pleasant. The grilled mahi-mahi was very good. No "nouvelle" squiggles of sauce on the plate where food should be, there was a satisfyingly large slab of well cooked fish and properly crisp and flavorful veggies. Fritz opted for grilled veal which looked (and tasted, he said) fine. We all went for the Boston Crème Pie for dessert and got a surprise--ordered at the source, it’s a healthy cylinder of cake and filling rolled in slivered nuts, topped by dark and white chocolate fondant with a generous dollop of whipped cream on the side along with chocolate and raspberry sauce--not the ordinary two layer yellow cake with whipped cream in the middle and simple chocolate frosting that's the standard at other restaurants in the area.Service fell down at the end. After dessert was served, our waitress forgot about us for a half hour, disappearing from the floor. Fritz found our check on a sideboard and Keith ventured out to the hostess station to pay our bill so we could finally leave. Fritz, normally the gentlest and most forgiving of men, got delightfully incensed over this kind of neglect at a restaurant of the Parker Housess reputation, after which we all hugged goodnight and headed home.
Sunday morning we hosted the guys who bought the house next door to me last spring for brunch. We’d had some over-the-fence-contact and they'd met Fritz briefly but we'd never had a chance to really get to know each other. The weather made us abandon any thoughts of brunch on the deck, so I set the dining room table with the good stuff. Fritz made one of his Southwest Egg Dishes with layers of flour tortillas, shredded Monterey Jack cheese, and mild green chilies, all left to soak in a milk and egg mixture overnight and baked in the morning. Yummy! We also had a sweet whole wheat Italian bread from our local Fornax bakery, and fresh fruit salad including our home-grown raspberries. The boys brought a bottle of pink Champagne with which I made mimosas, and we spent three hours talking, laughing and and having a really good time.
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hey will, thanx for dropping by. the boston dinner sounded like fun! over here in bbay, we usually have these parties organized by a grp, but they're more likc dance-till-u-drop events - the casual dinners out are for when my buddies n i dine/drink. ;-)
do come by more often . ta!
do come by more often . ta!
Will, your food descriptions are very impressive. I became amazingly hungry just reading this entry!
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