This has been a quiet weekend and that's just as well as last week was...well, a week from Hell...at work and this coming week will probably be more of the same.
More about that later, perhaps. Or tomorrow.
There were some bright spots in the week...none of them involving work. (And hurrah, my friend and coworker will be back from vacation on Monday! We missed her...and not just because of what was going on at work.)
On Tuesday evening my dad and step-mom had us over for dinner. I was good and didn't eat any of the cheese and crackers and had no dessert. But my, dinner was tasty! Ham loaf and green beans and yummy potatoes. My brother was there too and we had a good time.
And we had a nice time Friday, too. I had to leave work early for a visit with my friendly dermatologist about a spot on my back that I wanted her to look at. She said it was nothing to worry about. So that was good.
Then Mr. Pointy Sticks and I went to Barnes and Noble because we had coupons. I bought him the last of his birthday presents (the latest Donna Leon) and two books for me, one being the new Graham Joyce, The Silent Land. It's an eerie book and a quick read. I picked it up when I got home...just to take a quick look...got sucked into it and finished it up on Saturday. I did figure out what was going on before the characters did but still, it was well done and is the sort of book that I think will linger with me for some time.
Friday evening a friend of Mr. Pointy Sticks took us both out to dinner for Mr. Pointy Stick's birthday. We went to a Persian restaurant over on Joppa Road called the Orchard Market and Cafe. It's in a very unprepossessing strip mall, near a roller skating rink we used to have to take Rachel to for various birthday parties. Inside, though, it's very nice...and man, was the food good! I had a salad for starters...mixed greens with slices of ripe pear and mango, tomatoes, cucumber, olives, and feta cheese in a pomegranate vinaigrette. So good! The saltiness of the cheese and the acidity of the dressing against the sweetness of the fruit...yum! I continued the fruit theme with the Plum Lamb, a stew of lamb and plums and butternut squash, served with basmati rice. I could only eat about half of it and had the rest reheated for lunch on Saturday and you know what? I think it was even better the second day! The flavors had mellowed. The other two main dishes we ordered were beef tongue in stew (bleah) and the special of the evening...a Persian take on paella. And man, that looked wonderful! Huge servings and really good. The desserts were disappointing, though I actually was glad of that because I am trying not to eat too much.
Saturday morning Mr. Pointy Sticks and I left the house relatively early and went to the Smith College booksale. I came home with about four books, I think. There wasn't a lot of stuff of interest. There were lots of knitting patterns, for once, but they were mostly from the '80s...pretty awful. I did bring home two knitting magazines in German for a buck each and an old Oat Couture pattern for a still good-looking cardigan for 50 cents. Did some grocery shopping and headed home again.
Oh, we also did some preliminary stove shopping. That's something else that happened this week. I was broiling swordfish steaks one evening and I opened the oven door to turn them over and heard this odd popping/crackling sort of sound. Looked down and the inside pane of glass in the oven door had shattered. And you know what? Ovens are expensive! I'd like to get another smooth surface one...it needs to be a slide in...white...I guess I'd like the option to do convection. And all that brings the price up (at least for the ones recommended by Consumer Reports) to $1,000 or more! Yikes!
And today we haven't done much. Some cleaning, some reading. (I read Erin Kelly's The Poison Tree, which I thought was pretty good. Not great literature, but a well-done thriller/suspense sort of book.)
I am hoping that if today is boring enough, I'll actually look forward to going into work tomorrow. Fat chance.
No comments:
Post a Comment