Aunt Voula: What do you mean he don’t eat no meat?!
[the entire room stops, in shock]
Aunt Voula: Oh, that’s okay. I make lamb. 🙂
Yesterday Monte de-boned and marinated a leg of lamb, and tonight he put it on the grill. Add some quick pasta and insalata caprese (with basil and tomatoes fresh from the garden), and VOILA! I think Aunt Vuola would approve.
Oh, and also: TGIF!! It’s been about a month since we’ve been out to the lake, given our travel schedules. Tomorrow we will make up for lost time.
Today we set out for La Jolla beach, rented bikes, enjoyed a picnic on the shore.
Pelicans flying overhead at La Jolla Shores:
An artist’s vantage point at La Jolla Cove:
Pelicans and seals nesting on the rocks:
Back in San Diego watching the America’s Cup boat Stars & Stripes tacking across the bay:
Safe and sound back at the Palomar lobby in time for happy hour:
Dinner tonight at Cafe Chole. Didn’t get a picture of the restaurant, but the food and the service was excellent.
Back at the penthouse, there was table dancing into the wee hours. No photos here, but what a fun time!
Sort of spur-of-the-moment, but with just-enough planning, I left today on a girls’ weekend to San Diego with Lori, Doray, Laura, Ann and Irene. Here are some sights from today.
We flew Southwest – my first time on that airline. Ended up with a window seat. We had reservations at the Palomar Hotel in the Gaslight district. AAAWESOME!!!! No complaints on the lodging.
Dinner at Croce’s restaurant Thursday night. Good jazz, kind of loud, and very busy. BTW, they are not closing, they are moving, so check them out in their new location.
I headed into Seattle today to visit Pat & Nga and the kids. Before I hit the road I stopped by a park on the puget sound shoreline where attended girl scout camp back in the day. I remember camping, cooking, clamming and making sand sculptures here over several summers here. I dare say it has been 35 years or so since i last stood on this particular stretch of beach. It is still amazingly beautiful.
I drove my mom’s car. Not your typical dashboard.
When i got to seattle, we drove to a park on the *other* side of the puget sound to fly the kites that I gave the boys. They are master kite flyers. One shot with both of them:
Saturday!! This is likely the last weekend before our dock becomes disconnected from shore, power and water. Lake Travis is low and dropping. 😦 This guy was guarding E dock when we arrived.
We anchored up in Arky south again. Rory and Greg arrived on Sapphire and joined us after a couple hours. We have the kayak stored in the slip now so it’s easy to bring it out with us. This is its first outing of 2013. Many more to come.
It’s pizza night! These are the works of art from tonight’s installment. Rachel and Julie were the pizza artistes. Monte’s homemade crusts, of course. The top left one is margherita with tomatoes, mozzarella, home grown basil and olive oil (instead of red sauce). Top right is tomato sauce, prosciutto, onion, basil, red pepper, olive and goat cheese. Bottom left and right are varying amounts of prosciutto, mushroom, olive, onion, red pepper and mozz.
Yum – life is good !
For the last 15 years, Becker Vineyards has had a Lavender Festival. Its been one of the things on my todo list. This year, i put it on my calendar several months ago, so I wouldn’t miss it. And, it worked! Today we headed out for a long drive through the hill country, in the miata with the top down. And we had a really great day…
We walked out through the lavender fields. They have several different varieties. It didn’t look quite like I had expected – i was imagining endless rows of deep purple, like in Provence. But it was pretty, nonetheless.
In bloom.
They also grow their own artichokes. I have never seen them in the wild before!
Artie chokes three for a dollar 🙂
We walked through the vendor booths. Lots of lavender goodies, flowers, herbs, nibblies and such.
Then one more walk through the fields, this shot is looking back at the winery.
We packed a light lunch and ate it at the festival while sipping wine and listening to the Raggedy Cats (we really enjoyed them).
Then a winery tour. Lots of new factoids. Becker has been here 20 years or so, and in that time, they’ve increased the amount of their wine that they make from grapes grown at the winery to 85%. The rest come from Lubbock.
Can’t wait for the Fredericksburg peach harvest!
On the way home we decided to dodge the brewing thunderstorms and buzzed over to Der Lindenbaum in Fredericksburg for some German home cooked food for dinner.
The festival is open tomorrow, too. Get out there if you can, this year or next!
We celebrated the evening with friends. The murder-mystery theme was fun. It was set in 1969, so the costumes were a bit … far-out, man. I was Enya Goddard-Daveeda, high priestess of the Church of the Vacant Mind. My costume instructions were to wear all white: gogo boots, flowing robe & miniskirt. Can you believe I found knee-high white platform-heeled gogo boots that laced up the back?!! Thank you Goodwill!
It is fun to get a little silly. And we did.
As is the custom, Monte played Auld Lang Syne on the saxophone at midnight, and everyone sang along. We also played an encore out on the front lawn just to make sure noone was asleep.
I don’t exactly know what my resolutions are. I do know that I want 2013 to be a year with a little more peace, love and understanding. I guess we’ll have to figure out what we each should do to make that happen along the way.
Rumors of the end of the world have been greatly exaggerated. We headed out today with a boatfull of friends, Al, Tina, AJ and Ireni. Lori went out as well with Doray, Laura and Ann. A good time was had by all. AJ took the helm and took us up and down the lake in mighty strong breezes. He’s a natural.
We are blessed with great and fun friends. What a great day spent with them!
One of the most well-padded packages I’ve ever received arrived today, containing a lovely gift from friends Teri & Jim… a hand-made sailboat ornament. L.O.V.E. I.T.! 🙂
Here’s to friends, family and fun. Embrace them all, every day!
We went to Laura and Arnie’s Christmas party tonight. It’s become a tradition, and a most fun one at that. Everyone ends up gathered around the piano belting out Christmas songs. Some scenes from the evening:
Today Noreen and I went to a glass fusing class in Tacoma. We each made 5 glass Christmas ornaments. I have to wait another week or two to see how they turned out… until they are fired, and they’ll mail them to me. But we had a lot of fun.
Afterwards, all my sisters and my brother met to spend some quality time together and yuk it up a bit. I had a really nice time. I have lived away from home for over 30 years, and though we get together every now and then, it never seems like enough. I’m glad we spent today together.
We ate lunch in a bar / restaurant loaded with Seahawks paraphenalia. They play tomorrow, but I’ll miss it – since i’m flying while they’re playing. I hope they make the post-season, so I have a chance to watch them on TV from Austin. Go Hawks!
I took a walk down E-dock this morning after scrubbing Nirvana stem to stern. There are some big boats on this dock, and most seem to be used frequently and are well taken care of. There are one or two that haven’t been boarded in many, many years. The photo above is of one boat that has lichens growing all over the top of its deck and cockpit. Sad.
As I was walking along in my flip-flops looking at the boats, and not watching where I was walking, I kicked one of the dock cleats. OW! Luckily just a scrape. A few minutes later, CRACK! I did it again, and this time brought blood. I thought I had broken my toe. That brought an end to my dock walk. Live and learn: no flip-flops on dock walks.
Cleat toe.
The rest of the day was spent lounging around. Until the afternoon, when the beer can race took place. This week Wally came aboard Nirvana and gave us some lessons in racing a sloop. Kurt and Kevin won on Dancer. Marty & Sue came in 2nd this week. And Monte, Wally & I took third. That’s better than last week when we came in 4th! 😀
The shot below is of Marty & Sue on Caribbean Hug approaching the starting line.
It’s Sunday night, and the end of another great weekend. Yesterday my cousin Devitt and Aunt Joanne came over for a breakfast visit with Monte, Julie and I. Monte made french omelettes, Julia Child style. And we tried our hand at a potato recipe that we got from Devitt:
Browned Breakfast Potatoes
Large cast iron skillet 8 oz bacon, cut into 1-2″ pieces 3 large potatoes, peeled and diced into 1/2″ cubes 1 onion, chopped 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped Salt & pepper
Cook bacon, onions and garlic in large cast iron skillet until browned. Discard bacon fat from pan. Add potatoes, salt & pepper. Cook another 10 minutes or so over medium heat on the stovetop. Then place skillet, uncovered, in 425 degree oven for 20 minutes. Lower temperature to 350 and cook for another 10 minutes. Serve and savor!
Afterwards, Julie headed home to study up for the last final exam of Summer session (good luck!), and we packed for the lake.
We planned to raft-up with friends overnight to watch the Perseids meteor shower. We made it to the cove by about 5pm and set our first anchor on the new boat. It was a good set. We were soon joined by Joe on Prelude, Rory & Greg on Sapphire, Nick, Laurene & Morgan on Kalliopi, and Kurt & Kevin on Dancer. Everyone was tied up by the time the golden hour was upon us. The shot above is of the 5 boats, stern to the sunset. Nirvana is in the middle.
After dinner and stories from the day, everyone grabbed a cushion and laid on the bow of their boats to watch for meteors. It wasn’t a knock-out show, but we did get to see some good ones. The night was peppered with random shouts of “There’s one!” every 10 or 15 minutes.
This morning everyone floated for a while and then people started peeling off at about noon. I’m pleased to report that we got the anchor up with little problem. I am loving the electric windlass to bring up the chain and anchor!
Monte and I sailed ALL afternoon. The breezes started out sluggish but filled in to some great wind that we haven’t seen in a long time on the lake. At about 3:30 we dropped sail and picked up Devitt at Arky cove to take him out for a sail. He did great, taking the helm as Monte and I worked the lines. We dropped him off back at the park around 5:30 and headed back to the marina.
By the time we got home several hours later we were pleasantly exhausted.
I can’t wait to get out there again. Friday soon come!
We had reservations at the 
Sheila365 