Patricia Abbott (pattinase): Monday, Monday

Monday, March 13, 2023

Monday, Monday

What's up?

6 comments:

Steve Oerkfitz said...: Very disappointed in the Oscars. I disliked the movie that walked away with everything.
Still watching Poker Face, Perry Mason, Last of Us, and John Oliver. I watched no movies in the theater this week.
Read The Murder Book by Thomas Perry and UBIK by Philip K. Dick ( a reread). Up next the Big Bundle by Max Allan Collins.
Saw Chuck Prophet at the Ark in Ann Arbor. Good show. We got there early and went into a Starbuck's two doors down from The Ark to wait and Chuck Prophet came in. My friend Jim who has never met a stranger starts talking to him and he ends up sitting with us for about half an hour. Which was cool.; 11:26 AM
Jerry House said...: It's school vacation week, and Walt, Mark, Erin, and Jack are off in Virginia visiting his folks. Yesterday, the five of us remaining (Christina, Jessie, Ceili, Amy, amd me) went out to tea to celebrate Kitty's birthday. We were opting for a tea shop in Foley, Alabama, that had advertised 100 different types of tea. Work schedules made us switch the date from Saturday to Sunday, and that tea shop was not open on Sundays. We found another place in Foley; this one advertised Southern cooking (with a 29-foot buffet!), but they did have a separate dedicated room for tea. Not sure what we were getting into, we booked the place for noon.

The other part of celebrating Kitty's birthday was a visit to the Vera Bradley outlet store, which had been one of Kitty's favorite places to shop. The outlet store opened at 10 am, asnd Jessie thought it would be a good idea to hit it before our scheduled tea time ("tea time," get it?). Because we all sprung forward at 2 am that morning, our bodies were telling us that it was really 9 am, and because Foley is an hour and a half from us, that meant leaving really early -- but no sacrifice is too great for Vera Bradley. The ladies bought all sorts of stuff. I didn't. Then it was off to tea.

The restaurant was festooned with all sorts of signs and sayings of a conservative religious bent, but this was the South, after all, and each to their own. I say. We were the only ones in the separate tea room. The hostess poured us each a cup of hot water and there were several dozen tea bags on the table (Twinings, Lipton, and what have you, in various flavors) and we began to realize that a properly brewed tea was not in our immediate future. Then she gave us each a tiny plate with three little triangular sandwiches (no crust, of course, but the bread while not stale, had certainly been roaming around that neighborhood) and a little tiny bowl of blueberries, grapes and sliced strawberries). The sandwiches were 1) the funkiest ham salad I have ever tasted, 2) something that was supposed to be chicken salad but could have been possum for all I knew, and 3) cucumber sandwiches made with one part chopped cucumber to twenty-thirty parts cream cheese. The look on Amy's face when she tried one of the sandwiches was priceless; Amy is one of the few persons I know who can gag discreetly Then the hostess brought out a big platter with more of the sandwiches. I was the only who ate them because I was raised on my mother's cooking, so nothing really tastes bad. Then came the second course -- little tiny dry quiche puffs, small quarter-sized lucheon meat sandwiches (balogna or salami, or maybe ham, who could tell?), and baking soda biscuits with out choice of lemon curd, blueberry compote, and some white stuff that turned out to be whipped cream and not clotted cream. The piece de resistance was the dessert -- tiny little pastries, each vying for the title of dryest food on the planet. And we each got a plate with a lerge meringue shell filled with whipped cream. And if we wanted more tea>? Well, the hostess had the kettle waiting on a side table and would gladly pour what was now luke-warm water into our cups.

The experience was so bad that it was great fun. We laughed a lot and were absolutely sure that Kitty would have laughed the loudest at the experience. And I really have to admire my family: while we did not praise the hostess effusively, we certainly did so diplomatically.

After that, we went to a nearby used book store where I happened to have some credit and Ceili and Amy came away with a gazillion books and I ended up with an early Gordon R. Dickson SF paperback and a Joe Konrath thriller.

Not being truly filled with our tea, we then went out and stuffed ourselves some super-yummy tacos. After which Jessie and Christina spent some time and money in Old Navy, and we headed home.

It was a good day.

I hope you are enjoying Florida, Patti. You've had some pretty good company. Stay safe.; 12:53 PM
Margot Kinberg said...: Hope you're doing well, Patti!; 1:03 PM
Jeff Meyerson said...: That tea sounds incredible, Jerry, but not in a good way. We (and Patti) had some much better seafood on the water on Ft. Myers last night.; 2:09 PM
TracyK said...: Patti, I hope your trip is going well and it sounds like you had a good time with Jeff last night.

We did not watch the Oscars last night, but I was glad to hear that Everything Everywhere All at Once won so many awards. It is the only film up for awards that we had seen, so I can make no comparisons but I did enjoy Everything Everywhere All at Once.; 2:47 PM
Gerard Saylor said...: Jerry's tea story is a good one.; 10:36 AM