It was a full week, so that it feels like we were on holiday for more than the actual 8 days. (I am quite certain this effect will vanish about 5 seconds after I arrive at work tomorrow.) There was the aforementioned shoe-shopping. There was eating of dinner on the deck while looking out over the lake. There was eating of breakfast on the deck while looking out over the lake. There was drinking of beer o.t.d.w.l.o.a.t.l. There was erging (while looking out on the lake, though not on the deck). There were two separate ventures out on the lake in the in-laws’ inflatable kayaks, which for some reason I decided to do right after erging, not once but twice. (That was a bit frustrating because they are so much more inefficient than rowing shells, but it was just good to get lake water under my butt.) There were two visits to the new Cabela’s, which has an extraordinary number of things I can’t ever imagine wanting to buy (deer decoy? Are deer that stupid?) along with a surprising number of things I do want (this is where some of the shoe-buying came in, not only Ted’s workboots which are the sort of hiking boots you’d expect them to carry but two quite dressy pair of shoes I’ll wear to the office.)
There was reading of my books, including a new one bought this trip, at my very last visit to a Borders books. I’d actually thought they were all already closed, but this one was in its last few days, with the last few books and all the fixtures being sold. That was sad, especially while remembering how excited I was back in October 1995, at my first visit to a Borders, when I was out being interviewed for the job that moved us to Arizona.
We finally got to meet all of he neighbors we’d been hearing about from Ted’s parents; we took some Belgian chocolates along and gave them to a few who seem to have been keeping an eye on our place. We also went down to visit Te’s parents, got our boats down from the roof of their garage where they’ve ben hanging out since 2006, and got the boat racks ready for them to be taken up to the house. (Ted’s parents will taken them next week, with the help of a friend of theirs who has a big truck. I am still not clear on why it matters so much to Ted to have the boats there, since we won’t get back to the house to actually row them for months and months, maybe a year, but it clearly was important to him, and the friends with the truck seem to really want to go up and get a look at this house they’ve been hearing about. I wouldn’t be surprised if they do a little fishing while there.) We also spent some time helping clear out and organize the garage – the least we could do after keeping our boats there all these years, though of course we’d have been glad to do it anyway.
I did a mental run-through yesterday and realized that all of the dinners we ate there were ones that could not have been duplicated here, so that’s a success. First night: steak and baked potatoes and salad: we’ve never been able to buy steaks here that aren’t tasteless and much tougher than US ones, and if we could our combi (combination microwave/oven/grill) doesn’t get hot enough to really cooks steaks well, and the supermarket here only has small potatoes, too small for baking. The farmers’ market has bigger ones, though still not as big as normal US baking potatoes. Night 2: shrimp, corn on the cob, asparagus. We can get shrimp here, but not sweet corn, and they mostly sell white asparagus and that only briefly when it’s in season. We prefer green, though that’s probably mostly about what you’re used to. (People here say they prefer white because it’s more tender – but when we do see green here, it, it’s thicker and woodier than we get in the US.) The third night we had big old burgers at a brew pub. Next was pizza – they do have good pizza here, but US pizza is much heavier on the toppings and we wouldn’t have been able to get a Mexican pizza that good. Next up was Mexican food, at what we thought was a hole-in-the-wall storefront that tuned out to be quite a big restaurant with a large menu. Then salmon (better than the salmon we get here, though not miles better as the steak was) and more corn. Our lat two dinners were at BJ’s Brewery and Chipotle’s, which may not be fine dining but we like them. All along we drank local wines and Pacific NW beers.
Ted’s now up to Diamond status on Skymiles and this tri took me to Gold (it goes Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond) so we were disappointed to be told that Delta “doesn’t do upgrades on international flights except for operational reasons”. We think that means they only upgrade if they can sell your old seat. We did get to use the lounge, though; while there we heard something about a plane crash but couldn’t figure out where it was (which is a bit worrying when you’re just about to get on a plane a few days after September 11). I’m glad no one was attacked, but it was still a bt upsettign to find out they must have been talking about the crash at the Reno Air Races. We’ve been to those races, met some of the pilots, and sat in those grandstands not far back from where that place crashed.