daily life

so things are finally shaping up in the yard and we now have use of our deck - we have been working on household items (which is a common activity for northerners in the summer) and catching up with friends... soon we begin summer travel so then we will have more scintillating topics for posts- LOL

I am not really amazingly tech savvy so I am always surprised when something happens "by itself" like the photos that google sent me that "they" had edited and changed- here are my photos followed by theirs -

LOL- I apparently now live in an old fashioned post card- LOL

but I actually like MY flowers better- if I had wanted pink or fuchsia flowers I would have picked that color- LOL  anyway- here are some more photos of the yard - so you will know we have made some progress-

about the time we are heading south it should look mighty fine- LOL....

the fourth party at our house was lots of fun for me because I did the cooking I had to do well ahead and just hung out with folks - everything was cleaned up (thanks to many pitching in on kitchen duty) by an hour after the last guest left... so an easy and fun day/evening for me...

the weekend weather was not so fabulous so last night we were pretty stir crazy and decided to go out to dinner... we had been meaning to get back to Magnolia Cafe for a while and had Open Table checks to use so we headed there late on Sunday... I like this place. It has good memories for us because it was at Magnolia Cafe in November of 2007 that we met our friends Laure & Arnaud (known as "Larno" for short) through Keith Ross who had arranged a dinner there for winos... No one has seen Keith in years but despite Larno moving to NYC three years ago we still keep in touch...

back to Magnolia Cafe- the food is decent, the corkage fees reasonable, service good and it is a warm friendly neighborhood place- so that's how we end up there late on a Sunday night of the holiday weekend- I had the short ribs and Phil the bouillabaisse and we drank one of Neil's 83 burgs which turned out to be excellent-

and a final thought for the day- someone posted this on FB and I couldn't agree more so I am posting here-

and this holds true for people too- before they are your friends they were someone you didn't know- sometimes you don't remember exactly where you met (like we remember Larno) but certainly in each instance there was a time before you knew them and a time when you did know them... and no matter how much you see them or don't see them- you never go back to not knowing them  (I guess unless you lose your mind of course- but luckily we're still young enough that we haven't had that issue!)

so our summer goes on and we are heading out of town for our road trip in the heart of Midwestern America...will keep you posted!