When Ginger wrote for her sabbatical grant, one of the things the Lilly Endowment encouraged her to include in her budget were monies for a Send Off Party and a Welcome Back Party. I volunteered to be the chef for the gatherings. We had the first party today, even though next Sunday is her last…
I got to participate in my first Portuguese pun today. Robert, the chef, likes to say, “Obrigado too much” when he wants to thank one of the Brazilian folks for helping him with something. It caught on with all of us, so you hear it a lot in our kitchen. Thelma came up with the…
Today has been a hard day, not because of anything that happened as much as reality is setting in: I’m in a downward spiral and I can’t seem to stop it. For reasons I don’t understand, I’m depressed again. I had one particularly strange moment tonight. Friday is one of my full days at the…
I was supposed to go bowling this evening. Bowling in New England is unlike bowling anywhere else, unless you happen to be in the Canadian Maritime Provinces. Up here, we call it candlepin, which means – well, here’s how they describe it at Boutwell’s Bowling Center in Concord, New Hampshire: Candlepin bowling unique to New…
We’ve had a run of beautiful early spring days that have lifted all of our spirits and made us think winter was gone, at least for this year. It’s a lie. I’m sitting in my office watching the flying saucer sized snowflakes swirl around, taunting the Schnauzers and me: there will be no walk to…
Tomorrow (Wednesday) at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06. It will never happen again. The moment I’m waiting for is twelve minutes and twelve seconds after either noon or midnight on December 12 (my birthday) in 2012: 12:12:12 12/12/12. This afternoon, I drove…
Saturday AOL played an April Fools joke on me. Besides posting here, I send my Lenten Journal to a number of folks by email. I had it all typed and ready to send, hit the button and got a message in return that told me to go to KW: RATE LIMITS. I typed the phrase…
It was perfect. Don was taking prayer requests before the pastoral prayer in our ten o’clock service. One of the men in the congregation, a retired surgeon who is full of both gentleness and whimsy, raised his hand. Don called on him and he stood up, his hymnal open. “I wanted to make note of…
Carl and I were the only ones at the restaurant for most of the morning, which is usually the case on Saturdays. He is the function chef and I am the lunch cook. Carl does brilliant work in his kitchen. Not only does he make great food, he does it in a way that he…
It was a great night. We went into Boston about two o’clock because we had to go to the doctor’s office before our evening could begin. Ginger and I are three weeks away from her sabbatical and the Trip of Our Lives to trace the steps of Paul through Greece and Turkey (thank you, Lilly…